I know its been a long time since the last time I wrote a blog entry. For the first few weeks I was busy but recently I’ve just been putting it off. The last time I wrote was before I left on my vacation to the Balkans and Greece, which was a lot of fun. I met my friend Danny along the way and together we met some pretty cool people and had just one major miss hap where we got on a train we thought was going to Skopje, Macedonia but was actually going to Sofia, Bulgaria. We didn’t end up in Bulgaria just one stop down the track with two suitcases and a ton of food we bought for the long ride which we then had to lug back to the town before catching a bus and finally going on to Skopje.
When I got back to Armenia my friend Ian who I met when I studied in DC came to visit. He stayed for nearly two weeks and in that time we went from the north of the country to the south seeing some great sites along the way. We even got to go to a wedding between a former volunteer and his new Armenian wife. Ian got food poisoning from a beer filled with dead bugs but those bugs didn’t show up until the last sip and then you know the damage wass already done.
After Ian left I packed up my old apartment and moved to a new house on the other side of town. I now rent the bottom floor of a house while my land lord lives above. She has three sons but she keeps telling me she now has four because I am her son also. I always appreciate hearing people welcoming me into their lives like that. The other day her youngest son called her on the phone and she made me talk to him which was weird but she had a big smile on her face while I did it. She also has 8 chickens, 20 chicks, one cow, and six rabbits, which she said we will kill in November and eat during the winter. I hope I am not around for that. Especially the cow because I think she knows what’s in store for her and often she looks at me with a look in her eye that can only mean one thing: “save me”.
When I first moved to Artik over a year ago I came alone in one taxi with just my stuff. When I moved out of my host family’s house back in December I went to my new house making two taxi trips and when I came to the house where I live now it took three taxi trips. I’ve accumulated a lot of things in one year. But Friday I leave to go home for my sisters wedding and with two suitcases in hand I will bring back many of the things I have bought to remind me of Armenia as well as many gifts people have asked me to bring to my sister and her fiancée Matt for their wedding. Of course these people have never met any member of my family so it means a lot to me that they want to share with them what they have.
While I’m home I hope to upload lots of pictures to my blog so check for those soon. And it would be great to meet up with you so give me a call!
