Khor Virap

Today we were invited to go to church with the family. In the US, we do not attend church, so we were a little reluctant to accept the invitation, but thought that for the sake of cultural integration, we should at least see what services were like here. It turns out we needn't have worried. For our host  family at least, going to church was really more of a sight-seeing excursion than anything else- and what great sights there were to see! 

Instead of going to the small church in Shahumyan, we traveled about 5 miles southwest of our village to a monastery called Khor Virap, or "Deep Pit". It was in this deep pit that St. Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for 14 (or 40, depending on who you ask) years, and was later credited with bringing Christianity to the King of Armenia and securing Armenia's place in history as the First Christian Nation. It sits, perched atop a hill, overlooking the Ararat Plain on one side and with a magnificent view of Mount Ararat on the other. The Armenian-Turkish border divides the two, and can be seen behind the monastery in the picture below. 

Going to church with the family consisted of driving to Khor Virap, purchasing a few candles, and lighting them while saying quite prayers to yourself. It took about 5 minutes. We spent the rest of the day exploring the monastery's grounds and enjoying to incredible sights that were on hand.

From the very highest point on the monastery's hill, you can lookout over the cemetery (where, we were told, our host grandparent's parents are buried) and see the town of Shahumyan where we live. (It's in the picture above, in front of Karmir Sar, the Red Mountain, in the background).

After we had seed what there was to see at Khor Virap, we drove to a second hill from which you can see the monastery backed by Mount Ararat. Below is a photo of Sam on that promontory in a sea of vinyard fields- directly behind him is Mount Ararat, and in the far right of the photo you can see the church of Khor Virap.

The view of Ararat is really stunning. It doesn't quite translate in photos. It's difficult to capture just how much of the horizon is taken up by the huge mountain, but I think the photo below may be my best attempt yet. 

We haven't seen much in the way of wildlife in Armenia yet, but there were some pretty cool snails on the second hill. I can't think of some clever way to talk about them in terms of Armenian culture or history, but I really like this photo, so I'm sharing it here.

And that, in a nutshell, was our trip to Khor Virap. We got home safely- although my heart was in my throat the entire time we were in the car. Driving here is a little like Grand Theft Auto: The Real Life Edition, and this was my first time driving with someone other than a Peace Corps driver in something other than a Peace Corps vehicle. But fortunately, the ride home was relatively uneventful.

Tomorrow it's back to the grindstone: 10 hour days of language lessons and technical training sessions. It was really nice to have a day off today.