Snowy Day

The mountains in snow are really incredible. The landscape here is so different from New England, it sometimes feels really alien to me- but with the snow capped mountains gleaming in the morning sun, it's easier to put those feelings of unease aside.

Another Sunrise

I post a lot of sunrise pictures here- but I just can't help it, they're so beautiful.

A Merry Little Christmas

Merry Christmas! I'm not sure why decorating for Christmas is so important to me,  but it definitely is. This year, we splurged and bought ourselves a 3' plastic tree... It may have been a silly purchase since we won't be here next year and so we'll only get a few weeks of use out of it, but even so, I feel so happy with the decorations up that I think it's well worth the dram. 

Solstice Cinnamon Buns

One of our fellow PCVs has a family tradition of eating cinnamon buns on the winter solstice. She organized a group expedition to the Cinnabon store in Yerevan for today. Unfortunately, Sam and I aren't in Yerevan, so we couldn't take part in that particular group activity, but we thought that solstice cinnamon buns sounded like a great idea, so we decided to make our own. Between the kitchen being freezing cold and the high altitude, it was a little tricky to get the dough to rise properly, but we managed it in the end... Unfortunately, I don't have any finished photos for you, because once they were baked, we were too ravenous to stop and take pictures- instead we just wolfed them down and subsequently fell into a food coma. 

Morning Walk

Despite the cold, I got myself out of bed and took a short walk this morning. It's odd to be the only person in the streets- these days, with the temperatures in the single digits, the town really doesn't get up until after 10am...

Frosty Garden

Winter Has Come

It's official. Everything is frozen, including me. Winter is here.

DIY Snuggie

I'll admit- sometimes I don't spend my time in the most efficient ways possible. Today, a fellow PCV asked posted on Facebook that she was looking for a way to turn a 5'x5' blanket into a bathrobe-type garment to help her stay warm while moving around her house, cooking etc, but that would also work for sitting on the couch and working on her laptop.

I spent the rest of the day creating a paper doll and playing around with a paper 'blanket' to find her the most functional but also easiest to create solution. Here's what I came up with- and I have to say, I'm pretty proud of it.

The only sewing involved would be about 3 inches on either shoulder and at the cut points, and can be a simple as just whip-stitching the edges of the blanket together. Here's the diagram, just in case you want to try your hand at making your own. 

Sunrise

Our Kitchen Window

Winter is coming alright... ice is supposed to stay outside the house, right?

Meat Shop

While we do have a brick-and-mortar butcher shop in Sisian, it's much more common for people to purchase their meat from what, for lack of a better term, I'll call a street-vendor:

The basic formula is to get a recently slaughtered animal, a sheet, a tree stump, and a hatchet. Find a likely spot on the side of the road, and set up shop. Meat is sold on a by-size basis rather than any particular cut of meat, and the business is open for as long as the meat lasts, or until the guy selling it decides to close up shop. Then, whatever's left over, gets bundled up and tossed into the trunk of the guy's car, and he drives away. It's an interesting process to watch.

Envoy Staff Are The Best

There was a glitch with the internet in Yerevan today, which meant that the staff at the Envoy couldn't access their records for who was staying the night and who was checking out that day. This meant that they mistakenly stripped my bed and tossed out a half-empty water bottle that I had left on the bedside table.

All of this was no big deal- when I got back to the Envoy in the afternoon and saw that my bed had been stripped, I just went to the front desk, let them know that I would be staying for another night, and they got right on putting fresh sheets on the bed. I didn't even think about the water bottle- it wasn't a Nalgene or anything, just a disposable plastic water bottle that I had bought for a few hundred dram (less than a dollar) at the convenience store around the corner so that I'd have something to drink if  I got thirsty in the middle of the night.

But when I went to bed this evening, I found this on the shelf by my bed. Not only is it a replacement, but it's the same exact brand and bottle type that I had bought the day before.

And that's why the Envoy staff are the best. I could stay in any number of places when I go to Yerevan, but the staff at the Envoy know my name. They know who I'm married to. They take care of us, and for that we'll always book our stay with them.

Dinner With Friends

I was fortunate enough to be in Yerevan for a Peace Corps meeting this weekend- fortunate because a friend of our was having a birthday party! We got a great big group of volunteers together and went out to one of our favorite restaurants in Yerevan: Karma. I'm pretty sure this is the only Indian food restaurant in Armenia. But even better than the amazing food was the amazing company. It was so great to hang out with all these fantastic people:

Garden Tomatoes For Breakfast

So, here's something I never expected to see: fresh garden tomatoes for breakfast in December. That's right- the tomatoes in the pictures below were grown in our garden over the summer, and have not been dried, frozen, canned, or preserved in any other way, except to have been kept in a cool, dry location.

The variety is called "Grappoli D'Inverno", or 'Grapes of Winter', and was developed for it's keeping properties. I know- it's suuuper wrong to transport live seeds across international borders, but I'm so glad I did. This is one of the best investments of time, money and energy I've made in my personal life here.

I had gotten them planted later than I would have liked, and then neglected the plants for the rest of the summer. But when it came time to clean the garden up in September (back before we had nights dropping below zero...) we found all these tomato plants with just ripening (pale yellow to orange in color) fruits. We cut the entire plants at the base and brought the entire lot into the house. 

I had intended to jar or pickle them- but never got around to it. Instead, we just left the tomatoes- plants and all- in our unheated front hallway. Over the past several months, a few times a week, we pick a few of the slowly ripening cherry tomatoes from the long dried out vines and toss them in our morning omelettes. It's amazing to me that we can eat tomatoes from the garden- without any preservation efforts- almost 4 entire months after they were picked. 

Mulled Wine

We've decided on a good project to open up the first of our homemade Armenian compotes. We're going to make some mulled wine. We've picked the pear-and-plum juice blend for this particular experiment, and we'll be mulling it with cinnamon sticks, cloves and a little bit of nutmeg this evening. I'm excited- I think it'll be a nice addition to the cold winter nights here.