Dog In Snow

It's cold out, guys. Like, really, really cold out. We're never gonna get our pipes to unfreeze. I walked to the bank today to send our rent money to our landlady, and it occurred to me that we must be renting the most expensive non-plumbed property in all of Armenia. I really, really hope we don't have to wait until the weather warms up in Spring to get our water back. If we do, I want to renegotiate our rent, but that's definitely not something that you do here. I worry that if we try to bring it up, we'll just get evicted, and then we'll be out in the cold, with the dogs, with no where to go. It makes me realize just how lucky Sam and I were to have the family support structures in place back home that we did. It makes me feel a new sense of empathy for folks back home who live without that safety net.

Anyway, enough doom and gloom. Here's a dog (not ours), hanging out in the snow:

Further Adventures In Armenian Plumbing Pt Forever

Ok- I don't even know how to begin picking up this tale... where did we leave off? If you'll recall, we woke up the morning of January 5th to find that we had no running water in our house. Further investigation (over the course of several days) lead us to discover that there was a problem with the cuff which connected our house's water supply to the water main. Fortunately, since the problem was "upstream" of the water meter, this meant that it was the Jrmugh's (the Water Department's) responsibility to fix it. Over the past 3 weeks, in comedy-of-errors style series of events, that hasn't happened. First, there was no suitable replacement cuff in Sisian, so I guy had to go get it in Yerevan. About a week later, they finally got the piece from Yerevan, but it was the wrong size. Then there were no pieces the correct size in Armenia, and so the correct size had to be ordered from Russia. Then, they finally had the right piece and it was the right size, but nobody had thought to bring back from Yerevan the literal nuts and bolts to install it. For a while, we wondered if we were supposed to bribe someone- and if we had known how much and to whom, we may have done it-but it looks like no bribe was necessary, since yesterday they finally fixed the problem and replaced the broken cuff.

We were super excited about this, however, that excitement quickly faded when we learned that we still didn't have any running water. we checked all the places we learned about over Thanksgiving, but heating them up didn't seem to have any effect. With Karine's help, we got a plumber out to our house towards the end of the day yesterday, and his only advice was to dig out the pipe, poking holes in it every few meters, until we found a spot which had water pressure. This was most definitely not the answer we wanted, but at least it gave us a game plan.

And so here we are today:

We've spent the entire morning digging the pipe out of frozen ground- which is no easy feat when all you've got to work with is a shovel and a large piece of iron bar. What we really need is a pick ax, but I don't see us acquiring one any time in the near future. 

We've got a system of several extension cords and electric heaters set up so that when we go in for lunch we can try to warm up the area around the pipe where we're digging. I know, I know, it's a wild fire waiting to happen and Smokey the Bear would be horribly upset with us, but Smokey hasn't had to deal with a month without running water in the middle of an Armenian winter, so he can take his disapproval and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Well, This Isn't Gonna Be Fun

The forecast says we'll get anywhere from 6 to 14 inches of snow over the course of the week... looks like any travel plans that Syunik volunteers had for the weekend are soon-to-be cancelled. :(

#IMarchFor

Technically, it's still January 20th back home, just a few hours after President-Elect Donald Trump was sworn into office, but in anticipation of the hundreds of women who will take to the streets today in protest of the new President's message of misogyny, bigotry, and xenophobia, I hosted my own little Women's March in Sisian. It was really just me, walking with my sign through the center of town, but still, I was proud to take part in this moment in history. 

We Have A Plant Growing In Our Window Sill

I spotted a small sprout growing up from in between our window sill and the counter top in our kitchen today. In response, I felt a strange combination of frustration and happiness. I was frustrated because houses shouldn't grow plants from their walls. That's just not how things are supposed to work, and the kitchen these days is cold and always damp, and this little sprout coming up from the woodwork just seemed to be a manifestation of all those ways that the kitchen didn't match the idealized room that I have in my head. On the other hand, this little itty bitty sprout was there, despite the fact that this was clearly the wrong place for it, and it was this cute little stubborn plant working its way into the world- and I can't help but smile thinking about that. Anyway. I guess I'm just feeling very conflicted these days. Here's a picture of the little plant upon which I'm placing all this emotional turmoil. 

World War II Monument

We took the dogs on a walk today, just as the sun was starting to set behind the mountains west of monument to the Sisiansi soldiers who fought in the second world war. It's a tall, proud monument- very much in the Soviet style- and it stands on the edge of the  plateau above the Sisian river valley, overlooking the entire town. I thought it looked almost regal in the sunset this evening.

Composting Toilet

So, yesterday was my 30th birthday, and as we still have no water, it proved to be a true 'dirty-thirty'. While we had a great time celebrating the day with some PCVs and friends from around Sisian, we also got some bad news: they replacement part that they brought back from Yerevan was the wrong size, and they have to special order the correct size part from Russia. Our friends from town tell us that this means it could take months to get that pipe repaired. And so I yesterday I took myself on a little Birthday Shopping Trip, and bought myself a present- some assembly required: 

Now Sam and I are the proud owners of our very own composting toilet. It took a little finagling to get the height/seat positioning just right, but now that we've got that figured out, it works like a charm. Not quiet as convenient as a normal flushing toilet, but waaaay better than the make shift urinal-bucket-squat situation we had going on before.

Our Posh Corps Bathroom

It's official: the man from the Jgmugh is in Yerevan, purchasing the replacement part to fix our water. Hopes are high that I'll be able to take a shower for my birthday on Saturday. In the mean time, this entire episode has made me really think about the state of infrastructure in Armenia, and the impact that has on the people living here. It seems to me that our bathroom is a perfect microcosm of the challenges facing the Armenian people. The #ThrowbackThursday challenge on the Peace Corps subreddit this week was images from 'your Posh Corps experience'. I submitted the following photo and short explanation which captures my thoughts on the matter pretty well:

"So, this picture of my bathroom perfectly sums up my Posh Corps experience, and provides a really great microcosm for understanding one of the major challenges experienced my the people in my country of service.

In this image, you see a bright, modern-looking bathroom- completely tiled, with a french shower head, bathtub, sink, and the piece de resistance: a western-style toilet. Very posh-corps, right? No pooping in a hole for me. 

Unfortunately, you've got about a 50/50 chance of any of those things working, and sometimes the plumbing is on the fritz for prolonged periods of time. Hence, the make-shift urine diverting dry toilet (that's the pot and the DIY lady-friendly urinal you see between the toilet and the tub), and the camelbak hanging from the shower head for washing faces and brushing teeth (Sam and I invest in sani-wipes or alcohol-based hand sanitizer in the capital rather than pinching the camelbak mouthpiece to wash hands)...

We could theoretically take bucket baths in the tub, but the fact that some times houses have running water means there's no town well where we can draw up water when the municipal plumbing shuts down. Similarly, we have to crap into a pot on our bathroom floor because the existence of modern plumbing means the house isn't equipped with an outhouse. (And trust me- having done both, crapping on your bathroom floor is somehow waaay more psychologically disturbing that pooping in a hole... I don't know why, it just is)

On a nation-wide scale, the existence of modern-style infrastructure has eroded the social and logistical systems which were previously in place to handle these kinds of day-to-day needs. However, the conditions of economic hardship with which Armenia has struggled since the collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in crumbling, unreliable infrastructure, causing problems which wouldn't exist if locally sustainable technologies and systems were extant in our community.

And that, my friends, is my Posh Corps experienced summed up in one photograph."

S**** Just Got Real

This whole no water business is getting old, but it doesn't look as if the town water department is in any hurry to fix it. (Although we have one source in town who says that they're in Yerevan buying the replacement part today, so maybe by next week, we'll have water back!) The bathroom situation is getting dire, so I made a lady-friendly urinal. It'll keep the need to flush to a minimum so as to conserve our water as much as possible- but it also brings this whole 'indoor-camping' thing to a whole new level. I'm pretty pleased with the functionality of the device, but I still wish it weren't necessary in the first place...

Further Adventures In Armenian Plumbing Pt 4

Well, it's official: there's a new lake in Sisian- Lake Samollyan. We haven't heard any updates from the Jrmugh about when the replacement part will get here, but now that the sediment has settled a little bit, the pit outside our house looks kind of pretty. If we threw a few koi in there, we could pretend that our street had a water feature...

In less pretty developments- our bathroom is starting to become a real disaster zone.... we have a large pot that we've been filling up with snow and melting to flush the toilet, and now we can fill it from Lake Samollyan- although we're really not sure how socially acceptable that is, so we only do it under cover of darkness, which means we're only getting one or two flushes per day- and that's not really working out for us. Quite apart from the skeeze factor, there's a significant risk that we'll clog our toilet, and then we'll really be up sh*t creek... So, this week I'm researching- let's call them 'alternative bathroom situations' for Sam and myself- I'm worried that this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. 

Further Adventures in Armenian Plumbing Pt 3

Okay- so, we've got some real information regarding our water problem. Today, the guys from the water department brought out a great big digger and tore up the street to figure out what was going on down there. Turns out that the water main is about 2 meters deep, and the cuff which connects the main pipe to the pipe which services our house is broken. The guy from the water department told Sam that we had to buy the replacement part, and had him get into his car and drove off- presumably to get the replacement cuff.

As I write this, we now know that replacing the cuff definitely isn't our responsibility. We've had a chance to ask a few Armenians- both Sisiansis and PC staff- and they tell us that anything broken after the Jrachap (water meter) to our house is our responsibility to fix, but that anything before the meter is the responsibility of the water department. We were pretty sure that this was the case when the guy told Sam he had to buy a replacement part, but we figured that just coughing up the money for the part may be the fastest way to get the water fixed, so- as long as it wasn't crazy expensive- we'd just go along with it. 

However, it turns out that there was no replacement part in Sisian. Sam rode around town for a few hours with the guy- and as he did, it became increasingly clear that the guy had known from the start that there was no replacement part in Sisian. We're still wondering why he had Sam drive around town with him in the first place... but eventually they drove back to our house, at which point the man told us that we'd have to go get the part from Yerevan. This was just too much. Forget the fact that we're literally the least qualified people in town to travel to Yerevan, locate a store with the necessary part, and describe the the people there which part we want- there's just no way that the water department is going to unload that much work on us. Sam told the guy that we weren't bringing him anything from Yerevan, and went back inside the house. We were done negotiating with this guy for the day. 

With nothing to be done until the part arrives from Yerevan, they turned the water main back on again so that our neighbors will all have water, and we watched as the pit around our pipe slowly began to flood. The bright point in all this is that our neighbor who is a police man says that once they get the part, it's only a few hours of work to replace the thing, so in a few days it should be sorted out. 

Hike to Tolors with Friends from Sisian

Since one hike to Tolors just wasn't enough, I went again! Our friends from Sisian weren't able to make it yesterday, but they're schedules were open this morning- so at 8 o'clock while most of the town was still indoors, we struck out boldly for the lake. It was so much fun to hang out with Lilia, Hasmik and Sona- they're some of my favorite women in Armenia- and of course, Lilia brought back jumping photos, ensuring that we all had some fabulous pics to remember the day by:

Further Adventures In Armenian Plumbing Pt 2

Well... things aren't looking great outside our house (seen in the upper right corner of this picture)... our street looks increasingly like a river, and several ladas have gotten stuck in sinkholes that have formed around the flood zone. The water from this leak flows all the way down into next-door neighborhoods, and is starting to make some quite dangerous black ice on the newly paved road down the hill from us. The guys around our street have told us that someone called the mayor, and that the "Jrmugh"- the water department- will come and fix whatever's wrong. Until they do, though, we still don't have any running water in our house. The bathroom's starting to get stinky.

Hike to Tolors with Dogs & PCVs

Turns out that Alia came up from Darbas for some R&R in Sisian today, and since we had Renata down from Gyumri, that made for a big ole' PCV get-together.  Since the weather today is wonderful, we decided to walk out to Tolors Lake. This is about the same time of year that I went with Hasmik, Basensi, Sona and Natella last year, and the lake is as beautiful as I remember. I'm looking forward to coming up here  during the summer with the dogs to go swimming. But for now, we'll just enjoy the frosty beauty of January.

Further Adventures In Armenian Plumbing

Yesterday evening, Sam came back from Yerevan and brought our friend Renata with him. It's super great to have her come to visit- but unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll be putting out best host-foot forward on this particular trip.

This morning, we woke up to find that we had no water. This was confusing, since we've been pretty careful to leave the water running constantly since the Great Frozen Pipes On Thanksgiving Saga of 2016, and it wasn't even that cold last night. 

Further investigation, however, revealed that frozen pipes probably weren't the culprit this time. There seems to be a new spring bubbling out of the street right outside our house. We're not sure how this situation is going to resolve itself, but the smart bet says that it's probably not going to be resolved in the next few days while the entire country is still celebrating New Years. 

Hike to Zorats Qarer

Today I got to hang out with two of the most awesome young ladies in all of Sisian: Kate and Lilia. We hiked out to the ancient stone henge about 3 miles outside of Sisian, Zorats Qarer.

Lilia- clearly the veteran of many hiking photography shoots- decided we were going to jumping pictures once we got out to the stones. Hilarity ensued. I don't have any pictures of Kate, because she was too busy being our awesome photographer. 

New Years Day

Happy New Years! We took it easy last night- avoiding the all-out Armenian New Years parties that last pretty much until sunrise. Instead, we decided to celebrate the first day of 2017 by taking a short hike with Hazel and Muppet. Here are a few pictures I was able to take before my phone's battery decided it was just too cold out and died.