I'll Never Really Fit In Here

The students at my school were taking a timed test in which they had to assemble and disassemble an assault weapon in school today. I was particularly taken by the part where they all were jamming magazines into the gun while pointing the barrel directly at their seated classmates in front of the table. Something of my thoughts must have shown on my face, because on of my counterparts treated me to a 15 minute explanation of why it was important for children to know how to use guns. It's days like this when I feel completely alien in this country. 

Brunch

For weeks now, Sam has been extolling the virtues of American-Style Brunch to our friend Karine. This weekend, we finally brought those conversations to fruition with a homemade brunch with Karine, her family, and the Sisian-area PCVs. Sam was our head chef, and with a little bit of help from the rest of us, he created a masterpiece: scrambled eggs with spinach and mushrooms, fried potato pancakes, made-from-scratch breakfast sausage, and the piece de resistance, fresh-from-the-oven homemade biscuits. It was a really fun morning, and I think that the food was much appreciated by all.

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:

World Food/World Peace Thanksgiving Edition 2016 (Part 2)

Thanksgiving morning saw us up bright and early, and the electricity had even come back some time over night. Our water situation, however, remained unresolved. We decided that the est thing we could do now was to call for professional help- the only problem being that we didn't know any plumbers here, and it's not as if there's some sort of Sisian-Yellow-Pages you can use to look one up, either. In Armenia the only way for you to get a plumber out to your house is to know someone who plumbs, and, of course, as outsiders here, we don't know anyone.

We waited until around 10 o'clock in the morning for it to be a socially acceptable time to call a family's telephone. Then we called our Armenian tutor, Karine. The thing you should know about Karine is that she's awesome. She helps us out with so much, we ere confident that she would know what to do about our situation- and she did not disappoint. Immediately, she offered to have her son run over to our house with jugs of water. Once we assured her that we had plenty of bottled water and that nothing that drastic was necessary, she told us she would make some calls and find us a plumber.

While we waited for Karine to call us back with word on the plumber, the Great Waterless Food Prep project continued. We care carefully used as few dishes and cooking implements as possible, rinsing utensils off only when strictly necessary, using as little of our store-bought water supply as possible. It was much easier for me than it was for Sam. All my dishes were vegetable based, and had complementary flavors. Who cares is there's a small piece of apple baked into the pumpkin bread or if some extra pumpkin pie spice finds its way into the apple crisp?

Sam, on the other hand, had ot make both chicken stock and sweet Italian sausage from scratch for the stuffing (talk about food poisoning risk...) and then hat to shop up both onion and garlic for the glazed carrots. And you really don't want those strong allium flavors- to say nothing of the potential bacterial contaminants- to get on your other food or dishes. At one point, Sam was mixing sausage meat with one hand, adding spices to the meat with the other, and then using his 'clean' hand to scrape the sticking meat off the 'dirty' hand, with a spoon before rinsing the 'dirty' hand briefly in clean water and doing a final sterilization with some alcogel (hand sanitizer gel) that we thankfully had left over from our sketchy school bathroom days back in Shahumyan.

Karine called us back about two hours later with an update. The plumber she knew and would normally have called was in Yerevan, and thus unavailable. She had spent some time on the phone with various friends, family members, and neighbors trying to find a second plumber who might be in town. Eventually, she got a name, but the referring party didn't know the potential plumber's phone number. They did, however, know the neighborhood where this potential plumber lived- and this is where the story gets super hayavari (translation: traditionally or stereotypically Armenian)

Karine collected this information and called her brother, Karen. (This naming pattern is analogous to the English Robert and Roberta.) She had Karen drive over to the plumber's neighborhood, and just ask random people on the street if they knew this guy's phone number, until he got an affirmative answer and the number. Having accomplished this, Karen called the plumber and explained our situation to him. The plumber said that he'd be happy to help, but that he was working on a job in the next town over, and since he didn't have a car, he had no way of getting to our house that day. Apparently, the solution to this problem was that Karen would drive to the next town over, pick up the plumber (who was still in the middle of the job that he was working on when Karen had called), and drive him over to our house. At least, that's what happened.

After a few minutes of poking around, the plumber informed us that a few 3/4" thick pipes which were completely exposed, uninsulated, and fixed to the exterior wall of our house (and which I had- up until now- assumed were gas pipes because if they were water pipes they'd clearly freeze...) were, in fact, our water pipes, and were indeed frozen solid. He suggested that the best thing to do would be to tear them all out and replace them with new pipes rather than trying to thaw them. He estimated this would cost about 3,000 dram in materials, plus labor. (The total cost at the end of the day was about 7,000 dram, or about $15 US, making this the cheapest plumber visit Sam and I will ever have in our entire lives).

"Does that plan sound good?" he asked us.

"Yeah-" we replied, "what else would we do?"

"Well," the plumber gestured to our uninsulated frozen water pipes, "You can call your landlord and tell him that he's to blame for this, that this is terrible, and that he needs to pay to have it fixed..."

Feeling vindicated, we smiled. "You're right, we agree, by we're not telling our landlord anything." we said.

So Karen drove the plumber back to his job in the neighboring town, he finished up there, and then used that money to buy the pipes for our house. Karen stayed with him all afternoon, and drove him and the new pipes back to our place at around half-past three. By 4 o'clock, we had running water again.

It just so happened that the first batch of apple crisp was just finishing up in the oven at the same time the plumber finished up his work on our house. I boxed up a few servings for both Karen and the plumber and just before they left explained to that that this day was an important holiday in America, one in which we celebrate all the things we're thankful for- and eat lots of food. I thanked both men,  telling them how grateful we were for their help, and I explained that the food I was giving them was traditional American food for this holiday. They seemed to follow along with my broken and stumbling Armenian, and I felt like I had done well with my impromptu Thanksgiving explanation. The men left together in Karen's car with smiles and waves.

Unfortunately, the work was far from over for us. The next several hours passed in a blur as we frantically worked to finish all that there was left to do. Having running water was a godsend, since at that point in the day we had used and made dirty just about every dish and implement in the house. Somehow, we got it all done, and by 7 o'clock all of the food was ready to eat, packed safe and warm in a hamper. Our friend Davit came and helped Sam carry the hamper down the hill to the Basen. There, we met Kate and her host family, Arus, Tyler, Meline, and their parents, Karine (who was definitely our hero for the day) and her sons, as well as our Sisian host family members Hasmik, Sona, and Basentsi.

Other friends from around Sisian drifted in and outover the course of the evening and the American food was a near universal success (Kate's hostmom refused to try most of it because when it comes to trying new food, some Armenians have the tolerance of a 7-year-old picky eater). Karine even asked me for the recipe to the pumpkin bread- which is a real compliment around these parts.

The dinner itself was filled with toasts. It seems like everyone made at least one speech. For myself, I toasted our friends in Sisian, without whom we could not be happy, healthy and whole members of the community. And for a moment I was able to forget the challenges I've been struggling with here, as my heart filled with gratitude for these people who have made room in their lives for the weird and socially awkward Americans. It was the perfect way to truly celebrate Thanksgiving.

At the end of the evening, we were driven home by Vagho- the young man who works as the Basen- with full stomachs and sleepy (read: 'slightly tipsy') heads. We spent the next day recovering and washing almost all the dishes in our house, before we got to repeat the experience again with the PCVs in the area.

It has been a mentally and physically exhausting week, but I think this will always remain one of the best Thanksgivings I've ever had...

World Food/World Peace: Thanksgiving Edition 2016 (Part 1)

Over the past 48 hours Sam and I have 1) frozen our pipes, and subsequently 2) melted our pipes, 3) cooked a significant portion of a Thanksgiving meal for 25 people without any running water, and 4) had one of the most amazingly awesome Thanksgiving's ever. Here's the story- it's a long ride, so buckle up.

The story starts yesterday morning. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and we were planning to throw another World Food/World Peace event the next evening, for which we had to cook a sizeable amount of food, and our water wasn't working. It's not that uncommon for out water to get turned off- in the summer we don't have water for at least part of the day 4 or 5 days a week. So, when we woke up that morning and non of our taps were working, I wasn't particularly surprised or concerned- the water usually comes back on in a few hours. I was frustrated, though, when by 2 o'clock that afternoon the water still hadn't turned back on. We had to start prepping food for dinner the next night, and that would be really hard to do without running water to wash dirty dishes or hands. So, as we were still waterless, we postponed the kitchen-based prepwork and decided to head out on a grocery shopping trip that we had planned to make the next morning...

We had been signed up for a grand total of 4 dishes between the two of us. Kate, our site-mate and the main instigator of the mean that was to come the following evening, was going to cook two more. Originally, Kate had wanted the three of us to prepare the entire meal, but thankfully we had talked her into splitting the cost of booking an event space in the Basen Hotel, and having them serve the bulk of the food in the form of traditional Armenian Khorovats (usually translated: barbeque)- which is the meal that Armenians eat at every holiday and special occasion. This left us three responsible for preparing a few key American side dishes and desserts.

Kate was making corn pudding and a cake shaped like a turkey (we decided that providing an actual turkey- or 5 because the turkeys here are sized more like large chickens than US turkeys- would be a little bit pricey). Sam was making two varieties of stuffing (one with vegetables, one with sweet Italian sausage) and honey glazed carrots. For my part, I was supplying pumpkin bread and apple crisp. All together, this had the makings of a good Thanksgiving meal, but it was going to be a lot of work, and that would be compounded if they didn't turn out water back on soon...

We finished our errands around 4 o'clock, and we were hiking back up the high hill to our house- lugging with us four 6L jugs of water. We had a 5 gallon bucket filled for emergency toilet flushing water back home, but we didn't want to cook with water that had been sitting in an open bucket in the bathroom for a week. As we approached our house, I saw one of our neighbors walking along the street.

"Excuse me-" I said, "Is you water working?"

Our neighbor gave me a quizzical look. "Yes," she replied, "is your water not working?"

"No, we haven't had water all day." I said.

"Ahh," our neighbor nodded knowingly, "Your pipes are frozen. You have to leave your water running overnight so they don't freeze."

"Well, fuck" I said. Not really.  But I thought it real hard. Instead we thanked our neighbor and dragged our now precious bottled water inside the house to think up a game plan.

The problem was this: we didn't actually know where our water pipes entered our house. We knew where the shut-off valve and usage meter were located (out by the street, about 60 feet from the house ,in a 2 foot deep pit covered by a metal lid), and we knew where our taps in the house were- but the path between points A and B was a complete mystery to us. So, even if we had a plan to heat up the points that were frozen, we had no idea where to find them. In the rapidly gathering dusk, we set this issue aside for a moment and decided to focus on the problem of heat transfer. 

The method we settled on- which I think was rather clever of us- was to take our 5 gallons of emergency toilet flush water, boil it in our tea kettle, and fill all the empty soda bottles that I had saved out of a compulsive hoarding habit I seem to have developed in this resource poor environment. Once this was accomplished, we took these make-shift hot water bottles and packed them around the water pipe at the shut-off valve by the street, since that was the only place where we knew to find out pipes. Then we went back inside the house to wait. 

It was at this time, around 5 in the evening, that I finally got started prepping the 30-odd cups of shopped apples that I'd need for 25 servings of apple crisp. I'll admit that I took great pleasure from the fact that all the apples I used for this meal came from the apple trees in our garden, and that Sam and I had picked them ourselves about a month prior. I was also pleased that- except for a small dish in which to rinse my sticky fingers, the peeling and chopping of apples required no water. 

After about 30 minutes of waiting, we still had no running water, and it was getting close to full dark. Convinced that this shut-off valve hadn't been the problem, Sam strapped on a headlamp and headed out into the night to search for the point at which our water pipes might enter our house. After poking around for 15 or 20 minutes, he still hadn't found the entry point, but he did find a segment of pipe that was close to the house and had only been covered by a few inches of sandy soil. Figuring that this seemed like a point at which the pipe could have froze, Sam decided to build a fire on top of the pipe segment to thaw the ice inside it.

We let the fire burn for about 45 minutes, watching our open faucets with bated breath. It was straight up night now, and getting colder every minute. After almost an hour of fire time, we still didn't have any running water, and we still had a crap-ton of Thanksgiving prep work to do. Disheartened, Sam decided to let the fire die down. Once it was down to embers, the began to kick sand over them and spread them apart to put the fire out for good. It was at this point, as he was kicking the sand surrounding the pipe, that a geyser of water shot up from beneath his foot, soaking everything in the immediate vicinity, including Sam. 

Apparently, the pipe was made from PVC (or similar), and while the heat from the fire hadn't succeeded in melting whatever ice was blocking our water supply, it had succeeded in melting a small hole through the pipe wall. As I ran back to the street to turn the water supply to our house off at the valve there, and Sam went inside to change into some dry clothes, we reflected on this new development.  On the plus side, the melted segment of the pipe was very close to our house, and given the pressure with which the geyser shot forth from the hole, the frozen segment of pipe was almost certainly 'down-stream' of the melted point. This narrowed our search for the frozen pipe segment considerably. On the other hand, our pipes were still frozen, and now we had a hole in one of them as well. 

Given, this- and the fact that it was cold, dark, and now wet outside, we decided to give up on the "thaw our pipes" project for the evening and focus on Thanksgiving food prep sans water. However, as luck would have it, about 30 minutes into that project the electricity cut out, leaving us in the dark, with no running water, and a boat load of cooking yet to be done. Finally defeated, we took the hint the universe was sending to us, and climbed into bed that night with full confidence that things would be better in the morning, if only because it wouldn't be pitch black in our living room by then.

We Have Wool

For a long time now, I've been wanting to get my hands on some of the wool from all the sheep that live around us. Well, today it's finally happened.

A volunteer who's site is a village not too far from us lives with a host family who keeps sheep, and sells wool. Today, we walked to their house and bought some wool. Because this is Armenia, that means we walked over to their house, were treated to a lavish spread of coffee, candies and cakes, had a nice long couple of hours worth of chatting, then bought some wool, and then before we left were loaded up with more food than we can possibly eat on our own.

But, at the end of the day, I have my wool!

Now I just have to figure out how to skirt and wash the stuff....

Breaking Gender Norms

The women in town don't think I'm a very good wife. For one thing, I don't have children. For another, my husband is sometimes seen in getups like this one:

But seriously, demonstrating different gender norms and relationship dynamics is an important part of our service here as a couple. Sam's really proud of his cooking, and we try to share it with as many of our friends and neighbors as possible. When I'm hanging up our laundry, he's always ready to help. On the flip side, I go to the hardware store with the plans for any building projects that we want to accomplish and try to get our tools and materials whenever possible (although, the men at the hardware store will frequently refuse to let me buy things from the 'manly' section of the store if Sam isn't there with me, and I still haven't figured out a way to get around this), and try to take an active role in any 'man' activities to which we participate (like helping to push a car that's stalled etc)- something that usually pisses off the Armenian men involved, but that's just too bad for them. 

First Bell Ceremony

Fist Bell Ceremony...

All the students are dressed in their fanciest black and white clothes. Girls wear their hair in pig tails, with ribbons and bows. The first graders- for whom this is their first First Bell Ceremony- are dressed the fanciest, the boys sporting little suits which make them look like very tiny old men and the little girls apparently competing in a fierce "Who Can Wear the Puffiest Dress and the Biggest Bows In Her Hair" contest.

The parents, too, are dressed for the occasions- or at least the mothers are. Fashion here is heavily influenced by Russian tastes, and the outfits worn by young mothers would look more at home in a night club in the US than at your child's elementary school. 4 to 6 inch stiletto heels abound, and the makeup is on point for a night out on the town back home. 

Oddly, given the intense preparation that has gone into dressing for this event, no one seems to care a great deal about what is being said in the actual  ceremony itself. Students and parents alike have gathered in the front of the school building where they mill around and talk with each other, seemingly oblivious to the various members of the community who stand on the steps of the school- barring entry- and speak into a microphone at length. Finally, about an hour later than I was told the schedule had planned, there is music, doves are released, and everyone is allowed into the school.

I had expected that this would lead to the first day of school. But how very wrong I was. Turns out, each student goes to their homeroom where they get their school books for the year (there is much scheming and swapping at this point as each student tries to get the best, least worn out, copy of the books most important to them), and then each classroom has a little party at which the teachers are given flowers by the students and their parents.

Finally, in our class, we took a group picture, and all the students went home. The teachers stuck around and had a party of their own (yes, cognac was involved and I'm only grateful that this party happened *after* the students had all left the building). Everyone packed up and headed home by noon. All in all, definitely not what I was expecting, but I guess not a bad way to being the school year.

Getting Ready for School

Well, summer's officially coming to a close here in Sisian. As students are getting ready to return to classes, parents (okay, moms) are working to clean the school up and get it ready for the First Bell Ceremony on September 1st. 

One interesting thing I learned during this process is that most of the classroom improvements are not financed by some sort of school-wide maintenance fund, but rather from contributions of individual parents for students who will have that classroom as their homeroom. Thus, today, in my school, some teachers were excitedly talking about the new wealthy student they have in their homeroom, and the improvements that such a student's family would mean for that teacher's working environment. One of the classrooms, which will be homeroom to a local military leader's child, had young soldiers making repairs to the floors and walls today. 

I found this whole system very strange. It seems especially odd that, in a country which still espouses so many communist social values, improvements to the school would be made in such a small, nepotistic fashion. On the other hand, when there aren't enough resources to go around, I suppose it's only natural to want to make sure that *your* offspring get as much as you can give them, even if it means that improvements aren't distributed equally among the classrooms, or even in some sort of triage-based system where the worst equipped classrooms get the improvements they need most. 

I tried asking my counterpart and the mothers who were working in her classroom today about this, but they didn't seems to understand why I was asking- to them, this seemed like a very logical system, and challenging it was frowned upon. So I didn't push. But it still doesn't sit well with me...

World Food/World Peace - Day 2

Day 2 of our August "World Food/World Peace" event with Lisa was a study in the typical Armenian Khorovats party! It was an amazing day, tons of fun, and plenty tiring! It was also a day of gender divisions. The men are in charge of meat and fire. And the women... everything else.

Armenian Khorovats is also a very simple style of food. It relies on quality ingredients, good flavorful wood fire coals, and a bit of salt.

First things that goes on the coals are the veggies. Fresh summer tomatoes are in the picture, but we also had bell peppers and eggplant. No marinade, no spices. Just fresh veggies.

Next the ladies prep the veggies by removing the charred skins. Everything is still hot, so we're all burning our fingers a bit!

While the ladies finish prepping the veggies, salads, setting the table, etc, the pork goes on the grill. Martin insisted he and Molly pose like he's teaching her how to barbecue :)

Meat! It's bone-in loin chops and some nearby cuts. Before going over the coals, it's prepped simply with "the good salt" (sea salt). 

The traditional Armenian table is always set with bread, cheese, and a plate of greens (usually scallions, cilantro, parsley, and red basil). Bottles of water, soda, wine, vodka, or brandy are also common. In the summer, you always get the "summer salad" (bottom right), which is raw tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, with a little oil, salt, cilantro and/or basil, and sometimes raw onion. 

Besides meat, the only cooked dish is the roasted veggies. The mushy insides of eggplant, pepper and tomato are mixed together with a little bit of raw chopped onion and some cilantro.

The meat is done!

We had a really fun time preparing the meal with Martin and his family. Everything was delicious. And it was amazing to see Lisa teach English and Armenian songs to the kids - her energy and attitude are inspiring! All together, a very successful second day of "World Food/World Peace".

World Food/World Peace Day: Part 1

Today we had the absolute pleasure of hosting one of our favorite PCVs, Lisa, and throwing one of her fabulous World Food/World Peace parties. These gatherings are meant to bring people together to cook delicious food, exchange ideas, and generally have a good time socializing together. And so we had some of our awesome Sisiansi friends over to the house to cook pizza with Lisa, followed by a family-style meal with great conversation about the similarities and differences between America, Armenia, and our two cultures. Tomorrow, we'll continue in the World Food/World Peace tradition with a party at the house of our friend Martin, a taxi driver who has offered to teach us how to cook Armenian Horovats (Barbeque). 

Collecting Flowers for the Women's Resource Center

Today was a great day. The flowers that Women's Resource Center in town uses to dye their yarn yellow are in season, and so today my host family, our new site mate Kate, and I all headed out to the fields to collect the flower in question

We started bright and early, all of us piling into an old Soviet-era Uaz, and drove outside out town and a few score meters higher in elevation, where the flowers were blooming beautifully.   

Wildflowers are enormously abundant in the alpine meadows surrounding Sisian, but today we were interested in one flower in particular. This flower, to be precise:

And for the next few hours, we all wandered around and picked flowers into collection bags.

Occasionally, some of the party decided to knock off for a quick nap in the sun.

About the time we finished with flower collecting in the early afternoon, we were joined in the meadow by a flock of sheep. It amused me to be picking  flowers that we were later going to use to dye wool with the sheep right there.

It was a phenomenal day. I had so much fun. Definitely a high point of PC service so far. 

Dog Walks

We go on regular dog walks with Hazel in the mornings and evenings. This has actually been a great integration tool for us- we get stopped by our neighbors all the time on these walks to chat and catch up while the kids play with Hazel. This is especially true in the evenings when it seems like all of Sisian comes out into the streets to relax and socialize. We have to go pretty far outside of town to get some serious walking in. Still, its' a really nice feeling to be part of the neighborhood in this way- even if it did take our quirky American attitude towards dogs to get us there. 

Our first Armenian Wedding

Today, our friends from Sisian, Arus and Tyler, got married, and so we were able to go to our first Armenian wedding. Here are some photos from the day. 

I think I did something right?

So, fun story:

Today, I was riding back from Yerevan on our local marshutney. I thought I had the crappiest luck in the world, because instead of one of the normal seats, the driver assigned me to site on a small chair (like the type they have in the schools here) that he had just put in the aisle space of the marshutney. Needless to say, it was uncomfortable, unstable, and most definitely unsafe.

But, when we were a few miles outside of Yerevan, we pulled over at one of those random pick-up points that make no sense to me, and out of no where this little old woman appears and climbs into our marshutney. I assumed that the folks on the bench seat in front would skooch over to make room for her, but instead, the driver magically produces a small foot stool (from God-knows-where..) and puts it in the aisle next to my chair- except that all 4 legs of the stool don't fit in the aisle, one of them is hanging precariously over the foot-well next to the door. The old woman had to cling to the back of the seat in front of her in order to stay upright as we traversed the bumpy road south for the next hour or so. Every time we hit a bump or made one of the many hairpin turns on the mountain switch backs, I looked at this old woman gamely keeping herself more or less in her designated area by hanging onto the headrest in front of her for dear life, and reminded myself that I didn't have it so bad. At least all 4 legs of my chair were on the floor of the marshutney.

Finally, we stop for a bathroom break (really, a smoke break for all the dudes in the vehicle), and I see my chance to do something about this situation. I try to offer to change seats with this old woman. My chair may not be comfy or safe, but least it has a back to it, and doesn't try to tip over every time we go around a turn in the road. The old woman grins at me and shakes her head, indicating I should sit in my assigned seat as we board the marshutney again. But then a few of the guys notice what's going on, and decide to help me out: the make the old woman and me sit in their seats, while they take the chair and stool for themselves. I really appreciated this gesture, and I was really glad that old woman wasn't going to have to cling to the seat-back in front of her for the rest of the long trip home. 

Then, something really surreal happened. As the marshutney started up again, every single person on that van quietly reached into their bags, pulled out an apricot or two, and passed them up to me. Three minutes later, I was sitting on the marshutney, with a pile of apricots on my lap. The old woman next to me patted me arm and grinned at me again. I think I may have finally done something right...

Djengelov Hats

Ahh! I totally forgot to put these photos up back when I took them- after we went on the hike to Uyts with Arus, Tyler and Andrea, Andrea and I, along with Arus's mom and sister Meline, cooked Djengelov Hats, which is just about the most awesome cooking experience to date. It was awesome. I am totally in love with Arus's family. They're super amazing- I'm so glad that Andrea introduced us.

Milk

Since I've been in and out of the yard all afternoon every day moving piles of poo from the front of the house back into the garden, the neighbors have started to take notice of us. Mostly, they've taken notice to the effect of asking me "Where's your husband? Why isn't he doing that?" instead of answering "good question" (just a joke, Sam, just a joke...) I take it as an opportunity to tell them that I'm strong, that it's good exercise, and I don't need his help to move the large pile of earth. They think I'm crazy. One woman took pity on me and gave us a large container of milk. I don't know what we'll do with it, but it was really sweet nonetheless.

Garden Progress

Talking with Arus and her father about my gardening envy turned out to be a great move! They helped us connect with some folks who were selling manure, and so we got a great big truck load of sheep poo unloaded at our house this morning. I've never been so happy to have someone dump a great big pile of poop at my door! 

Uyts

A nearby PCV, Andrea, introduced us to some new friends in Sisian today. Together we walked out to the neighboring village of Uyts (called by the old pre-Soviet name "Ooz" by those who live there), and picked wild greens which we'll later use to make a delicious local bread called "Djengelov Hats" (literally: 'Bread with Greens' in the local dialect). It was really great to meet this young couple living in Sisian and spend some time with Andrea. I hope we can do something like this again soon. In the mean time, here are some photos from the walk: