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.