Gardens Coming to Life...

I don't think it's any big secrete that I've been covetously eyeing the gardens of Sisian with great interest for some time now. That's why I was so surprised when I noticed that over half the gardens on my school's street have sprung to life seemingly overnight. 

Seriously, I swear to God, none of that growth was there yesterday. It was all leaves and dirt and a a few stubborn patches of ice. Now it's a nicely tended garden bed with baby garlic plants poking their heads up in tidy little rows. 

Gardens across Sisian are transforming from abandoned patches of mud into well tended, food producing machines. The garden bus is leaving the station and I'm not on it! We need to find a house to rent and fast.

Old Phone

For the past few days I've been working primarily in the teacher's lounge- coordinating and researching for various projects that the school staff has asked me for help with. One of the things I have noticed in this room is the old phone at the desk of the woman I suppose is best described as the school's administrative assistant. I've never seen it in use,  I don't know if it works, but for some reason the aesthetics of it really catch my eye. 

Cows on the Mountaintop

Khach Mountain (at least, that's what our host siblings call it) lies directly behind our house, and has about a 45-degree pitch on every face leading up to a ridge-line peak. Given this  steep terrain, I was surprised to see a group of cows traversing the peak today.

How they got up there, how they'll get down, or why they climbed up there in the first place, I guess I'll never know...

Disappointment

Dealing with disappointment in the Peace Corps is sometimes difficult. We've been pretty aggressively searching for a house with a garden to rent since the beginning of the month. Although many people have made encouraging remarks, we only found two definite leads, one of which didn't want to rent his house out at all when we got in touch. The other did, and we had scheduled to see the house this morning (confirming plans as recently as last night!). But when we arrived at the house this morning and called to see where the man was, we were informed that he changed his mind, and didn't want to rent the house to us after all. This leaves us with no leads at all. Needless to say, I'm disappointed.

The morning wasn't all bad, though- and I suppose the good parts will temper my feelings of frustration and regret with time. My counterpart, who had arranged this potential rental, was very upset with the man for backing out as he did, and invited us over to her house for coffee, which in Armenia is practically a full meal in itself. We sat and ate with her husband and his parents, all of whom were most distressed by our housing predicament, and spent the time brainstorming about other potential homes in town we could rent. Their concern and hospitality went a long, long way towards making up for the initial events of the morning.

I am at work now- taking advantage of a free period to write down my thoughts. My counterpart has already told two of her coworkers that we're looking for a house wit ha garden for Sam and I, and the man we were 'supposed to rent from' had let us down. I'm still struggling with the thought of delaying independent living for another month, but the fact that my counterpart, her family, and her coworkers are all on our house-hunting team now makes me feel a little better about the situation.

Soviet Army Day

Today is a holiday here in Armenia, something like Veteran's Day back home- but instead of celebrating soldiers who have served in the Armenian military, this holiday honors those men (and apparently women as well, although I haven't met any female veterans so far) who served as soldiers in the Soviet Army, back when Armenia was a Soviet Republic. All day I've seen people congratulating and thanking the older men of Sisian for their service. It's a strong reminder of what a different role Russia plays in Armenian culture.

In America, Russians are the villains in movies. Russia is depicted as a resource-poor country with long winters and hardened people. In Armenia, people over the age of 30 remember the Soviet Era as a time of relative prosperity: every one had a job at the local factory (which exported goods to the rest of the Soviet Union), every one had access to free healthcare, and housing was provided by the government, along with cars. That's not to say there weren't problems, but those were nothing compared to the economic collapse and political turmoil that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, and were compounded by the Nagorno Karabakh war with neighboring Azerbaijan which started shortly thereafter.

And that cultural heritage doesn't even start to address the role that Russia plays in current day Armenia. The Russian military patrols the boarder between Armenia and Turkey. Russia backs Armenian interests in the border war with Azerbaijan. Russia is Armenia's literal protector. It also serves as a major economic provider for this tiny country with closed borders. Many imported goods come to Armenia via Russia. Most food found at the markets carry Russian labels. Russian manufactured items are regarded as high-quality and reliable.

Furthermore, Russia provides many, many Armenian men with jobs. It is extremely common for Armenian men, who due to high unemployment aren't able to find jobs in Armenia, to move to Russia for work. There, Armenians are thought of with the same kind of stereotype regarding construction as many men from Central America are thought of with regard to gardening and agricultural work. Armenian men working in Russia are able to send money home to their families: making the Russian job market directly responsible for many Armenian's primary source of income.

And so while I feel vaguely uncomfortable today- wondering if perhaps Americans are still the villains in Russian films, and how all these former cold-war era Soviet soldiers perceive me and my country- it's fascinating to consider Russia in a different light than one is exposed to at home.

Pop Up Butcher Shop

I don't know if I've addressed, on this blog, the Armenian phenomenon that is the Pop Up Butcher Shop. 

In the US, as Pop Up Shop is a commercial endeavor which occupies a retail space for a short period of time. It's a business strategy that's commonly utilized by home crafters who want to make some extra money selling their finished objects, but for various reasons can't maintain a full time retail location. 

Similarly, the Armenian Pop Up Butcher Shop occurs when some one slaughters an animal and wants to make some extra money by selling the meat. The Pop Up Butcher Shop typically consists of a man, some cloths/blankets to cover the sidewalk, a large dead animal, a tree stump, and a hatchet. Sometimes, instead of having the large dead animal on the cloths/blankets on the sidewalk, it's on the cloths/blankets in the open trunk of the man's car. 

Orders are given not  for specific cuts of meat, but rather for rough approximate size. One the size of meat chunk desired is established, the man goes to town on the dead animal with the hatchet, and a monetary exchange takes place. For some reason, I always find these Pop Up Butcher Shops a little intimidating, so I've only taken this one picture from pretty far away.

Winter Gardening in Sisian

It's interesting, I haven't seen any over-wintering crops in Sisian- no kale, no cold-tolerant greens for salads, no parsnips or carrots under mulch for winter harvest, certainly no hot beds or cold frames were used to extend the autumn harvest into winter. But in the past week, I've seen a few ambitious Sisiani gardeners who are trying to get a jump-start on spring.

Like this gardener who's used plastic bottles as mini-cloches for their heavily pruned rose bushes. 

Or this gardener who's got something that looks like salad greens growing under  a sheet of plastic:

This this gardener who created a full blown low tunnel (although there doesn't appear to be anything growing in it yet):

This is actually the third low tunnel I've seen in Sisian gardens this week. I think that they aren't kept over winter, and they aren't used in the fall, but a few people do seem to set them up in the spring. That's interesting to me- I wonder why there's no use of season extenders in autumn? 

Regardless, seeing them is very encouraging for me because it means the materials to construct a low tunnel are available locally and probably aren't prohibitively expensive. Hurray!