Baboulia

Today we went to a memorial event for Hamest's grandmother ("baboulia"), who died a year ago. They hold these events every anniversary after someone has died, it seems. About 60-70 people, almost all relatives, showed up at the grave - somewhat like a small monument - in a graveyard at the top of a desolate hill overlooking a beautiful valley about 20km from here, under an intense sun. There was no religious ceremony, but the brother of the deceased held a short emotional speech and then one by one everyone took a pinch of what I assume was salt from a bowl and dropped it in a small fire of twigs and grass.

After the usual waiting around, we all drove to the late grandmother's home, in a village called Ayrum. To get to the house - or neighborhood, actually - we had to cross a railroad yard with several tracks: on the other side were a cluster of buildings in which (we were told) 10 families live. Susan and I got a small tour of the grandmother's house and were introduced to various relatives: we've now been introduced to so many people that it's difficult to keep track of everyone. If I can remember that I've met them before I'm happy.

And then we all ate, all 60-70 of us: one table with just men, another with women, and then a third with a mix - which is of course were we ended up. The youngest women did all the serving. A good time was had under the vines. We met some interesting people. The picture is of Hamest and a niece of hers, Lorena, who speaks good English. Top right you can see one of the kids watching a Soviet-era locomotive go by.

Then it was back to the apartment, where David watches movies. I've seen Godzilla (the newest one, yawn), all of Clint's spaghetti westerns (gotta love'm), 'From Paris with Love' (Travolta in a French "action" movie), various Jurassic Park movies (yes, they're all the same), a Quentin Tarantino movie about a shootout between a Mexican drug lord and his brother (now that's action!), and I forget what else. All of it dubbed in Russian, which keeps everything extra interesting.

Our park

It's the kind of park every town should have: one that people use. This picture was taken just after the sun had set, but the park remains as crowded until at least midnight. It's truly wonderful. And safe. Kids, old people, ice cream eaters, mothers, but mostly teens, of course. The strongest thing I've seen anyone consume is ice cream (that would be us). Of course, everyone knows everyone else here, so there's a fair amount of gossip. They're all aware that we're the American volunteers in town, and there have been about a dozen before us over the years, so we don't get too many stares or too many people coming up to us to practice their English.

Hot days

This is Noyemberyan in the evening, looking southeast. We live just outside the picture to the left, but the roofs of our schools are visible beyond the two houses in the foreground.

We get up late and then spend most of our daytime hours indoors, where it's cooler, at least in front of the fan. In the evenings we somehow tend to end up in the park eating ice cream. Not that we don't have things to do, but it's nice to take it slow after our rather intense 10 weeks of pre-service training.

Home sweet home, Noyemberyan

Long ago when I was still living in San Francisco, I believe in the mid-1980s, I had this dream: I was moving through the southern parts of the city - some neighborhood I didn't know that well - when suddenly I realized I had travelled quite far and ended up in Armenia. I was approaching the top of a hill, and on the sun-drenched slope in front of and below me were houses scattered on both sides of the street. The atmosphere was calm but also a little eerie. At the time I had no idea why I would dream of Armenia: it was still a rather obscure Soviet Republic, and my mind's choice of destination seemed entirely random.  Few other dreams have been as vivid or stayed with me nearly as long, but I also didn't dwell much on what this particular dream might have meant.

Yet those images from my long-ago sleep returned vividly to my mind when we first rounded the bend in the highway that brings the town into view. There are some minor differences between what I saw in my 1980s sleep and the reality of Noyemberyan, but the similarities are overwhelming. The whole dream was drenched in a sepia tone, and the sun was setting in front of me, whereas in reality the sun was merely moving toward evening on my left, and the light was a bit hard, with deep shadows and grey metal roofs.

I want to add one note: much as we wanted to come to Armenia once we had applied to the Peace Corps in spring 2009 and started to talk about where we'd want to end up, I never once thought of the dream, and our deliberations seemed far removed from any sentimental motives. Susan didn't know about this dream, and if anything she wanted to come here more than I did. It wasn't until half-way through training, when we found out where our site placement was back in early July, that my dream popped up again in my head. The long and short of it is that I can't make too much out of this, yet I am happy that by all appearances one small dream of mine seems to have come true.

We Are Peace Corps Volunteers!

After 10 long weeks of pre-service training, we were officially sworn in by the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia on Thursday, August 5. We had one last horovats (barbeque) with our wonderful host family and some other volunteers who had lived in our village last year. Then we packed up our belongings for the trip to our permanent site in Noyemberyan, Armenia. Friday morning all 55 volunteers met for one last time in Charentsavan. We loaded up all our backpacks, suitcases, bags and boxes, which somehow had managed to nearly double in size in 10 weeks, and drove off in a variety of taxis, cars and vans. Some faced a 9+ hour drive, others only 30 minutes. We dropped off two volunteers in Sevan, one volunteer and two currently serving volunteers in Ichevan, and the remaining three of us in Noyemberyan.

Our original host family changed when our host mom fell and broke both her legs. We can only imagine how difficult that is for the family as the mom did all the cooking and was an integral part of the family cheese-making business. Hopefully we will be able to visit her at home once she is out of the hospital. They are a wonderful family, and we thought it best not to add to their daily routing by having to take care of two more people.

We now are living in another apartment with a woman who lost her husband to the war in 1991. She has two grown sons who live in Yerevan. She is the librarian at our schools, so all the kids in the town know her. She speaks some English, but we’re trying to get her to speak only Armenian so our language skills will continue to improve. Our living quarters are modest and water is going to be a constant challenge.

Last night we drove up into the hills to a spring and filled all available bottles with water. We still have to filter it through our Peace Corps water filter, but the water is cold and fresh. And a luxury for most people. Our new host mom also took us to meet her mother-in-law. She is a widow and speaks only Russian and Armenian. Her first question to me was “how old are you” and both she and our host mom refused to believe I am 61. They are my new best friends for sure. Our host mom regularly goes to her house to help her, and she has a wonderful garden with beets, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and grapes. Everything here is organic, mostly I think because fertilizer is so expensive.

When we stopped at the bank to get money last night we met some girls who will be starting at university in Yerevan in the fall. They were so excited to find someone to speak English with, and we were delighted to speak with them. It has been a while since there were volunteers here to work in the schools, and now there are two. We expect to be very, very busy both with teaching and then with English clubs after school. Our challenge is going to be not to take on too much as there is much to do here.

School will not start until September 1, and the teachers don’t go back to work until the 17^th or 18^th of August. We have a little bit of downtime, and plan to use it getting to know our town and the people in it. We are not allowed to leave our site for the first month, so we will have lots of time to get settled.

And now, the journey begins. We will be here for two years. Although we get 24 days of vacation each year, we hope to spend as much time getting to know Armenia and its people. As part of our Peace Corps duties, we will be preparing a travel book for volunteers and their families. We will be working with other volunteers to put together a book of places to go with information on how to get there, where to stay, what to do, costs, food, etc. It should be lots of fun. Tblisi, Georgia is only an hour or so away by taxi, so that is definitely on our list. And the churches around here are amazing both architecturally and historically.

We also will be organizing a hike for other volunteers in our region as soon as all of us can travel. Getting together with other volunteers is going to be especially important, especially once it starts getting cold and dark. We are hoping for another mild winter so we can travel. If not, there are four of us here in Noyemberyan and we can get together for dinners, movies, or whatever. I plan on sharing some of the peanut butter we have stashed away, and getting one volunteer’s recipe for pancakes. Now if we only had some real maple syrup!

We will write more soon. Thanks for reading our blog. Send us e-mails too. We love hearing from family and friends.