Spring Break Armenia, Day One

Around Georgian Easter, we got quite a nice break from school. Our schools were closed from Thursday through Tuesday, with an extra day off the Wednesday before for "spring cleaning."  Sam and I decided to take advantage of the break to use up the final vacation days we'd acquired and see a little bit more of Armenia.

We were planning to take one of the plethora of minibuses headed for Yerevan on Wednesday morning, only to make it to the station just as one bus was leaving and the next not yet arrived.  This sent the bus station taxi drivers into a frenzy, as they all swarmed around us trying to entice us to ride by taxi instead of waiting on the next marshrutka.  Once one driver finally agreed to charge us each the same price as a minibus ticket (20 lari, about $12), we climbed on in, shocked at our good fortune.  Of course, we should have realized that he wouldn't just take us, but would wait around for 2 more passengers to cram into his little hatchback, and we should have realized that he'd try to charge us more when we arrived in Yerevan.  We should have known this by now.  But, in a shocking twist on fortune, we got there quicker and with fewer bags of potatoes and cheese, and managed to haggle our way back to our initially agreed upon price, so all in all it was an auspicious start to the trip.

Armenia's weather is generally warmer than Georgia's (it being south and all), and Yerevan was in full swing spring.  Grass was growing (and green!), flowering trees and bushes were all starting to show there colors, and outdoor cafes were already up and bustling.  We checked into our homestay/hostel, shed a few layers and headed out into the city to do some walking around and site seeing.

Our previous trip to Yerevan took place in January, so we had already seen most of the museums and indoor attractions, but Sam was excited to check out the ruins of the Bronze Age Erebuni fortress just on the outskirts of Yerevan.  That was our first stop, along with the accompanying museum.

Day one was rounded out with some lachmajun, some tan, some other tasty treats, and some nice long walks along the pretty downtown pedestrian boulevards.  We had some nice conversations with our hostel/homestay host, Anahit, and called it a day.  Vacation success all around!

Remains of the Erebuni fortress wall

Me, getting excited about mud brick (and being super supportive of Sam's future academic pursuits)

There were some cool cuneiform slabs here and there throughout.  Once Sam's progressed a bit into learning cuneiform, I encourage everyone to take pictures like this and send them to him, asking "What does this say?"

A chariot found in the fortress excavation

One of the guys who did something with the fortress or something, I think.  Whatever, he's standing on a lion.

A model representation of Erebuni.  Sam really likes these kind of models and hopes to make some like this some day.  But preferably out of legos.

In the museum they had some more old cuneiform tablets...

Which were later repurposed by Armenian Christians into khachkars on the reverse sides

A very Soviet-inspired facade to the Bronze Age fortress museum, no? 

After our visit, maybe Sam could join the junior archaeologists' school!

Easter Celebration

I'm a little late updating from Easter, although the other PCVs in Georgia might not realize it. The Armenian church celebrated Easter at the same time as the non-Orthodox Christian churches (Catholic, Protestant, etc.), so last week, on Sunday, April 8 we celebrated Easter in Akhalkalaki. Orthodox churches celebrated this past weekend, on Sunday, April 15. Last year, the two branches of Christianity celebrated Easter on the same day, April 24, but this year there was a week difference. Here's why.

Since last year we were off doing other things during Easter (like going to my little sister's wedding!), this was our first time seeing the celebrations in Akhalkalaki. It's some pretty cool stuff, with some shared traditions and some very different traditions.

Last Easter

First, on some shared traditions, we've got egg dying. In Georgia, as in many parts of Eastern Europe, the traditional color for dying eggs is red. Here in Akhalkalaki, they use either onion skins or some kind of red-colored root (whose name I didn't recognize) to dye their eggs. In other parts of Eastern Europe, they use beets. The brightly colored eggs and shrink wrappers of my childhood are still sometimes found here (the kids especially love these kind of eggs), but most people still stick with the traditional red for most eggs.

Shaen and his grandmother, Emilia, prepare the eggs for dying

They wrapped pieces of parsley around the eggs, then held it in place with old pantyhose, to make cool designs on the eggs

Getting ready to dye

Some of our host family's finished eggs

Dying the eggs isn't the only fun part of Easter eggs in Akhalkalaki and Georgia, though. On Easter, people choose their favorite egg (or one that they decorated) and do battle. They crack their eggs against one another to see whose egg will stand up to the test (and thus, who will have good luck in the coming year, plus bragging rights, of course).

Akop, Armine, and Shaen try to explain the game to Lilit

Once she got the idea, she started off on a rampage, cracking all the eggs she could get her hands on against one another

Shaen's friend, and our neighbor, David, came over to test out his lucky egg against Shaen. The first victory went to David, but on the other end of the eggs, Shaen had the upper hand.

There are a lot of other similarities in some of the non-religious Easter symbolism, with chicks, ducks, and bunnies ruling the decor. Our host family really got into the season by purchasing a battery-operated chicken that plays a really annoying song while walking and then laying eggs. It's been great. Really. I love having it around. Seriously. If no pictures or videos of it appear here, I swear it has nothing to do with any kind of sudden, unexpected disappearance. Really.

Some cute table decorations that don't play annoying music

And of course, like any good holiday in Akhalkalaki, Easter also comes with doing up a big, fancy tablescape of decorations and food. One of the must-have foods of Easter is a sweet bread, laced with raisins and dotted with sprinkles. Another is Armenian gata (which in Akhalkalaki is made with a savory filling instead of a sweet filling, as it's done in Armenia). Our host family also says that they also always eat fish and rice pilaf for Easter. Our pilaf was a special ghapama, a tasty treat that Sam and I have been really fortunate to enjoy here many times.

The table transforming into an Easter table

Some Easter gata and ghapama

More Easter decorations (including one egg that Lilit got ahold of)

There isn't a tradition of having the Easter bunny come and hide eggs for good little boys and girls here. I really like the Easter bunny, though, and we decided to share one of our favorite Easter traditions with our host family as well. Sam and I didn't have any plastic eggs to fill with candy, but really wanted to have an egg hunt for our host siblings, so we improvised. Our "eggs" were just plastic baggies filled with candy and color coded with post-it notes to keep straight whose goodies were whose, but the spirit of the thing was there. We explained everything to a very excited Shaen, who helped keep the others in line for the hunt.

Our improvised plastic eggs, hidden for the Easter egg hunt

Shaen, searching out the last of his "eggs"

Lilit was really most excited about showing off her loot to her grandmother and me after the egg hunt finished

Shaen and Amalka preferred to go through their loot in privacy, though

In all, it was a really nice holiday filled with lots of food and good times with our host family. Not so dissimilar from a holiday at home, really. And, although the message may be a little late (and the video sideways), Lilit has something to say to all:

Yet another day in the life

We've had some talk on the Peace Corps Georgia Facebook group about trying to give a rundown of a typical weekday-in-the-life. We've done a couple of "day-in-the-life" entries before, but here's another one. This is how a typical March Thursday might go for Sam.

7:40 am - Wake up to alarm and go for a run with Melissa. We've been pretty consistent about this, but the winter was tough. We usually run 3 miles, braving snow and ice, mud, cars, bewildered pedestrians, cows, and (especially) angry dogs. We have three usual routes, straight out and back along the highway leading to the Turkish border, out the dirt road toward the village of Gumbordo, or down and up the hill toward downtown. Along with the mud and the slowly melting mountains of snow, the spring has brought my favorite hawk back. He sits in a tree just about the point where we turn around.

8:15 am - Stop at the bakery for bread. Roughly 50% chance of bread on any given day, depending on whether we get there before or after the guy fills up his car to go sell the bread elsewhere. Glasses fog when I go inside, but it smells really good.

8:20 am - Back home, try to force myself to do push-ups and sit-ups; clean up as best I can and head out to put on water for tea.

8:30 am - Breakfast is tea and oatmeal, with a piece of bread to sop things up, because how can you sit down to a meal and not have at least one hunk of bread?

9:20 am - Head out to school; it's a 20-minute walk the way I do it, which is more like moseying. Listen to a German or Russian lesson or music on the way.

9:45 am - Eighth grade class starts. This is my most difficult class. Terrible textbook apparently assembled by Dadaists, originally 40 kids finally split into two groups of 20, but still too many. In general we have 3-5 girls crowded up at the front paying attention, and the rest of the class busy with cell-phones, origami frogs, and so on. I have real difficulty getting my own parts of the lesson in, and too often, sad to say, I do next to nothing in a given class period. That makes the successes--a lesson on family trees, a "Wheel of Fortune" game--all the more rewarding, but, on any given day, odds are that this is a rough one.

10:30 am - First grade class. We've got some characters here: a little wiggle-worm dude who I don't believe has sat still for 10 seconds since birth; twins who have obviously picked up that it is cute when they scratch their heads and rub their chins when called to the board to point to a picture of a car; a know-it-all girl who is continually screaming out answers, which are half the time wrong; a really studious little guy; a girl who ought to be in the gifted class; and the girl who mostly stares at her shoes. My counterpart for this class is really good with the little ones, and we do a lot of games and activities. We've hit a bit of a plateau with the alphabet, so I'm trying to work in some more conversation.

11:10-11:20 am - 10-minute break. Try to read, or sometimes practice my Armenian with the other teachers. One vice-principal in particular has made it her mission to get me to speak Armenian, which is all the better for me.

11:20 am - Fourth grade class. 18 kids crammed into what ought to be a supply closet, and when the windows are closed and the heat's on, it's a heady experience. Although the kids have some real discipline issues, I think I like teaching in this class best--of all my classes, I have the most responsibility and am the most active here. I earned some credibility with the kids for teaching this class alone for a couple of weeks last semester when my counterpart got married, and for some reason I can speak Armenian with them ten times better than any other class.

12:05 - Twelfth grade. It was pretty early on this year that we learned the word "Senioritis." It's a pretty relaxing class to end the day with, since we more or less sit down and try to do conversation, but it's frustrating that they're not willing to take any risks with English and just turn to my counterpart to translate for them (and more frustrating that she continues to do so). Most of the kids are good and checked out of school already, and, to be honest, by the end of a long Thursday, so am I.

12:45 - Finish up; plan quickly with counterparts for next day

~1:30 - Get home. Relax and read for a little bit.

2:00 - Have something between a snack and lunch; usually a cup of tea and buckwheat, vermicelli, or beans.

2:30-3:15 - Play guitar if our host sister isn't sleeping, check the computer otherwise. Make sure I have all my ducks in a row for the eco-club. Melissa usually comes in just about as I'm coming out. Thursday's a coming-and-going kind of day.

3:30 - Eco-Club. I work with a friend and her mother to put this on; it's become something rather different than my original intention, with children much younger (1st-graders mostly) than I had expected. Because most of them don't know Russian well, and because my Armenian is not at a level where I can speak intelligently about the environment, a lot of the work is left to my counterparts here and I'm there for moral support, computer games, and films.

4:45 - Get home. Play guitar, read, write, fool around on the Internet. Do the written part of my German lesson; try to read some Russian. Melissa heads out for her fitness club around 5:30.

6:30 - Dinner. Our host dad has been working late, which means it's often just me, Melissa, and our host grandmother eating, but we'll be eating more as a family as the spring comes on and a lot of his clients at the pharmacy will be back to work in the fields.

After dinner, I try to sit out in the common area while reading or preparing. Lately, grad school and travel plans have meant a lot of Internet time, and this (as well as plain old fatigue) has meant more time in the room. Often Melissa and I will watch a TV show. If my host brother has English homework, I'll sit and work with him for 45 minutes or so.

10:30 - Tea. A host family tradition, but lately it's been just Melissa and I drinking, because the Armenian soap operas are running later than we go to bed, and they don't want to have tea until the shows are over. When we do sit down as a family, it's a good opportunity to talk and catch up.

11:00 - To bed.

Hurry up spring!

Beautiful March weather, as enjoyed from through the window in Akhalkalaki

We spent the weekend away from site, traveling to milder climes. Spring is already upon most of Georgia, where the snow is melting and giving way to little green shoots. Akhalkalaki has certainly also seen some milder weather than in the past, and has had noticeably more sunshine of late. The cold winds keep blowing, though, and periodic snowstorms keep us on our toes (and bundled in our long underwear and sleeping bags).

We're starting to melt our way out of winter

But despite these relapses into winter, we are marching steadily (if slowly) towards spring. Our snowbanks are melting as well. They might not be yielding green shoots just yet, but we've got a healthy lot of mud everywhere, which should be just the perfect environment for green leaves to shoot through eventually. It takes a long time to thaw here, too, because the ice and snow builds up pretty incredibly over the 6-month winter.

The ice build up under the bridge is beautiful and terrifying

The morning run might still be windier and colder and less pleasant than we'd like, but we're getting there. The worst of our final Peace Corps winter is behind us and we're looking forward to some nicer spring days to help us make it through to the end.

Best possible presents for the preschool set?

Are these the best possible presents you could ever possible get for the preschool set (especially in a country where choking hazards and lower-age restrictions on toys aren't necessarily heeded)? Yup, probably.

In our last, crazed moments of America, sandwiched between a 6am flight from Philadelphia to Chicago and a 9pm flight from Chicago back to Tbilisi, Sam and I stopped in at a Target. Giving in to the culture-shock overload that being in a Target can induce, we stared, wide-eyed at the row upon row of beautifully arranged, colorful doodads and gadgets, the unnecessary junk and the much-missed, how-do-we-live-without-these-products goodness. But we were on a mission, so we clutched our Starbucks cups and marched back and forth in search of the things we could afford to buy to bring back for the little kiddos in our Akhalkalaki host family.

And what did we find? Why, jumbo punching balloons and a frog mask and butterfly boppers, of course. Of. Course. Crazy, the things you can find and buy so easily in America. Crazier how novel some of them are here, and how loved they are.

See?

That's love.

So another birthday, huh?

My custom-made birthday bracelets, courtesy of Shaen

I went and celebrated another full whirl around the sun here in the time since our last blog post. Not just another birthday, though... this was one where I got to change a front digit! It's probably true that until the recent past, I never, ever would have thought that I'd celebrate my 30th birthday in a place called Akhalkalaki, but I'm sure glad I did.

Since my birthday came only two working days after making our way back to site from our trip to America and week-long COS conference and travels in and around Tbilisi, I was still warm from the memory of visiting with family, taking lots of showers, eating salad and blueberries, and drinking lots of delicious coffee. That warm glow helped (or at least in my fogged memory of something that happened 2 weeks ago) me stay warm as I went to school and work. Also, all of my coworkers were still all excited and happy to see me again, and were all going out of their ways to talk to me and ask me about my time away from school.

Host sister Lilit got all gussied up for the party and wanted her picture taken

Host cousin Narek didn't get dressed up, but still wanted a picture

Our trip to America inspired some incorrect rumors, stemming from a misunderstanding of the American system of higher education, that Sam had successfully defended his dissertation and been offered a spot as a top professor in a university in either Chicago or Philadelphia. This led to me receiving lots of congratulations, which I at first accepted graciously, thinking they were just happy Sam got admitted to PhD programs or that they were maybe trying to wish me a happy birthday (who told?!?). Happily, though, only 2 people at school seemed to know that it was my birthday and give me long happy-birthday wishes, kissing me on the cheeks. But seeing this display just encouraged others to ask "why are they congratulating her?", which led to more spreading of the Sam's-a-new-professor rumor.

In the end, my Tuesday birthday, happily coinciding with my one-class-during-6th-period-only day at school, saw me stay at school about an hour longer than usual, giving a really, really boring lecture on the differences between the American and European systems of higher education, then going into detail on what Archaeology is (yes, I can say "digging in the dirt" in Russian), and explaining rather convincingly why in God's name someone would spend 10 years studying something after already going to college and getting a Master's degree.

If only I had bought the Sam keychain at the Field museum! I could have explained it all so much better!

Coming home from school was a nice reprieve (for whom, for me or for my poor fellow teachers, who were just subjected to my long-winded lecture?). It was made nicer by the smell of baked goods being baked. Our host mom was in the process of making a delicious cake! Happy day! Then Sam greeted me with "well, I wanted to make you a surprise for your birthday, but now the kitchen is busy and I'm not sure if I'll have time, but at least if I don't we'll have 8 bags of M&Ms."

In the end, Sam made it into the kitchen that night and made a really great batch of M&M cookies (which were a big hit with our host siblings) and we still had 4 bags of M&Ms left over to eat in coming days. After dinner we had Armine's cake, Sam's cookies, and a huge, beautiful birthday cake (baked confection #3 for my 30th!), courtesy of Shushan, our host grandmother's sister (and Marianna's mother).

Beautiful and delicious

And as we settled into our sugar comas around the table that evening, the kids provided us with a dance party entitled "We all really know how to break dance." Enjoy the videos!

Being There

We've logged a lot of miles in the past few weeks. In mid-February, I got word that I had been accepted to PhD programs at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania and invited to visit the departments—at the end of February. A few frenzied phone calls and Kayak searches later, we figured out a a way to make it work. And so we were unexpectedly off to Chicago and Philadelphia for the week.

To me, international travel always carries with it something of the surreal, the more so when a trip comes, as this one did, with little time to plan or prepare. But the chance to see the universities (neither of which I had visited before) and our families (after nearly a year) made it a great trip. Also, Girl Scout cookies.

I got a really good impression of both schools and had a warm welcome at both departments, which doesn't make a difficult decision any easier, but we're planning to have that decision made by the beginning of next week, and the next big step in our lives mapped out.

After only a week in the States, we had to hurry back for our Close of Service conference in Tbilisi. It's hard to believe, but we're less than 4 months out from the official end of our Peace Corps service, and the conference is where we start thinking about all the logistics of leaving—plane tickets and health insurance, saying goodbye and finding jobs, filling out all our paperwork and returning to an America in which everyone has a smartphone.

Peace Corps Georgia, in keeping with its amazing ability to make things nice for us, managed to snag space at the Holiday Inn, one of the nicest hotels in Tbilisi. There are worse ways to transition into Georgia from America than three days in a hotel with waterfall showers, king-sized beds, and Internet-equipped treadmills from the future. And having all the volunteers together, for maybe the last time, was a reminder of how lucky we've been not only to have this experience in Georgia, but to have it with some remarkable people.

Peace Corps Georgia 2010-2012

All this time spent thinking about the future can make it hard to live in the present. Especially for someone like me, whose mind is often drifting six months in the future, a hundred miles away, or 200 million years in the past: the Time of the Dinosaurs!


Peace Corps volunteers, like everyone else, find themselves wishing away time, counting down the hours, shutting out the world around, trying to forget where we are. And this is a good thing; at times, a necessary thing. Everyone needs a recharge and an escape. But in these last few months I want to try to be as present as I can, taking my cue from Montaigne on the value of “living to purpose.” It's hard, dodging angry dogs on the ice-walk home from school, head splitting from trying to yell over the yelling of the kids, to think to store up memories to treasure. I doubt I'll be sitting in my rocker at the Old Folks' Home thinking about how much I miss careering down mountains in a hot minibus too full of people and potatoes, knees to my chest and someone's elbow in my ribs.

But we are here, and it's our life, for now. And it's a remarkable and a blessed life. That being the case, it would be a terrible shame not to live it. We will miss the places, and the experiences, and the people most of all. We still have lots to learn about this country, about our villages and towns, about the people we meet and their own stories. We still have lots of work to do. My aim for the next three or four months will be to try diligently to stay aware of that, of where I am and what I am doing, and what the possibilities are.

After the Close of Service conference, we and some other volunteers headed to the Monastery of David Gareja on the border with Azerbaijan. It is a cave monastery complex established by one of the missionary Syrian Fathers, but quite different in its setting and set-up from the cave monastery of Vardzia. I especially like the caves built into the big slanted rock face.





We walked around the complex and up into the sometimes muddy and icy hills behind, but failed to find the path to the monastery of Udabno, where some 12th-century frescoes are still to be found. But the view from the hilltop was something.

Behind Davit Gareja

That evening, we went to Sighnaghi, an extensively redeveloped town in Kakheti, famous for its wine and a hub for tourists in the summer and fall. It was quiet when we were there, but luckily the Mexican restaurant (possibly the only one in Georgia at the moment) was open. We walked around the town as the sun set, and saw the fires in the fields below as the farmers got ready for the planting season.

Fires in the valley

Sighnaghi has drawn some criticism for having been overly remodeled, but I was really pleased with the look and feel of the town. I don't know what the social effects for the people living there have been, but, as a tourist, you didn't get the feeling of walking through Disneyland, but of being in an old Georgian town, well kept and well cared-for.



The next day, we set off for Bodbe Convent, where St. Nino, one of Georgia's most revered saints, lies. We managed, as usual, to take the long way there, thanks to a sign turned just the wrong way, Wile E. Coyote style. Eventually, after making our way down a mountain on a dirt road, a couple of miles beyond where the convent should have been, we debated turning back. But the memory of missing the frescoes at Davit Gareja was still fresh, and so we pressed on, and at last we came across: A Clue!

A clue!

Using our detective and archaeology skills, we managed to piece the sign together and found our way to St. Nino's Spring (where, thanks to some miscommunication with the nuns, we were almost baptised), and then up to the monastery, where we were able to kneel at last to touch the grave of St. Nino.

Church where St. Nino of Cappadocia is buried

Another lesson from the week: you may not always get there, but sometimes, even if you take the long way around, you do.