"I'm small, you know? I was only 2 kilos when I was born. My mom went into labor running away from our house when it was bombed. Our house was re-built, and you can still see the Azeri village from our window. Locals know to never go close to the border, but sometimes people get lost. Those people never come back."

 -A 19-year-old student from Noyemberyan, Armenia.

A Thousand Words

Found on Tumblr, taken by Instagram user INeedMoreBeer

This is a picture I found today on Tumblr, and I love it more than I can really describe. It was taken during this year's celebration of Vardavar, which is a summer festival that dates back to Armenia's pre-Christian times, and is one of the only holidays with obviously pagan roots that's still commonly throughout the country ((I think)). While I didn't get to experience Vardavar since it's in mid-summer, it sounds amazing: like Holi or Thailand's water festival. You basically run around all day spraying people with buckets of water; kids jump in the city's numerous fountains, taxi drivers get drenched if their windows are open, and unsuspecting foreign tourists are particularly beloved targets, or so I've been told (here's a great video my students showed me of the festivities).

I love this picture so much because it's such a contradiction to the Typical Armenia Image, which is some mix of Mount Ararat, a stone church, or a pomegranate, in different combinations.

And when you're here, and foreign, people are really excited to tell you the verbal equivalents of these images. "Every race has its roots in Armenia," people say. "Mesrop Mashtots helped invent your alphabet too," others note. "Did you know President Obama has Armenian blood?" students ask. "Armenian is the third most beautiful language in the world," a teacher comments. "An Armenian invented X, Y, and Z," someone else adds. "Armenian is the language of God, and we are His people."

I don't know what adjective to describe Armenian pride, but one of them is certainly "impressive." I think I'd be just as patriotic if my country and language still existed after thousands of years of wars and a genocide.

But sometimes I think all the images and ideas about Armenians and Armenian-ness are an attempt to cover up the fact that there is so much bad shit happening in this country. An unbelievable amount of corruption in every sector of life, from education to law. Closed borders with two out of four of its neighbors. A war that has no end in sight. A startling rate of emigration. Citizens' complete lack of hope or trust in the political system. Environmental degradation and lack of sustainability (the nuclear power plant that provides 40% of the country's energy is considered one of the most five dangerous nuclear facilities in the world. It's located in one of the world's most seismically active areas, and is--by the way--20 miles outside Yerevan). The fact that a trained university lecturer in Yerevan makes no more than $400 a month (less than professors in India, Malaysia, or Ethiopia.)--and if you're just an associate or assistant professor, it's more like $200 a month, despite the fact that the cost of living in the city is not much less than in the U.S. In short, it's not all stone churches and Mount Ararat and fruit.

I love the picture above because I feel like it's a representation of everything in Armenia--the bad and the good. The Stalin-era apartments, the rust, the cracked pavement; the brightly-colored laundry as it whips in the wind, the kids playing, drenching each other during a joyous summer holiday. There's no symbolically-oozing pomegranate, no William Saroyan quote, no talk about the Turks, no Photoshop-enhanced monastery. It's imperfect, it's real, it's beautiful in its own special way. It's Armenia.

Pranes, Trains, and Avtomobiles

16:

Komine Castle in Shirakawa, Japan, where I lived as a Rotary Exchange Student

23:

Soviet-era monument on top of the Central Train Station in Yerevan, Armenia

Mental Sediment

I thought blogging in Armenia would be so easy. "There will be so much to describe! So much to write about! So much to expound upon!"

There is, truly. My head and heart seem full of ideas, full of questions, full of frustrations, full of things I want to discuss and pinpoint, highlight and delineate.

Fortunately (for the growth of my noggin' parts) and unfortunately (for the growth of my Google analytics page), the stuff I want to write about just isn't easy to write about. To be honest, I don't even know how to answer the question "So, how is it?" let alone discuss anything worth value. I'm still so new to this country, and I don't want to come off as expanding on something I don't understand (or ever will understand). So here's what I'd like to write about--and tell you all about--once the mental sediment calms down and condenses. If it ever will?

• The palpable, tangible pallor of revulsion that washed over my students' faces when I told them I believe gay people should be allowed to adopt children;
• The way the temperature in the room changes when the topic of Turkey or Azerbaijan comes up, as if sadness, hatred, and anger are particles that can fill the air;
• The idea that your country of origin dictates your religion, your traditions, your beliefs, the way you will bring up your family, and your sexuality--and God forbid if you ever question that;
• The insistence on a flat, one dimensional (and often contrived) narrative of "ARMENIA" as a country/identity, and its effect on the country's future economic/political growth (as well as its tourist industry)

TL;DR: 

The kind of things you remember when you're in a new place:

I never felt so safe as when my big brother, when he was in high school, would take me on night drives in his Jeep. We'd listen to music and we wouldn't talk much. The dips in the hills, the fog glowing around football field lights, the cold snap of the Tennessee autumn when he'd roll down the windows to smoke--that always said enough. The whole world happened during those drives and I remember exactly how I looked, when beyond the pine trees that would glide by in the window, I would stare into my own reflection.

Family Outings

The past two weekends have been full of adventure, thanks to some awesome Armenians who have done a lot to integrate me into Armenian life and their families. I have to include an admonition right now that Armenian hospitality deserves not a separate blog post, but a separate blog; the knock-you-down-speechless quality to it evades the written word, and can only be appreciated with warm lavash at your side, homemade apricot vodka in your glass, and a gigantic Armenian family all around you.

Suffice it to say, the past few weeks have been made truly incredible by so much generosity, so I wanted to write a little bit about my most recent adventures into the Armenian countryside.

Women making tonir lavash in a traditional oven.

Last weekend, my first adventure was to Areni, which is a major wine producing area in Armenia and the location of the Areni Wine Festival every October. I was very excited to experience what a wine festival might be in Armenia; I had dressed cute, and imagined myself leisurely strolling through a sun-dappled vineyard, nibbling cheese and covering my mouth daintily as I laughed with the British Ambassador or some other high-class diplomat, because that's what happens at wine festivals in foreign countries, right?

basically.

The road to Areni passes very close to the Turkish and Azeri border (particularly Nakhchivan, which is a bizarre exclave of Azerbaijan that's sandwiched between Iran and Armenia). I didn't realize this until, as we drove, the mountains and hills on the right side of the road disappeared behind tall, 10-ft high piles of dirt. I didn't think anything of it (too busy daydreaming about witty banter with diplomatz) until someone laughed, "Don't worry, Lusijan--now that the dirt is here, the Azeri snipers can't shoot at cars any more."

#YouKnowYou'reinArmeniaWhen

View Larger Map

Once we started getting closer to Areni, I noticed a really strange preponderance of outdoor stalls selling coke. I wondered why so many merchants were insisting on selling the drink outside and not kept cool. Then I realized the Fanta bottles had dark liquid in them too. Ohhh!!!

Wine seller at Areni

Areni Wine Festival stalls

The wine festival itself ended up being fantastic, crazy, loud, exciting, and completely different from what I expected, just like most other experiences in Hayastan. I spotted the American Ambassador and the Armenian President, ate tons of Armenian BBQ, drank more wine than was probably appropriate, and even ran into some friends.

After the wine festival and a long, leisurely lunch at which my Armenian hosts succeeded in quadrupling my daily calorie intake, we headed to Noravank Monastery, built in the 13th century.

Noravank Monastery, Yeghegnadzor

At Noravank, my hosts pointed out a special carving--the only place in Armenia where God the Father is depicted in art. The story goes that he (He?) was given almond-shaped eyes and a thick beard, so that marauding Mongols would see in him their likeness and leave the church in peace. To be totally frank, I never know what to believe when it comes to Armenian history, but that's what they told me.

This weekend, I went with my teacher's brother and his two daughters to pick apples at their family orchard. 

Mount Ararat, outside Yerevan.

The drive to the orchard was breathtaking. Every hairpin turn was a more majestic view of Mt Ararat; every hill a different herd of scraggly cows. It made me remember how deeply I love being a passenger in foreign countries. It is the purest quiet, to melt into yourself while others talk around you in a language you can't understand.

Applesh!!!

Going to the orchard with the family--who were exquisitely kind but also very quiet--was like giving my soul a spa day. No sounds of traffic, no Armenian bros yelling "Arrrri, aper! Arrraaa!"; no worries about work or schedules or anything else. The neighbor's cows lowed, the roosters fought under our ladders, and we picked apples. It was paradise.

When the daughters got tired of picking apples, they strolled past the brambles growing on the orchard fence and returned with handfuls of blackberries and raspberries. They showed me how to rub the skin off a fresh hazelnut and how to crack open a walnut with a rock. A 'walnut' from a bag in Safeway is so different from a 'popok' that you cracked yourself. Everything is relative.

Chicken, cow, beehives.

After an afternoon of harvesting, we returned to Yerevan for a gigantic feast of chicken porridge (harissa), lavash, salad, fruit, vodka, wine, and cake. Everyone in the family seemed to be there--the grandmother, cousins, kids, siblings, even one of the daughters' boyfriends. Toast after toast came--toasts welcoming me to Armenia, toasts for my continued success, toasts to welcome me into their family, toasts to my parents, toasts to the maker of the porridge, toasts to health and good luck. I even got an impromptu Armenian lesson by one of the family members, who taught me two new verb tenses and wouldn't let me say anything in English that she knew I could say in Armenian. When I finally got home and dropped the three giant bags of apples (along with two jars of homemade jam) on to my bedroom floor, I had to pinch myself. Did that really just happen?

Sometimes I think I must be dreaming.

A Month in Review or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Armenia

A month? It's been a month???

Khachkar (stone cross). Noratus.

The past few days I've been struggling a lot with how to put into words the past four weeks; the juxtaposition between the mornings in bed staring teary-eyed at the ceiling with the afternoons and nights of joy and excitement; the transition from Tourist to Resident, from Former-Exchange-Student-to-Japan to Present-Exchange-Something-to-Armenia. I don't know if it's really possible to capture those feelings in words. All I know is that on the plane to Yerevan, I wrote this sentence in my travel diary: "I want to laugh, I want to cry, I want to feel all those emotions that are at the height of intensity when you're living abroad." While that's the type of thing easier said than done, at least I knew what I was getting into.

Old Armenian inscription on a stone pillar. Geghard Monastery.

The first two weeks in Armenia were kind of, like, tough!! I felt excited and very eager, but the intense pressure I put on myself to constantly be out and about, "getting out of my comfort zone!!1," meeting people, and learning Armenian got compounded with exhaustion, not knowing anyone, and being in a big loud dusty mind-jabbering city after spending a month secluded in semi-monasticism at home in Tennessee.

Of course, there was a lot to get used to. I'd never experienced the "aesthetic" of a former Soviet region (let alone spent any time in a developing country), and it was hard to shake off the constant stares and the lack of smiles; Armenians are really friendly, but they're also not American, which means smiling at strangers isn't kosher.

Soviet-era pedestrian tunnel. Yerevan.

Like I said, I felt excited and eager. But I also felt a little lost. Where was the euphoria I felt when I arrived in Japan as an exchange student in high school? Where was my "honeymoon period?" Where was my happiness? Any time I had a moment alone to my thoughts, I kept wondering how I was going to find it.

Why buy a fancy plaque when you can just write the floor number on the walls? My apartment, Yerevan.

One night, still feeling unsteady and unsure, I was doing some lesson planning and decided to flip through a book of quotes I brought from home, thinking I'd find a good passage to start off my conversation class and get the students talking. As I skimmed through the book, a quote at the bottom of one page caught my eye: Happiness is a conscious choice.

Hayastanə du es - 'You Are Armenia.' Yerevan.

 "Happiness is a conscious choice"!!!??? DUH! I read that, and it clicked: that euphoria, that joy, that insistence on living in the present, that happiness I was looking for--I wasn't going to just "find" it. No amount of new activities, new hobbies, new friends, or new places would make me happy in Armenia. I realized if I wanted to be comfortable and happy in my new home, it was as simple as that: I just had to be happy. As cliche and crunchy and touchy-feely as it sounds, it started a big shift in my experience.

Doorway looking out over Lake Sevan. Hayravank Monastery.

The first two weeks I had spent so much time worrying about being happy that I, uh, NEWSFLASH!, wasn't really happy. I was constantly comparing everything I experienced to my past trips abroad; I was stressed about figuring out work, finding new activities to fill my schedule, making friends, and learning Armenian. I didn't let myself take a chill pill and recognize that the first two weeks in a new place (for me, at least) are always kind of tough.

Now? Now everything is awesome!! After hitting the two week mark, I found my stride. School is amazing, Yerevan is amazing, and every morning I wake up excited, eager, and happy. In the past two weeks I hiked to the top of Mt. Aragats (Armenian's highest peak!), drank grape vodka with village honeymakers, celebrated Armenian Independence Day, learned enough Armenian to order food and talk to my host mom, watched hundreds of people dance Armenian traditional dances in downtown Yerevan under the full moon, taught all my own classes, met amazing new foreign and local friends, and laughed my butt off at all those hilarious and bizarre things you can only experience if you're a 'stranger in a strange land.'

Here's to nine more months of happiness!!

Cathedrals and Stone Crosses and a New Apartment!

The past few days have been full of more Yerevan wandering, plus lots of running around--meetings with my Embassy contact, university administrators, and runs to multiple cellphone/internet companies, not including the move to my apartment! Luckily I'm all moved in with my incredible host mom in my amazing soviet flat, and to mark the end of my first week in Yerevan and a successful internet connection, here are some new pictures!

A dreamy, typical cafe lunch--fresh salad, lime/raspberry tea, and chicken kebab! I ordered this all in Armenian--it felt very exciting!

One of the parks that's a part of Yerevan's green belt. It's such a great city for strolls~

I feel really good about this little orange elephant and his beret!!!

Dubious. One thing I'm still getting used to is the lack of American food chains--no Starbucks, no McDonalds, no Target or chain book stores or even department stores. I'm not implying I miss them--it's just surprising!!

Yerevan's cathedral, dedicated to St. Gregory the Illuminator (who helped make Armenia the first Christian nation). It was built in 2001, to commemorate the 1700th year of Christianity in Armenia.

The few times I've been abroad long term, the first weeks have always overwhelmed me a little--I have a lot of those worries about understanding and being understood, making friends, trying to balance expectations with goals and hopes. When I got to St. Gregory's I sat down and immediately knew I needed to meditate a little, so I pulled out my worn copy of the prayer of St. Francis, which has to be the ultimate encouragement to "be your own champion."

Of course, if Saint Francis doesn't get you jazzed, Andranik Ozanian will! He was an Armenian freedom fighter who fought against the Turks and Azeris in the early 1900s. He's a big national hero in Armenia--the country's Robin Hood and Washington, all in one? He's so badass that he's astride two horses (one of which is trampling a snake).

Very close to the shopping center in Yerevan is a little side street where stonemasons carve khachkars, Armenian stone crosses.

I couldn't believe this was stone--the carving is so gorgeous and intricate I was sure it was wood. During my research before I came to Armenia, I read once that the stone cross was one of the iconic symbols of Armenia, like Mt. Ararat and the pomegranate.

One of the ubiquitous Russian Ladas that have almost killed me. I feel very safe in Yerevan, except when I cross the street!

Mt. Ararat at sunset

No words necessary~

(Mom, I told you everything in the stores were Russian--obviously I was wrong, HAHA)

Like I mentioned, this weekend I moved into the apartment I'll be staying at for the next year, which is the home of a wonderful Armenian women who often hosts travelers and Peace Corps volunteers. I am so thankful to the Fulbright embassy people for arranging this--I don't know if I've ever met someone so kind, and just from the past few days together I know I'm going to learn and laugh with her so much.

My room!!! I think it looks small in the picture (made smaller by my crazy unpacked clutter, which will soon be remedied!) but it feels so spacious, much bigger than any room I've ever had. The window makes it very light and airy during the day.

I debated leaving my little Pluto in the picture (street cred!!1) but when Zina (my host mom) saw him, she said, "Ha! All girl have talisman. You see mine too?" And she proceeded to show me into her room, where a little stuffed bunny reigned over her things. Soul sisters? I'm thinking.....yes. (also I am SO referring to stuffed animals as "talisman" from now on!!!)

The fantastic view from my bedroom window. I love my 'hood!! :)

That's it for now! It's getting late and I've been on my computer too long. This week should be great--the other Fulbrighters are here, I'm meeting with my university tomorrow to figure out my schedule, and I'm also having coffee with my potential Armenian teacher! Things are slowly falling into place :)

Love from Yerevan,

Lusi

A Walk With Mesrop Mashtots & St. Grigor

Today after spending the morning working on boring stuff (figuring out the process of getting a new phone, outlining my budget, contacting a few people), I had to get out of the hostel and walk around in the beautiful (surprisingly hot) weather. Since I had only explored the top half of Yerevan, I decided to walk down one of the main streets (Mesrop Mashtots) and to the south on Grigor Luysavorich (Gregory the Illuminator Street) to see the sights and maybe hit up a museum or two before I headed back home.

Here's the idea:

My first stop was the Blue Mosque, which is a little funny, since Armenia is much more known for its beautiful churches and monasteries than Muslim architecture of any kind.

However, I was very happy to find this place--there's a beautiful, shady courtyard in front of the actual mosque itself that was a wonderful respite from the city clamor.

I sat down at a bench in the courtyard to take it all in and relax. I've been a little stressed the past two days (I'm getting a little antsy to move into my apartment and get settled, make friends, etc.) so I needed it.

The actual mosque.

Walking around the courtyard made me feel like I was in Tehran, not Yerevan! (Which isn't surprising--the mosque's recent reconstruction was paid for by the government of Iran)

((Side note--can Americans even go to Tehran?? I've met a bunch of people at the hostel from Iran/Europeans who have traveled there and it sounds--aside from the political insanity--so wonderful!))

In front of the mosque was an old apartment building with balconies overlooking the courtyard. If I didn't have an apartment already set up, I think I would've knocked on the door and asked them if I could rent out the top room--it would have such a good view!

Outside the mosque, I found this great street corner--I know it's a bad picture, but I love the Armenian flag and the statue of Mother Armenia way in the back.

Another apartment I want to live in! I love the little catty-corner balconies.

My next stop was Saint Sargis church, which was on my map but only briefly mentioned; just a nice, very old church that was restored. It was so beautiful, though unfortunately sandwiched between a bunch of Soviet-era apartments. A bunch of people were walking casually in and out, so I wandered in myself, only to realize a wedding was being performed! I quickly scuttled out but nobody seemed to care.

Yerevan has a very dry climate compared to Tennessee, but luckily there are little stone water fountains all over the city.

From Saint Sargis, you can see Mt. Ararat!

Further along my walk I came upon this--Yerevan's Institute of Linguistics?! I need to do some googling.

After my walk, I stopped at the mini-mart to look at food and buy a little snack. I love the juice cartons!

Festival of Bread, TM

At the store I found a bottle of carbonated tan, which from what I gather is a kind of yogurt drink. It tasted like really spoiled milk that had been carbonated in an old gym sock, but it was amazing!