"Bari galust Hayastan" - Welcome to Armenia!

Armenia, Armenia, ARMENIA! It's so hard to put into words how I feel about my new home, but magical and completely amazing are the two (three?) big adjectives that keep popping into my head. But after a few days here I at least feel mentally prepared to write up a quick post about my experiences so far!

The City

I've never been a city person. Growing up in East Tennessee, studying abroad in a rural Japanese town, and going to university in Oregon were all experiences that gave me a great love of wide open spaces, verdant greens, and beautiful forests. Before I arrived (especially during my layover in Warsaw, a pretty big and not especially beautiful city), I started to worry--what if I touched down in Yerevan and realized I wasn't cut out for it?

I know this is going to sound naive and maybe overly earnest, the gushing of a foreigner in a new place--but I've never felt so comfortable or happy as I have the past few days in Yerevan. Even during the pitch black drive to my hostel from the airport I loved it (the alphabet! the crazy driving! the whiskey advertisements!); but when I stepped outside at about 4pm the next afternoon, the gold-tinged afternoon light reflecting the pink of the tuff stone buildings--I couldn't really believe that I'm going to live here, that this would be my home for at least nine months.

First, the city is miraculously easy and fun to navigate by foot (also important to note is that it's a very small city--just over 1 million people). From what I read, the original plan was designed by Alexander Tamanian in the 20's, who also styled many of the buildings using the pink stone tuff and integrated Armenian traditional styles into the architecture. It's arranged a lot like a wheel with criss-cross spokes, and from the exploring I've done so far it's very easy to walk from one side of the city to the other--for example, from Saryan Street in the west to Nalbandyan Street in the east, it only took about twenty minutes going the long way across the top of the wheel (I went this route because my job will be on the west side, and my apartment is on the east side, and I wanted to see it all!). Of course, I've only seen the major streets in the upper half of the city, but from what I've seen so far I'm so excited :)

Here are a few pictures from my wandering:

From the map you can see that the very top of the Yerevan city 'wheel' is a place called Cascade (pronounced kaskad), which is a giant staircase that was originally supposed to be a big waterfall. There's some construction up top that makes it not very picturesque, but in real life it's very pretty. The statue in front is the architect I mentioned before, Tamanian.

The top of Cascade, looking to the south of Yerevan. I could make out Ararat from the top, but this picture doesn't really show it.

Many of the streets are named after Armenians or Russians.

 I also love how many statues there are in the city! This is Hovhannes Toumanian, an Armenian poet who wrote a very popular opera and many folk tales. I have a huge affinity for him--I watched a TV show based on one of his folktales once (called Brave Najar) and I fell in love with how crazy it was!

Behind Mr. Toumanian's statue you can see a glimpse of the Opera. The night of my arrival I met two great guys at the hostel (one Persian, one from the Faeroe Islands!) and they were nice enough to invite me on their trip to the philharmonic, which was fantastic. Our seats were about $7.

This is part of Republic Square, which is to the south of the Opera. I can't get over the color of those stones! There's a cool book store nearby called Noah's Ark, and the street leading up to it is full of popular restaurants (according to my Lonely Planet--we'll see!).

Just a glimpse of the city

Near my hostel--it says Haykakan Konyak - Armenian brandy. I really like the store facade and font :)

An alley~

The front of the university where I'll be working, called Yerevan State Linguistic University! Very excited to see the inside and explore the campus.

The side of the university

Just another street corner, with a yellow marshrutka mini-bus in the foreground

There's so much more I want to write about--the language, the other sights, the food, everything!--but the night grows late here in Yerevan. More to come soon!