Barev Dsez! So I am in Armenia, have been here now for about 19 days and am currently loving it! I am living in a small village outside of Charentsavan and am surrounded by beautiful mountains. In fact, I can see Mt. Ararat from my house! Things are going very well now that I have a cell phone and the edge is wearing off of my homesickness. There is a 9 hour difference between here and the East Coast and it makes things sometimes difficult!
The flight here was not too bad, as expected, I slept most of the way. The flight from Philly to Vienna was long and cramped, but the food was not bad. We had a 14 hour layover in Vienna and part of our ticket included 'day rooms' at a local hotel where we could shower and sleep. Of course we went exploring as well. We took the CAT train to downtown Vienna and found this great little bar/resturant to eat at. I got a baked potato with bacon and cheese (there was some miscommunication, thought it had veggies!) but even though I could feel my arteries clogging, it was delicious!
The flight from Vienna to Yerevan was fine. I slept, and then they randomly served us dinner at like 1 am. Apparently I later slept through breakfast, but oh well. When we arrived in Yerevan we had to wait for quite some time to gather all of our bags. We took over the baggage area since we made up most of the flight! We also found out that our tickets included a free vivacell sim card...which meant I did not have to buy one! yay! Unfortunatly for me though the whole actual cell phone process was excruciating. After quite an effort it was decided that it was in fact unlockable. I easily admitted defeat and with the help of my english speaking host sister went and bought a phone for 39000 dram. Not an hour later I went to an optional Armenian Culture session at the Peace Corps office. Apparently someone got a little excited with the dancing and ended up stepping on my bag, effectivly killing the screen on the phone I had yet to use! After a long bus ride home, luckily one of my family members drives a big, yellow bus, I was comforted by my family and it was decided we would go that night and get it fixed. We brought it to a shop and I had to pay for a new screen, and wait 2 days for them to fix it. Thankfully it came back on time though, as I had assured my village buddies that any mental stability I was hanging onto would go out the window if anything else went wrong with the phone! All is fine now though, some of you should be hearing from me soon!
I am picking up the language pretty well, and am becoming fast friends with all the other A-17s, which is good because they will be my best friends for the next 2 years at least! My host family is amazing...they are great at helping me with my lessons and make sure I am everywhere that I need to be. My tateak (grandmother) here reminds of my grandmother, always asking me where my coat is and making me grab a jacket before I leave for school. The food is great as well, my favorite is the dolma! It is rice and meat and spices all rolled up in grape leaves! Delicious! I actually helped the women in my family to roll the leaves the other day. I also helped to make brooms, I felt very proud!
Oh yea! Today I lived through my first earthquake! We were all sitting in class and the room started to shake! Luckily it only lasted for a few seconds and was only a 5 on the scale. Some people who were walking did not even feel it at all. And yes, I called my parents at 4 in the morning their time to let them know all about it!
Next week, on the 24th, I find out what my permanent site will be. Basically, where I will work and live for the next 2 years when I offically swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer mid-August. I am hoping to be placed in the Northeast or the Southwest. The middle is the coldest so I want to avoid that, but not be too far away from Yerevan. I am pretty excited to find out where I will be staying and to visit and meet my counterpart!
Pre Service Training (PST, the Peace Corps loves acronyms) has been keeping me pretty busy. I go to school Monday through Saturday from 9 to 1 and then have homework and studying for the rest of the day. Not like I don't have the time to fit in a nap or hanging out with everyone else in my village. On Tuesday, we went exploring and ended up hiking up this big hill and finding this amazing stretch of flowers, it was beautiful. Hopefully I will be getting a flash drive soon so that I can start posting some of the pictures I have taken.
Well...I am going to try and keep this up once a week, at least during PST. Miss you all and love you lots!
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