a sad day....

We lost our first two volunteers today, one of them is from my village. It was a pretty sad day, but I guess I have to respect them for knowing themselves well enough to know that Peace Corps wasn't for them. He was a great guy, and will defiantly be missed. Them leaving also made me question my decision to be here, but I think it is getting to the point now where my extreme homesickness is ebbing, and the practica (actually teaching classes) over the last couple of weeks reminded me of why I signed up for the Peace Corps in the first place.

So far, I have team taught 6-30 minute classes and a solo 30 minute class to children of all ages in my villages. I have taught about the food web, insects (my favorite), observation skills, migration, fish parts, and one other subject that I can't remember (oops!). I have 3 more solo classes to teach, and the big thing...drum roll please...two of them have to be in Armenian. I am pretty nervous about those, but am very comfortable with the topics (water cycle and animal senses) which should make things a little less difficult.

We swear in on the 14th, and it is hard for me to believe that I have only a little more then 2 weeks left of PST and living in Karenis. I am very, very excited for Dilijan, and luckily have some amazing people close by. I will defiantly miss my family in Karenis though, they should be expecting visits about once a month at least! Let me just say that if I didn't have such an amazing family, I would probably be sitting in America right now...and that goes for my family in Armenia and America. After meeting people here, I have realized how incredibly lucky I am to have such an amazing support network at home...and I can't wait to visit in December!

Well, we had ourselves an EE horavats at Vinny's house last night, which was really great. I think we all needed a little bit of fun and good times. It only reiterated the fact that for my coming home party (in 2 years) we will all be experiencing some amazing Armenian horavats!

I know it is short, but we are all going to our favorite cafe to say our goodbyes and have one last hoorah! I miss you all and love you lots!

There is an Art University in Dilijan, so during my site visit, I saw them on almost every corner. This man was nice enough to let me take a picture.


This is the view from my porch, I can certainly wake up to that every morning.


The Forest King, added to a tree near the old KGB summer house, which you will see below.

The ceiling was my favorite part, plus it is the only part of the house left intact.

You can tell it used to be grand in its heyday.


The colors in the ceiling made me really happy. The stairs leading to the old 'bathroom', it was gorgeous with all the plants growing up it.
Can you figure out why I took this picture?

Erosion, a big problem in a town built into mountains.
A view of Dilijan from above.

This is the bus that picked us up at the airport in Yerevan. View from my seat, they had goody bags for us, with wet wipes and snickers.
I had never seen so many sheep in one spot before in my life.

This is a room at the Cathedral of Zvarnots, which has an amazing view of Mt. Ararat.
You see eagles all over Armenia, they are a symbol of strengh, which Armenian's have had a lot of in their history.
Walking off the bus and up to the ruins.
That, dear friends, is Ararat. It was beautiful with the sunrise behind it.



This is probably my favorite picture, there are really no words for how beautiful it was.

This was on site announcement day. All of the drivers helped to paint a large map of Armenia on the cement outside. They labeled all of the sites we would be going to.


This is me standing in 'Dilijan'

Armenia is divided into 11 Marz or regions. These are all of my Tavush Marz mates, an incredible group of people.

This map shows all of the current volunteers in Armenia, we are far from alone.

There is a fish farm right outside of my village. This sign says eanchkhan tdsook (doesn't really translate well)
There was at least 30 hives in this mans yard, the noise was amazing.
Making Horavats (Armenian Barbeque). The men allowed me to come and flip the veggies once for a picture, then I was shooed away.
This is the sketchy ladder I climbed to get onto my neighbor's roof and pick cherries.

The flowers in this field are beautiful...hundreds of shades of blue.

They cut skinny branches into poles for all the lobe (beans)..I helped my tateak to put these in.
One of our favorite hang out spots, the gazebo on the way to school. It overlooks the gorge and river, unfortunately though some obstinate familys throw their trash around it.

My papeak's big yellow bus, I love it!
These are some brooms I helped my family to make, they use grass that they cut out of their back yard.
Some of our havner (hens), we also have lots of jooteak (chicks)
a tsiatsa (rainbow) that was out after a rainstorm on my first day here, it was beautiful.
a 1500 year old chapel that is at the bottom of our gorge, there are artifacts from it housed in the museum at Ejmiatsine.

Bjni Ruins: The view from the top, it was absolutly beautiful. Which is probably why the current PCVs decided to greet us here. It is also where I saw my first Armenian Aysh (Donkey)





This is the hotel that we stayed at, it was surrounded by hills, and had a volleyball court which we made use of almost every night that we were there.



This was the shower in our room, let me tell you, I made quite a mess...water was everywhere.

Our schedule for the first day, notice they scheduled a lot of free time, which really meant nap time. We were exhausted.


The hills surrounding our hotel...absolutely gorgeous.