Things to talk about in my blog (in no particular order):
Fruit loop/cheeto hybrid deliciousness
Shoes and medication fiasco with eventual resolution
Meeting the mayor and police chief, in tennis shoes
Our house guests, resulting in my first Armenian manicure
My daily 1 to 3 hour naps
Late night phone calls and how I lost the popularity contest to a swimming pool
The ‘agitator’ and how agitated I am with the machine
First meeting with my new tutor, complete with coffee and watermelon
The red hat and how it will ensure my winter survival
Well, I decided to share my list of subjects that I thought important enough to be in my blog so you could see how truly all over the place my life here in Armenia is. It has been my experience in the last 3 months (unbelievable, I know, it freaks me out to) that when you are halfway across the world, immersed in an entirely different culture, seemingly trivial and unimportant things seem to get bumped up a few notches on the significance ladder. A prime example: If I were to write this blog about life in the United States would the recently discovered Fruit Loop/Cheeto hybrid deliciousness have made the cut for inclusion? Absolutely not. But, since I am in Armenia and experiencing new and different foods on a pretty daily basis, the serving of the Fruit Loop/Cheeto hybrid deliciousness had a disproportionately large impact on my outlook on life that day. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else but me, so moving on, in no particular order some things of importance that have occurred over the last week:
Fruit Loop/Cheeto Hybrid Deliciousness is, surprisingly, not that name on the package that these amazing little tasties are bought in. In fact, I am almost positive I will never learn the proper name of these snacks since it is printed in Russian or some other language all Armenians can understand. But vochinch (it’s OK), because the name can continue to elude me as long as I am allowed to indulge in their greatness every once in a while. What exactly is a Fruit Loop/Cheeto Hybrid Deliciousness? I am sure you are wondering. Well, it is just as my assigned name implies. It is essentially a pale Cheeto (the fat ones, not the skinny ones- and without the fake cheesy taste) saturated with the incomparable fruit infusion taste of the popular Fruit Loops cereal. In a word: childhood. I have honestly come to expect very little from the snack foods in Armenia, with a few exceptions. While they own the world of delicious fruit, hands down, sometimes their snacks leave one unsatisfied. The story of how I came across the Fruit Loop/Cheeto Hybrid Deliciousness is not great in itself. We had house guests for a couple of days, and on one of the last nights of their stay they went shopping. They came back with some bologna hotdogs (yup, again just as the name implies) and these big, puffy, pale Cheetos. As customary, after dinner everyone sat around the table drinking coffee, snacking, and on this night speaking in a particularly rapid Armenian. I tried to follow the conversation for quite some time, but my brain got tired, and I decided to test out one of these deceivingly plain looking puffs. I am pretty sure I broke out into a smile. It was amazing. I wanted to run to the store, buy some milk, pour it in an oversized bowl, and dump a large quantity of the puffs into it. Of course, I did not. I already have a number of strange habits (like walking around barefoot), why add to add to the strangeness, especially in front of guests. This may seem like a very large paragraph dedicated to a single snack, and while it makes me sad a little bit, I have been assured by longer serving volunteers that the significance that food has in my life is going to increase 100-fold in the next 2 years. What I mean to say, is you should expect more tangents like this one in the future.
This blog is very long, so I have to post it as a bunch of seperate blogs, sorry.
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