onwards through the snow
My life went on, as life is wont to do. I still had no real job, but I went to karate classes on a regular basis and started to know Alaverdi and the people there a bit better. Somewhere in here I also started to think about working with the karate school as a possibility - the building was in pretty wretched shape (the roof leaked, the floor was rotten, the kids had to carry water from a nearby building, etc.) and it WAS the only regular after school sports program in the area. The director seemed relatively honest (unlike many others) and I liked the way he worked with the kids. I took the co-director with me to the training in Tsakadzor - and that started the process that finally led to my doing something useful
But for now, it was winter, and my first New Year's in Armenia - and that was an experience. Here's what I wrote to the kids in America:
I had a site visit recently- the director of my program came up to Alaverdi and looked around, saw what I was doing and who I was working with. (This was a direct result of that little article I wrote - o, they were NOT best pleased!) As a result of that, I may have a new organization to work with, which would be very good. Unfortunately, nothing can start until next month - all the schools are closed for this month, because of the cold, and the lack of heat. Actually, it seems as though most everything is sort of half closed down right now - the shuka is smaller, some stores are closed, the bakery shelves are a bit bare. It’s the after New Year’s crash, I guess (New Year’s is VERY big here - but more on that later). Meanwhile, I’d been working on rewriting and revising some Peace Corps forms for my program, and had to go into Yerevan on the 21st of December for a committee meeting.
That was the day it started to snow here. I woke up in the morning and everything was beautiful and white - a bit sloppy, but still pretty. Got on the bus at 10:00 am, with my enormous backpack (I planned on going to my host family’s for the holidays as soon as I got through in Yerevan) and my friend Lilit, and we were off. It was a lovely snow, just wet enough to stick to the branches, and it made everything look clean and new, the way the first really good snow does. It made everything look like Christmas. It just kept snowing, big fat flakes coming down, and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy all the way to Vanadzor, and about a third of the way from Vanadzor to Yerevan. Then the bus started having trouble getting through, and I began to feel a bit apprehensive about all this snow, and about getting through the mountains between Vanadzor and Yerevan. Then the bus stopped. I didn’t like the snow at all by this point; I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy and Christmassy anymore. It was cold, and the snow came swirling in the bus as people got off to shovel and push. Chains were put on the tires. There was no bathroom, there was no food, there was no heat. This went on for a long time - we would move forward a bit and it would seem as though progress was being made, and then we would stop again and it would seem hopeless. The cold was slowly seeping into my bones, I was hungry, and there was nothing I could do, nothing at all. Halfway between Vanadzor and Yerevan, with nothing in sight. There weren’t any plows on the roads, the friendly highway patrol wasn’t driving by, I doubt there was even a CB type radio on the bus. It wasn’t just our bus - there were cars and buses stopped on the road ahead and behind us, and we couldn’t move until they moved. It took a long time, and there was a point where I was sure we were just going to stay there on the bus all night in the middle of nowhere. It was not a pleasant feeling..
Now, I should add that Lilit is 16, and this was the first time she had been allowed to go to Yerevan ‘alone’ - her father ended up driving to Vanadzor and then partway to Yerevan looking for her that night. There was no way to contact him until we got into Yerevan, and by that time he was on the road. He had heard that the bus was stuck in Vanadzor. What time he got home, I don’t know - I just found out this part of the story yesterday.
As luck would have it, we made it though eventually - we got into Yerevan around 9:00 that night, 11 hours after we left Alaverdi. Cold and hungry and desperately needing a bathroom. I waited at the bus stop with Lilit for her brother, and then took a taxi to the Peace Corps office. Which is open 24/7, is heated, and has a bathroom - I tell you, sometimes the little things make a big difference. The guards were very sweet indeed. They made me coffee, shared my chocolate, hooked me up with a hotel for the night (I had almost no money, since I had been planning to go to the bank once I got into Yerevan, and the person I was supposed to be staying with wasn’t at home), and got me a taxi to the hotel. It’s one of those adventures that makes a good story, but isn’t much fun at the time.
I went to my meeting the next day, still exhausted and a bit shaky, and then caught a marchutney up to Vanadzor. The roads were still pretty ugly, and THAT journey took longer than expected - we got into Vanadzor around 8:30. The buses out to Shahumiyan had long since stopped running, the sidewalks and roads were sheer rutted ice, impossible to walk on. I loaded myself and my enormous backpack into a taxi, was grossly overcharged for the ride, and was happy just to be home, with the endless road behind me. Normally I never take taxis - they’re just too expensive on a Peace Corps budget - but there are times when it’s worth it.
I ended up staying with my host family for almost a week and a half, through Christmas and the endless Armenian New Year’s - by the end of that time I felt quite recovered from my little ordeal and about ten pounds heavier. A lot of the holiday celebration here involves eating, and a lot of eating at that. Christmas isn’t celebrated until January 6th here. Well, that’s the Armenian Christmas - the Russian is January 7th, and if you’re from Georgia you might celebrate December 25th. It doesn’t seem to really matter that much where you’re from, though, Christmas is not the big holiday here. New Year’s is. My host family threw a little something together for me on the 25th, just to make me feel at home - but real stuff started happening after that.
First, New Year’s is not one night here - it’s a four to five day event, with lots of preparatory work. The whole house gets cleaned, decorations are hung, a ‘Christmas’ tree (doan-na-zar - literally, ‘holiday tree’) is brought in and decorated - and food is made. Lots of food. New Year’s Eve the table is laid; great joints of meat, salads, dried fruit, dried meats, sweets, tortes, fish, dolma (grape leaves or cabbage stuffed with a meat and rice mixture), fresh fruit, nuts, little blintzes stuffed with meat or cheese. Wine, vodka, and liqueurs at one end of the table; the best dishes and glasses laid out. You start eating at midnight, and basically continue for the next four days. The food stays on the table (except for perishables, which get refrigerated and brought out anew each time), and people visit - and you go visiting others. Every time you visit someone, or someone visits you, you eat. And drink. The toasts alone go on for days. New Year’s is also the night Zimmer Papik (a.k.a. Santa Claus) comes - and guests continue to bring presents he left at their house for their host’s children throughout the four days.
It’s positively exhausting - and I wasn’t even doing any of the work, just dandling baby Anya now and again, or trying to keep Hasico amused. None of the cooking, none of the endless clearing and washing of dishes, the laying out and putting away of food, none of the cleaning. I was just eating and trying to keep up with the conversation (not easy - my Armenian still needs a lot of work), or playing nardi (a form of backgammon). I did really well at the nardi this time (luck was on my side), and positively slaughtered my host father time and time again, which made me most happy. Other than that, I did a bit of visiting to families I had met during the three months I lived in Shahumiyan - and everyone had a table laid out. Even the poorest houses (a lot of the families I know are refugees) had their table laid out with the best they could manage, and everyone wanted me to eat.
The food fest was finally winding down by the 4th, and I was ready to try my luck with public transport again, so I boarded a marchutney to Alaverdi, and have been here ever since. I had a second Christmas (Armenian) at my friend Nellie’s house, and am going there tomorrow for a second (small) New Year’s - apparently it’s by the old calendar. I know the holiday season has got to end someday, right? It just seems like its going on forever… I think this is the last of it. Already karate has resumed and business will be back to normal soon enough.
Well, relatively speaking - there are some major changes in the works. The biggest one being that one of my sitemates, Mandy, has decided to Early Terminate and will be leaving at the end of this month. That’s going to be a bit difficult for me - my other sitemate, Matt, has fallen in love with an Armenian woman and now spends the majority of his time in Yerevan, so I’ll be pretty much alone here once Mandy leaves. Not to mention she was the main courier of mail and various Peace Corps documents in and out of Yerevan - mail’s going to be a bit more difficult now. Plus, having been here a year already, she had lots of useful survival tips for me. On the up side, she’s shedding a lot of things on her way out of Armenia, and a lot of them are falling in my lap. Clothes galore, and a TV with a VCR , and an oven, and various and sundry other oddities - books and a printer and puzzles and cookware and duct tape and batteries. I’d still rather have the company - but it’s pretty obvious that it’s time for her to go, sad as it is. I will miss her - it’s not that we spent all that much time together, but we did see each other at least once a week, and I’ll miss that contact.
As for mundane details of my life here - I’m still taking a bath every day! It’s an accomplishment here - though, to be honest, it’s not been that cold. I guess we’re having a warm winter, and I’ve been steadily burning through the 100 liters of kerosene stored on my porch. The smell is pretty nasty, but it’s warm in my house, and that’s what counts. That’s what makes the daily baths a reality - when I was staying at my host family’s, it was just too cold, even with hot water. Vanadzor is a lot colder than here, and Shahumiyan a bit colder than that - it’ll be a lot nicer there during the summer, when I’ll positively swelter here, but right now I’m happy.
And my phone finally works.
But for now, it was winter, and my first New Year's in Armenia - and that was an experience. Here's what I wrote to the kids in America:
I had a site visit recently- the director of my program came up to Alaverdi and looked around, saw what I was doing and who I was working with. (This was a direct result of that little article I wrote - o, they were NOT best pleased!) As a result of that, I may have a new organization to work with, which would be very good. Unfortunately, nothing can start until next month - all the schools are closed for this month, because of the cold, and the lack of heat. Actually, it seems as though most everything is sort of half closed down right now - the shuka is smaller, some stores are closed, the bakery shelves are a bit bare. It’s the after New Year’s crash, I guess (New Year’s is VERY big here - but more on that later). Meanwhile, I’d been working on rewriting and revising some Peace Corps forms for my program, and had to go into Yerevan on the 21st of December for a committee meeting.
That was the day it started to snow here. I woke up in the morning and everything was beautiful and white - a bit sloppy, but still pretty. Got on the bus at 10:00 am, with my enormous backpack (I planned on going to my host family’s for the holidays as soon as I got through in Yerevan) and my friend Lilit, and we were off. It was a lovely snow, just wet enough to stick to the branches, and it made everything look clean and new, the way the first really good snow does. It made everything look like Christmas. It just kept snowing, big fat flakes coming down, and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy all the way to Vanadzor, and about a third of the way from Vanadzor to Yerevan. Then the bus started having trouble getting through, and I began to feel a bit apprehensive about all this snow, and about getting through the mountains between Vanadzor and Yerevan. Then the bus stopped. I didn’t like the snow at all by this point; I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy and Christmassy anymore. It was cold, and the snow came swirling in the bus as people got off to shovel and push. Chains were put on the tires. There was no bathroom, there was no food, there was no heat. This went on for a long time - we would move forward a bit and it would seem as though progress was being made, and then we would stop again and it would seem hopeless. The cold was slowly seeping into my bones, I was hungry, and there was nothing I could do, nothing at all. Halfway between Vanadzor and Yerevan, with nothing in sight. There weren’t any plows on the roads, the friendly highway patrol wasn’t driving by, I doubt there was even a CB type radio on the bus. It wasn’t just our bus - there were cars and buses stopped on the road ahead and behind us, and we couldn’t move until they moved. It took a long time, and there was a point where I was sure we were just going to stay there on the bus all night in the middle of nowhere. It was not a pleasant feeling..
Now, I should add that Lilit is 16, and this was the first time she had been allowed to go to Yerevan ‘alone’ - her father ended up driving to Vanadzor and then partway to Yerevan looking for her that night. There was no way to contact him until we got into Yerevan, and by that time he was on the road. He had heard that the bus was stuck in Vanadzor. What time he got home, I don’t know - I just found out this part of the story yesterday.
As luck would have it, we made it though eventually - we got into Yerevan around 9:00 that night, 11 hours after we left Alaverdi. Cold and hungry and desperately needing a bathroom. I waited at the bus stop with Lilit for her brother, and then took a taxi to the Peace Corps office. Which is open 24/7, is heated, and has a bathroom - I tell you, sometimes the little things make a big difference. The guards were very sweet indeed. They made me coffee, shared my chocolate, hooked me up with a hotel for the night (I had almost no money, since I had been planning to go to the bank once I got into Yerevan, and the person I was supposed to be staying with wasn’t at home), and got me a taxi to the hotel. It’s one of those adventures that makes a good story, but isn’t much fun at the time.
I went to my meeting the next day, still exhausted and a bit shaky, and then caught a marchutney up to Vanadzor. The roads were still pretty ugly, and THAT journey took longer than expected - we got into Vanadzor around 8:30. The buses out to Shahumiyan had long since stopped running, the sidewalks and roads were sheer rutted ice, impossible to walk on. I loaded myself and my enormous backpack into a taxi, was grossly overcharged for the ride, and was happy just to be home, with the endless road behind me. Normally I never take taxis - they’re just too expensive on a Peace Corps budget - but there are times when it’s worth it.
I ended up staying with my host family for almost a week and a half, through Christmas and the endless Armenian New Year’s - by the end of that time I felt quite recovered from my little ordeal and about ten pounds heavier. A lot of the holiday celebration here involves eating, and a lot of eating at that. Christmas isn’t celebrated until January 6th here. Well, that’s the Armenian Christmas - the Russian is January 7th, and if you’re from Georgia you might celebrate December 25th. It doesn’t seem to really matter that much where you’re from, though, Christmas is not the big holiday here. New Year’s is. My host family threw a little something together for me on the 25th, just to make me feel at home - but real stuff started happening after that.
First, New Year’s is not one night here - it’s a four to five day event, with lots of preparatory work. The whole house gets cleaned, decorations are hung, a ‘Christmas’ tree (doan-na-zar - literally, ‘holiday tree’) is brought in and decorated - and food is made. Lots of food. New Year’s Eve the table is laid; great joints of meat, salads, dried fruit, dried meats, sweets, tortes, fish, dolma (grape leaves or cabbage stuffed with a meat and rice mixture), fresh fruit, nuts, little blintzes stuffed with meat or cheese. Wine, vodka, and liqueurs at one end of the table; the best dishes and glasses laid out. You start eating at midnight, and basically continue for the next four days. The food stays on the table (except for perishables, which get refrigerated and brought out anew each time), and people visit - and you go visiting others. Every time you visit someone, or someone visits you, you eat. And drink. The toasts alone go on for days. New Year’s is also the night Zimmer Papik (a.k.a. Santa Claus) comes - and guests continue to bring presents he left at their house for their host’s children throughout the four days.
It’s positively exhausting - and I wasn’t even doing any of the work, just dandling baby Anya now and again, or trying to keep Hasico amused. None of the cooking, none of the endless clearing and washing of dishes, the laying out and putting away of food, none of the cleaning. I was just eating and trying to keep up with the conversation (not easy - my Armenian still needs a lot of work), or playing nardi (a form of backgammon). I did really well at the nardi this time (luck was on my side), and positively slaughtered my host father time and time again, which made me most happy. Other than that, I did a bit of visiting to families I had met during the three months I lived in Shahumiyan - and everyone had a table laid out. Even the poorest houses (a lot of the families I know are refugees) had their table laid out with the best they could manage, and everyone wanted me to eat.
The food fest was finally winding down by the 4th, and I was ready to try my luck with public transport again, so I boarded a marchutney to Alaverdi, and have been here ever since. I had a second Christmas (Armenian) at my friend Nellie’s house, and am going there tomorrow for a second (small) New Year’s - apparently it’s by the old calendar. I know the holiday season has got to end someday, right? It just seems like its going on forever… I think this is the last of it. Already karate has resumed and business will be back to normal soon enough.
Well, relatively speaking - there are some major changes in the works. The biggest one being that one of my sitemates, Mandy, has decided to Early Terminate and will be leaving at the end of this month. That’s going to be a bit difficult for me - my other sitemate, Matt, has fallen in love with an Armenian woman and now spends the majority of his time in Yerevan, so I’ll be pretty much alone here once Mandy leaves. Not to mention she was the main courier of mail and various Peace Corps documents in and out of Yerevan - mail’s going to be a bit more difficult now. Plus, having been here a year already, she had lots of useful survival tips for me. On the up side, she’s shedding a lot of things on her way out of Armenia, and a lot of them are falling in my lap. Clothes galore, and a TV with a VCR , and an oven, and various and sundry other oddities - books and a printer and puzzles and cookware and duct tape and batteries. I’d still rather have the company - but it’s pretty obvious that it’s time for her to go, sad as it is. I will miss her - it’s not that we spent all that much time together, but we did see each other at least once a week, and I’ll miss that contact.
As for mundane details of my life here - I’m still taking a bath every day! It’s an accomplishment here - though, to be honest, it’s not been that cold. I guess we’re having a warm winter, and I’ve been steadily burning through the 100 liters of kerosene stored on my porch. The smell is pretty nasty, but it’s warm in my house, and that’s what counts. That’s what makes the daily baths a reality - when I was staying at my host family’s, it was just too cold, even with hot water. Vanadzor is a lot colder than here, and Shahumiyan a bit colder than that - it’ll be a lot nicer there during the summer, when I’ll positively swelter here, but right now I’m happy.
And my phone finally works.
posted by meg at 6:25 AM
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