go somewhere else

So, I've been using wordpress. The hoot and the cakes were right. It's very nice. I've posted there quite a bit now. So take a minute and plug this in your aggregator:

http://breadtobeeaten.wordpress.com

And follow me........

Making a move????

So I'm currently checking out wordpress. I know, this will likely cause any of you aggregators the strife of having to plug in yet another web address. But the place was lauded by a friend of mine at What the Stitch?. So I'm trying it out. I'll let you know when/if I make the move.

The biggest thing holding me back is that the website is slow from over here. Blogger is much faster. But wordpress just LOOKS so much nicer. There are more features. I'm torn. Any advice?

(You can see what I'm testing out at breadtobeeaten.wordpress.com)

Քույրիկս և Ընկերներս

Other Peace Corps Volunteers are invaluable friends. There is no one else in the world who will know what it's like here as well as your PCV friends will. The good ones provide a safe space to vent, miss home, commiserate, and let your American self hang out. When I'm with my PCV friends, I can talk about Obama, Battlestar Gallactica (never thought I would watch that... but necessity is the mother of you-will-watch-anything-when-desparate), and where to buy vanilla in Yerevan. I can complain about host mom quirks and all the stares. And I can dance like I dance, which can certainly incorporate the Armenian arms-only techniques, but is only complete with wobbly feet and old step squad rolls and swings.

The above picture is my friend Liz. She was the first to welcome me to Armenia with, "Oh, you're the one living with my old host family." Because we share this host family connection, she calls me 'Aghbers', my brother, and we reminisce about Geghtsik's wild dancing and Armine's quick temper. I'm currently hoping she'll cut my hair when I see her this weekend in Yerevan.



And these are some of my close friends, geographically and otherwise. I went up for the weekend to Baghratashin to visit them. Grace made that plate of cookies (I'm cleary very excited, yeah?), as well as lavash chips and 4 layer dip. We watched Perfume, leavened the night with Dodgeball and slept warmly all surrounding each other on mats on the floor. Peace Corps is one of the only places in the world where not only are you not too old for sleepovers, but the activity is expected, comes with the two year package.

I would not survive here without people like this.

The Armenian Artists

This past weekend I grabbed my European Volunteer Service friends, and we popped over to Gyumri, Armenia's second largest city, for an art tour provided by the Berlin Hotel. The weather was quite the foil to last week's sunny, crisp sort, but the day was still so charming, made up of long, quiet, gray rides through rain and flat lands and punctuated by endearing men and women armed for everyday with paintbrushes and homemade wine.

The above picture is the table of the first artist, Hakob Hovahnnisyan.

He lives in a small village, Gusanagyugh, where he moved only a few years ago. The landscape surrounding his home was surely uninspiring with dull grey rocks, smudgy grass and endless horizon, but Hakob said he moved there for the "light". The best light in all Armenia he said. I was instantly considering the typical Why's of moving (re: the schools, the active lifestyle, the beach, the job market). Not many people pick up and follow 'light'.


This is his room where he paints, sleeps, cooks, warms by the gas stove. It's actually a good picture of what most Peace Corps Volunteer homes are like, except that Hakob covered the walls with off-white draft paper where he hangs his work and scribbles things like, "Պետք է ապրել այնպես, որ կարողանալ նկարել, ոչ թե հակառակը:" It's necessary to live that way, which can be pictured, not the contrary.


I always wondered what it would be like to be that fabled kind of artist. What it would look like if I jumped off the face of the earth and landed somewhere totally unknown, like the moonscape country of Gyusanagyugh. To be totally devoted to my art. And now I know. It's a lot of broken furniture, of light-following, of sparse rooms, of quiet.


And outside his home stands this tiny structure, a remnant of soviet pressures which so supressed Christian life. A few brave souls who could not find a church nearby constructed their own for lonely services. The inside of this place was crusted with candle drips and thick with wet air. A picture of Mary. A cushion worn out by the recurrant fall of knees.


Ah, but a mood can certainly pick up at the sight of such houses, surrounded by piles and piles of cabbage, don't you think? I know it's hard to see, but look around the houses. Piles and piles. It's like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but ... just cabbage.


The cabbage piles were followed by a visit to this structure, old walls of a seventh century fortress that jut into the sky at the crest of a hill. When you're an American tourist, such vists always spark phrases like, "Well, we just don't have anything that old in the States," and "I don't think our Starbucks will last this long." And then we start thinking about the irony of American self-importance. And then we say things like, "Remember that time we were standing in a 1400 year old building." Smile, then a bunch of ugly pictures (come on... you know they're ugly), then back on the bus.


Now the next artists were my kind of people. Yesayi and Irina Meyroyan. These aethetes set up a snack spread as though it were a piece of art. They're yard was speckled by rickety sculptures that doubled as summer tables and clothes pin holders, little works set up merely for their own pleasure, because very few other people would ever see them.

Each corner of the place was a chance to explore the beauty of a new perspective. Oooh... doesn't that sound all vague and oddly pleasing. Indeed, they were perfect Armenian art-hippies.


There was just a lot of art, a lot of light, and a pleasant warm place to snack and do those arty type things like contemplate beauty and revel in warmth and purity. Stuff like that.


Seriously though, best part was that their little girl's art (see far left of pic above... there's the girl) was just as proudly posted as her parents' most phenomenal works.

And finally, there was Vahan Topchyan. His art was my favorite. Whimsical, dreamy. Made me want to write a children's book and ask him to illustrate it. Ooooh... maybe I will...


He was a strange bird though. Less of an upper lip than my own dad, a mustache that curled down into his mouth. He laughed almost constantly, and when asked by my friend Barbara if there were vacant apartments in the building, and how much they would cost, he replied, "If they are girls, they don't have to pay rent. They just have to be gooood girls." And... creeper laugh. But his art was phenomenal. I would absolutely buy one of his Noah's Ark pieces if I had any dollars at all.


So, now, since I'm all inspired, I'm going to get my Lithuanian site mate, who studied at an art institute, to give me some painting lessons.

They are so not impressed.

Tigo and I visited a village for these boys' very first day of school back in September. They're decked out like businessmen, but my suspicion is that I've found the real Harry Potter. Don't think you fooled me with that band-aid, little man.

The Theatre

If you're kind enough to read my blog, you will notice in the coming months that I'm trying something new. Nothing drastic. I'll only be trying to update more frequently, but with less longer posts. So, you can grab your morning coffee and take a sip of Armenia as well. My pictures will come up in smaller bits, hopefully in the fashion of my friend over at Circle Me Confused (and go there to check out some really killer photos of PCV life in Armenia). With my little point-and-shoot Powershot (which I love), I'll offer my bits here. Like the following:



I went to a play put on my a children's club in a tiny village up north. I didn't understand a word of it as the village speaks mostly Russian. However, the costumes were great, and although the pic doesn't show it, the guy on the far left running the sound system dressed in fatigues, painted his face and carried a knife for the occasion (and was the sole representative for the village's men). What a supportive akhber.


And here gathered the audience on tiny schoolroom chairs. After the performance which included recitations, drama, and a few musical numbers, the crowd was engaged with in a game of trivia. A right answer won you a paper flower prepared by the theatre troop. The women pictured here loved the event, paid at the door actually.

Scary Things

It’s cold here. My toes are freezing, but strangely it’s a feeling that I’m getting used to. It’s funny how much I don’t know about winter. For instance, I thought I had packed winter clothes. But no, I packed Texas winter clothes, clothes that are sufficient for getting me from one air conditioned home to the next. I am so thankful for all of those years of central heating for sure. But I was so unprepared for nights of being able to see my breath as I’m getting ready to get in the shower.
The other thing that Central Texas does not prepare you for is the drastic change in the Armenian diet come winter. Gone are apricots, cherries (gosh how I would love some cherries!!!), watermelons, green plums. In the States, our industrialized food systems don’t prepare you for seasonal vegetables (a term my mind previously relegated to special “green” efforts, an abstract idea that could ‘better the world’ like buying florescent light bulbs). The term “seasonal vegetables” actually means something to me now. The change of food goes along with the act of wearing sweaters 24 hours a day, or furiously knitting a new hat because I CANNOT BE WITHOUT ONE and I left mine on the bus. I am certainly now involved in a new sensation, this act so strange to me, this bearing down, gritting your teeth, bracing yourself for winter.

I made a verbal agreement on a house today. I’m trying to not get too excited about it, but my wayward imagination is taken with the place. It is a tiny cottage, spackled a plain grey on the outside with new, white trimmed windows. The building sits in the corner of a family’s garden and can be reached by a path that winds through a small forest of drying sunflower stalks and rows of newly planted potatoes. The whole thing looks new, and certainly the inside has been recently tiled and furnished sparsely with cabinets, beds, a table, an electric water heater. The landlord assured me that soon a gas line will be set up, that the water that only runs a few hours a day will be running 24 hours a day by January, and that a wardrobe will be brought in. Now I only need the thing to be approved by my PM, and I can move in. Cause for pause? Only one, that I’ll be moving in the dead of winter, and my first few days will be the coldest days of my life. So be it. I need a place of my own. And I think I’ve found it.

Things at work are going well. I had a fantastic Halloween party on Friday. I made cartoon versions of all my coworkers, had them draw numbers for the costumes that would be put on their cartoon selves. After they were dressed as an octopus, a dragon, a magician and others, the paper selves were handed out to their animate counterparts and hung around their necks by yarn. In the Armenian party tradition, each of my coworkers was also given a pre-written toast to correspond with their character, and so throughout the night my friends presented such speeches as “The Alien’s Toast” and “The Butterfly’s Toast”.
My desk mate, a wonderful sprig of a woman, who brought her husband’s nephew and neice to the party, had the bright idea to cut up some old posters and help all the kids decorate them into costumes. Kings and queens, butterflies and rabbits were all running underneath the strings of orange balloons and tissue ghosts that hung across the ceiling.
We had ordered a cake, a green one. My director actually did the ordering, but despite her saying that it needed to look like grass, it came with lots of beautiful swirls in many greens and creams and was finished with a large spackling of glitter. Much too pretty. However, it became a great deal uglier once we pressed the gummy worms into the icing and laid the gummy snake from corner to corner. Amongst the paper headstones and gnarled tree that were stabbed in a convincing arrangement, the whole thing gave my Armenian friends willies. Perfect. The cake also allowed me this cultural exchange: The security guard asked if this was the holiday on which American’s eat goose. I was able to reply, “No, this is the one where we eat cemeteries.”
We played three games. The dance competition and round of musical chairs were both very exciting. But the most well recieved was the Halloween Lottery. From money we had collected for the pary we had bought mostly food, but we also bought 18 prizes. We attached numbers to the prizes and put corresponding ones in the lottery. We also folded up written dares. So, if you wanted a prize you had to be willing to perform a dare should you draw one. Ah, risk. We then wrapped the pieces of paper in bits of plastic bag and stirred them into a pot of cold, soggy oatmeal. The pot was covered in a box with a hole in the top. So to play you had to be willing to stick your hand into a dark hole and dig around in a mucusy mess. The faces were priceless and the laughs went on for a long while.
The whole party was wrapped up in a video from a website my mom sent me which featured members of my NGO dancing to “Monster Mash” as a mad scientist, a vampire, a werewolf, and Frankenstein and his wife. I think they watched the video at least 8 times before we all went home.

A successful Halloween. Of course, now I’m getting asked the date of my next party. Perhaps I set a dangerous precedent. No... a terrifying, even scary precedent.