another new year in armenia

On the last night of 2009 I was sitting with my best Peace Corps friend, Zoë, talking late into the evening about New Year’s resolutions.  We almost missed the New Year, and with moments to spare we ran outside with pots and pans to ring in the new year with a metallic clamor.

This year I was invited by my friend and co-worker, Gayane, to spend the evening of the 31st with her family.  When I called to confirm the plans, I found out that they had already prepared a room for me to sleep in after we had toasted and danced and otherwise welcomed in the New Year into the wee hours.

After wishing my mom and sister a happy new year over Skype, I wandered in the dark, calling friends to spread around the holiday cheer.  Of course, without street lights Gayane’s house became hard to find (re: impossible).  Eventually Vartan, Gayane’s husband found me wandering the dark, cold streets.  I finally showed up in time to hang balloons around the newly renovated living/dining room.  Little Rueben assisted me, trying his hardest to blow up the balloons before handing their slobbery spouts over to me to tie.

When the party started, we ate every delicious thing available on an Armenian Nor Tari (New Year) menu:  salads and dolma and khorovats and tkhvatsk and more.  We toasted the New Year, shnor-havoring all around  We danced and stuffed ourselves into a food coma which took us to bed around 2:30am.

The real surprise came in the morning.  After a very strangely dry winter, I woke up, finally, to a white spread over our little Armenian town.  I reached up to wipe a spot in the fogged window of my guest room and gazed out onto that tireless cliché, that winter wonderland.

Being from seasonless Texas, I finally get why people dream of that White Christmas thing.  It’s one of the world’s miracles.  The entire landscape becomes absolutely new.  Streets and homes and trees and hills have a new shape.  The place is quiet, and in between racing out of doors to marvel at the new world, we huddle together near the wood stove or under throw blankets drinking in warmth from tea cups and from the souls of people we love.

After looking outside at this new little town of mine, I crawled back in to bed to write in my journal.  I heard Rueben stumble across the wood floor to look under the Nor Tari tree to see what Grandfather Winter brought he and his brother.  He raced back and yell-whispered, “Maaaa!”  I didn’t hear any movement after that and assumed the tot crawled back into bed wide eyed and anxious.

When they finally woke up, I pulled clothes over my long johns and joined them in the living room.  There the boys played with their gifts.  I immediately dove onto my stomach in front of the new hockey/foosball game and challenged Rueben to a game on the ice. Later we set up a firing range of stuffed animals; Mom, Dad, the boys and crazy uncle Brent took turns with Narek’s new bow & arrow.

Then to breakfast, a comfortable meal of blinchik and tea, before we went out to take on the snow.  We built a snow man which I destroyed with an old car battery. It would have made a cool head for that dzyni mart, but of course I was ignoring physics entirely which I tend to do.  No matter; the chunks of snowy body made a perfect pre-fab pile of snow balls to use in the shortly ensuing battle which ended with a crying three year old and a wet but eventaully triumphant me (take that Vartan jan!).

I left their house thinking I’d go home for a few alone hours before going out to visit more friends, but this holiday wasn’t letting go.  The storybook feel continued as I met an old grandmotherly woman in a magenta bathrobe who talked to me about her hopes for the new year and for whom I shoveled a path from from her home to the road.   Her well wishes followed me down the street while I listened to my Sufjan/Brandon Kinder/Arcade Fire/Destiny’s Child/Vince G Mega Christmas mix, giving my heart again to Sister Winter.

Finally, before coming here to write this blog post I ran into a blonde grandmother with her three grandsons.  She was tugging them on an old metal sled down the sidewalk.  I asked to take their picture which turned into me pulling those tiny boys through the white powder in circles like my own Dad used to do for me on Texas ice days.  The blonde grandmom invited me back to their house in true Armenian fashion and spread before me a feast of pases dolma, beet salad, more vodka, more tkhvatsk and a final cup of Armenian coffee before I walked back out into this white wonder of a town.

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my texan mother in armenia

My mom is going to hate me for putting up a picture of her without her hair done. But besides just being joyful, this picture is proof of love, that she would give up a multi-decade, never-missed hairdryer habit for me. You're beautiful, Mom.

Most of the past week I think I’ll save for my novel/memoir/perpetually-put-off-piece-of-literature.  That is both a artistic decision, and a way of avoiding the impossibility of putting into words this past week with me, Mom, and Armenia. But, despite the length, consider this a taste.

I saw her at first down the hallway, behind the glass partition, my mother looking much skinnier, a little lost, and washed over with anticipation.  She saw me jumping up above the crowd, waving one arm and holding a bouquet of flowers in the other, this little collection of green, white and lavender, a message to my mom that despite the craziness of her first trip abroad, there is beauty, simplicity, joy and calm ahead.

Of course, directly after the bouquet presentation and tearful hugs came a walk through a dark, cement parking garage guided by a less-than-polished, self-proclaimed taxi driver.  In between waves of joy and disbelief that she was actually here, our hands holding each others hands, my mother said, “This doesn’t feel safe.  Are you sure we’re going to a taxi?”

“Yes, Mom, don’t worry.  I’ve got you.”  I was not 100% sure that this man was legitimate, but I was sure that I was so full of love right then that I would have crushed this little man into crumpled nothingness should he even try to threaten the joy.  Plus my friend Chris was recording her arrival, walking behind us with a HD camcorder.  If the taxi driver took us out, my mother and I would be recorded as innocents, full of life and love, and the taxi driver would be immortalized as a love-killing, evil monster.

We did however end up at the prearranged hostel room, both of us too excited not to walk around Yerevan, taking in the joy which the city wind whisked around us.  We ate falafel at Habibi then walked to the Cafe Rich and drank cafe glazses.  Our conversations circled around a few subjects but always came back to this:

Me: “Mom, I just can’t believe you’re right here.  Right here.  Flesh. Bones. Smile even.  My mom!”

Mom:  “I know.  I know!”

There were, of course, updates on everyone from my sister’s boyfriend to a high school friend’s mom.  I can still see her sitting right there in the outdoor cafe, across the table from me, holding a swirl of coffee and ice cream, framed on one side by a tv playing Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” and on the other side by the artificial Swan Pond reflecting the street lights with Armenian lovers and families and friends circling it.  I imagined their conversations, unique and mundane, all of us sharing the same air while my mom and I sat and enjoyed a dream of mine coming true.

I know this may feel dramatic.  It’s a mom; it’s a visit.  I can try to explain.  Growing up, I thought everyone had the same life I had, going to little brick elementary schools, escaping to the toy aisle in Wal-Mart while my parents shopped, carrying cartoon-inspired lunchboxes, watching flat highways roll by through minivan windows on the way to our grandparents’ house.  High school mission trips to Mexico broke the bubble, and all the sudden the world opened.

The young traveler’s epiphany: for every unique fingerprint there comes an entire unique life with as many variations to it as there are drops of water in the sea.

I told my mother I’d like to spend my first college summer abroad.  She told me, “If you can find the money, go ahead.”  She would later confide that she didn’t think I’d be able to, and was surprised and even a bit worried when I told her I’d spend my summer working for a church in Auckland, New Zealand.

I spent a collective year of my four in college living and traveling through other countries, full of wonder and joy at each new life I got to know and love.  I changed; I saw the world.

It didn’t stop after college, with 5 months in Kolkata, 3 in Panama, and a year working in refugee resettlement in West Texas.  And now I have lived 16 months in Armenia.  What has changed, or what has intensified I should say, is my desire to share these experiences with family.  Let’s bypass for now my hope to find someone who wants to build a family around this kind of world-chasing life.  Since those first trips to Mexico I have wanted to visit these places with my mom, my dad, my sisters, and with my brother’s family.

It has torn at my soul, this feeling of being in love with people all over the world, being pulled to La Laguna, Mexico, missing my Indian family, and being so far away from my Texas loves.  After a short collection of months, I’ll be a mess of collected memories, current tears, and full full full of joy and love for my Armenian home and the friends I cherish here.

And so, here for just this brief, bright week, my mother did what I’ve dreamed someone in my family would one day want to do and make it happen.  My mother visited a distant country I love, experienced every place I love, met souls I’ve fallen in love with and fell in love with them herself.

We traveled by rickety marshutka to my old host family, that summer home of mine.  Within the first five minutes, sitting in my family’s general store, neighbors gifted us with a plastic bag full of live crawfish.  Later my mom cried giving a toast at the feast they set out for us, already full to the brim with the love they showed us.  I watched her during our morning hike, wondering at the dry yellows and silvers and light blues rolling through the valley.  I named the surrounding villages, speaking for her the unfamiliar sounds of a language she’d never heard.

She spent five days in my valley town.  We feasted on khorovats, danced at her birthday party, hiked to my favorite spot in town.  Every morning she’d shower and then head over to my land mom’s porch for a cup of Armenian coffee.  She couldn’t use her low-voltage hair dryer here which led to the blessing of my land mom doing her hair.   She fell in love with my friends at work, visiting their homes for so many cups of coffee and tastes of Armenian life.  At night she came home to more coffee with the landfamily and finally, long talks with me in my little cottage, with cups of tea and desperate attempts to stay awake to treasure the fact that here we sat in Armenia together.

She even tried to learn some of the language, finally mastering shnorakalutsyun but leaving without mastering the french ‘r’ in deghts.  I translated for her, feeling the blossom of new friendship open through me as she sat and talked with the clooker, with my coworkers, with my tiny little landsisters.

She brought a smorgasbord of gifts for me: Rosita’s refried beans, 80 ounces of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, 9 pounds of brown suger, and my loving Aunt’s hand-tossed Puppy Chow.  She filled my spice cabinet to overflowing and brought more Hanes socks and underwear to try to outlast the wear-and-tear of handwashing.  And she brought so many gifts for my Armenian friends that she was wrapping the last handmade bit of jewelery around my friend Gayane’s wrist while we walked to our marshutka on the way out of town.  A volunteer from our office had accompanied us and without a pre-planned gift, my mom dug into her make-up bag and pulled out eye-shadow, telling her that with such beautiful eyes she should could easily pull of some wild blue and shocking pink.  Gayane, one of the Armenians who fell in love back, waved to my mom and me through the marshutka window as we rolled out of the parking lot and back to Yerevan.

The last two days were a mix of stress and the coming departure.  My mom recalled a Kolkata story of mine, quoting my little Indian brother, who upon seeing the white curb lines that signaled the coming airport entrance, sat back in the bus seat next to me, sighed and said, “Oh, no.”

“What is it, Martin?” I asked, confused as to the change in mood right after a series of goofy-face pictures we’d taken.

He looked out the window again. “This is where the missing starts.”

We stressed each other out shopping in the Vernassage, her wanting to bring back some worthy gifts to our family in Texas, and me at the end of my ability to calmly translate Armenian to English and dollars to dram.  But the moments I’ll remember most about that last day in Yerevan are my mom insisting that we sit with Zeena, our homestay host, while she told us about growing up in Soviet Armenia, about running from Turkey in 1915, about her life hosting Americans with her sister in their home, about her sister’s recent passing, about her brilliant father, about her own career working with the early, room-filling super computers.

And there my mother sat, soaking up all the good, radiating compassion, looking at that old, amazing soul with love and wonder.

At the airport we put off goodbye with two cups of coffee and an apple crumble.  We sat on uncomfortable chairs, holding hands and talking about simple things like my sister’s percussion lessons and her making Armenian coffee for my dad.  We hugged each other some twenty times before she finally walked through through to security.  I watched her through the crack in the glass partition, and when she turned around to catch a glimpse of me, I jumped up above the glass and waved.

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shnor havor

An Armenian student waits to go inside on her first day of school.

Today is the first day of September.  Remembering this, I woke up early, ate a bowl of cornflakes and went with camera in hand to congratulate my Armenian landsister on her first day of school.  I had missed her and goofily said, “Shnor havor,” to my landdad as a consolation for missing his daughter’s departure.

It should be noted that Armenians congratulate each other for everything. At work I was shnor-havored by my friend Liana because today is Knowledge Day (don’t I feel smarter now!) and shnor-havored by my friend Armen because today is recognized as the first day of autumn (I made it to another season!).  They’ll congratulate you for your birthday and for your family member’s birthdays or their weddings or their new babies or their babies new babies.  They’ll buy their friend a small gift if he gets a new car.  They congratulate you on new clothes or a good shave.  They just through that appreciation around, and it feels good to get a dose every once in a while.

Here’s another feeling all together.  Today is the first of the last things. I start counting them now.
Today is the last First Bell for me in Armenia. The last Halloween in Armenia is coming up.  The last All Volunteer Conference will happen after that.  There’s no sadness to it just yet because I do have quite a bit more time here.  Mostly, I’m feeling satisfaction.  Shnor havor, me.

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my advice for the newest peace corps volunteers

Here’s a strange transition:  One minute you’re sitting in America, surrounded by people you cherish, burritos you cherish, Chilli’s franchises, Sonic cherry-limeades, parks, Reese’s peanut butter cups and libraries, the next minute you wake up a year later in a land where summer means removing one of three sweaters, surrounded by signs in foreign script, a group of friends who don’t speak your language, pickled vegetables, and potatoes at every turn.  And also indigestion (I should eat more than cookies for dinner tonight).

I’ll hopefully write a post about A Year in Armenia next week.  But this week we’re gearing up to receive a new group of volunteers.  Peace Corps, like those washing machines I seem to remember from The Old Life, works in cycles.  Very soon the volunteers in the cycle before mine will leave.  My group will be staying for another year.  And this new group will be arriving before they can say Bob’s Your Uncle in Armenian. This is how excited I am:

[Deleted: long explanation and defense of Facebook stalking new volunteers on account that I couldn't make it not sound creepy.  Just consider that our current group of The Only 100 Or So Americans Around is about to increase by 50%.  That kind of news = a lot of profile page reading.]

A friend of mine, a volunteer just a few hours away, said that when her aunt served in the Peace Corps, she took a tiny skiff to another island to make the only satellite phone call to her parents she was able to make for her two years.  Now, I Skype with friends and family at home.  I read news and culture blogs, and I write this one.  And thanks to social media, we have already virtually met most of the volunteers on their way here.  Heck, according to Facebook, we’re already all FRIENDS!!  Urakh!!!!

So, in light of the upcoming life change of a small but clearly significant group of people, I have decided to give some bits of (fairly disregardable) advice based on the humble experience I’ve had completing a year of my Peace Corps commitment:

1. Do not forget lots of wool socks and some good long underwear. Also, a sleeping bag.

2. You don’t have a lot of time left. Eat everything.

3. Go to Sonic. This does two things: allows the accomplishment of something ultra-American and gets you in the driver’s seat in the car, something that won’t happen for another 27 months (and bonus if the car hop is on roller skates!).

4. Hug someone. Hug a lot of someones if possible. You’re going to meet a lot of great people here, Armenian or otherwise, but it will be a while until your new friends know how to give YOU a good hug.  Hug someone who knows how as soon as possible.

5. Scrap all your expectations. There’s no brochure or slogan or commercial to prepare you for what your life will be like.  It’s a wild ride for sure, and you’ll only really know what it will be like after it already happened.  Enjoy the heck out of it.

5. Get really excited.  You’re about to come to a fantastic place.  There will be plenty of challenges.  But if you’re game, you’ll get the chance to do arm-only dances til you can’t hold your hands up.  You can sit around toasting everyone you’ve ever met, throwing back horovats and and the occasional local spirit.  You’ll learn what is, by definition, an exotic language and take to heart words and with them concepts that you won’t be able to translate into English.  You’ll make friends that will fit into places in your heart you didn’t know had been vacant.  You’ll learn what ծավդ տանեմ means and give the sentence-as-name to all your best friends.  In general, money’s on you having a good time.

6. Get here already. Please.

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mold tastes like dirt and ghosts eat cake

Spring Chicken is quite upset with me.  It has been raining for a few days.  Rain makes mud.  Mud gets stuck in paws and then leaves stains on clothes and tracks on the office’s tile floor.  I am not allowed to keep her inside the cottage and bringing her mud ridden to work would be the end of her office life altogether.  So I leave her behind bars, and she screams at me and shivers in her little cage.

Guilt is not a good way to start (multiple) days.  It is also little use to follow them with days of Reneging On Your Plans and Wondering What You Should Do With Your Days/Life and General Work Dissatisfaction and Further Whining About All of the Above Plus My Current Ant Problem.

Since my water only runs from 10am-1pm, I stay home two mornings a week to wash dishes and laundry and myself.  This morning after such cleaning, I made myself brunch, two egg and chicken wiener tacos and a glass of water.  The first bite I noticed a new flavor, a distinct taste of dirt.  This was my last piece of lavash so I attributed the taste to staleness.  However, during a later chew I noticed the blue-green dots on the second taco which could not be attributed to staleness.  These were signs of a new life, one I would rather not ingest.  I searched the taco in hand for such colors, and finding none I continued eating while ripping away the offending half of taco 2.  Getting towards the end of A Serious Man, a movie about the crescendoing crumble of man’s life and emotional health, I picked up taco 2 and began to eat.  I tasted the dirt again, and chose to believe in staleness instead of growth.  It wasn’t until taco 2 punched my soft pallet with a foul wave of dirt-taste that I looked down at the lavash which was now chicken-pocked on the inside with blue-green dots and had a final half-blot of mold on a piece hanging down into the taco’s inside.  I ejected the other half-blot from my mouth along with have chewed bits of egg and chicken wiener.  I heard Spring Chicken outside in her cage whining to be let go, and I joined her with a few small whimpers of my own.

That said, take heart, friends.  There are patches of sunlight coming in through the clouds.  Consider these rose-colored bits o’ life:

1.  I paused in the middle of writing this blog because my coworker, Davit, wanted to quiz me in Armenian words for fruits and vegetables.  The only one I didn’t recognize was a mysterious yellow melon I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten.  Still better than word recognition was the exchange.  It feels good to have friends.  In a few minutes I’m going to go have tea with them.

2.  I am consistently making pretty dang incredible choclate chip cookies.  If you visit my cottage sometime, I will make them for you.  (However, it seems that my town is without milk.  I found one Russian milk product but the aftertaste is so much of old cheese I can’t stomach it.)

3.  I’m reading my first book on Buddhist practice, one by Director of Gampo Abbey, Pema Chödrön.  Based on this reading, I don’t think I could ever really become buddhist; I am much too attached to narrative thanks to my Judeo-Christian roots.  But besides basic meditation practice and an overall admonition to love all parts of yourself and lighten up, I found some real gems including my new favorite religious ritual, Feeding the Ghosts.  Chödrön talks about Ghosts as those negative aspects of you that are often unreasonable, the kind of feeling that is there when you wake up and eats away at you all day.
The idea of Feeding the Ghosts is that you invite those Ghosts, those difficult and hard-to-reason feelings close to you.   Ritually, you do this by offering them cake.  Literally, you put out a tiny cake each morning or offer it during a small ceremony.  You put out a cake for your Ghosts.  From the book: “There is even an incantation that says, ‘Not only do I not want you to go away, you can come back any time you like  And here, have some cake.’”
I am so in love with this idea for it’s hilarity and it’s message I think I’m going to start putting out cakes as soon as possible.  But I have to learn how to make cake.  I wonder if Ghosts like chocolate chip cookies.

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2009makers

Tell me you forgot that I said I’d post a bunch of lists about the decade and the year and resolutions, etc.  I still may post some of them, but a bunch of lists are not really on the way.  However, what is on the way, in just a few sentences actually, is a list of what made up my 2009.  I’d say it was a significant year, on that marked a lot of change, one that solidified some same-olds, and one that will likely be a turning point for me.  So without further ado, my 2009makers:

1. Moving

my roost in kolkata

2009 began with me gearing up for the year after a couple months gearing down on the island in Panama in late 2008.  I had just moved home and was enjoying small town Texas in every way, making some cash at  Mom’s beading table, celebrating an exciting inauguration with the pint-sized sister.  But soon it was off to Kolkata where I lived for a couple of months.  There was teaching of ultimate frisbee to my brothers in the slum, copious amounts of carrom board playing and mango chop eating, and there was the most heart-wrenching cry of my entire life, right there in front of my indian Dada and Didi.  Then it was back home for an intense, take-it-all-in two months, and finally a big heaping move to Armenia.  Through the year I’ve moved from one country to another 4 times, been in six different countries (the U.S., India, England, Austria, Armenia and Georgia), and lived with four different families (including two host family stays in Armenia).
In 2010 I think I’ll be settling-in, planning on staying in the country for the whole year.  It will be the longest I’ve gone without leaving by plane to another country since I graduated high school.  And it’s not even my country.   But at least I’ll be settled for a bit.

2. New Holidays

a renegade band of colored kids on a holi parade

This year I have new favorite holidays.  The one that will stick out as not only a favorite holiday (just under Christmas with the fam, of course) but also my favorite travelling experience, is Holi.  Of course, I’ve only experienced a Kolkata version, but that version was so moving, that I will forever hope to recreate it and likely never will.
Just under that, I’d have to say, is Armenian Nor Tari.  The hospitality is wonderfully overwhelming; days and days of being an honored guest feels down-right humbling and sustaining at the same time.

This was also the first year I’ve experienced holidays dedicated to a town (re: Yerevan Day, Stepanavan Day, Vanadzor Day, all of which I celebrated).  There was also some holiday back in September, I think, through which we celebrated the Armenian church finding Jesus’s cross.  I took home some basil, but to be honest, I’m really not sure what all that was about.

flat me on a pumpkin

This was also the year in which, because I was missing my traditional versions, my family holidays were recreated in new ways.  A paper me was present during Halloween festivities while I hosting my own version with my new Armenian friends. (Flat Me also made it to Thanksgiving and Christmas, too!) Thanksgiving was a 100 person celebration at the All Volunteer conference, and the 2009 American Christmas was both an undesirable in-country event, and one that I will hold dear to my heart thanks to Skype.

3. Family Love

half the Kolkatan family sitting with new dishes in their partially constructed new home

First, I’ll say that this year I got lovin’ not only from my own family, but also from families in the UK (who housed me and fed me when I was stranded in England), India (in so many ways I can’t even count), and Armenia (through dance parties, games of UNO,  laughter and more laughter).

Still, it was a unique and amazing year to be me amongst my wonderful family.  Certainly this isn’t the first year in which I’ve received love from my family.  I’m one of the lucky one’s who’s gotten incredible love since the plus sign appeared (or however that worked in the ’80′s).  But this year was a year so full of family love that it deserves a list within a list.  So, Ways My Family Has Made Me Feel Unbelievable Lucky To Be Alive:

-In 2008, instead of having a usual gift-exchange-type Christmas, my family pooled money and sent it with me to Kolkata in January ’09.  With it, we were able to help Kolkata City Mission build a home for one family in an urban slum.   And I was blessed enough to be both in the living room when my family gave me that gift, and in the new living room with that Indian family.  There’s one 2009 moment I will never forget.
-There was also the parents help with getting ready for Armenia, the shoes, the sleeping bag, the million little things that would make my stay in Armenia so so much better.
-The Farewell Fishfry thrown by my family and my Dad’s brother and sister-in-law, and my grandmother.  The family gathered some of my favorite hometowne-ers for the fiesta.  Love.
-The first softball game in which the little sister pitched.  She didn’t walk a batter ’til the last inning.  And the big sister and I sat and cheered more than I’ve ever cheered for anything, and I forgot anyone else existed outside the three of us and the one striking-out.
-The daily emails from my brother that have kept my soul alive.
-The skype convos late at night (early in my morning) with my Texas fam.
-Packages from home stuffed with the most awesome gifts, like refried beans, socks, cribbage board, flash drives, sesame street coloring book, chips and dip, candy canes and puppy chow.
-Facebook albums of Flat Me enjoying holidays at home.
-Texts, phone calls, emails, letters, and a halloween card that had many Armenian’s giggling and had me explaining the word ‘tentacle’.
-And more.

4. Reading Reneissance

This has been a little while in the making, but I’d say this year has seen me reading more than I have in a long while.  It’s no 133 books or anything, but I’ve read more books this year than I have in any year since probably the sixth grade (I was a REAL reader from ages 5-12.  Then I just… wasn’t.)  This year I’ve found a new favorite (Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury) and found in books a revived inkling to write more and more and more (Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).
I’ve also been completely inspired by blog writers and have, in 2009, become a regular reader of a few.  Perhaps its because I’m way the heck away from my culture. But blogs have been the center of my reading reneissance this year and have made me hopeful about the future of the written word.  You’ll find my favorite reads on the right, and here are my best 2009 discoveries:
- Monkey See, NPR’s pop-culture blog.  She’s funny in my favorite, witty, we-should-really-get-over-ourselves-slash-appreciate-each-other kind of way.  And she’s ok with loving Survivor.  Check.
-/Film, read this and you will forever be at the cusp of cinema trivia.
-Circle Me Confused, in the world of Peace Corps Blogs, I really like this one.  Simple, unpretentious, charming.  More blogs should have that kind of voice.
-Hootenannie, as far as blogs-as-journals go, this one is welcoming.  Processing some gritty stuff online can be tricky, but right now she’s doing it with charm, wit, and a determination to keep sane.  And among bloggers who are my actual friends in non-virtual life, I think she’s kind a trend.  Like when a group of friends all love something unique, like fingerless gloves or Parcheesi.  We all love reading Annie’s blog.  And we all want to/are excited about meeting her.   Maybe one day I will?  Until then, reading on.

Alright, that’s enough words on 2009.  Now, onward and upward into 2010…

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the STRANGEST food I’ve ever eaten and other Nor Tari wonders

Yes, we’re already good and settled four days into 2010.  Yes, my American family and friends are already back to work.  BUT NOT HERE!   No no, Nor Tari celebrations are still to be had.  There are hours still to fill with visiting friends, with eating Nor Tari salads, meat pastries, and copious amounts of chocolates and dolmas (not in that order).  It will be 10 days or so until the Hayastan world is back into it’s regular swing, and I am quite enjoying the quiet, hangist way we’re ringing in 2010 here in my currently wet and cold little town.

My friend, Z, came down for a visit, and December 31st found us outside my door banging pots together like I once did with my 3rd grade best friend.  We wrote resolutions and talked about what it will be like in the next year in Armenia as Peace Corps Volunteers.  THAT conversation, with all it’s daunting realizations and exciting possiblities, took hours, so in the morning we let the sun get up first.  After it had already shown brightly for a few hours, we got up to one of the best January Firsts of my life (despite the way it ended).  I’m a sucker for bright blue sky, and all of the sudden we bustled into productivity (I AM SO AMERICAN!).  We dug around in the shed attached to my house and found a paint-chippy old  table.  It was a wild puzzle getting it out of the shed past old doors, ladders, stacks of wood and old rusty barrels, but after rubbing it down and covering it in used flip-chart paper, it now holds my horde of books (yes, Mom, I’ll NEVER grow out of this hording habit of mine).  We carried my mattresses out into the sun to air out, and openned all my windows.  Z then commenced making homemade applesauce (the current and wonderful trend among Armenian PCV’s) while I handwashed a few weeks worth of laundry.
After hanging it all out to dry over the courtyard deck (which overlooks a crowded cemetery), Z and I took a sunny walk to my coworker, Alvart’s house.  Alvart is one of the jolliest Armenians I’ve met.  She jokes with me, scolds me when I do shameful things (like trying to wash dishes or telling people I don’t have money to buy extra things), and dances like someone who’s seen enough to know she shouldn’t hold joy back.

Alvart’s house was the best place to go for our first Nor Tari experience.  Walking into her house, it was as if we were honored guests with an extravagant spread set out just for us.  Of course, that’s the whole idea behind the tradition, behind the days spent in preparation to give a feast to any and every passerby.  We ate two kinds of dolma, blinchi, three types of salad, three peaces of cake each, fruit, nuts, chocolates and toasted with champagne.  We lauded our friends and family, hoped for our health and happiness in the new year, and smiled and smiled and smiled.

We visited other houses, made our way back to my house and settled into what would be a raucous evening for our bellies.  Indeed we were both sick enough that the next day we split most of our waking ours between the armchair and the toilet, watching movies and 30 rock and reading a 8 month old Conde Naste Traveler, respectively.
We did have enough gumption to make my Dad’s pancakes (although I mixed up the measuring cups THAT MY PARENTS SENT ALL THE WAY FROM THE US and ended up making a ridiculous amount of batter).  AND we washed the cat.  That actually made my day.  I mean, look at this rat:

And finally, on the third day of the year and of the Nor Tari celebration, I ate THE STRANGEST FOOD I’VE EVER EATEN.  Now I’ve been to 19 different countries by now.  I’ve eaten a lot of weird things, forced down some unwanted ‘delicacies’ in the name of comeraderie.  But this one,  I do believe, takes the cake… or should I say, takes the pig-head jell-o:That’s right.  A jell-o like mold of contents-of-pig-head. Of course, let’s get the praise/disclaimer on the table, you’ve got to hand it to a culture that has figured out a way to use/enjoy every little bit of something.  The dish takes quite a lot of preparation and is enjoyed by many Armenians (although… this mold remained whole throughout the 8 person meal). However, I interviewed the family who offered me the delicacy, and something that is made from brains, jaw muscle, cartalidge and various connective tissues just doesn’t suit me I think.  Believe it or not, the dish was accompanied by cheese wrapped in slices of pig ear and a little snack made from coiled slivers of pig skin wet with garlic and salt.

I didn’t try its dinner partners, but I did have a go at the pig head jell-o.  It was everything I thought it might be, gelatinous with a taste of pepper and ligament (which I’ve also eaten a lot at Nor Tari tables… I REALLY don’t like meat on the bone).

However, it did inspire me to grab up my shot glass of vodka and offer a toast to my wonderful Armenian friends:

“To Armenians, who know how to enjoy everything.  May I learn from you, and may we keep finding ways to enjoy the world in the New Year.”

The same to you, too.

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ho ho horovats

You thought Christmas was like, SO last week.  You are wrong, of course.

Last night the World Vision crew hopped into our Ladas and drove up the hill to the old Soviet resort,  Pasionat (transliteration) for our staff Christmas Party, a preemptive event for the real Christian Christmas (re: previous post).

The event started with the women setting tables and the men making horovats (Armenian barbeque).  Horovatsing involves touching a LOT of meat, breathing in a LOT of smoke, and taking too many shots of vodka.
After the horovats is ready, then begins the meal which last night included a corn/carrot/meat/pea/sour cream salad, lake fish, salty cheese, lavash and un-regional fruit (we get KIWI in winter.  Kiwi, people).  The meal was, as usual, punctuated with lots of toasts, toasts for family, for the New Year, for parents, for kids, for friends, for World Vision.  I was even toasted at length by Father Vram after which trickled a few very-good-for-my-ego bits from around the table.  And I added my own toasts for my new Armenian friends, for World Vision, and for the English speakers at the office who make it possible for me to understand what’s going on around me.

After being toasted, I was then forced to dance ALONE in front of everyone, Armenian style.  I’m finding that after seven months here, I have exhausted all the easy moves and need to spend a little personal time perfecting the knee-up swing and the quick-jump-hop (I really don’t know what they’re called, but everyone can do them but me).   The wonderful thing about Armenian dances, however, is that there is very little pressure to dance well, and just about any move goes (there are usually plenty of chicken knees, swimming hands, finger v’s floating across the eyes).  It’s pretty darn merry.

And after everyone is somewhere between full-and-tipsy and full-and-toppling-over, we gather up the left overs and go home.

And that is how Sanity got this chicken leg and how I was able to remember that that little kitten is very much an animal.

In other news, the year is just about up.  I hope you got all your jollies for 2009, enjoyed your last Christmas of 2009, wrote 2009 as many times as you could because 2009 won’t be 2009 much longer. My last moments of 2009 will be 2009erifick I do believe.

A couple of PCV friends are making a jaunt up to my place, and one will be staying to help me ring in the New Year.  I’ll be writing some resolutions, and because here in Armenia we celebrate New Years with 10 days of holiday for everyone, I’ll be spending those days, among other things, making some lists.  I may just join the blog fops around the globe with my ‘Best Of’ lists.  Am I behind the curve?  Well, possibly.  But unlike Time or Slate or Rolling Stone, I’ve got my OWN personal decade to cover.  So, lets begin with a list of lists I might list.  And if you think I need to list something else, list it in the comments.  Mmmmmmm…. lists….

So, A List of Things to be Possibly Listed:

1. Favorite Gustatory Moments
2. Resolutions, or Things That I’ll Feel Mostly Guilty for Having Not Accomplished in 2010
3. Book of the Year (a very short one here)
4. The Decade in Significant Moments (The writer in me is excited for this one.)
5. My Noughties Junkdrawer
6. Things I Wish I Hadn’t Done in the Noughties
7. Why I Hate the Word Noughties

I know this has the potential to get really tedious.  But it could be cool.  And if it isn’t, we’ll just pretend that this blog post never existed.

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christmas from 6,945 miles away

I was sitting in my room, knitting a hand warmer (out of necessity!) and watching the wedding episode of the Office, when my mother called.  She wanted to tell me about my sister, about how my mother and she decorated the Christmas tree this year, just the two of them, how my sister took the greatest care to arrange each and every ornament on the prickly limbs (even the ratty elementary school projects my mom was trying to hide by the chair).  My sister got a little miffed at my mom’s lackadaisical attitude towards the Christmas-afying, and my mother wasn’t understanding the ‘tude until she realized that my sister’s attention to this family ritual was an expression of her love for her siblings.   My little sister knows that every year before, my other sister, brother and I good-naturedly bicker about who affixes the porcelain dove over a tree light.  She knows that for years we fought over the height-wise placement of my A&M ornament and their UT ornaments.  She knows that the clothe Santa and Mrs. Clause must be placed together, and that every tattered ornament represents a memory which must be recognized and appreciated by the ornament’s display.  So this year she took care to place them all exactly as we would have placed them.

My mom told me this, and I bawled. I’m very happy to be living in Armenia, but I am so so sad to be missing one of the most precious moment-makers of my life which I share with my little sister every year: decorating the Christmas tree.  We’ve been doing it with determination despite the natural spreading of other family member’s priorities, and for the last few years, only she, my mother and I have enjoyed this Christmas devotion together. My mother sits on the couch, pulling reindeer and gilded paper angels out of tissue paper, and handing them to us to hang.  And for at least the last six or seven years, it has been me who has lifted her onto my shoulders to put on the star.

I know that it’s right for me to be here, but the hardest thing about it is missing moments like that.  Heart-wrenchingly hard.

So, for now, we have a new tradition. My mom and sister’s idea.  (Praise God for Skype!!!)  We meet via the interweb, and Macey shows me how she’s done.  This year she lifted the computer up, took me around the tree to visit the Paper Plate Angel and The Box With a Prayer Inside, a prayer that I haven’t read since I wrapped it up that Christmas of 1993.  She giggled while raising the computer up so I could see the prominent placement of the UT ornament, and laughed louder when she lowered me down to see my bottom-dwelling A&M ornament, turned backwards on the lowest branch.  She carried the computer rapidly around the tree, trying to help me find the Christmas Pickle (which really meant showing me a 3×4 swirly light show)

Then, she took me to the tin holding the Nightmare Before Christmas ornaments.  This is the only set that includes one for each family member (although sister-in-law’s and Mom’s are still fluid), and mine, a very skeletal Barrel (she’s holding it in the picture at the top of the post), was waiting for me to place on the tree via skype via my sister’s little hands.  I had heard that there was a new volleyball picture of hers on the tree this year, so I instructed her to place my ornament next to it.

What followed was a long conversation with my sister and then mother about the upcoming holiday season, the absolutely hilarious antics of my mother as her coworker’s Secret Santa, the pondering on the whereabouts of the packages my parents sent to me weeks ago, and of course, what is currently available to eat (and for me to dream about) from their kitchen.

The new, or shall we say ‘interim’, Skyping tradition was concluded with the rendition of the Christmas song of my choice.  I selected “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”, and they sung it with a gusto that about bowled me over from thousands of miles away.

Can you possibly argue that someone does Christmas spirit better?  I mean, just look at this:

I daresay, you cannot.

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