ice

I am right now that (hopefully) forgivable blogger cliche, the writer who pledges to write and disappears from the web. I haven’t written in two months. You haven’t met my Minnesota friends. You haven’t experienced the coming winter. You didn’t come with me to get lost in that small town corn maze or stare wide-eyed with my sister and I at the crazy screamers throwing rice into the air at the midnight showing of Rocky Horror. You missed a lot. I’m sorry.

I take walks often around the lake by my building. I don’t remember ever seeing a lake frozen over. Today I threw a rock out onto the ice to see if it would crack. It merely bounced a bit and then skidded out onto the hard surface. There are a number of these rocks. And in the photo below you can see footsteps where someone tested the ice with their own weight during last weeks snow. I hear I’ll see ice skaters soon.

Winter is magic sometimes.

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i’m still here in all of the winter goodness

I was supposed to be laid up with knee holes right now, but I’m still here because PC HQ pushed back my surgery.  This makes me lucky in some ways.  For instance, the winter’s biggest snow fell on the day I was scheduled to travel to the capital.  Not only did I not have to brave the feet-deep-buried roads, but I got to see my town covered in a thick layer of snow.  There is nothing like the feeling of waking up on a sunny morning to pillows of glittering snow trying to peek into your windows.  I’ve said it before.  It’s magical.

For the record, the best shoveling chore in the world title goes to shoveling snow.  The soft powder is so light, flies away, and gives you a satisfying crunch when you did in.  What could be better?  Perhaps shoveling marshmallows… maybe.

Here’s a look at the magic of winter.  The first four are simply around my yard, and the rest are from a visit to the nearby 11th century fortress and settlement during my friends’ visit right after the New Year.  Winter is pretty incredible.

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knee, nuptials, and no snow

Knee news: Despite percolating for a while and sleeping in a tiny white room at the Peace Corps office for a few nights, the knee is a mystery.  Nothing torn or damaged according to the MRI.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for having intact cartilage and whole ligaments.  You only get two legs in this life, and I’m not eager to have anyone trimming away at my knee parts.  Final outcome: take some ibuprofen so the swelling will go down.  Wait to see if my knee spazzes out again.  Go see an ortho specialist in the States.  Here’s to avoiding another episode of being laid up for days.  Cheers.

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I’m fairly certain that THIS is one of my favorite things on the internet.  I am in no way close to marriage, but I went to school with the two at Two Pair, spent many a night eating Sharky’s and watching America’s Next Top Model in their living room, and now I frequent their blog.  It’s not that I’m terribly into romance.  And it’s not so much that I admire their artistic skill, although it’s wonderful.  The truth is that these wedding/engagement/family photos are done in a way that make me want to be the people in the pictures.  I just hope that when I DO get married they aren’t so famous that I can’t afford them.

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I saw this in Yerevan a little while ago.  The taxi driver didn’t even know I was watching.

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If you want to see my beard, it’s over here.  And you should save the date, too.

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Yesterday I hung out my clothes to dry.  They didn’t freeze!  Not a single icicle. And the last few days have been a mostly sunny 24 degrees!  I keep waiting for last year’s dreary, low-grey winter days. But the sun is shining, and the tank is clean.  I’m looking at less than six months left in this country, and that time is looking pretty good.

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cold

This will not be the happiest of updates.  Last night, still sick, I actually stabbed my journal while writing because I couldn’t get all my angst to quietly come out on the page.  Then I scribbled a big “F—!” on the bottom of the page and called it a night.

I’m sick.  I’m worried.  I’m cold.  And I’m emotional.  Oy.  But let’s just take stock of what’s going on today:

I can be positive, see: The snow is dancing in flurries.  Huge white snow bits are swirling outside the glass and laying themselves down on the ground, quiet and unassuming.  Thanks, flakes.

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Plus, I took a hot bath today.  With candles.  While starting John Knowles’s A Separate Peace which is appropriately angsty.

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I just had the most disturbing snack.  My friends called me into the break room to break with them.  I, being a bit hungry, was so thankful.  But there they were, bowls of the unwanted.  There was a bowl filled with slices of bologna.  There was a bowl spilling over with strips of cold, seasoned fat, with one of yesterday’s boiled hot dogs on top.  There was a plate with a collection of fried fat pieces.  And finally, there was a cold bowl filled with chunks of pig skin.  The proper mode of intake was with bread and sour cream.  I took the one hot dog, and when your best choice at the table is a hot dog boiled yesterday, you have reached a new snacking paradigm, to say the least.

To be fair (and I know my BRILLIANT AND LOVING, English-speaking coworkers are reading this), this is winter where produce is expensive and hard to come by.  And every enlightened culture learns to laud those who can use every part of the buffalo, or whatever.  And furthermore, I come from a land where we merely diguise our strips of fat and hooves of cow by shaping them into chips and snack cakes.

So basically what I’m saying is, please forgive my mini-shock after realizing I’d been invited to snack on a bowl of skin.

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I seriously need my tonsils to cooperate with me.  If they insist on making it hard to swallow, perhaps we can agree that the tension headaches caused by strained swallowing should be abated.  Yes, tonsils?

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After many sleepless or sleep-interrupted nights where upon I gave up completely and started knitting and listening to podcasts, I can confidently say the following concerning NPR’s mostly quite nice Pop Culture Happy Hour:

“Glen Weldon, shhhhhhhh.”

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And finally, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing.  You know what’s bad about that?  Actually I’m quite confident you KNOW what’s bad about that: Thinking about writing ≠ Actually writing.  However, I did consider this:

Snow makes a great metaphor.  Like right now this current winter snow feels like a covering over all these things I’m feeling underneath the surface.  I’m feeling icy and anxious and cold.  And here comes the snow, this beautiful, quiet white covering which I mostly wish would just melt, turn into spring and give me a blooming chance at a reborn world.

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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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yeah, i got things

The blog world is all on fire with roasting chestnuts and yuletide wreathing and holiday crayoning, etc.  Here in Armenia, the Peace Corps volunteers are all huddled in their houses around PC issued heaters, wearing night caps (or drinking them) and watching the Christmas movies they may or may not have remembered to bring with them from home.  Next week I’ll be heading south to be with friends.  I plan on doing a lot of talking about what I miss from home, things like Elf Dice, sugar cookies, shuffling under the Christmas tree on my back with my tiny sister and looking up through the branches at the blinking lights and old ornaments.  I’ll wish to be gathering the mattresses so that all the sibs can fall asleep together watching The Nightmare Before Christmas; instead I’ll be falling asleep in a room full of dear hearts that have carried me through some tough times away from home.

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I have gone almost 19 months in this country without eating that delightful–ly endorsed cow stomach and cow hoof stew called khash.  I thought perhaps I’d get away with never chewing a hoof in my life.  Today though, around 5pm the my office friends will gather, and the hoof will be chewed.  It is currently simmering in our office kitchen and the smells is wafting right over and threatening to ruin my apetite for the rest of December.

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If you want to honor one of the great Christmas contributions of our time (yes I DO mean Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” [chuckles]) you should absolutely go listent to Kimya Dawson’s other-holiday-themed story from The Moth.  Really.

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I have a knitting queue for the first time ever.  I’m knitting stuff for people.  I have projects ON THE LINE.  And I think I’m getting carpel tunnel.  Come on, tendons, don’t let me down!  [asks self: 'Am I old?']

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The other night I was walking home.  It was around 9pm, just me and a quiet, sleepy town.  Oh, and a white horse walking alone up through the street by the square.  The night was wet from an afternoon rain; I stopped and watched the mare saunter slowly toward the museum, her clip-clop the only sound in the winter night.

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It a very blustery day.  The pine outside my window is pretty much doing tree yoga.  The windows of the museum are shuddering.  I’m fully expecting an animal, maybe a dog (re: Wizard of Oz) or a cow (re: Twister), to fly in front of me while I type this.

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I’m growing a beard.  I’m following my last year’s precedent, New Year New Face.  I’m getting compliments.  It’s going over much better than ‘the broken brush‘ of yesteryear.   Pictures to come?

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Merry Christmas.

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a summer blip in winter: the landsisters

Word has traveled from Moscow to our sleepy town via emigrated relatives of my Armenian friends: THE BIG FREEZE IS COMING.  Apparently, when Moscow freezes over, the same icy hand reaches out to our town in about three days.

This comes to me as a bit of a surprise.  You know what I was doing a couple of days ago? I was with my landdad, moving the nardi board into the house because the sun was beating down too hard.  (I was wearing a t-shirt.) And then I was hanging out with my landsisters on the terrace.  Meri and I built a car out of blocks my mom brought from the States.  We rolled it down a carpet my landmom left in the sun to air out.

In the game, I took on the roll of simple fool, dropping the car down the carpet and watching it crash and fall to pieces.  Meri took the roll of exasperated mother, skipping the now-is-that-the-smartest-thing-to-do’s and going straight for the this-horrid-child-is-killing-me’s, slapping her palm against her forehead and collapsing to the ground.

She did get over her feigned exasperation eventually.

Her sister Greta found me later while I was reading Timbuktu, lying on a bench under the leafless tree by my cottage.  She proceeded to build a fake barbeque by my head.

I love having landsisters.

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loneliness, an unavoidable peace corps companion

I’m still sorting through pictures and thoughts about Turkey.  That post will come soon enough.  However, upon landing in my cottage a couple of days ago, my thoughts have moved quickly off of what feels like a dream of water-pipes, Ikea, cheesy bread, and Turkish hipsters.

I’m home in Armenia, and after arriving here on Sunday, the first days of the week found me hosting Danelle, a new volunteer who arrived this summer and now works at a kindergarten and at a children’s NGO in a small town by the Georgian border.   We spent some time comparing our experiences which led me to recall how I felt around this time about a year ago.

A year ago I was considering going home.  After a couple of months the previous spring working for an organization in Kolkata slums, I came into Peace Corps not expecting to enjoy it.  I originaly gave myself six months to either love it or leave it.  This time last year I wasn’t sure if I was loving it and told a friend I would go to our All Volunteer conference and would make a decision afterward to stay or go.

Around this time last year, I took this picture:

I actually found it a couple of days ago when sifting through files, looking for something to submit for our volunteer photo contest, something for the category “I, Volunteer”, something that was supposed to shed light on ‘the volunteer experience’.

I was sick then, as I am now.  I had a sore throat.  I hadn’t slept through the night for days.  I would wake up at night, the freezing air sitting heavy on my cottage without the threat of central heating.  I’d turned on Friends.  (I explained to a fellow volunteer, “I watch television shows so much more than movies here.  I used to prefer a movie alone at home.  But now I’m watching Friends because, as lame as it sounds, I like that fact that when I turn off my computer at night, I know I’m going to hear the same voices in my living room tomorrow.)

That night, without a flashlight to look in the mirror, I felt a flash of brilliance and whipped out my Canon for a shot at my tonsils.  Despite being equipped with a Digital Macro setting, the Canon didn’t do the trick but instead gave me pink, cavernous blurs, a slobbery abyss to stare at and wonder if indeed I had strep or some kind of something growing on my stinging throat.

I was in a state of loneliness I had never reached before.  My Armenian community was trying, but at the time I was still hoping for something akin to movie nights, late night taco runs, or long kitchen chats that, often without our full appreciation, keep our souls afloat.  I was longing for social structures I understood.  I was longing for a place that felt like a comfortable fit.  I was longing for a friend that could take a look down my throat and tell me how sick I might be.

I have since, of course, come to feel quite at home here.  I treasure my landfamily.  On Kelly’s first night here my coworkers were holding a party for work birthdays in August, and during my toast to them, I could hardly hold back tears saying how proud I was to be able to introduce Kelly to my Armenian friends.  I will likely be sitting in Texas this time next year wishing for a khorovats with friends and whispering to myself those Armenian phrases that have been stitched into my soul fabric. The tables have turned, and I know I’ll be in Texas wishing for some Armenianess, wishing, for example, that I could walk into a neighbor’s home on a whim and sit down to warm smiles, good conversation and a steaming cup of coffee.

I am so thankful that I can say, “I love it here.”  But my time in this place has surely not been without its moments of profound loneliness, and as I begin to round the homes stretch of my term of service in Armenia, I think I’ll be hoping to find out how all of this, the bright days and dark moments, have shaped me into the person I will be in the years to come.

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a ghoul in winter

I’m home in my little Armenian town for a quick minute and feel the need to send out a tiny message to the blogosphere:  There’s a little monster I like to call the I-Thought-I-Knew-What-Was-Happening Ghoul, and it got me again.

I’m not sure if this is a working-in-a-foreign language phenomenon or it’s just me, but I often find myself agreeing to go places for what I think is a short event only to be gone FOR SEVEN HOURS or so.

I thought I was going to “install a khachkar” and have a quick word about the project I’m going to go do for a few days in the same village starting tomorrow.  I ended up gone for 7.5 hours.  We picked up the khachkar with its maker and drove to the village near the Georgian border.  We waited to find out where the khakar would go.  We drilled a hole into a wall.  We mounted the base and waited for the marble glue to dry.  We mounted the khachkar.  We waited for the marble glue to dry.  We thought of ways to further secure the khachkar.  We waited for a dude to go get some tools.  We waited for said dude to mix cement.  We drilled a hole in the khachkar.  We secured the khachkar.  We applied cement.  At this point I had given up on doing the work I had planned and thus welcomed the village mayor’s invitation to dinner.  The Armenian spread was beautiful and since I hadn’t had the opportunity to each lunch or breakfast, I gorged on tomato and fried potatos and cheese and boiled chicken and home cheese and home honey.  Yum yum yum.

And thus, reader-friend, I am not able to write you the summary of My Week of Epiphanies that occured this past week in the capital.  I’m so tired now that the only epiphany I can relate is that I need my bed.

Also, it’s important that you know that MY TOWN IS ALREADY COLDER THAN DEATH. Seriously, I spent seven hours freezing.  It is the first day since June that I had to wear closed-toe shoes.  Also, it is the first day since June that my toes froze through said shoes.  It was the kind of cold that made it hard to use my fingers.  Here comes winter, y’all.

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beerscum and line-dancing

Last week was spent mostly in a old blue Ford van with mismatched seats and a metal blue ceiling.  It snowed for most of the week (yes, snow in APRIL… no, Texans don’t DO snow in April).  The warmth inside the van caused streaks of condensation to end with tiny drips on our heads.  I looked over at one of the kids in the van and said, “The van is crying because it’s snowing outside.”

You would think that Snow In April would be enough to ruin an entire week, but really the truth is it was one of the best weeks of my Peace Corps service so far.  On Monday I piled into the old van with a guy from my office and seven kids from six different villages.  These are kids I’ve talked about before, kids who are brave enough to talk to their peers about HIV/AIDS.

At the end of our intitial nine hour drive, we stayed with other Peace Corps volunteers down in Kapan.  We did two HIV/AIDS forums thanks to those volunteers and saw Kapan sites which included, among other things, the biggest wild snail I’ve ever seen.

In Goris, I stayed with half of the kids in a Peace Corps friend’s apartment while the other half stayed in a bed and breakfast.  In that little apartment I taught the kids out to play Pondscum and Pirate Dice, both of which they loved.  Pondscum in Armenian is “ganach jrimur”.  I can’t count the times that was used OUTSIDE of the game.  “Jrimur” was pretty much everyone’s nickname from then on, or if not that, then “Garejrimur” which roughly translates to mean “Beerscum”.

Best part of the weekend: I taught them a “Texas Dance”.  Remember back in second grade, down in Central Texas, when during one week the whole class would learn the Boot Scoot.  Well, that line dance made it’s way to Armenia via my memory and the only country music I own, Dixie Chicks.  I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to “Goodbye Earl” so many times in 24 hours, and I haven’t been so enthusiastic about “White Trash Wedding” since I did an impromptu mime to it after a pie party back in Abilene.  I have now been asked to make a disc full of Dixie Chicks for all of them.  Oh, and I’m to tack on Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” at the end.

Things got a little testy at times.  For instance, in the Goris apartment I made the two boys wash dishes at breakfast.  The exchange was something like this:

Me: Hey, whoa, where are you going?  We have to clean the table.

Boy 1: What?

Me: The girls brought out breakfast.  The boys are going to wash the dishes.

Boy 2: But what about you?

Me: I’m a boy.  I’m going to wash the dishes, also.

Boy 2:  But we don’t wash dishes.

Me: Yes, you do.

[We walk to the kitchen where Girl 1 has already started the hot water.  I mix the hot water with cold water and soap.]

Me: Come on, let’s clear the table already.

[Boys clear the table and then begin to walk away.]

Me: Oh, no, no, no.  You are rinsing, and you are drying.

[Boy 1 takes towel.  Boy 2 pouts.]

Boy 1: Brent, listen.  In Armenia, boys work outside.  The work is difficult, so girls do work inside.

Me: Well, in America, men and women both work outside.  And they both work inside.  Men and women share work [Keeps own feminist thoughts about American sexual politics out of conversation].

Boy 2: But we’re in Armenia.

Me:  That’s true, but the good news is, this week you have no work to do outside so you can work inside!

Boy 2: [Whining] But this is our holiday.

Me: [Thinks, 'No its not.  You're here to do HIV/AIDS forums.' Says instead:] Well, it’s the girls holiday, too.  They brought out breakfast, so we’re putting it up.  You think you should be able to sit, and the girls should do all the work this week.  They let us sleep, so now we’re going to let them dance. [Sounds of girls practicing the Boot Scoot to "Goodbye Earl"... again.  Me smiles.]

So there’s that.  There were a few more tense moments.  I realized I would have made a terrible youth worker because by the end of the week I wanted to strangle them all.  But I will tell you that watching those kids line dance, I had one of those I’m-Living-My-Dream moments.  When I was 15, I walked across a ravine with a new friend I’d made in that tiny Mexican village.  We were walking at dusk to join a game of volleyball with other Mexican and American kids.  I thought right then that I wanted to do This for the rest of my life.  I had that feeling again dancing with these Armenian kids.

I don’t remember the topic of conversation or what I said, but in reaction to some joke I made, Boy 2 said an Armenian version of, “Oh, that’s our Brent.”  He had no idea how much that actually meant to me.

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