2 weeks in Dzaghedzor

I have been living in my village Dzaghedzor for 2 weeks now. I have filled my days with reading, napping, sudoku, kitten loving, exercising and various other activities. The following are some things that happened out of the ordinary from the regular lazing around or that I never imagined in Armenia and was generally shocked by.
One day as I lay in my hammock reading my host sister brought out a white drink with a bendy straw (first shocker) for me to try. I was nervous that it was “tan” a drink they love here that is a combination of their yogurty-milk, water, salt and sometimes greens or rice. It depends on the variety but usually this is not my favorite drink. I took the drink and nervously asked what it was, all I understood in the reply was milk. Uh oh, is this tan? Well, I am trying everything so I put my lips to the straw and cautiously sipped it. Holy joyous moment! It was delicious! A tropical milkshake of bananas and peaches that was so creamy and delicious I sucked it down. Since this glorious day I have been brought milkshakes a few other times and have loved every single one of them. The other day I even got my favorite variety of chocolate banana. Mmm mmm good!
We celebrated my younger host sister’s 22nd birthday, which produced an array of delicious food, drinking and dancing. Particularly interesting this evening was the 11 year old boy that was here with one of the families and became in charge of pouring the wine for the females to toast with. At first he was apprehensive with the magnum bottle of pomegranate wine but soon embraced his occupation as well as starting to pour for himself. And pour, and refill and refill again for himself. I was quite entertained by his excessive drinking and kept taking photos of him , laughing and pointing out that he was going to get drunk if he kept it up. Dinner was breaking up and room was being cleared for the dance floor. I quickly went into my room and to my surprise find the boy, drunk, passed out face down on my bed! Haha. We danced and danced. The first dancing I have done in country and although Armenian dancing it was quite fun. This was despite the fact that one of the older gentlemen who was present for the party kept trying to kiss me while we danced and I ended up with a lot of sweaty slobber on my cheeks. The drunken child was taken from my room and carried home and I evaded any horrifying moments.


host mother, Gayineh, me and my tatik

Getting Crunk


My papik


Dance Party!

Uncle Maxim and his mama

Running here is an event even more so than in my PST village. I am quite the spectacle on the side of the road and cars will slow down to a crawl as they pass me to see what this crazy person on the side of the road is up to. Sometimes very creepy. But I keep it up hoping they will get used to me because it is really beautiful in the morning as the sun rises over the mountain ridges. And I thoroughly enjoy the boysenberries growing on the edge of the road as a mid-running snack.


Secret doors to secret gardens

The gardens i run past every morning

This monstrosity sorta looks pretty in the morning light

Sunrise over the mountains





Off Trail adventure

The missing clue...





Picking boysenberries

I was beckoned into a home for coffee and a snack. These scrumptious tomatoes were brought out from their garden.

Last Monday evening my family wanted to take me into Kapan. I thought we were going to have dinner at my tatik’s house but instead we bought an incredible variety of sweet cakes and pastries from the bakery and went over there to eat these and grapes.

We stayed for only about 15 minutes and then headed out to adventure around the town.


After a quick drop in at the church and lighting of candles we hit up the carnival that I have been so anxious to try. Sort of.


We rode the bumper cars and they all found it hilarious when I put on the seat belt because of course they don’t use them on real roads so why would they wear them for bumper cars? Next up was the roller coaster. I am a lover of rollercoaster’s in America, but this one while never exceeding 10ft off the ground was the scariest thing I have ever been on. Hard plastic seats that were slippery, not seat belts, open sides to go sliding out of and only a small bar on the front of the car to hold onto. Plus each car is on one wheel on the one track that goes around and around. Terrifying. Next up was a swing-type of ride.


It actually had a lap belt although I am sure it was not actually doing anything to help preserve my life but a fun ride.



We ended the evening at the hotel in town where Ira used to work sitting on the balcony with ice cream and cognac.

Last week my host mother beckoned me into the kitchen. We want you to learn where everything is in the kitchen so that you can prepare your own food when we go to Russia. Russia? When are you going to Russia? Next week. Oh. Interesting. And when are you coming back? We don’t really know, but sometime after September. Great, over a month of no host family where I will have to fend for myself in this foreign teensy town and hopefully continue to integrate into the community. I have since found out that my tatik will be shuttled in to stay with me here. That should be fun because I really like my tatik and can understand her much better than my host mother who speaks mostly Russian with some Armenian mixed in. Oh, and who I am coincidentally terrified of. So here’s to girl time with my tatik in September!

And I went swimming again! But this time in a pretty legitimate pool that was tiled, crystal clear and long enough for me to push off and take two full strokes before reaching the other wall. Flips! Handstands! Some pool “volleyball” with the famdam and I was feeling great. It was in the evening so it started to get a bit cold though and as I was getting out to get back into some warm clothes my sisters called for me to come where they were. It looked like a bathroom so I assured them I was fine dressing outside. No no, come in here! All righty then. And to my everlasting surprise and delight through a small door from that bathroom was a sauna. It was fantastic! I still find it hard to believe that there was an actual sauna in my village in Armenia but think that the house we were at may have some involvement with, err, less than reputable business. All speculation of course.
I have also acquired a kitten. She is adorable!

Her name is Sonya and provides a lots of entertainment and adds pleasure just when sitting on my lap or chest while I read, write or sleep. She is a family kitten but keeps rather close to me as I don’t grab her by the head, kick her 3 feet into the air and then catch her or any other atrocious things I watch my family members do daily. And respectively they are probably the most generous and loving family that an animal in Armenia could hope to be with. One thing she loves to do is sit on my chest and as I blink she becomes captivated with my eyelashes and will then paw my eyes. For the time being she is not a vicious cat so this is a very gentle tap but I am hoping it does not become an open claw to my eye as that could do some serious damage to my retinas. All in all it is great to have animals here at the house.
So those are the adventures and oddities I have come across recently and look forward to discovering and experiencing more!

School Starts! Sorta...

After two weeks at my site I was very much looking forward to school starting. Although the constant relaxation was nice for a change of pace after PST I was starting to struggle to find new activities to do, movies dubbed in Russian I had yet to see, trails to hike and books to read. I also may have come close to exhausting the sudoku game book I have. So, Sunday evening I endured (so I thought) one last evening of rest which I spent reading and playing with my kitten, Sonya.
I awoke with some nerves but mostly excited about the new adventure that awaited me: 2 years working at the village school which houses approximately 50 students and has 18 full time teachers, a director and various other staff who clean and maintain the grounds. My counterpart had told me to be at the school at “ten, or eleven. Whenever”. Wanting to set an example of being punctual as well as wanting to see the bustle of school beginning for the teachers in Armenia I decided to arrive at 10am. It was much cooler that morning with clouds rolling over the tops of the mountain ridges down into my village, an eerie foreshadowing of the dreaded winters I would soon encounter. I did not let this deter me as I walked along the gravel road on my 3 minute walk to the school and became exceedingly anxious. I arrive, enter through the gate. I can hear voices inside. I walk up the stairs, push through the front door and walk down the hallway with the voices getting increasingly louder. Aha! In the teachers room, which is also combined with the kitchen I found one of the teachers I know, Merita, talking with another woman. I am introduced to her, and find out she is not a teacher but one of the cleaning and grounds keeper ladies. She invites me to her son’s wedding this coming Sunday, a generous invite I thought for just having met her and promise that I will try to make it. Why not?
Of course I am a bit put off by the fact that the room is not bustling with all the teachers from the school. I inquire about this and Merita assures me that the other teachers are coming in on the 10:30 bus so they will arrive right around 11. This clears up the option of arriving at 10 or 11. So we chatter back and forth as best we can with my limited language skills (that incidentally have slid down hill over the past few weeks without any classes…or much studying) awaiting the anticipated arrival of all the other teachers. We prevailed in communication, but 11 came around and a teacher showed up. And about ten minutes later 3 more teachers arrive, including the English teacher (read: savior) which makes my life drastically easier. Water is boiled for tea, coffee is made, cookies laid out and we all crowd around one table. There are plenty of other tables but they still have the chairs up on them. I ignore this and merrily go along with the women who are present but wonder where my counterpart is, the director and some of the other teachers that I had met previously during my site visit in July. The teachers have produced a piece of paper and write down the dates of this week with areas for each teacher, it appears, to sign in. Of course I am not positive what this was and or is for. Then out come the tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, breads more chocolate and cookies. “Eat!” Despite the fact that I had just eaten my breakfast an hour earlier I obliged all in the interest of integrating into the community and being loved by all the teachers. A drastic portion of which we are still missing. Noon is approaching and all of a sudden two teachers jump up, apologize and run out the door. Late for the bus! Oh no, so is another one! But, you have only been here an hour? Why aren’t we having an open forum, talking about the summer, what conferences and workshops everyone attended, goals for the upcoming school year, how we will close the achievement gap etcetera etcetera? Oh right, not in America. So, while I am somewhat taken aback by the brevity and lack of attendance from participants who I have deemed key players to the school year and my success here as a volunteer, I follow in suit. Help clean up because I don’t have a bus to catch and make sure that the first day of “work” is in fact over. Of course! And tomorrow, when will we be meeting “At ten, or eleven. Whenever.” I make the decision to arrive a bit later tomorrow.
We had of course been warned of this, that the work days with teachers before school actually starts with the students would be somewhat of a social gathering with lots of coffee being drank, gossip and some work. I assumed this to be an exaggeration. Never had a imagined the possibility that the other volunteers who had previously gone through this last year were actually down playing the situation. We’ll see how day 2 goes.
Mostly the same. I arrived around 10:20 because I was nervous about missing something that could prove to be terribly important. Oh how naive I still am in this culture. Some weeding is taking place at first. Then we rearrange some flowers in Merita’s room and await the arrival of the other teachers. With baited breath I anticipate all the teachers showing up today. Naïve. Two of the same teachers from yesterday show up, and two of the younger teachers I had met before. The six of us crowd around the same table. Well today…today is apparently fortune telling day. First, we do a Chinese “hexogram” game to determine our futures, very similar to astrological tellings but quite the cross-cultural event to an American in Armenian hearing how the Chinese forecast my life. Next we played a card game that I would equate somewhat similar to tarot card reading and then of course the ever popular najel bajack, or reading of the coffee cup to see what lies ahead for us.
So two days down. I would definitely say that I am integrating into the community with the teachers and really do enjoy them. All very nice and encouraging ladies in my language and endeavors at the school. I did take some initiative to discuss what I would like to do in the school and how I can help some of the other teachers with their curriculum. I was encouraged by my fortune.

To Kapan I Go

I ventured into Kapan to get some shopping taken care of and to see other American faces. As I have said before, Matt a TEFL and Jay a CBD live in Kapan so much of my interaction down here will probably be with the two of them and Robyn made it in also to hang out with us.
I started the adventure walking out of my village to the main road and saw an older man sitting next to the river bank, pushing his dentures out of his mouth and generally unaware that anyone was approaching him.

I announced myself and started chatting with him, he was quite adorable and was heading into Kapan also on the marshutni. I was comforted by this because there isn’t an actual stop for the marshutni, rather you just sorta wave it down, hope it sees you and as it approaches and slows down you make a running hop onto it. Well, it saw us and the two of us boarded and headed into town. This was actually the first time I had taken any public transportation, besides a taxi, that has not been provided by the PC so I gave myself a silent applaud. At the last stop in Kapan I debarked and found myself right in the center of town. Next to the main bus stop is a large statue of a horseman Davit Bek, leader of the south in the 18th century.

Kapan is an old, if not extinct industrial town whose workers lived in high-rise flats that now look as if they will crumble above the next earth tremor.




Kapan is bisected by the Voghi River, the same river that my village tributary runs into higher up the mountain.

It also has another main tributary running from the southern mountains into town and meeting the Voghi at the town center.

In town these two rivers look more like canals as they have been corralled and guided through the town in a concrete path, one that also has to try to dodge all the trash that is thrown there. A development of the Soviet Era. This also has required pedestrian bridges all throughout the city.


But they have a nice variation to the setting made either of stonework or brightly painted iron work. Across the river from the bus stop and the horseman statue is the touristy main part of town (where the two rivers meet). There is a large café


set in a nicely landscaped square that is rimmed by the hotel, restaurant and various other khanoots and surprisingly a billiards lounge. Following the tributary up the hill you will find the church that has been renovated so no longer looks like a cool old church but a brand new church of garish pink stone.




On the other side of the river is the Post office (hopefully I’ll receive plenty of care packages here !!)

the culture house


that houses the library,




(trying to break into the art university)





the Art University and heading south you will encounter the Kapan University and sport field and pool with platform diving boards.




Curving back down that road toward the city center I found a very nice park with what would be beautiful fountains if they were ever filled with water, and across the street in what looks like an abandoned building the Armenian Art Museum.

Too bad it was closed, and I cannot say with any assurance that it will ever be open again.

Random herd of horses just wandering the streets

And Robyn's Armenian dream home

The lovely mountain view in Kapan
Robyn and I grabbed some food at a little shack which ended up being delicious. I think they were called Shaghama; basically marinated chicken, onions and greens wrapped up in lavash.

We sat next to some old men playing their card games and nardi and talked with them a bit. We both tried to buy internet sticks but have found out that I get no signal in my village and her computer is rejecting the program. We figured this out though after almost 2 hours in the store.

We browsed the “supermarket” and can’t say we found anything too interesting except for a premade gin and tonic beverage AND wine from somewhere besides this country.


I will survive.


The fruit and vegetable stands right outside though are still marvelous and smell so good as you walk by.

One of the bus stops i thought looked really cool

khanoot owner




What the public transportation avtobus looks like. 1940 recall?

We walked around the other side of the town and then ventured into an Armenian salon for some Armenian spa treatment and paid a fraction of the price for waxing as compared with America.


Perhaps I will be better kept over here than I am in Cali. We walked to meet the other Americans for a beer at the new place but encountered an amusement park (of sorts). It looks completely abandoned but I am told that every night it is bustling with Kapanites riding and squealing with joy. I don’t think it would be proper to compare the safety of the annual town fair with carnies galore to this site. Mostly because I don’t know which one would win on safety issues.


Americans! We met at what we have deemed the “posh place” because it looks straight out of New Orleans with the intricate ironwork and come fall it will have an amazing view of the trees changing colors.


We had a couple beers, Erebuni (Yerevan’s in Russian) because we have learned that the beer made in the northern marzs are not pasteurized so they do not travel very well down to the south.

And on top of that everything is unplugged each night and then turned back on in the morning so the beers are going from chilled to room temp to chilled to room temp and for my faithful beer drinkers we realize how atrocious this can make a beer.



The trash. tis everywhere.
Afterward I walked up the hill to accompany Jay to dinner with his family. His house is very nice and perched up on the hill above the rest of Kapan. His host family’s actual daughters were in town with their children and I fell in love with one of the little girls. She definitely enjoyed being a model though.


jay not being amused by her her antics

loving her papik



I have become obsessed with the clotheslines strung from every apartment building to a nearby tree or a neighbor’s window with clothes, blankets and stuffed animals dangling precariously. I have photographed a lot of them so I apologize for the redundancy.
I took the avtobus on the way home to save 100 dram. It took a bit longer as we had to stop twice to throw cool water onto the engine. This appears to be a team effort by the men on the bus who boisterously pile off the bus to help and then jump back on, I am sure, having done nothing to actually help. The bus does even more of a moving stop to drop off and pick up people than the marshutni so I tried to mentally prepare myself for this. As we approached Dzaghedzor I asked the gentleman next to me, who had been staring at me the entire time in wonderment, to move so I could get out. He obliged, but my route off the bus was obstructed by three teenage boys in the aisle. The village was in sight and they apparently weren’t getting the hint that I was trying to move past them. “Neretsek” Excuse me. Oh, she wants to get off. I thanked my lucky stars as I see that there is actually someone at the bus stop for my village so the bus is going to have to stop. Have to? That is debatable. The bus slowed down, opened the doors and the man jumped on. The bus driver pressed down on the gass and started to accelerate. I frantically apologized and requested for him to stop, “but this isn’t Kajaran.” “I’m not going to Kajaran, I am going back there to Dzaghedzor it is the village I live in.” “No lady, you are crazy, you don’t want to get off there” “oh my god yes I do, stop the bus and let me off!” “OK then”. Oh, and where in the world do I pay you for the door to door service? Fine, I will just hand my 200 dram piece to one of the three gentlemen sitting in the stairway. At least I can’t be arrested for not paying for the ride. I finally get off. The bus has a hard time getting going again up the small incline and as I look down the road I realize that I have been dropped off about 500 meters from the bus stop. At least now that driver will go and tell every other bus driver about me, and every marshutni driver, and hopefully they will remember the white American girl who lives in that tiny village and never make me go through that ordeal to get home again. I high fived myself on a successful maneuvering of a round trip trek to the town as I walked across the bridge. Feels good to be home.