Sundays

A snapshot of my Sundays:

I usually do my Armenian homework and catch up on my email at a cafe. This morning had an interesting addition - I had coffee in Lover's Park with a woman I met on my plane in, and her daughter and new granddaughter. The daughter, Molly, has lived here for two years with her husband, who works with the British embassy. Molly also did a program similar to mine at the LSE. It was so fun to trade notes on Yerevan, and also to confirm how small of a town this is and how many acquaintances we had in common after only two weeks here. I also happened to meet a guy in the same park who is here working on a project to use garbage as an energy source (no idea yet how that works exactly), but I had just heard about him the day before from friends working in conservation. Amazing the people you run into here. I'm interested to learn more about his work, particularly after seeing some of the dumps in the villages. As I understand it, Armenia doesn't have any sort of landfill system and of course no recycling programs yet. Driving through the villages sometimes you will see whole fields full of plastic bags and garbage.

If this project works, it will be badly needed. Energy is also a huge problem here because of the closed borders. Armenia relies largely on nuclear energy and the whole system needs some serious upgrading (and preferably, new ideas altogether).

Yesterday was a day trip to Gyumri, the second largest city in Armenia. Gyumri used to be a thriving city and a cultural hub, but it was devastated by the earthquake in 1988. It seems that a lot of the city still hasn't been rebuilt and many people have left. We toured the city a bit and then visited a local orphanage, where we ate lunch with the kids and also did some yard work. The kids were very impressive - they spoke and sang to us in many different languages, and one little girl, Siranoush, loved to blow kisses and give me hugs.

This gives you a sense of the difference between the villages and Yerevan:


Empty buildings near Gyumri.



A main street of Yerevan.

The AVC and Birthright building.

Tonight should be interesting. I'm attending the very first (as far as I know) production of the Vagina Monologues in Armenia. I'm attending with some colleagues. I'll be interested to see how it goes over.

This is a big week coming up as well - Easter and also Genocide Remembrance Day. I'm glad to be here to experience both. I'm also meeting with a local political science professor to interview him for my research. Eager to get his perspective on the political system here.

And - back to my homework.