Lots has been going on the past several weeks. Here's a highlight - my colleague Patti and I were in charge of preparing Thanksgiving dinner for 110 volunteers and staff at our fall conference the week before Thanksgiving.


This pic is Patti, Katheryn and I at a calm part of the process.


We decided to spread out the labor and found several people to be in charge of various portions of the dinner. Katheryn was Sweet Potato Queen. Lindee was Queen of Pies. Dustin was King of cauliflower casserole. Brian was Director of Turkeys. You get the point.



Here are Dustin, Mimi, Austin and Patti working on the Cauliflower casserole.
















Here are two of the members of the pie team, Heather and Elizabeth. Elizabeth had worked in a bakery and turned out beautiful crusts very quickly. Heather made fillings for lemon and chocolate pies, topped w/ meringue.





The results of their efforts - some of the 16 pies they made.





this is the hotel kitchen we had to work in. Interesting seeing how an Armenian hotel kitchen is equipped. Only two ovens. Fortunately they were big enough for us to get two turkeys in each. We cooked 6 big turkeys (35 K) for the event.











Here are Eloise and Mimi putting together plates of crudities for the tables. They remained virtually untouched as the hordes dove into turkey, dressing, gravy, etc.
















Of course, Thanksgiving dinner was not the only thing that happened in the last 6 weeks.


Now I'm on a two week vacation which I will write about in another post.

And work went on during the last 6 weeks. The Armenians were very excited about US election results, very happy to hear about the outcome.

I found out during this time that a grant I had worked on w/ Caritas had been awarded. Its a big EU grant and will support a 3 year project impacting 15 villages in a 3 marz region and will involve 3 additional NGOs in the planning and execution. This will be a major focus for the my next several months. More about it later.

Armenian fingernails

This is the art work I received yesterday.   Armenian women like designs on their nails and they are quite creative about it.   I'm having fun with this. 

Harvest Festival

In early October,  I visited a good friend in a beautiful little village (name of person and village withheld to protect privacy) to celebrate their harvest festival with about 30 other volunteers.   This is a picture of the village. 

Here is what happens at a harvest festival.   Various neighborhoods in the village get together and make a table with a variety of food, arranged in very interesting designs.   Plus the food is delicious.   Each table has to provide a person dressed like a vegetable and some entertainment (usually singing although one very little girl performed an astonishing belly dance routine).    We had an American table filled w/ some typical dishes - potato salad, hummus, pasta salad, lemonade, apple pies, pumpkin pies, and everybody's favorite: brownies.   

Local officials go around to each table, eat some of the food and judge the table on several categories. 

A sample of the elaborate decorations. 

Of course, it being Armenia, there is dancing.  

Me and another volunteer.   If you look closely, you can see the American Flag tattoo (temporary) on my cheek. 
This being a village, my friend's house, while possessing a spectacular view, was somewhat limited in amenities.  

The food for the festival was prepared on a stove w/ two burners that worked.   The stove was not in the kitchen.   It was in a separate outbuilding (called the summer kitchen but it looks more like a garage).    The refrigerator and stand alone oven were in the kitchen.   There is no running water or water at all at the house.   It all had to be brought in from a nearby reservoir/well.   

The bathroom accomodations were extremely limited (outhouse w/ no seat).   Fortunately, my friend took pity on me and my knees and put me up at the mayor's house for the night.   He has a more western indoor bathroom.  Whew!   

After the festival,  the PC guys and a few women played a touch football game on a village field - complete w/ cow observers.   You can see alot of the football pictures and more pics of the festival on my dropshots site (www.dropshots.com/elizpou).   

Then we all came back to my friends house for chili and cornbread.    Quite a challenge to prepare the latter as we could not heat up water to wash the dishes we needed for dinner  and cook the cornbread at the same time.   The power kept shutting off when we tried that.  Nevertheless, it all worked out and everyone was fed.    Most of the crowd stayed at my friend's house, sleeping in about any place they could find.   A few others went to a nearby volunteer's town and stayed with him.   I was thrilled to be at the mayor's house with only 2 other people in my bedroom.   

Village life is quite a contrast to city life.     I have alot more creature comforts in my homely apartment and there were several moments over the weekend when I thought how nice it would be to have a separate house with a big yard and gorgeous mountains all around me.     Then I remembered the outhouse.  

The next day, 3 vols and I went to the closest big city which also has a dollar store (the items in the dollar store cost about $3), a chain (3 stores in the whole country) that reminds me of odd lot and dollar stores back home.   Many of the items come from US and appeal to American shoppers - like big jars of yellow mustard which is unobtainable anywhere else.    I bought two and some aluminum foil, another item not readily available. 

October is very nice in Gyumri.   The days are crisp in the morning, mostly sunny and warm in the afternoons.   The trees are turning and people are busy canning for the winter.   Celery has appeared in the shooka and should be hear for another couple of weeks at least.   I'm eating chicken salad, potato salad, bean soup  and everything else I can think of that likes celery.    It seems strange that something as ubiquitous as celery is not a staple here.  People don't really use it that much.   Its available for a few weeks in the fall and a few weeks in the spring.   Its picked at a young stage so the stalks never get as full as the ones we are used to.   

The heirloom tomatoes at Albert and Emmas house are about gone.  The nights are in the 30s and tomatoes don't like that.   Great while they lasted. 

My friend Patti and I are busy planning the Thanksgiving dinner for all volunteers held at a conf. in Yerevan in late November.     Its interesting trying to figure out the logistics of dinner for 100 people that has to be prepared in the hotel dining room while hotel staff are preparing breakfast and lunch the same day.   Another logistical challenge is figuring out where to get things like brown sugar, sweet potatoes and pie ingredients (pie is not common here).   The American Embassy has some things in its commissary.   We are not allowed to go there but Peace Corps staff can and are right now buying up canned pumpkin, cornmeal and other important ingredients for the meal.    Patti and I have divided up the work by allocating specific dishes to interested volunteers (one person is Captain of Turkeys, another Captain of Pies, another Salad Queen..... you get the picture).     

In addition to all of this extra curricular activity,  I've been busy with several assignments.    More about those in a later post (we're waiting to hear if we got a certain grant).    I've started a school exchange program with a 4th grade class in Asheville and some 4th and 5th form students who attend a local childcare center.   So far, the children have drawn pictures which I scanned and sent to Asheville.   They have just sent 20 letters from the Asheville students to the Armenian students.   The Asheville letters were typed in computers by the students.   Ours have no access to such modern equipment.   I'm working with a center employee who will translate the English letters to Armenian and reverse the process when the Armenian students prepare their replies.    This week I'm going with the students on a "field trip" around the city with my camera in hand taking pics of everything they would like to show the Ashevillians.   

Next post will show my new manicure.   Armenian women like designs on their nails and I have gone native in this aspect of my dress.   Don't expect to see me wearing those 3 inch pointy toed heels.   

random thoughts

This is an old Russian church near the center where my exchange student class resides. 

This is my exchange class after the first "lesson".   I asked them to draw pictures of something they would like their counterparts in Asheville to see.   Most of them drew pictures of their school.   They wrote their names in English and Armenian.   

Future classes will give them opportunities to write to the students in Asheville.   We may also take a couple of field trips around Gyumri to see various buildings, etc. 

This is Gyumri's big park.   I like to sit on the benches and read on a warm afternoon.   Obviously I'm not the only one who favors this pastime.

Riding to Yerevan:  more often than not,  I take route taxis (4 passengers plus driver).   Unless it is too hot and I can't get air (Armenians believe air blowing on you is unhealthy and causes a variety of ailments),  the trip has a couple of enjoyable features:

- cow traffic jams.    On every trip there is at least one required stop to let a herd of cows finish  crossing the street.   Cows take their time.   Frequently they are herded by a man on donkey or horseback.   They use sticks to keep the cows behaving themselves and moving forward.   Its anachronistic to watch this parade unfold on  a serious paved highway with cars coming in both directions (no one seems to mind the wait).  

- bare landscape.   We pass a few villages seen at a distance.   Most of the scenery is sun-scorched brown hills and lots and lots of rocks.   No McDonalds beckons.   No gated communities.   No billboards.   Its very soothing to see miles and miles of very little.     I think I will miss this absence of human intervention on main roads when I get back home.   

Tomatoes -   I planted a few heirloom tomato seeds this winter (from Appalachian Seed Company) and late spring tranferred the seedlings to Albert, my former host "dad".     They actually grew up and produced fruit.  I've been eating yummy yellow and red cherries,  a german pink/yellow (German Johnson) and waiting for the cherokee purples to get fully ripe.    I like to make short visits to Emma and Albert.   I bring puzzles to Albert, sit with Emma for awhile and usually take home some ripe lavash.    

2nd year - all the things we heard about 2nd year are coming true.  The assignments are getting better, I'm feeling more a part of things and its nice to be the experienced one instead of the novice.    I know how to get around in Yerevan,  I can ride the subway,  I know where the good grocery stores are and can get to at least three places where I stay, usually w/ Patti and Mimi.   

Thanksgiving - Patti and I are in charge of the big thanksgiving dinner this year.  I just finished putting together a menu and list of ingredients - how much butter do you need to make dinner for 120 or so.    Patti is reviewing the lists.   We've decided to parse out the various parts of the meal to make our lives easier and to give those who help some actual discretion along with responsibility.    So far, we have a Captain of Pies, a Captain of Turkeys,  a chief procurement person and a Captain of Salads.    We need a few more section captains and we'll have the key staff in place.   Each "captain" will be responsible for recruiting their team members.   Sounds very organized and under control but I'm sure when the actual event occurs,  chaos will reign (we only have one evening and 1 day to get everything ready and we have to work around the hotel kitchen meal service).   

Now I have to develop some activities for my young kids English club (I do the club w/ Dustin and Lindee and they have visitors from US this week and wont be there) tonite and the adult English club tomorrow. 

Enough for now.  

Antibes France

Beach off of the ramparts (looks like an ancient wall that may have been a fortress). 

view of my hotel from the pool.   My room it on the upper flooor - closed shutters on the right.   We can see the mediterranean from the window. 

Picasso museum on te ramparts at the mediterranean. 

Andrea and I stopped here to stick our feet in the sea so we can say we

 

were in the mediterannean. 

This is the open market.   Such an array of herbs, olives, vegetables, cheese, sausage.   Oh my.   My suitcase will be considerably heavier when I leave. 

  These are pics from Marmashen, a medieval church/monastery near Gyumri.   My friend Mimi and I visited this summer.   As you can see, its a lovely setting.   Hard to imagine how life was when these structures were built in the late 900s to 1100s a.d.   

The pics below are of a camp I visited to help my organization work on a grant proposal.   Caritas sponsors a camp for disabled children every summer.    My Caritas colleagues and I came up a day before the camp opened to set things up and work on this proposal.   The pic on the left shows one of the dorm buildings on the campsite.   The pic on the right is the group bathrooms - actually very nice - flush toilets and running water all day - not all that common in camp sites around the country.   

I'm writing these blog updates from my room in Antibes, France where I am ending a 5 day vacation.    I'll put some of the pics from here in the next post.    Because of the way  the blogger software works,  its easier to add pics then write.   

So one more blog then I'm through for awhile.   

I'll be sending a fairly detailed email to several of you to describe a very exciting village business project I'm working on.   I've avoided asking friends and colleagues for funds to help out w/ the many needy situations I've encounter.   I wanted to wait until a really exciting opportunity occurred and I think I've found it.   Since this blog is more of a travelogue,   I'll send the info separately.   However, if anyone is intriqued by this teaser and wants to find out more,  email me and I'll give you details.   

Thanks for all your patience waiting for me to start writing again.   I'd love to hear from you. 

Elizabeth

Where has she been?

Dear Faithful readers,  

I 'm surprised at how long its been since I last posted.   This has been a whirlwind of a summer.   Here are a few highlights:

- new vols have come, completed pre-service training and been sworn in.    I visited the training site a few times for presentations.   The most popular was the cooking day when several of us made a big array of dishes for the new vols.   I made satay salad (really yummy), humus, salsa and lavash chips.   Other dishes included egg rolls, pad thai, date bars and choc chip cookies.   The newbies were wowed.   After nearly two months of Armenian food only, they were really happy to experience some variety and glad to find out that its all doable w/ local ingredients. 

- the old vols have left.   I find I miss the friends I made, especially the Gyumri vols.    One of them (Scott) announced in July that he was engaged and would get married as soon as he left service in August.    Here are scott, brian and Dominic on the day Scott told us about the engagement.   That's scott on the left with glasses.   

Fourth of July party at Brian's place.   

Another good bye dinner at my friend Anahit's house.   That's her baby in the swing and her husband w/ the beard. 

- went to a Green camp in July.   This was a group of 40 kids led by Armenian and Peace Corps counselors - one week day camp w/ a focus on environmental issues.   My friend Patti and I cooked for the counselors every night.    

Here are all the kids after they had cleaned up trash at a local park.   

I have more news and more pics which I will  add to another post. 

a wonderful day

I have been remiss about posting lately. You'll see a few pictures here. You can see others at www.dropshots.com/elizpou

Now I need to describe this past weekend, a series of delightful experiences. Friday, a group of vols gathered at the one place where we have outdoor space and had a breakfast for dinner party. Everyone brought appropriate dishes like pancakes, eggs, cinnamon rolls. I made ham biscuits and fruit smoothies. A fun dining experience. I highly recommend it.

Saturday, one of my fellow vols came to Gyumri to conduct interviews of local teens for a two week international camp led by Peace Corps volunteers. I joined her for the interviews that afternoon - a great opportunity to glimpse Armenian teenage thoughts and opinions. Ate lunch at a local Georgian restaurant (lots of melted cheese) with the vols who were interviewing as well as two Armenians who are working with the camp. I continue to be impressed at how well the Armenians who speak English do it.

Afterwards, a nice walk to the shooka for some fresh veggies (strawberries are in season now and lovely - eggplants are here as well as fresh lettuce and assorted herbs), a quick visit to the park and then home to cook up a few things for dinner. My visiting friend and I had a pleasant quiet evening working a hard jigsaw puzzle. I have to remember that just because I love VanGogh's paintings doesnt mean that it will be a joy to assemble a puzzle of a VanGogh. I would have appreciated more straight lines and clear colors. Maybe Mondrian.

Sunday, I went on an "art tour" sponsored by a local hotel and a woman from Yerevan. The other tourists were an older couple visiting their daughter and her friend. The daughter is a fullbright scholar studying in Armenia and her friend is doing some graduate research here. Two local Gyumritzis guided us. One of them took us on a walking tour in the old district. While I was quite familiar with the streets, I heard several good stories about the history behind some of the beautiful buildings. Gyumri was a well known center for the arts from the late 1800s until the earthquake in 1988 which destroyed the city and the heart of the art scene.

This pic illustrates a classic jerry-rigged electrical system.

(Some of the pics here are going to be out of order as rearranging things is quite a challenge with this particular software).
















Then we visited a local sculptor at his studio. The piece he is showing here is his effort to show the beauty he sees in women who are not considered classic beauties (read: thin). The other pic shows some of the instruments in his studio.








https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz2g1HN7KDhpm4YtAQsAwVunrrpfvMmkvblI9nWCsfHeRD2UrKoHoS_IktCw8JB4aRs8ReHQmUQWI-2vGLkdQlZ6qmtTf0jsj67Ts3aO-9ybQeGxk4d8F10-e_BjOXfUtBhFFLMIGyH9s/s1600-h/P5242306.jpg (This might show you a pic of one of the buildings on the tour - or not).








Another pic of the artist with one of his pieces. The artist was very generous with his time and answered all our questions about his process. In addition to his conversation about passing on the beauty of ordinary women, he talked about another series of pieces that are parts of armour - without a knight inside. The idea is that the trappings may be there, but there are no more knights. Alluding to the loss of virtue and civility in modern days.





Then we went to one of my favorite places for lunch, the fish farm. As you can see, the setting is bucolic and the day was perfect for outdoor dining.




The pools are where the fish are raised, fed by flowing natural springs on the property. They have sturgeon (good caviar), rainbow and golden trouts (my favorite). They grill the fish and serve with traditional Armenian side dishes. Lots of fresh herbs now that spring is here and lavash they make in their own ovens.










After lunch we watched the horse and colt as some locals tried to interest their children on getting on top of the horse. A couple of them did and they were taken on short walks around the property, fathers close by. The path you see in the background leads to my apartment. I'm only about a 10 minute walk from the fish farm.



The pic below is looking down at the fish farm from the walk to my place. The scary dog is on a chain. He lunges at everyone who passes. Thank heavens the chain holds.



















This out of order picture shows some of the knights I mentioned earlier.

I took many more pics on Sunday than I can show here. Go to the dropshots site to see more.


The new volunteers arrive in a few days. Its getting exciting to think about meeting them. Its nice being on this side of the learning curve. They will be the ones asking all the dumb questions for us to answer.









The spring weather, while rainy on several days, has been great. Several shirtsleeve days. Long periods of daylight - nearly 10 pm before it gets dark.

1000 words

making lavash in a village. Once the dough rises, the ladies on the right roll it out thin, the lady over the hole which is a VERY hot brick oven puts the lavash in the oven and takes it out, fully cooked in about two minutes.
view of Mount Aragats from the Manookyan bridge
cemetary in Echmiadsin, site of old Armenian church complex that was the seat of Christianity for the country.

road repair in Gyumri

more road repair

Pruning trees in Gyumri - can you hear them crying?

There are many more pics on my dropshots site (www.dropshots.com/elizpou

Serpentine, shel, serpentine

 

Sorry I havent written since Istanbul.   Spring-induced torpor.   Spring actually started in March this year (late March, but March).   Today the temp was in the low 70s.   Mostly it is in high 50s-60s.    Cold at night.   My favorite season.    Green is starting to appear on trees and bulb flowers are peeking out of the ground.  

 

I'm trying to start some tomato seeds to grow some heirlooms over here. We'll see.   They are at the two leaf stage now and I have no access to good growing medium or fertilizer of any kind.   I'll poke around in the hardwareish stores near the shooka this weekend and see if I can't find something to give these sprouts a chance. 

 

A couple of stories:

 

1.  A friend at Caritas invited me to Easter dinner with her family.   I came early and sat with her in the kitchen watching her and her mother in law cook.  Kind of strange for me to be a spectator in a kitchen.   That's not the normal order of things.    Lots of hardboiled eggs for the table, dyed with natural dyes so a little more quiet than what you see in the US.   They actually eat the eggs here, not hide them in the grass.   Some of the other traditional dishes included boiled rice with raisins (no other seasonings that I could discern), baked fish, various cooked greens w/ yoghurt on top, another green called aveluk which can be quite tasty cooked with garlic.  Sort of a bitter green like collards or chickory.  

 

An easter dinner tradition is to click eggs with another person and try to break theirs and keep yours whole.   I tried a couple of times.   The 5 year old daughter beat me.   Of course, she used a trick egg.  There is apparently technique to this, but it is not yet a recognized sport.   Look for egg cracking at the olympics one of these days.

 

2.  Roads

 

I'll definitely have to include some pics here.   Those of you who saw The In-Laws   -   the original version with Alan Arkin and Peter Falk understand the reference in the title of this blog.   The rest of you should rent this movie immediately and prepare to laugh out loud.  

 

Road repair is underway on the main street near my house.   Its done very differently from the US.   First,  a few crews dig out all the holes that need to be patched and configure the edges into a rectangle.   The holes are 6 to 8" deep.   Then, they leave....for weeks now.   There are no orange cones or anything else to mark these holes so every car riding down the street swings back and forth  in a snakelike pattern with very little attention paid to which side of the road you are on, just aiming for the  part where there are no holes.  

 

There must be 50 holes in less than a mile and some of them are 4 feet across.  No consistent pattern exists.    In the daytime you can see most of them and twist out of the way.  I'm sure at night the number of broken axles increases dramatically.  

 

3.   Pics for this part too.   I have a few examples of how Armenians prune trees.   What I learned at master gardner class about never, never topping off seems to be the opposite of what occurs here.   I'm not going to describe them here.   I'll take a few pics to illustrate and post them in the next couple of days.  

 

Most of the volunteers in the June class have been selected and they are busy emailing those of us on a group Armenia PC list and asking all the questions I asked last year.   Its nice to be on the other side of the queries about what to bring, what to leave, what's it like and how about that language.     I've heard there are 13 vols in the 50+ group.   Let's hope more of them  stay than in my group (6 out of 10 are still here).    

Last post from Istanbul

You're probably tired of hearing about Istanbul. Just a few last notes. We did get to the Dolmabache Palace. It was opulent beyond belief. Versailles on the Bosphorus, with more furniture. My recollection of Versailles is that many of the rooms were empty. This place is still furnished as it was when the Sultans lived there.

Here is a pic of me with one of the guards at the Bosphorus gate. Here is the gate that faces the street. We were moved through the required tour (it would be dangerous to let tourist roam through such valuable items by themselves) so fast there was no time for pictures. I'm sure you can find some on the internet if you are really interested.

We made it to the Hagia Sophia - another splendid creation - full of beautiful mosaics as well as the ubiquitous Isnik tiles.

We continued to hunt for restaurants that had fish.
Here's one display.

We also ate under this bridge one day with the fishermen above dropping lines right outside the restaurant windows. One of my favorites was the grand bazaar. 4000 shops under one roof with many more in the alleys outside the main building. It is sheer luck alone that I made it out of there with only 3 shirts and a copper coffee set. I nearly succumbed to the extremely good knock off designer bags. I still think about the red Prada knock off I walked away from. Its hard to walk away in this country. Every store and restaurant has a roper standing outside entreating you to come in. They follow you down the street ---"lady, lady wont you come and see my store, no obligation, come in, please...." The only way to deal with this is to treat it as their accepted cultural behavior, say no thank you, walk on or make a joke and leave. Doesn't matter if they are still talking when you walk away. Its a special challenge walking down a street of restaurants, most of which are offering the same thing and all insisting on you coming into their place.

We also walked around neighborhoods where real people lived. I like this shot of the house that's seen better days with the crisp white dresses fluttering outside. This is a park that is just like any other park except the women are all wearing scarfs.



Patti and I are hanging around the last few hours before our plane. Time for one more meal. Today was the perfect day climate-wise. Temp had to be in the mid-60s, sunny with only a slight breeze. Perfect for the last tour of the spice bazaar.

Back to Armenia and winter.