How do you make new friends while you’re in Armenia? Well you just jump in to conversation, go with the flow and try to remember everyone’s name along the way.
I’m not going to start by talking about new impressions again, cause you’ll just think we copy-paste it from the previous 300 posts about new impressions. No instead we’re going to talk about the hectic life of trying to balance work, language classes, interesting forums, gatherings, hanging out with the other volunteers and maybe somewhere in all of that, actually trying to spend some quality time with Emma.
Work is the easy part, I get there, say hi to my colleagues, sit and work on my interesting tasks (holding a presentation on Agile Transformation and Data Driven next Friday). No the real logistical magic show begins after that. It’s a mix of language classes (8 letters known, 31 to go), visiting different forums, going out drinking or eating dinner, seeing my host mother, hanging out with Emma, planning some adventures of our own, finding an apartment for October and yeah the list goes on. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really a positive kind of complaint. There’s just so much that I want to do when I’m here. We’re also planning a visit to the Swedish embassy, as well as meeting a few interesting people, both in politics and business. This is also one of the reasons why I haven’t had time to blog recently, It’s like the days are shorter in Armenia or something, I don’t know where all the hours are going.
Assorted volunteers – Missing, the other 80-100 of them
It’s been really fun to start going to language classes as well. I haven’t written or read any Armenian for the last 24 years or so. It’s painful being so awful at it but baby steps I guess. The classes are twice a week and we practice everything from reading to writing to telling stories etc. One thing that makes it harder is that sometimes the there are differences in what things are called when you compare for example Iranian Armenian and regular Armenian. I know what something’s called, just to be reminded that it’s incorrect in Armenia. But I’m confident that with some practice, stubbornness and fear of failing I’ll be able to leave Armenia knowing how to read and right, even if it’s on a 6 year olds level.
This weekend we’re going to Gyumri, Armenias second largest city. I look forward to it a lot, I hope to have time to grab some nice aerial photage, another thing I’d like to put some time into. The same can be said regarding all the hiking Emma and I were supposed to be doing, again, time is not on our side so far. But we’re planning to go to Dilijan next weekend, it’s a scenic and green area just north of Yerevan. I’ll post the videos here once I get around to it, it’s supposed to be really beautiful.
Anyways, this post felt a bit fragmented and all over the place but it’ll have to do, I figured it’s better with a update than complete silence until the perfect blog-idea pops up.
If there’s anything you’d like to see more of, or less of for that matter please let us know. We’re happy to see people are reading our blog. Today a colleage at Ameria Bank came up to me and mentioned that she’s reading our blog and that she really enjoyed it. Especially my use of gifs and nonsensical pictures, they are basically the only thing on the table that are not subject to change on the blog.
Armenian adventures 