Filling in the gaps

Emma’s smart, I mean really smart. She got her blog posts up before me after the Gyumri trip and cornered the whole market. Now I’m standing here with more is less the same experiences as her. Well played, that’s all I have to say. There is however something I can do, fill in the gaps with some short anecdotes

Group photo at the birthright office in Gyumri

First of all, this will be a fragmented post, but what else would you expect with a title like “filling in the gaps”? This is the first real excursion Emma and I do with AVC and Birthright and it’s been a lot of fun and really intense. If Emma’s mental age has been 75 this trip, mine has been 115. I think a combination of sleep deprivation, sensory overload and a flock of volunteers really took its toll.

Leo Zakarian after socializing for like 4 hours

I’ve been curious about Gyumri ever since we arrived in Armenia. It used to be a thriving city before the earthquake in 1988 that devestated the town. It’s a strange sensation walking around in a city and seeing the remnants of the tragedy, mixed in buildings that have been restored or rebuilt. It is however a nice town, I’d like to visit again, if not for the city than the fish restaurant we visited. Best fish in my life hands down!

It had to be quite a sight with 80 people that don’t really fit in walking the streets of Gyumri taking pictures of whatever they could find. We were gathering at a place near an roundabout when a guy in a Toyota corolla, with a hookah in the car was just driving round and round looking at us