Arrival in Armenia

Peace Corps personnel met us at the airport, which was a welcome relief, after the Vienna mess.

We were directed to a luggage van and a big bus for all of us. All the bus seats contained a nice “welcome” bag, with little goodies: water, an apple, candy bars, gum, wet wipes, tissues, and the like. Fun!

They first brought us to the “Zvartnots” ruins, a circle of columns that used to be a big church. It was beautiful. They served us bakery that was very delicious, coffee, water, and tea.

Zvartnots Ruins

More of the ruins at sunrise

Then we had the opportunity to walk through and around the ruins, and came across the absolutely stunning view of Mt. Ararats. Wow, what a big mountain. Gigantic! Fills the sky! Way, way, way bigger than Mt. Edgecumbe, which is the one mountain I am used to seeing in the (Alaska) skyline.

Mt Ararats

I could stare at that mountain forever.

And as we drove away, through Yerevan, you could see the mountain from everywhere.

Next we drove to our motel, where we would be staying for the next three days, for a little bit of training and a chance to get our bearings before going to live with our first host families.

The drive was about an hour, up and down mountain passes. This landscape is very green and hilly. It’s like someone took a sheet of paper and crumpled it all up, then smoothed it out very slightly. No flat spots anywhere! It’s gorgeous. [I have since learned that Armenian terrain is very diverse, so this region is not what the entire country looks like.]

One weird thing was seeing all the abandoned brick and stone buildings. Factories? Warehouses? Mining buildings? I couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be, but it was almost eerie. Someone mentioned they look like construction sites, but there is no construction equipment, which is what makes them look so odd. Abandoned. Why? Is it just like the Copper Country, where the mining buildings are all in ruin, but everything else is still running and functioning normally? Or is it something more political, with projects that ran out of people and money to finish them? I don’t know enough about this place to say.

Signs are written in Armenian, of course, so as we drove through the city streets, I tried sounding out the words. But my mind ran too slowly through the sounds of the foreign alphabet that I had tried to memorize back home, and when I got stuck on the first or second letter, we were passed the sign before I could look at the third letter and come up with the sound for that one. Signs are also written in Russian, and some are Armenian but transliterated in English. So I could read some things, but still had no idea what they said.

Next entry will be about our stay at the hotel.