Yesterday was incredibly productive. I ordered a nice wood door with steel insides from one guy, I bought the kitchen/bathroom tiles, and ordered bedroom/closet doors as well as some furniture from Yura, a carpenter from Vanadzor. He will do the doors for waaaay less than all these other clowns. So everything is picked out pretty much, I just need a few other pieces of furniture, which I will probably have Yura make since everything I have seen in stores so far is pretty butt ugly. After that I will get a couple of appliances and finis!

Officer Hakob Mkhitaryan's Lecture on our (lack of) Rights

So Yesterday we had a run in with the police (again!). My own remodelers were taking me around to get the aforementioned items, when as often happens, a cop on the side of the road indicates you over for no reason at all (aside from a bribe). My remodeler (as often happens) ignored the theif and kept driving. The cop radioed ahead to the next policeman along the road - they really are everywhere here - and warned him of our approach. This cop, Hakob Mkhitaryan (Badge number 0347) stood in the middle of the road and forced us over. I got out and asked what we had done wrong to begin with etc, and him and his partner got incensed that I would dare to ask such a thing. They were asking where I was from so they could determine if they could get away with kicking my ass, (this is what they do to locals who ask questions or talk back if they don't have important friends) and were really mad that I was from America. His parter Rafael took my remodeling guy up to the first cop to write him up a ticket, which is a big pain in the butt because of the way they set things up here. He no longer would take the bribe since I had pissed them off. During this time I went over to Officer Hakob to get his name for you and he refused to tell it to me, instead telling me I have no rights in this country ("Iravunk Chunis") and go back to your country ("G'na ko Yerkir'")... Hell, I thought that was what I was doing all this time ;-) So I wrote down his badge number at this point and he decided he may as well tell me his name now that I have his ID anyways. He told me to go print it ("Kna d'be). I assured him I would and returned to the car to wait for my remodeler whose only fault (they never mentioned any other) was ignoring the theifs command to pull over for the fleecing. Now as I am sitting in the car waiting, Officer Hakob apparently had to give me more of his mind. He came over and sat IN the car and tried to chew me out some more. He said "Kayl angam dujh dur", which I don't know what it means even, mentioned he was from Arshaluys Village near Echmiadzin (apparently in order to prove he was not embarrased of his behavior and identity anymore), mentioned Yerkrapakh, and started trying to explain how police relations are with people in Hollywood, CA (in a further attempt to prove that his thievery is not so bad) before finally leaving me alone. All I can say is go to hell Officer Hakob. You are the reason this economy collapsed, and people are hungry and leaving by the thousands.

I hope I am not dwelling on the negative too much, this whole thing took only 10 minutes in otherwise a great day, but since this is the biggest problem in Armenia right now, I feel I must dedicate some space to it even though the police cannot harm me personally.