I have a few unrelated topics to write about...

People have asked me what the locals reaction was to the attacks in the US, and I would say they were amazed, and a number of acquaintances and strangers asked if everyone we knew was OK, and just gave their sympathies in general. Armenia is a strange little country which loves America AND Russia, plus has extremely close ties with Iran and the Arab world and an extremely similiar history to the Jews...

I was going to write about a tourist who came in the other day and asked me if all parts of Yerevan were as safe as he was experiencing... and I noticed Madlene writing about her aunt being pick pocketed... I have never heard of that ever happening in this country, I think it is more likely that she dropped/lost it than that it was stolen, but maybe someone came back from Russia with a new trick? I hope not... the tourist who came in talking about the safeness here mentioned how young kids were playing on the streets at 10pm with no supervision and girls were walking home late by themselves. I told him that yes, this is how the whole city and country is. It is one of the most beautiful things about living here and I hope it never changes...

I would like to address Ashots post also... people here do know how to protest, he is mistaken. It was the Karabakh protests in Yerevan (1988) of crowds surpassing a MILLION people that rocked the foundations of the Soviet Union and led to the collapse. I don't know if in history a third of the inhabitants of a country participated in such protests. In this ArmenTel fiasco, there have been student protests already, and I for one will follow the current call to refuse to pay the per minute charges, even if they cut off my phones. At this point with the government saying nobody will have to pay these charges it is hard to say if there is a reason to protest or not... aside from nasty e-mails to OTE, the owner of ArmenTel.

I forget what else I meant to talk about, however I would like to say that the positive reactions that continually come from readers of this log make us all feel warm and fuzzy ;-)

(Picture is of my new house before I moved in)