I am fully back in the swing of things now. After a 3 hour nap yesterday and seven hours of sleep last night I hope my jet lag is now totally behind me. Today I go to OVIR to finally apply for my 10 year visa. Now that my current visa is running out I may as well get the ten year. It looks just like the Armenian passport, except for a rubber stamp in it that says "special residency status". It is not dual citizenship, but it is easy to get and costs $300 or so. When I moved here almost 3 years ago, they were going through a period where they were not issuing the ten years which really pissed me off. Well anyways, I thought I would be clever and work around the system... I would apply for Armenian citizenship! In America when you get your green card you can live there the rest of your life without taking the final step and taking on American citizenship. Not that I don't want Armenian citizenship, I just don't want to give up my American citizenship which you have to do in Armenia which does not allow dual citizenship. Aaaanyways... to make a long story short, the guy in the citizenship office tells me that ordinarily the citizenship process takes a long time, but he thought he could process mine in an unheard of two weeks! Unheard of efficiency for Armenia. All I had to do was bring my US Passport with a stamp in it from the US Embassy saying that I have renounced my US Citizenship. Well, needless to say I thanked him and haven't returned to the citizenship office since. I believe that the only reason that the government here is not allowing dual citizenship is out of fear of the diaspora. They do not want to give any power or strength to this outside force. The diaspora might finally do something about the corruption which enriches those in government so much. As children of genocide however, the diaspora really ought to be able to maintain dual citizenship.