It has been 1701 years of Christianity being adopted as a state religion in Armenia, and there are 1701 addresses in my email address book. Numerologists, tell me what this means... :-)

What a nice weekend, so relaxing. Saturday was a nice, slow day. I picked up my rug which I had taken for repair, and it looked good. I bummed around, went out for some Thai food, and took it easy. Sunday I went to a co-workers summer house (Amaranots/Dacha) near Garni where we had a great bbq. I know what Ara means about relaxing day. Her dacha is at the edge of the huge canyon, with the river running below, a pool at almost the edge of the cliff, and a small orchard. We were sitting and laying on the edge, with our feet in the water... okh, it was so amazing how you get transported to a better place. It was too cold to swim in, but a couple of people braved it for a few minutes each. There were two Americans, I was the diasporan, and seven locals, most of whom had spent a lot of time abroad. This made for a very interesting mix and conversation. One of the guys has a very interesting business going, and I will definitely go and check it out. It is involved in a number of unrelated activities, but I want to see the tile production myself.

Last night a large group got together at a cafe by Opera to say goodbye to a few of those leaving us this morning. They are all up in the air now, overloaded with goodies from Armenia. Hopefully they have a pleasant journey and find all their stuff in the baggage carousel in America. I saw folks I had not seen in too long, and just drank loads of fluids to fight the heat. It is definitely August weather now. A half a dozen friends have left this week, and most of them would have stayed if they could find decent jobs. It really makes me appreciate mine and wonder how more job opportunities can be created here for everyone, so that nobody has to leave Armenia to find work. One way of course would be for diasporans to open loads of businesses :-)