With the departure of the last batch of the LCO volunteers, summer has officially ended for me. This calls for a celebration!!
The summer zoomed by. It was full and tiring, fun but short. My parents and Lara's parents' came to visit. My aunts were in town as well. Other friends from Montreal had come to Armenia... all during the same period. That's when we had organized Varanta's baptism (see previous logs). The LCO guys were great. The campaigns went smoothly with some exceptions which is sort of expected when you work in a village with villagers. You can see some of the pictures on armeniadiaspora.com.
On another note, I witnessed the training of about 3 dozen soldiers who were preparing to head off for a peace keeping mission in Kosovo and Iraq. This made feel proud since it indicated that our military has reached a certain standard that it is involved with international projects. Don't get me wrong, I think the Armey here still has a long way to go. There are still unjust and criminal actions that need to be looked into as well as the whole macho approach to protectiong our country. What I mean is, like Israel and Swiss, we need to think of inviting ALL citizens to military training... men and women. We are not a country with lots of capable people, so we should invest in all our potential and get the smart and devoted women involved especially since they make up the majority of the population here.