Last night was the Miss Europe 2005 competition, and the final race was between Germany and Armenia! From (I think) 36 countries, 12 were chosen, followed by 5 (including Slovakia, Armenia, Germany, England and France.) Armenia became the 1st runner up after Germany won.

Anyway, back home from Paris. Of course had an awesome trip, but very cold. Meanwhile Yerevan has been having really nice weather, usually +10 to +16 temperatures, yet you look at the CNN website and it says minus temperatures for Yerevan. :-/ Propaganda?

Construction goes on, mostly new really ugly buildings and shops, but this city is so alive. My area is a complete disaster with mud everywhere. I just heard from a Syrian-Armenian family (that had recently moved here), that they know a lot of Syrian-Armenians who will be visiting Armenia this year, all interested in investing ... buying homes, opening up shops, and so on.

My entire family, for the first time ever "as a whole", will be visiting this spring. My dad has never seen Armenia yet, so hopefully with this trip he can decide if he wants to make this move (which he has been talking about for the past couple of years.) He is on early retirement, and my poor mom is really getting tired of working.

I want to pressure my neighbours into helping out clean and perhaps paint our building entrance and replace the windows, but it's not going to be easy. I know what my relatives went through doing their building. Once a week I clean the entire staircase of our building, and my neighbours walk by me and say nothing. On the first day I moved in, I told the neighbours on my floor that I hope we can keep our floor clean. Luckily they understood, and now our floor is the cleanest in the building.