I had a great time last night catching up with my good friend C. from Holland who is here for almost six weeks. We ended up at Square One for dinner and while we were sitting outside, my boyfriend's best friend passed by. He joined us and the three of us had a great evening with lots to talk about. Right now C. is working as a campleader at a volunteer camp in Yerevan, after that he will stay for another two weeks or so trying to set up a project of his own. C. was here last year as well, and has since had some ideas he wants to put into action. I really hope the plans for his project will work out, as they combine some of the things he is very passionate about. C. really deserves that! I will try to write more about this when the time is there and when there is more clarity on how things will go. Anyway, It is so nice to have one of my friends here!

Together with my parents, I visited my best friend A.'s family in Spitak, my "Armenian family" (A.'s parents jokingly call me their third and youngest daughter). It turned out to be a very memorable visit both for me and for my parents and for our hosts as well. My parents were able to communicate directly only with A., with her brother-in-law and two of the elder children around, who all speak and understand some English. Nonetheless, everyone was able to understand each other with my translating from and into Russian, Dutch and English and with the help of hands and feet. We spent the evening eating khorovadz, drinking (I had to translate all the toasts, and drink some myself.....), talking and laughing. Not only A., her parents, brother and his wife and two kids where there, but also A.'s sister and her husband and children, an uncle who happened to drop by but ended up staying all evening and a niece who is spending part of her summer vacation with the family.

A's brother-in-law had just returned from Holland, where he had spent two weeks looking around in the health care sector. He is a family doctor / general practitioner and heads a G.P.'s practice in Spitak. In Armenia the G.P. is a fairly new phenomenon, most people still go immediately to a hospital and/or to a specialist if they need to see a doctor. However, in Holland G.P.'s have been around for a very long time, so it was an interesting opportunity for A.'s brother-in-law to look around, see how a Dutch G.P.'s practice is organized, etc. With my parents both working in the health care sector as well, the three of them had a lot to talk about (but they had already found that out when they first met a year ago).

Often friendship with local Armenians turns into getting to know the extended family - parents, uncles, aunts, siblings with their spouses, grandparents, etc. Sometimes this gets to be a bit of a pain in the behind, but in the case of A.'s family it definitely doesn't. Over the years I have got to know most of her relatives who live in or near Spitak. Especially A.'s sister and brother-in-law and their two kids are wonderful people, with whom I get along very well and who have become friends in their own right.

The next day A. took us to the center of Spitak. The town has a nice, big park with a lake which is now very dilapidated with old benches partly falling apart and an old playground with caroussels that are still working but by the look of it have turned into a safety hazard for anyone using them. However, the park is still covered with large, old trees, which, if you think of it (which I obviously never had before ;-) ), is a rare feat considering that due to the energy crisis in the mid 90s, the population has cut down almost all of the trees growing in Spitak and on the slopes surrounding the town in order to heat their homes in winter. Even though I had been to the park so many times before, I somehow never realized how old the trees in the park are and that it is special that they are actually still standing there. A. told us that during the years of the energy crisis, the trees were continually guarded by policemen to make sure they would not be cut. These trees in the park are probably the only ones or among the very few (old) trees left in the town.

A. also showed my parents where she and her family lived before the 1988 earthquake and in the years after it, before they moved to the house they live in now. She also told us about how her family experienced the earthquake. I already knew most of her history, but it was very moving to hear it again. Everyone in Spitak has similar stories to tell, but no matter how often you hear them, they remain spine-shivering. The earthquake is not something that comes up in every conversation, but it is always there, not too far beneath the surface. A. expressed this very well, when she said that most people in Armenia only saw the earthquake on tv. For those people, and also for the children born in the earthquake zone after 1988 and now growing up there, the event is history, hearsay. However, for those who lived through the earthquake and its aftermath, it is not just history, it is their own history, it is part of their lives, something that will always be with them, wherever they go, until the day they die.

Something I can't really get used to is the way people answer the phone by just saying "Allo". I guess I am still used to the Dutch way, where people say their name when they answer the phone. I am not good at recognizing voices on the phone and I often forget to ask someone's name. My boyfriend keeps getting annoyed when I tell hime someone wants to speak to him, but I don't know who it is.

In the end our cat didn't survive her fall. She died Friday evening. She was doing well until four or five days ago. However, when we woke up about five days ago, she wasn't getting up, not walking around, not eating, hardly drinking water. We still don't have a clue as to what might have happened, neither does the vet. By Thursday, she seemed to improve a bit. Friday evening though, while I was reading my email and she was lying underneath the desk at my feet, she suddenly started breathing heavily and next thing I knew, she had died. We'll miss Yin-Yang, she was a kind, smart little lady.

My parents arrived this morning. They'll be here for ten days, partly on business (my dad), but for the most part on vacation. We'll do some sightseeing, go to Spitak and in general catch up on things. My boyfriend and I picked them up at the airport, where we ran into another friend of ours who had just arrived from Beirut, where he had spent a week with his relatives. It seems every time I am at the airport, I run into someone I know. Small town, small country. Also, it seems that every time I am at the airport, something seems to have changed. This time it was the payment for parking at arrivals. You used to have to give the guard 500 drams or something like that upon entrance to the parking lot, now you get a ticket from one of those machines where you have to hang out of your car window in an effort to push the button and grab the ticket. You pay when you leave and you pay according to the amount of time you spent at the parking lot, so no standard fee anymore.

My parents brought me my quarterly load of reading material: some magazines and especially some books I asked them to bring. I am especially looking forward to a few of them in particular. Firstly, there is the latest novel by Jonathan Safran Foer "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close". He is a Jewish American writer whose debut "Everything Is Illuminated" was a big bestseller two years ago. It is high on my list of all-time favorites and I highly recommend it, so you can imagine I am looking forward to reading his new novel. The second book I am looking forward to is "Putin's Russia" by Anna Politkovskaya. She is a well-known Russian journalist who is very critical about the authorities. Her topics include the ongoing war in Chechnya and human rights issues. She is one of the few who writes critically in the Russian press (or at least tried to) about the situation in Chechnya. Most reports about Chechnya in the Russian press are pro-government. Politkovskaya has occassionally been harrassed by the authorities because of her articles. "Putin's Russia" should be an interesting read. Thirdly, my parents brought me a book that I hadn't asked for, but they bought it after reading some reviews about it. It is a collection of essays and portraits of Armenians from all over the world and from all walks of life. The book is called "Portraet einer Hoffnung - Die Armenier" ("Portaits of Hope - The Armenians") edited by Huberta von Voss. The book is in German, so it's a good reason to brush up my German. I speak it rather fluently, but for the last ten years or so, I haven't read much in German.

Also, my parents brought me a pile of newspaper clippings about Armenia, the Genocide and the Caucasus in general. They are from two Dutch newspapers, De Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, generally considered to be the two best newspapers in the country, and from the Frankfurter Allgemeine, the leading German newspaper (one of my parents' neighbors apparently receives this paper by mail, and my parents borrow it, I guess). Obviously, Armenia and the Genocide have been an issue in German newspapers over the past months, with Germany recognizing the Genocide a few weeks ago, but I was rather surprised at the amount of articles from the two Dutch newspapers. It's good to see that there apparently is growing interest in Armenia in Dutch media.

So, if I am not blogging for the next couple of weeks, you know what I am doing......!

Living in Armenia, there is not much I miss, but there are two things that I do miss very much. One is, you probably guessed it by now, a good bookshop with a good selection of (recent) fiction and non-fiction where you can spend hours browsing around. The other is a good movie theater where they show something else than the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Fortunately, some of the embassies organize cultural programs with recent movies from their countries every now and then, but somehow I always seem to find out about them after the end of the series! And, next week there is the Golden Apricot International Film Festival here in Yerevan. I had a look at teir program, and it looks interesting. I hope I will be able to take in some of the events. I was actually supposed to work as a volunteer hostess/guide/translator at the festival, but I had to cancel that when I found out my parents would be here right at that time.