A pic

Here's a picture of my new school, taken from their website.

Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE...

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...and Happy Birthday to Donna!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

School at last

On Monday, I found out that I got accepted to QSI (quality schools international.) I was also informed that I would be starting on Tuesday. So I went out, bought a few school supplies, and went the next day. My "homeroom" was really nice. There are 5 girls and 4 boys. One girl is from Norway, one is from Uzbekistan, one is from India, and one is from Greece. And there are two Armenian guys, one half japanese -half dutch guy, and an Iranian guy. In some of my classes, there are only 3 girls. I’m taking geography and algebra 2 alone, online, in a small computer room with two other students doing something else. Yeah. Anyway, for a first day, it went pretty well. One of the first things I noticed was not only the difference in size (this school is tiny), but also how free everything was. I mean, some kids stay in the classroom for the next class, some leave. They go in and out as they please sometimes, and there are no bells between classes. Only after recess and lunch, but that's a real bell rung by a real person. Basically, it's less restricted in some respects. Still, it’s a very good school. It’s hard to describe the atmosphere there, but I like it.
I have to ride the mini- bus with a bunch of little kids who are usually very noisy. But some were very polite and introduced themselves.
Yeah, I have alot of catching up to do, but so far it's going great. Well, enough rambling.

Cascade

There is a very popular place in Yerevan called the Cascade. This is basically a monumental stairway connecting the lower and upper parts of the city. That's where you go to find tourists and such, especially in the evening. It consists of many beautiful levels with gardens, fountains, statues, the whole enchilada. Various free outdoor concerts are held there. On one of our many visits, Mom and I saw some pretty interesting and breathtaking sights.

Here's a view or Mount Ararat (It's a little hard to see), and a bit of the very pretty park in front of the Cascade.

And here's a view of the lower part of the Cascade, with my favorite statue: a rabbit in running position (look closely).

While we were on one of the middle levels, we looked down and saw a long bench directly below us.

Here's what was happening on the left side of the bench...

Here's what was happening on the right side of the bench...

I think this can safely be called the "love bench."

The royalties of fast food

Have you met Burger King's wife?





(This is an old picture taken a long time ago, but the place hasn't changed much, so I used this one.)

Overcoming the cow

So, it's getting colder here in the city. And, as you can probably imagine, we didn't bring too many warm clothes from Southern California... What does one do? Go shopping, right? So we went shopping.

Boots were our number 1 concern, and I must say that we all got them now, even though they were all rather expensive. Unfortunately, there are no real good thrift stores in Armenia yet. Not even Payless or China Town open market. Anyway...

The prices weren't fun, but some of the things we encountered along the way definitely were. For example, a conversation in a shoe store. It was crowded there, and only one salesperson, so we tried to find the size we needed ourselves in a stack of boxed boots. The associate was upon us immediately:

- Please don't touch the box. If you wait, I'll help you in a little bit.
- Sorry, we are in a hurry, - I told her, because Vicky had to get to work.
- Well then, you may leave and come back some other time.

Well, I doubt we will. We got the boots elsewhere.

Then, there was a small shop where the jeans carried truly outstanding labels like Nini Horse, JingPinFuShi, and, my personal favorite, Overcome the Cow. Have you overcome your cow yet? I know I haven't...

Finally, after much walking and freezing and trying on shoes and pants, we (Roxy and I) thought we should get a bite to eat. A new Chinese restaurant just opened downtown, so we walked there and sat down. There were red lanterns, folding screens, shining silverware and waiters in Chinese shirts. And when we opened the menu, there were truly exotic dishes that no Chinese would recognize as their own, such as (and I quote) Garlik Biff, Aromatik Chicken, Soy Souce, and (Roxy's personal favorite) Pork with Fish Smell. The place too, according to the menu, was called a Restourant... In short, almost every line in the menu had a spelling error, both English and Russian. After laughing all this off, we got up and left. If the owner can't hire a decent translator for his menu, one can only guess what he has inside those exotic dishes...

We didn't go hungry, in case you were wondering. There is a really nice Mexican restaurant called Cactus right next door to the unfortunate Chinese one, so we went there and stuffed ourselves silly. And, in all fairness, most of the restaurants we visited so far were really nice, too. And inexpensive. We just never had a chance to tell you that.

Random thoughts and pics

Roxy watching the blooper reel for the Pirates of the Carribean. I think she was talking to the guy, don't you?


Vicky - sick. Her phrase of the week was: "What I ate has nothing to do with me barfing!"
Of course not! I mean, really!

Roxy, on a beautiful Sunday morning, fresh out of church. Did I mention that the temperature have dropped below freezing last week and it already snowed in some parts of the city? Thus, the polar explorer's outfit...

Hedgie pics

Alas, Hedgie is still here. I hope we will soon release him into the wild where he belongs. Meanwhile, my house looks (and smells) a lot like a zoo, but we get some close-ups of wild things without endangering our lives. Here is a portrait of our hedgehog...

...and here, he (for he is now a confirmed "he") is begging to let him into the kitchen, where the yummy smells are coming from.

The new arrival!

Now, about our new arrival. About three days ago, we had guests over. The same family that we visited in Bjurakan at their summer house (see previous posts about our trip). Before the guests arrived, Mom came home with a little surprise- a hedgehog which she found in the park across from our house. I got to hold it, and let me tell you- this is one no-nonsense prickly thing. We showed it to the guests and agreed that we will keep it for two weeks until we go to their summer house and release it there, where it's quiet. I call it the hedgie, or Sonic the Hedgehog. Here's a pic that I took recently. We will hopefully have some better pics once it gets accustomed to our house. For now, it sleeps all day and is awake by night. We gave it a bed with some newspapers, and it tears them up at night, then goes exploring, while leaving its droppings everywhere (which i later have to clean). They love newspapers, and poor Vicky has to listen to the scratching and grumbling all night while it builds a nest out of them. A very noisy animal altogether.

Isn't it cute?