Body Art

Yesterday, the beauty salon downstairs had a TV crew over, filming them, and asked Vicky to be a model. You can see the results below - the hair, the makeup and the body art.

City views...

Just some pics for your enjoyment. All are clickable - enlargeable...

Ararat mountain as seen from my window. The annoying building with antennas on the left is the Department of National Security, formerly KGB.

Laundry World (as Roxy called it).

Grandmas

The spring has come and grandmas are out in the streets - begging, selling flowers and sunflower seeds, sitting in the sun. They definitely add flavor to the city; it wouldn't be the same without them.

Home makers

If you are living in the village of Ashtarak (we posted about it before), you will find yourself using strange materials for the building of your home. For example, you might use old rusty car parts to make a sturdy fence (although I don't exactly think it will keep anything out).






Also, if you really have to go and can’t make it to your luxurious outhouse, you might find it helpful to relieve yourself in your old abandoned roller coaster car.





Did I mention you could make a fence out of old car parts?

Winter fun at Tsakhkadzor

Tsakhkadzor is a resort, quite famous in Armenia and through nearby countries. People come all the way from Russia to ski here. We visited it once in the summer, but winter here is a totally different experience.

I couldn't help but to take a picture of this combination - a 1950 car, a woodpile, laundry and - naturally - a satellite dish!

Roxy and her Norwegian classmate Helen.

March 8

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY EVERYONE!!!

I wish all of you ladies happiness and love and many blessings.

A TEENAGER’S GUIDE TO COMPLICATING YOUR LIFE

You think your life is too plain and boring? Want to complicate the heck out of it? This simple procedure will work for anyone, of any age and walk of life. Follow it, and soon enough you will find your life very different.

First, you need to do something that you know for sure is wrong. It can be anything within you means – from stealing cookies from a cookie jar to telling a lie or taking a relationship too far - just as long as you know for sure it’s wrong and you shouldn’t be doing it.

Of course, knowing what you did is wrong, you will feel bad about doing it. It helps if you are a Christian indwelt by the Holy Spirit, because He will convince you of your guilt in no time. But even if you aren’t, you might have something called a conscience, or a “little voice inside” that will tell you just how bad you are.

Naturally, you wouldn’t want people to know you did it. So you’ll have to keep it a secret. This is a creative process and can include anything – from conducting all your phone conversations in whispers and hiding notes from friends to lying or drowning the murder weapon. As long as no one knows you did something wrong, you are safe. Of course, you will worry about keeping your secret safe all the time, but that’s perfectly normal and is expected at this stage.

If there is anyone in the world who really and truly loves you (parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, wives and husbands) they will, of course, soon sense there is something different about you. They will ask questions. This is normal, too. Do not answer those questions. Pretend nothing happened. The harder you pretend, the more convinced they will become that something is terribly wrong.

If they really care about you, they will try to find out what exactly happened, so that they can help you. Parents especially have a notion that they know better what’s good for you and will do anything to determine what is going on in you life. They will ask questions. They will talk to your friends. They will even go through your stuff and read you diary. They will search for information.

Resist it. Do not give in. Do not tell them what you did. Put you diary under you pillow at night. Swallow all correspondence after reading it. Take the phone to the bathroom and close the door before dialing someone’s number. Promise to kill anybody who gives you away. Do not answer any questions. If they insist, act indignant. If they plead, look cold and distant. If they threaten, break into hysterics (for girls) or turn violent and run away from home (boys). Alienating people who love you is an essential step, so make sure to go all the way.

For the process to be successful, at this juncture you would need a confidant or two. They don’t have to know what you have done wrong. All they need to know is that someone is bugging you for no obvious reason. A perfect candidate for such a confidant will be a person who doesn’t have someone to really love them. They will easily believe that your loving parent/spouse/whoever can be mean and cruel. Another good choice would be someone who doesn’t have a sense of right and wrong. You can even tell this person what you have done and they will tell you had every right to do it. They will tell you there is nothing wrong with you, and no one has a right to tell you otherwise. They will make you feel good for a little while.

From this point on, you may leave the process to itself – it will develop without any effort on your part. In fact, you might have to make a considerable effort to stop it – but that is not our purpose, so this guide will not dwell on that. It will be smooth sailing down the slope. To keep what you have done secret, you will have to do other wrong things, like lying or killing someone who knows your secret. And the more of them you do, the more secrets you will have to keep. The more you resist people who try to help you, the more you will dislike them for trying so hard, and the more you dislike them, the more you will resist. Once you distance yourself from the people who really love you, you will seek the company of people who make you feel comfortable, and the more time you spend with those people, the more wrong things you will do and have to hide…

The true success will come when you find yourself with a load of dirty secrets, no true friends, far, far away emotionally (and perhaps, physically) from people who care about you and with a future muddled by your past. This is the true purpose of this exercise, so aspire to it!

The Red Church at Tower City

The town of Ashtarak (meaning Tower) is not too far north from Yerevan. It's a sleepy little provincial town, much like a big village, with several old churches, an ancient bridge and several museums. So, on the first sunny Saturday of the spring Roxy and I took a bus there.

This here is Karmravor - the Red Church. Of all the churches in Armenia (and there are many) it is one of my favorites - so compact and pretty! It is also the only church that still has its original red tile roof - since 7th century!

Roxy mid-jump on the wall that surrounds the church.

This ancient cemetery is as old as the church.

The city.