Ode to Spitak

I spent most of my day yesterday driving throughout the Western most parts of Armenia with my boyfriend, traveling to a wedding in Arteni, a village so small and obscure most Armenians have never even heard of it. Over the course of 3 hours we saw many different small villages that we had never heard of before and of course we experienced Talin and Arteni first hand. I have to say, I am used to villages and small towns here but man did this experience open my eyes to how poor some parts of Armenia still are. It is very easy for me to live in Spitak which is a relatively big town and to forget what it used to be like living in Alapars where we had no running water and had to go to the stream to collect it a few buckets at a time. So anyways being in Arteni has made me appreciate my Spitak much more and I thought I'd share with you a video of my beautiful little spitak which I have grown to love and sometimes hate with love. By the way for you A-20ers, Spitak will become home to two or three of you in August!! I just hope you guys learn to love it as much as I do!!
And also I added a Sophie picture because really she is just so cute!

Things you see while walking the streets of spitak 2

So a few weeks ago I published a picture blog of all the strange things I see while walking around town... here
This is basically a continuation of that blog as I have had a week of spring break and not too much to do, I have been taking mini one to two hour hiking trips with Sophie, just going places we have never gone before... Here are some pictures from today's trip which was mostly warm weather and tons of mud. At one point I was ankle deep in the stuff!!! I was so ashamed walking back into the city center covered in mud, everyone staring at me... oh wait, they always stare at me no matter what!!! Point in case, yesterday I was walking with Sophie and off to the side were three little old me. I hear one of them say, this girl speaks Armenian. and the other says che ha?! (No yes?) the third says no she doesn't, she doesn't speak it at all. The first one raises his voice now and says Yes she does. She speaks very clean and proper Yerevan Armenian, and she even knows Spitak slang.... I am walking with my head down trying not to let on that I understand but trying to hold back from laughing at the same time. I don't know why I don't just interject and say well actually I do speak Armenian, I guess part of me likes that people don't think I understand them and talk about me as if I am not around. The other part is once people find out I speak Armenian we have a good solid ten minute conversation before they say something I don't understand, and then they are disappointed in me. It is just funny to me that after all this time, people in the streets are still so curious about me.