Shnorhavor Thanksgiving

I'm behind on my posting so today is going to be my catch up day on all the events of the last couple of weeks, which have been very busy. One of the questions I get most when I talk to my family and friends in the U.S. is what I do to celebrate American holidays here in Armenia. Luckily Armenia is a small country and it is fairly easy to travel around and visit other volunteers and because of this I've been fortunate enough to be able to celebrate among fellow volunteers. This Thanksgiving I celebrated at the apartment of my site mate Pat, who was kind enough to host a small dinner in Artashat. She even went so far as to go to the turkey farm and select our dinner! Together with Pat and fellow volunteers Beckey, Katrina, Katie, and David, I enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pecan pie. We even got to decorate a mini-Christmas tree after dinner!

Hello my name is Sarah and I am a knitting addict

Now I’m sure all my friends and family in America have this image in their minds of what exactly it is I’m doing here as a Peace Corps volunteer (saving the world one person at a time and all), but one thing I bet you don’t picture is the vast amount of free time the average PCV has in any given day. When Peace Corps is looking for our job placements the school/office must be able to provide 15-20 hours/week of meaningful work. I’m lucky and there is plenty for me to do at the mayor’s office, but coming from the U.S. where I was in class 12-15 hours/week, working 20 hours/week, and attempting to read about a 1,000 pages/week for grad school it is a huge difference. Many volunteers also find themselves with free time because of the differences in the work culture here compared with the hyper-efficient, always on the go nature of working in the U.S. Volunteers develop many interesting hobbies as a way of filling this new free time including reading, playing music, blogging, watching television and movies on our computers, hanging out with friends, and knitting.

A powerful cult of knitters has developed here in Peace Corps Armenia and volunteers are learning every day. Now I’m not sure if this happens in other Peace Corps countries in the Eastern Europe/Central Asia region, although I’m sure it does. I recently learned how to knit and I now must admit that “Hello my name is Sarah and I am a knitting addict.” I attempted to learn last year, but I only ever ended up with scarf fit for a mouse. My new site mate Pat is an avid knitter and when she moved to site she began teaching me again and I was hooked. This fall we would meet up at the outdoor cafe in Artashat (the town near my village, where Pat lives) and knit and drink a few beers. We were quite a scene! So far I have made six scarves, three pairs of arm warmers, and now I’m working on my first hat! Now in the evenings I sit in my house and either listen to music or watch a movie and knit. The contingent of knitters in Peace Corps is so strong that when we have our conferences and meetings you look down the conference table and there are probably ten people knitting while they listen.

So here are some pictures of my creations…

Բերքի Տոն 2010 & The Grand Opening of the Aygpeat Cultural House

On Thursday, November 11th I celebrated the grand opening of the Aygepat Cultural House, the community development project I have been working on since the spring. We planned the completion of the project so that the grand opening coincided with the annual Բերքի Տոն Harvest Festival. This year the festival included a khoravats (Armenian barbecue) feast following the traditional singing, dancing, and a sampling of the local fruits and vegetables of the harvest, along with homemade wine and cognac.







The Marzpet of Ararat Marz (the regional governor) attended along with his entourage of regional officials, which judging from the reaction of all the villagers and everyone who works in the mayor’s office this was a big deal, because it is the village’s way to stand out to the regional government. Apparently all our work is paying off because during the ceremony the Marzpet told the village mayor that the cultural house would receive chairs from the Parliament.




The staff of the municipality with Mayor Petrosyan

The Finished Product

The renovation of the Aygepat Cultural House is complete! Not only is it complete, but the project was finished on-time and on-budget. I'm so proud of everyone who worked on the project and now it's time to begin working on creating new community programs for the village. The first will the annual Berqi Ton Festival, celebrating the harvest. This year's festival will take place this coming Thursday - so more pictures to come!

Community Cultural Center Project Update

The renovation of the cultural center in my village is a month under way and is going really great. I had a status meeting with Stepan - my Peace Corps program manager - and Seroyzha - the mayor of the village - and according to the mayor the project should be done on schedule at the end of this month! I cannot believe that the renovation will actually be finished on schedule. I had already prepared myself for it to be at least two weeks behind schedule, if not a month. The mayor and the whole village has done an amazing job and the room already looks incredible. So without any further ado...here are some photos of the renovation process over the last month.

Առնում ներկ Հայաստանում

So the title of today’s adventure is առնում ներկ Հայաստանում or for those of you who don't know Armenian ‘buying paint in Armenia.’ As you may know I am working with my counterpart organization to open a community cultural house in my village. We received funding for the project at the end of July, but I was very busy working some summer camps so we had to wait a bit to being the project. When I returned from working an environmental camp in Idjevan the first week in August I was ready to begin working on the project. One of the hardest things about working in Armenia is dealing with delays and working in an extremely different work culture. In the United States, we are very focused on being efficient and keeping to a project's schedule, but here it seems as if the timeline for every project or task must be padded because there will always be delays. It feels like everything here takes twice as long as it would in the States. For example, while I was under the impression that we would start cleaning out the project space the second week of August, it didn’t actually happen until the third week. So for an entire week I was waiting around and asking my counterpart when we would start and the only response I ever received was we will let you know.

The cleaning of the room was scheduled to be completed by the 13th, but it was actually completed on Friday, August 20th and when I came into the office that day meet with the mayor and my counterpart they told me that everything was ready and that now they were just waiting on me because the grant money is in my bank account. I made arrangements with the mayor to go to Artashat so we could go to the bank and purchase the renovation materials and supplies on the following Tuesday. However, when I arrived at the office on Tuesday to meet the mayor my counterpart told me that the mayor was in Yerevan! This is not the first time this has happened and I don’t know how to change it. The mayor is a middle-aged man and it is not like I’m all of a sudden going to get him to write down things and remember appointments. It is so ingrained in the culture here that it isn't disrespectful to be late or miss an appointment especially if you are an 'important person' in the community. My counterpart told me she would talk to the mayor and schedule a time for our little shopping excursion and let me know when it would be.

Again after waiting around for a few more days we met on Friday, August 27th to come up with a plan about how we would go about buying everything. Of course the mayor was an hour late for the meeting! So the shopping excursion finally happened on the following Monday. Of course the outing wasn’t exactly the picture of efficiency. My counterpart called me at 11:30am and told me the mayor was ready to go. I made it to the office by noon and the mayor was nowhere in sight. After waiting around for an hour-and-a-half the mayor finally showed up to the office and we were off.

Our merry little troupe included the mayor (Seroyzha), my counterpart (Ruzanna), and the renovation guy (Onik). First we went to the bank and because of the large sum of money I needed I had to go into the bank, rather than just using the ATM. If you think banks in the U.S. are a pain, just come to Armenia! After waiting around for 30 minutes for my turn I wasn’t even able to withdraw all the funds I needed because of the bank’s daily withdrawal limit. So with about half the necessary cash in hand we headed out to the hardware store. It was a chaotic experience – I was trying to follow what everyone was talking about and making sure that everything they were selecting was the same price as what we had put in our budget. It took us about 3 hours to get everything together including all the paperwork for the taxes (the tax system here is crazy!). We finally paid and got everything loaded into the delivery vans and were on our way back to the village. I definitely felt a sense of accomplishment watching the villagers unload the delivery vans, while the mayor proudly took pictures.

Because we were unable to buy everything the first day, my counterpart and I went back to Artashat the next day for another delightful trip to the bank and the hardware store. Now all we have left to buy is the windows and I’m curious to see exactly when that happens. After our shopping excursion last Tuesday they told me we would go in a few days, but again that must mean a ‘few days in Armenian time’ because here we are almost a week later and we still need to go to the store and I've heard no concrete plan. But that is generally the way working here goes and I've started to learn to be a little more flexible and adaptable.

My SPA Project

You may have seen some random postings on Facebook and mentions of something called a ‘SPA project’ and in case you thought I was writing a project to get a jacuzzi put in my village or something, I wanted to clear the air of the lovely Peace Corps acronym alphabet soup (SPA, PCVs, CD, PMs, etc.) and let everyone know what I’ve been working on lately.





As you probably already know, I work for the mayor’s office which is located in a building called the գյուղապետարան (gyuhapetaran) or the village hall. In this building is a rundown auditorium that hasn’t been used since the Soviet times. It was full of old furniture and radiators, the window frames don’t have any glass in them meaning that birds are flying around inside the room, and the walls and floor need a good paint job. In April and May, I worked with my counterparts and the mayor to write a Peace Corps SPA grant (which means a Small Project Assistance grant – a program that gets money from USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) to make small grants to Peace Corps volunteers and their community partners). We found out we were approved for funding at the end of June and the grant money was transferred into my bank account at the end of July.





The project work actually got underway the third week of this month with the cleaning out of the room. After the room was clean, we began making plans to purchase all the materials and supplies needed for the renovation: spackle, primer, paint, window glass, paint brushes and rollers, cement, plaster, and cinder blocks. Now the materials have mostly been purchased and the renovation work will begin soon. The plan is to have the renovation complete by November and then we will have a great ‘grand opening’ celebration. We are also purchasing a projector, microphone, large speaker, and a dry erase board/flip chart easel that we can use for club meetings, trainings, and community celebrations.





More pictures to come as we make progress on the renovation!

Finding My "Cause"

As August approached I began to think about the fact that a year from now I will be finished with the adventure that has been my Peace Corps service and heading back to the U.S. and for the first time in my life I have no idea what is next for me. I’ve always had a plan so that when one phase on my life has finished I was prepared to move on to the next big thing. I know you would think that someone who joins the Peace Corps is a carefree hippie who just floats from one adventure to the next not worried about what tomorrow holds, but that is not exactly my style – I am a little too Type-A for that! So being my Type-A self I started researching possible next steps and how exactly one begins a career in the mystical field of international relations. Through this research I found two career guides on jobs in international affairs and development in hopes of finding some guidance. I was hoping to find maybe some advice on how to figure out what I want to do and so far both of them have said that the key is to find your “cause” or your “purpose.” They say that you should think about what tasks you want to do every day and their advice on how to figure out these very important keys is to do a little soul searching. So far these guides haven’t been overly helpful in this area. While they have nice lists of all the possible careers that expand the possible options as far as helping me figure out what in the world I want to do I’m not finding them all that helpful. Trust me I already know that if you want to have a meaningful career you should do something you love and are passionate about (I’ve heard all the cliches before), but when their only advice for figuring out these things out is soul searching I’m stuck. I’ve been soul searching and I still don’t know what my “cause” is or what kind of things I want to be doing. I feel like I’ve spent the last year soul searching and I am not getting very far. Now I feel like there are a million options and different cities and I don’t know where to start. So if anyone has any advice on how exactly one goes about finding their purpose I would love to hear it.

Sorry it's been so long...

The last few months have been a whirlwind and I can hardly believe that half of the summer is already over. I haven’t posted since May even though I’ve been very busy with many exciting and interesting things because blogging isn’t exactly something that comes natural to me. You may or may not have been wondering what I’ve been up to these past two months…well I haven’t disappeared, I’ve just been avoiding sitting down and writing. I’ve never really enjoyed writing about myself. Writing essays about myself for college admissions and scholarships is akin to torture for me. I’ve always wanted to be one of those witty, self-aware people who keep detailed journals chronicling my life and thoughts and I have set many resolutions to write in my journal everyday or every week, but it invariably fails because I’m too self-critical and self-conscious about my writing. I spend half the writing process in my head wondering if what I’m writing is interesting and smart. Sadly for someone who spends half my day in my thoughts – day dreaming and analyzing – I’m not very introspective, at least not in a constructive way. I was discussing blogging with a friend of mine, whose blog happens to be hilarious, and he told me to stop waiting to only write about the big events and to write about my everyday life instead. He said consistently posting helps people connect to what you are writing about. The truth is that my average day as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia isn’t that exciting. On a productive day I wake up around 9 AM, exercise, eat breakfast, and get ready for work. I enjoy working at home so I often work at home unless I am teaching a class that day. Besides work I read, watch TV or movies on my computer, or do chores around my house. I also spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to do after Peace Corps.

Now that I’m beginning my second year I have projects to start and after how quickly the first year went I imagine that the second year is going to fly by in no time. I’m starting my SPA project now, which is to open a cultural house in my village and develop after-school activities for the youth. This will keep me very busy throughout the fall and then this winter I must start the research for my thesis to finish my masters degree. I’m also beginning to study for the Foreign Service Officers Test, which means brushing up on my U.S. Constitution and U.S. history. The last year has definitely been a roller coaster – at times I feel a little worse for the wear, but I know in the end I’m learning a lot about myself and what I want. I still have a lot to figure out and as cheesy as it might sound I really am focused on self-improvement over the next year and making the most of my second year in Armenia.

So after giving my blog a re-vamp I'm going to hopefully dive right in and actually keep a resolution for once.

Tsnoond Shnorhavor

I’m another year older…sometimes it is hard to believe that the last three years have gone by so quickly. There are times when it feels just like yesterday, but then I think about all the things that have happened in the last three years and then it seems like a lifetime ago. Three years ago on my birthday I was in San Marcos, TX finishing up college. I was preparing to live it up in my last summer there, studying abroad in Mexico, and trying to decide what I was going to do after I graduated. During this time I was applying to graduate school and thinking about joining the Peace Corps. Since that birthday three years ago I have graduated from college, moved to Denver, gone to graduate school, joined the Peace Corps, and moved to Armenia!

So here I am celebrating my 24th birthday in Armenia, miles from home and my friends and family, but with my many new friends. The last couple of months have been pretty frustrating and I’ve been struggling with work getting very busy and one year fatigue plaguing me, so it was a great relief to have such a great birthday. Some of the other volunteers came to my site to visit and we had a little party at my new house. I made strawberry mojitos, chicken enchiladas, Spanish rice, refried beans, chips and salsa, and a delicious cake. We feasted, listened to music, and played games. Even though I miss all my friends and family in the U.S. I couldn’t have asked for a better party or a better birthday!

A Home of My Own

I moved out of my host family’s house on April 1st and into my own place. The rules regarding how long a Peace Corps volunteer varies by country – all volunteers in Armenia are required to live with a host family for the first four months they are at site, but my friend in El Salvador only lived with the mayor of here community for a few days before moving into her own place. I decided to stay with my host family through the winter because they were already prepared and because I had been warned that the first winter is usually a hard time for volunteers here. I was really lucky because my host family is amazing, but in the end I was ready to move out and have a little more control over my daily routine and my own space. As much as I love my host family and I was at a point in my life before I left for Peace Corps when I was ready to live alone so living with a family of five could be overwhelming at times.


My Living Room


My Kitchen

Because I live in a village there aren’t any apartment buildings so my only option for finding my own place was to look for an empty house. The mayor helped me find a couple of places to look at and when I picked the one I liked best he helped with all the details before I moved in. He even helped me move my things in his car. The family who owns the house live in Belgium now and their relatives have been looking after the house and they are my landlords. My house has one really large main room that is the dining room and living room, two bed rooms, and a kitchen. It’s really big, but that because a normal Armenian family usually consists of 6-8 people not just one! I’m only using one of the bedrooms and the extra bedroom will be like my bunk house for when I have visitors. Off the kitchen I have a little balcony that over looks the backyard, which will be great to sit on in the summer and read. The backyard is a big garden full of trees and plants, which my landlords care for, but I get to eat from which is awesome. There’s a walnut tree, pear trees, cherry trees, and peach trees. Right now the only thing that’s ready is the green onions and greens.


My Bedroom


My Dining Room

I love that my house is big because that means I have plenty of room for visitors. In fact, I had my first visitors last Friday. Four other volunteers came to my site to help me finish moving in and to celebrate my new place. I made a great dinner and had a great time hanging out. One of the hardest things about living with a host family was that I couldn’t have friends come visit my site and if I wanted to see people I either had to go to Yerevan (which means spending a lot of money) and traveling to other people’s sites, so I’m excited to finally be able to have people come visit me.


My Extra Bedroom


The View of My Backyard from the Balcony

New Project

I’m starting a new project at work, well actually I started back in February after I went to a project development and management conference with my counterpart, but we haven’t made much progress in the last two months. The project is to renovate an unused auditorium in the village hall to create a cultural house for the community. To finance the renovation my counterpart and I are writing a Peace Corps Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant. The way the grant works is that 25% of the budget must come from a community contribution, which can be a financial contribution or a labor contribution. My village is going to provide the labor for the renovation as their community contribution. I have about a month and a half until I have to turn in the completed grant proposal so I’m really trying to kick start the process, which is quite difficult. The work culture here is very different and much more laid-back here than in the U.S. and I feel like I have to remind people of things multiple times before they actually happen. I mean if I was writing this project in the U.S. it would be done by now, but in the last two months all we have been able to accomplish is one community interest meeting and many discussions about what we need to do, but with little of it actually accomplished. If all goes according to plan and I get the grant money, work will start in July and hopefully the renovation will be complete by October so that it can coincide with the harvest and we can hold another harvest festival, but this time in the brand-new cultural house.

International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women’s Day and it is also an Armenian holiday called Womanhood and Beauty Day. In my village I celebrated at the village hall at a celebration thrown by the mayor’s office.





Children from the school sang and read passages about how wonderful women are and everyone danced. There were champagne toasts (cheap Armenian champagne is really bad!) and we ate fruit and chocolates. I was trying to get out of dancing by taking pictures, but the mayor and the women who work at the mayor’s office got me and made me dance.

Coming out of hibernation...

I know it has been a few months since my last posting, but there hasn’t been all that much to catch you up on. Things for me here really slowed down in the winter and it was definitely the period in which I felt the most isolated and lonely. After all the holiday parties were finished life in the village slowed to a crawl from its normal meandering pace. To be honest I live in a village of 700 people so it’s never going to be life in the fast lane here, but there were a few times when I had to really think to figure out the last time I had left my host family’s house. I mean other than going in the backyard to get to the shower room or the outhouse there were times when I didn’t actually leave my house for three days! Work really slowed down because I wasn’t holding club meetings while school was closed for the holidays and I worked from home a lot which was nice because I had the luxury of working in my pajamas, but eventually it got to the point where I needed to put on some real clothes and do something. It’s like I fell into this hibernation state and my world really didn’t extend beyond my room – I had my computer, magazines, books, snacks from America, movies. Now I should have known that this was going to be my biggest challenge with winter because succumbing to this sort hibernation isn’t exactly new to me. I mean during finals in grad school I only left my apartment to go to the grocery store and when I did I prayed I wouldn’t run into to anyone I knew because I looked a hot mess! I’m a nester – but after too long my nest gets messy, cluttered, and a little gross.

It’s a very good thing that spring time is beginning to emerge because it has given me the motivation to emerge from my winter cocoon and engage with the world around me again. The people in my village have also begun to emerge from their self-imposed winter hiatus – the children can be heard laughing loudly as they play outside at the school and everyone is beginning to go out into the fields and orchards to prepare for the spring planting season. I’ve started walking back from town to my village after my class instead of taking the bus to spend some time in the fresh air and sunshine.

With the changing of the seasons my work has also begun to pick up. At the beginning of February I attended a Peace Corps conference on project development and management with my new counterpart, Ruzanna. This was the first thing for us to work on together and it was a great experience. It allowed us to discuss what we wanted out my service and what the community’s needs and desires were. She works in the mayor’s office and has lots of useful connections and experience working in the village. She is a middle-aged widow with two teenage children. She works very hard to support her family and even though she already has so much work to do she has graciously volunteered to work with me. She had already become an invaluable resource to me, helping me further integrate into my community.

Noor Tari

In Armenia, Christmas (or surb tsnund, Սբ. Ծնունդ) is celebrated on January 6th and it is mainly a religious holiday that marks the kind of unofficial end of Noor Tari and coincides with the Epiphany. Traditionally on Christmas Armenians refrain from eating meat and the traditional Christmas meal consists of fish and Christmas pilaf (rice with raisins).

Now you may asking yourslef then what is this mysterious holiday called Noor Tari you speak of if it isn't Christmas? Well it is actually a holiday that is many days long and begins on December 31st. In Armenian Noor Tari literally means ‘New Year’ and it is best described to a foreigner as the secular parts of Christmas in the States plus New Year’s Eve with a twist. The weekend before my host family decorated the house with lights and a little Christmas tree. In the days before the 31st my family prepared a food for our Noor Tari table. The tradition is that every family prepares a table at their house with all kinds of food, including a turkey, pork, dolma, blinchik, kufta, fruit, mixed nuts, dried fruit, assorted cakes and candies, wine, vodka, cognac, juices and sodas. On December 31st everyone sits at home at waits for midnight. My family got the table ready and watched a special on TV. Then Dzmer Papik (literally Winter Grandpa but his like our Santa Claus) came to our house to see my little brother. We shared a toast with Dzmer Papik and when it was midnight my brothers went outside and shot off fireworks. The tradition is to go around to your neighbors’ houses after midnight to eat, drink, and say many many toasts.




I was really supposed to wait and give my host family their presents the next morning when they opened their gifts from Dzmer Papik, but I could not wait so I played Santa Sarah. My parents sent gifts for my host family from the States and even though they weren’t expected to arrive until January the post office gods smiled on me and they arrived on Christmas Eve.






I was not feeling that great on New Year’s Eve and my host mother has been sick so we stayed home. A few neighbors came over while I was still awake, but I went to be around 1am and apparently the mayor and his family came over and were sad I only made it to 1am. On New Year’s Day my host sister and I went to the mayor’s house and her aunt’s house to sit, toast, and eat. That is pretty much what Noor Tari is – going to people’s houses sitting eating, toasting, and talking. However, when you are an outsider it is mostly being told to eat a bunch of food even though you are full from eating exact same things at the previous houses and questions about how you celebrate in the U.S. and if you like Armenia. People continue to go visit their friends and relatives as well as have people visit their homes over the next week or so. I didn’t go visit a bunch of houses, but every time someone new came over to my house I got paraded around and introduced to everyone as “Our Sarah”. I'm glad I got to experience such a big holiday with my host family and they were glad that I was there. However, next New Year's I hope to be visiting the States!

Christmas in Kapan

Because this was the first Christmas many of us had been away from our families we decided to have our very own Christmas in Kapan. Kapan is only about 200 miles from Yerevan, but to get there you must drive through a ton of mountains passes so in takes about 6-7 hours in good weather to get there. Therefore, the volunteers who live there don’t make it to Yerevan often and they don’t get a lot of visitors outside their marz so it's become a little tradition to have Christmas in Kapan.

There were quite a few of us traveling from Yerevan so some of us took shared taxis and others (i.e. my group) had to take the marshootni. Now the marshootni takes about an extra hour and the three volunteers I was traveling with and I got the last four sets in the back which meant our knees were pressed into the seatbacks in front of us and we got to sit on hard marshootni seats for seven hours. But it was worth it because once we arrived in Kapan everyone met up at one the PCVs, Barbara’s apartment for some Christmas Eve chili. There were 22 of us there and it was so much fun! We had chili and cornbread, played charades, listened to Christmas music, and just had an awesome time.

I stayed at Shannon’s apartment with Danya, Rani, Amanda, and Bryan and Christmas day we sat around her cozy apartment drinking coffee and eating gingerbread cookies while we all knitted and listened to Christmas music. I got to talk to my family on my Christmas morning (their Christmas Eve) while they were snowed in at my grandma’s house. Of course my first Christmas away from Wichita Falls and there is a blizzard and no snow here for a white Christmas! Later on Christmas Day we all head out to Sue’s village Vachakan. We had a Christmas feast, exchanged Secret Santa gifts, and watched ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’. Even though I was far from home it was an amazing Christmas spent with tons of new friends.


Amanda and I were Christmas!


Watching 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'


Opening Secret Santa Gifts

Haykakan Harsanek aka An Armenian Wedding

At the beginning of December I attended my first Armenian wedding or as the Armenians say a Haykakan Harsanek. It was the wedding of my host cousin Miriam and it was definitely an interesting experience. I left my house at noon and returned home at 1 a.m. Armenian wedding and American wedding traditions are very different.



First my host sister, host mom, and I went to the neighboring village Aygezard to the family of the bride's house to sit and chat with all her female relatives before the ceremony. My sister and I sat with the bride and her friends while we waited for the groom’s family to come over. After about an hour we could hear music coming from outside and we all went down stairs where the groom’s family was coming marching down the street with a four-piece traditional Armenian band and gifts for the bride.



The women from the bride’s family came out of the house and took the gifts from the groom’s family and everyone danced in the street. Then all the women from both families went inside to give the gifts to the bride. The gifts were baskets of fruit and candies. One basket had the bride’s veil, wrap, bouquet and one of her shoes in it. Now you may be wondering why in the world the groom’s family had one of the bride’s shoes…well many of the Armenian wedding traditions involve the giving of money for various things, including one of the bride’s shoes which the groom’s family stole earlier. The women then began to sing and prepare the bride – putting on her shoes, her veil, and her wrap. Then they threw some of the candy from the basket at all of the women and girls watching. My host mom handed me a piece and told me to put it under my pillow that night while I slept and I would have a dream about my future husband. After the bride was ready the groom came up stairs and presented her was a basket of flowers. The bride and groom went downstairs and outside and we all followed. Once we were all outside there was more dancing, this time around the happy couple.



The next stop was the church – they ceremony was at Khor Virap, a beautiful church about twenty minutes from my village. Khor Virap is a 7th century monastery and it is where Saint Gregory the Illuminator (the patron-saint of Armenia) was imprisoned in a dungeon for 13 years. According to legend the King became very ill and began to go mad and his daughter convinced him to release Gregory who then healed the King and converted him to Christianity.



The ceremony was quite short compared to the rest of the festivities and after the priest finished the ceremony the groom’s parents stood at the front of the church with the couple and the wedding party for the receiving line. All the guests went through the line giving their congratulations to the couple. Everyone lined up for pictures outside the church after the ceremony and then doves were released.



After the ceremony everyone headed to the groom’s house for celebratory toasts and dancing. In Armenia it is tradition that when a couple is married the bride moves into the groom’s house with his parents. So when everyone was at the groom’s house the bride and groom arrived with a suitcase symbolizing the exchange of the bride to her new family. After some more dancing the party head to the reception, which was at a restaurant on the highway between Artashat and Yerevan, for more dancing, toasts, food, and drinks. At the restaurant there were large family-style tables full of olives, cheese, bread, fruits, and bottles of wine, vodka, and cognac. There was a three-course dinner 1) pork khoravats (Armenian barbecue); 2) kufta (this weird meat trine); 3) fish. The reception had a MC, tons of dancing, and many long toasts. The bride and groom went around the room and toasted every person at the reception. The bride and groom were presented with gifts from their families, mostly gold jewelry. They cut the cake around 11pm and then did the garter and bouquet toss. The bride and groom went around the room and handed out little plaster statues of hearts and flowers to all the single people in the crowd. Later the bride danced for all the guests and people came up and gave her money. The reception wound-down around midnight, but by the time we got home it was past 1am.

It was interesting to experience a wedding a culture that is very different for the United States. All in all I can say that an Armenian wedding is an exciting fun time, but it is not for the faint of heart because it is a marathon of toasts, eating, drinking, and dancing.