I walked a dog and learned some Armenian

I walked a dog around the fake lake today. It's getting cold here and I was told not to expect it to get warmer. Not awfully cold, but just cold and rainy.

Another volunteer in Vanadzor has a dog and he's out of town right now so I feed the dog at night (someone else has the morning shift) and I usually take him outside to do her business, and today I decided to walk her around the fake lake. It was fun, there weren't many people out because of the cold and it was just a leisurely walk with my (not mine) pup. It was relaxing, despite the dog being incredibly hyper. She's eight months old and is named Marozhni, which is Russian for ice cream.

Baghbarak (probably a poor transliteration) is the name in Armenian, which just doesn't sound as nice. Though I really want to sell some Armenian ice cream (which is awesome) called bagh-barak Obama ice cream next presidential election cycle. Seriously if you're reading this you will make a killing. What an amazing pun! That's copyrighted. I want a nickel every time someone writes, speaks, or thinks that phrase.

Anyways.

Before this I had my first real tutoring lesson. It was pretty fun, did some random stuff, talked in Armenian, blah blah blah. Then! Then she read a really easy passage from our Armenian textbook (I wasn't a fan but that's another post) and after that I said, I want to read things that Armenians read. Let's get some authentic materials up in here. So I mention the newspaper as an example, though to be honest newspapers are a bit high for me right now, but I'm getting there. So she grabs some old newspapers and finds this little article. I start reading it and I read the word Vostikan which means 'police officer' and then I read this: Ջան Մաքլեյն. I'm going to transliterate that for all those not literate in Armenian: Jan makleyn. That's a true transliteration, this is the name: John McClane. I was reading a synopsis of Die Hard! The original one from 1988.

This was the perfect thing for me to read. It was tough, I felt like a five year old reading it out loud and having to sound out so many words, but the fact that I already knew the story helped so much in understanding the words. It was the perfect text for me right now. And there is another movie, Scarface which is also part of the same article, which I'll be reading next session.