Oh, the things you'll see.

Ahh, Armenia.

I've been seeing posts on Facebook from other volunteers about snow on the mountain tops here in the past week. It's started to get cold, and really it wouldn't be cold except, when it's cold outside, it's generally the same temperature, or even cold inside. So my food is steaming hot, even though it's actually lukewarm, but because everything around it is so much colder (inside the house) it steams.

I discovered quite recently that the small mattress that I've been sleeping on is actually a blanket. This makes the nights much easier and a lot warmer, so that was nice.

I just got my peace corps heater and fire extinguisher and carbon monoxide detector. Those are three separate things, mind you. I probably should have written them with commas and a final and but who cares this is my blog and I'm not revising. But don't think I have this amazing 3-in-1 combination of those three things, when in fact I have three separate apparatuses that do each task for me.

Walking out of my house today I saw an old lady pouring ashes into a pothole. I don't have any idea why. Was she trying to fill it? An old Armenian custom? Seemed like a good a place as any?

In the US, or specifically in Pennsylvania where it gets very cold and then all of a sudden it will be warmer, then really cold again . . . we get a lot of potholes, we joke about them, we joke about the best part of getting lots of snow is that in fills in the potholes.

But no. We don't know what we're talking about. Armenia has potholes. Armenia has what Erie potholes would be if PennDot (or whoever does that job) didn't exist for 20 years. I haven't seen any speed limit signs because most places just have too many potholes to go too fast. Vanadzor isn't so bad, the roads are paved, but even the sidewalks have potholes, or just holes, uneven, again from the lack of any sort of government works projects that would repair the sidewalks. It wasn't really noticeable until it started to rain here (It rains here a lot) and I had to dodge entire squares of sidewalk as they were filled with water.

And I also wanted to mention tinted windows here. They're pretty popular, but I'm guessing there is no law against what can or can't be tinted because I've seen cars here with literally EVERY window tinted. Every single one, even the front windshield! It was absurd. Whatever floats your boat I guess.