I had one night of great fun, ate some wonderful food, had some Irish Coffee, and then promptly came down with a fever that night and had the worst diarrhea in-country that I have ever had, probably the worst in any-country as well.
So I actually had to sleep through more of the conference than I would have liked, recovering from the nights of chills. It was miserable, sitting there in a button-up shirt, a sweater on, then a hoody on over that, and I was still shivering a bit. And the hotel wasn't cold, it was a comfortable temperature. Waking up sweating, too weak to even take off the layers of clothes I have on.
In my fevered half-sleep I even had this sort of waking dream about this show, East-Bound and Down, I had just watched the first episode before going to bed (everyone else was out enjoying themselves) and, basically my whole night was this long hallucination, if it made any sense or I could explain it at all, I would.
The best thing about Yerevan is the food. And the best thing about All-vol is the thanksgiving dinner. I missed out on both for the first half of the conference. It was mostly soup broth and rice for me. Yum yum. I got to sample some thanksgiving stuff, but even now thinking about it, it's making me sad. Shit. This is just food, I don't watch the food network, meals are nice, but I'm don't usually miss not having some meal, like who cares, it's just food.
But this is Thanksgiving, and really, more than the food, I think it's more the people and the emotions surrounding the food. That's how it always is, going out to a nice restaurant is good and nice, and I love doing it, but ultimately it's a social thing I do with my friends. That's what I like about eating (and it being fresh and healthy and simple also helps) more than the food itself.
With thanksgiving the food is so incredibly tied to family and friends-- they can't be separated. Having Thanksgiving with my family, going over to my best friend from high school's place for leftovers, darts, and drinks.
And last year, I had a small dinner, with some misfit international students who didn't fly home for the holidays and cooking my first thanksgiving turkey with Bridget. I don't remember the dinner at all as much as I remember the preparation, not knowing what the hell I was doing, basting it, checking it every so often, asking her opinion, watching internet tutorials.
So it wasn't so much the food that I miss now so dearly, but the people and relationships around the food. That is what I missed so dearly. I came in, sampled the food, then left early, missing a lot of what is great about thanksgiving.
But finally the last two days I was well enough to eat, and boy did I feast. Some guys were doing a dinner crawl, so we went to the best Indian place in Armenia and had some samosas and then went to a Lebanese place for some hummus and a half a falafel wrap. Then we went to another place that had some Thai and Indian curries, and we got Biryani there, which wasn't spicy, so that was a little disappointing, (I expect my biryani to be absurdly spicy that I need to mix it with yogurt) but by that time I wasn't hungry so it didn't matter.
I ate so much during the next two days that I think I made up for the variety of food I didn't get to eat during the first half of the conference and had a great last two days.
I participated in my first ever flash mob, I guess it was more of a freeze mob, because we walked down the main pedestrian street in Yerevan and then froze all at once wearing the same t-shirts (our normal coats helping us blend in only moments before) raising awareness for World AIDS day.
Me and two other volunteers (two other volunteers and I, you say? Piss off.) froze in a riveting game of paper-scissors-rock. We all froze for one minute and then went to a bar called That Place (yeah, it can get confusing) which was underneath the main street, so we all disappeared immediately afterwards, so that made for a cool effect.
We got to celebrate our friend's birthday, went out to a nice restaurant had this awesome meal whose name I can't remember, it was an Armenian dish, went to a nice little bar with no one in it, took the place over, made them play dance music, then left there and eventually ended up at Karaoke nearby, and I got to sing Bicycle Race by Queen and Everlong, by the Foo Fighters. I don't really have any business singing Queen, it's way out of my non-existent range, but it's an interesting song to do with funny lyrics (Seriously look them up, the link I have is accurate) and none of my other go-to songs (One friend suggested calling it my repertoire) but always seem to have this song. I had never sang Everlong before and it was about as hard as I would expect, but do-able and may have to be added to my repertoire.
So that's my all-vol in a nut shell.
No comments:
Post a Comment