Post before New Year's and Christmas, here in Armenia.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, in an earlier post, but within the last few weeks since I’ve been living on my own I now have started to get the typical, amoosnats’sats es? (Are you married?) from neighbors and post office workers, and generally just strangers, and people who wouldn’t ask that sort of thing in the US.

What is significant is that I’ve only now just started to get these questions, whereas other volunteers have gotten these constantly over the last seven months whenever they meet someone new. So for me it’s still kinda funny and cute, but for them they’ve been sick of it for a while.

I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me. Is it that they just assume I must already be married (oh, with a face like that . . . ) or that I'm simply unmarriageable (oh my god, with a face like that . . . ).

We had a New Year's party at work yesterday, and I got to take shots of vermouth. Straight vermouth. Pretty baller, I know. One of my colleagues kept asking for me to say something, like a toast. She kept talking so fast, and in this sort of mix or random English words she knows, so it was a little hard to understand. And when Armenians speak really fast, even if I just understand them, I get all nervous, I feel unable to speak. I know some really simple toasts, but I'm not sure what exactly is appropriate, so at first I just made a joke, when she kept saying just: "say something" I went the awful American literal joke and said "Something (Inchvorban) and my counterpart laughed, she got it. I don't know whether it works in Armenian.

So eventually I just settled on my favorite, sort of corny and trite, Armenian toast. Ays Pahi Genatse. 'To this moment.' It's simple, and I like it.

So here in Armenia they celebrate Christmas on January 6th, close to Orthodox Christmas, though it's one day off for some reason. But (thank you Soviets) Armenians celebrate the New Year's on the same day we do in the West. Also Armenians have a Santa Clause type guy named Dmzer Papik (Grandfather Winter) and they get presents on New Years. For Christmas they usually just go to Church and light candles, then eat the leftovers from New Year's.

I can explain what I've been told about New Year's, but I'll be experiencing it with my first family in my training village, so I'll let you know how that goes. I'm excited for it.

American Christmas here was fun, we had a potluck with some other PCVs and European volunteers. We played some cards, drank some wine. We had this wine, it was like a merlot, and really if I was in the states, it'd be nothing special, but compared to the cheap wine (especially pomegranate) it was like a delicacy. It made me realize how much I've forgotten how wine tastes like in the states. I miss two-buck chuck, even that stuff would be top notch, at least respectable, here.

We watched Christmas movies, and we ate a bunch of American snacks I brought over that my family had sent me. Apparently an Oreos are called Dominoes in Europe, or rather the brand in Europe that has the most popular Oreo equivalent.

Everyone loved the sponge candy from my hometown.

Afterwards, a few people remarked that it didn't feel like Christmas to them, and while I agreed with them, I didn't think it was a knock against the gathering. That was the first Christmas I've spent away from my family, and I think that was the most noticeable absence for me. I could have had a replica of my Aunt's basement, or even my own basement, with all the decorations and furniture, but without my family, I still don't think it would have felt like Christmas.