The Super Bowl and Snow in Armenia

The day before a conference near Armenia's only ski resort we finally got some pretty decent snowfall. It was pretty warm before that, incredibly warm, and sunny, but now the real winter here has started it seems.

One interesting thing I've noticed here are the micro-climates. I'm driving from Vanadzor with it's modest 2-3 inches of snow, then I got up some mountain passes, driving through Aragatsotn Marz with Armenia's largest mountain, the snowfall rises into a foot or two of snow. Snow covered Mount Aragats so that as it reached towards the clouds it was hard to tell when the snow ended and the sky began. The snow continued until about 20 minutes outside of Yerevan, where there is no snow.

On the way back Yerevan did now have snow. Snow continued to fall, and I saw Armenians walking around with umbrellas for the snow.

Outside of shops there are always women who sweep their storefront of dust and debris every morning with brooms, that are really just the actual broom-head, without the wooden pole. Sometimes they will use some water (never soap, or soap that doesn't work) to help clean. They always wear furry slippers, commonly worn inside the house, which makes sense, but not when you wear them outside all the time.

In winter, instead of sweeping away debris I saw some storefronts in Yerevan being swept of snow with the same brooms. Which, initially comical, it's actually quite useful. The snow falls, no one plows or shovels the snow, no one uses salt on the snow, so it eventually all turns to ice and is quite dangerous and slippery. So sweeping the snow away while it's still powder is actually pretty useful.

Lastly, I was in face able to watch the super bowl! Steelers lost, whatever, it was a good, mostly close, game, and really, Rodgers didn't make any mistakes, and played a much better game. It was really a great time watching the game, I was in the north of the country with some other volunteers who have an Armenian friend who has a satellite dish. We all took naps at 10 pm so we could wake up at 2 am to catch the game at 3:30 am. It lasted until about 7:00 in the morning. The announcers were giving Russian commentary, which didn't really matter, but then there were no commercials at all. Not even Russian commercials. So we did miss out on the super bowl commercials, famous for the amount of work and time put into them (the most expensive time slots for US media than at any other time).

So all in all it was pretty surreal and fun. I was seated on a couch slightly under a stairwell, and I bumped my head as I stood up when the Steelers made a big play. It hurt so I just took a swig of vodka, chased it with some beer and everything was all better after that.