Noticing

I had this crazy one-day trip to Tbilisi. I went there to help some friends get into Armenia. It's much cheaper to fly to Tbilisi then take the trip to Armenia from there than to fly to Yerevan normally.

So everything gets off to a normal start, I made sure I put my phone on roaming, got a seat on the Marshutni in the morning, let them know what time I planned on getting there.

So far so good, I was worried about arriving late, but really there is no trouble at the border, and we're through in about five minutes. I actually get there a few minutes early.

I get in a taxi with a guy who knows Armenian, and he says he'll take me to a currency exchange, and from there take me to the McDonald's where we're set to meet. I get out and find out they don't take Armenian dram. The last time I was here I had no trouble exchanging my Armenian money so this comes as a surprise.

So we argue over prices in dram and he insists of 3,000 dram, which is way too much, but what can I do? So I get to McDonald's and I wait. I had set to meet at 1:30 wait until 2:10 then I get worried. I can't call because, despite putting my phone on roaming it doesn't work in Tbilisi. There is more than one McDonald's in Tbilisi and I am now worried I wasn't specific enough and they went to a different one.

So then after trying to find a place where I could find something like a pay-phone I go to the nearest cell phone carrier and decide to get a Georgian SIM card. I'm quite worried right now because it's 3:30 and I was told the evening Marshutni to Yerevan leaves at 3 pm, and I still have no idea where they could be. The first SIM card I get doesn't work, so then I have to go up and get another one. Finally I do that and the call goes through and I am able to meet up and everything seems fine.

We get to the bus station and I ask when the next bus leaves and I'm told it's in an hour, at 4:00 pm. I look at my watch, it's 3:50. I tell him, no that's not right, you mean it leaves in ten minutes. That's when I found out that while Armenia turned their clocks forward Georgia hasn't yet and so therefore I was waiting at 12:30 -1:10, not 1:30 - 2:10 and that's why we didn't see one another. So we have some coffee and wait. But then we're told that a taxi is leaving, and it's the same price as the bus, and we can leave now. So we finish our coffee and then get on the road sooner than expected.

The ride is uneventful until we get to the border. The line is massive and there is a group of Iranians coming back from New Year's celebrations (see previous post) and they're all trying to get Visas.

We wait there for about an hour before my friends get visas, and I meet some truckers that speak Armenian, and go from Turkey to Georgia to Armenia with various goods. The border between Armenia and Turkey isn't open, but trade and transport still happens via Georgia (And possibly Iran, but I'm not sure). I'm not sure he was Armenian, he might have been Turkish, but I didn't ask specifically. Because the line was so long he gave the border workers a 100 dollar bill. At first there was a problem, they weren't accepting it, I wasn't sure why, but then he pulled out three twenties and handed them instead, I'm guessing because the three workers in the building couldn't split a hundred easily.

Finally on our way through the customs I have a conversation with the Armenian border guard, I tell him I live in Vanadzor. He says, oh you know this word, Aziz? He calls it a Vanadzor word, because he has a friend from there, and he uses this word all the time. I had heard this word once, and I'm pretty sure I had heard another volunteer from the south mention its use there, so I didn't associate it with my city. I had only heard it once, and that was from the Vanadzor bus station who organizes the marshutnis to Yerevan, so I wasn't even sure if he was from Vanadzor.

But here's the thing: Now that the border guard mentioned the word, I hear it everywhere. Everyone uses it here! So I guess he was right. I guess I should explain aziz. It doesn't really have any meaning other than as a word of endearment, or a diminutive, sortof like, friend or brother, or the Armenian -jan suffix.

And so that's brings us to the title. I know that people have been saying aziz the whole time that I've been here, it was just a matter of me noticing them saying it. Before, I didn't hear it as much because it wasn't something important in conversations I've overheard, and so my focus was on just getting the meaning, and ignoring the things I didn't understand. But now, as it's vanadzor-ness, has been brought to my attention, and as my Armenian improves, I am able to pick up on this word more than I did before. Neat, eh?