So I saw some cows on the highway, so what.

Seriously.

To get to the capital, I go on a major highway (really more like the state/provincial highways highways. the hyphen depending on whether your country has states or provinces)

And yes, I have seen cows, on the road, being herded along or across it. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before on this blog, back in my earlier days. We've had to stop or slow down for a bit here and there, and yeah, sure it was interesting the first couple times, and living in a village I had to dodge cows (and cow shit) on dirt roads all the time. The worst was if I was on the roads after dark, then my amazing Nokia phone, which has a flashlight, would light my way.

But now I'm off-topic. Two occurrences made me want to post about this, it was a week ago, and I can't remember they were two separate trips or the same one. I went to a wonderful poetry recitation competition organized by a volunteer, it was the final, national competition, in the previous months various volunteers have had regional competitions and the winners were present at each. So I was coming up with the finalists from my town, and we slow down a bit, I look out and see a couple cows, and one of the student taps my arm and points at the cows. Now believe me, if this was my first months in Armenia, I would of course, been like whoa, ha, interesting, cool. But I've seen plenty of cows here.

You know, I have to remember, Armenians don't travel much. I visited Kapan last fall, the largest city in southern Armenia. I have never met anyone from Vanadzor who has visited Kapan. And really it's understandable, it takes about 8 hours to get there, up and down multiple mountains. This, coupled with the fact that my students are all from Armenia's third largest city, Vanadzor, might make for an interesting site for them. So perhaps my student was just as surprised as he expected me to be.

So then on the way back (I think that's what has to have happened because I haven't made any trips before or since then) we hit a giant gaggle of cows that bring us and the car ahead of us to a complete standstill. The car in front of us is trying to inch forward, occasionally honking his horn. Our driver knew what the hell he was doing and immediately guns it into the left lane, goes around the car stopped in front of us and lays on the horn non-stop until the cows move and we are back again on our merry way.