internationaaleest em?

Just the other day I was at work and had a conversation with some co-workers I haven't talked to as I've been in and out of the office most of the summer.

They invited me for coffee later.  The conversation started normally with them using some English, which I decided to respond to with a simple "What?  I don't understand?" in Armenian.  This usually brings the conversation to focus on Armenian, because I can understand all the things they are trying to say in English.

So we drink coffee and I eat some gata.  The topic of my masters comes up and I explain that it is linguistics and teaching English, but to people who speak English as their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, language etc. and that I have one more semester when I return to the U.S.

I am then asked what interests me about Armenian history and Armenia.  Now I am legitimately interested in all things history-related, and while I didn't know a lot about Armenia's history, but since finding out I was coming to Armenia I have read a fair amount and have become interested in a lot of events and aspects of it.  So I was presently surprised by the question.  The first thing I tell them about it Cilicia Armenia and that the general time period around that era (namely, the Crusades) is a very complicated and interesting time period.

Secondly I mention Sayat-Nova, a famous Armenian poet who lived several hundred years ago.  What I find interesting was that he was ethnically Armenian, born in Tbilisi, Georgia (a traditional center of Armenian culture), wrote his poetry and songs using the Georgian alphabet, in Azeri, the lingua franca of the time.  My co-workers explained that he played in royal courts for Persian and Turkish princes, and that he was of course an Armenian, which I did not doubt.  I then compared him writing in Azeri to someone in the Caucasus writing in Russian today, or perhaps during the Soviet Union.  So when asked what I thought was so interesting about Sayat-Nova (also his name in Persian means 'king of songs' so that's a fourth culture) I said that at that time the cultures of the Caucasus were mixed (խառնել kharnel I had to ask for the word, which I surprisingly remembered correctly.  Good cooking word.) in that era, and compared to now all the cultures are very separate and do not communicate.

My co-worker looked at me knowingly, and said ah you are an internationaaleest.  I laughed and said yes, then later I said, most Americans are internationalists, at least in some degree, because so many of us are from other cultures or other nations to begin with.  I clarified that certainly not all Americans are like that, but perhaps more than some other countries. (Okay I wasn't that eloquent but that is what I meant!)

And lastly I brought up a picture I had seen of guys in ski masks holding ak-47s.  I had asked about it a while ago and I had an idea what it was, so I pulled up the ASALA webpage which is the abbreviation for the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and showed him the name in Armenian and he confirmed that the picture was in fact of the ASALA.  I asked if they were in the picture, and they laughed, and said another co-worker, one that worked there earlier had had the picture, so that was a good laugh.