Arriving in Armenia

Well, here I am in Armenia. In Asia. A new country with new food, new customs, new alphabet, new transportation system… Getting here was an adventure, we had two planes which were both delayed, much time waiting at the airport. We left our house in Budapest at 3:00 Sunday afternoon and arrived at our house in Yerevan about 6:30 Monday morning. After two delayed flights, Hannah waiting in line to fill out a missing luggage paper, and a crazy taxi drive with luggage on our laps, we walked through the door to the apartment we will call home for the next almost 5 weeks. As we plopped on the couches our eager new leaders from here spent thirty some odd minutes filling us in on all kinds of information that I am sure not many of our minds actually absorbed.

It took a few days to get use to the time chance considering the fact we slept the entire first day, but we are pretty use to it by now. Our contacts here are a young couple working with YWAM themselves. She is from Armenia/Bulgaria and he is from Norway, both speak excellent English. We have yet to find other Americans. The Armenia people do not speak English, some of the students do, but many of the refugees, those from Iran, they speak English.

We have traveled the city a little, by taxi and ma-shoot-ka. The latter word I am sure is not spelled correctly, but is for those of you who need the phonetics. A ma-shoot-ka is a 12 passenger van, more or less - that is able to hold 20-25 some people. First come first serve get seats, then more people squeeze in, then 5 are sitting on a 3 person seat, then more squeeze in, then arms are around you holding on to things. You get at little closer to people that you would want. It is not a place for people that get Closter phobic or if you are really tall. But it is a fun experience none the less.

The appearance of the city is much like our other traveled locations, a post communist city with ugly apartments, garbage everywhere, cigarette butts every half step. The people are quiet, not many seem to smile, but we have yet to do too much with the actual Armenian people. Needless to say, I am here, I am safe and I am looking forward to an interesting and hopefully beneficial last leg of my trip.