Oh, right… HAPPY 2013! Completely missed out on explaining my New Year’s celebrations in Armenia to you all… it will eventually come along… OR you’ll just have to wait til next year!

Well, can’t catch up now, but here’s February!

February 12, 2013

So this Valentine’s Day lesson plan I made for my English clubs included questions about romance and relationships the students had to ask each other… one of the questions asked, “What do you look for in your future boyfriend/husband?” What was the answer you ask? HIS SHOES. Everyone said shoes, boys and girls alike. How clean they are and what kind of style they are. This is in a country where they don’t have paved roads, cow poop, sheep poop, dog poop EVERYWHERE, mud, etc etc… questionable really… really REALLY impossible to keep your shoes clean if you ask me. I don’t know how they do it. It’s kind of ridiculous actually haha. Oh and the second most popular answer was hair. SHOES & HAIR. There you go. If you come to Armenia and want to impress the peoples, have perfect hair and brand new shiny shoes, and you’re set!

I come home afterwards and tell my host family some of the funny answers my students had given to my questions and how I thought it was interesting that shoes were so important to Armenians, I mean I kind of already knew, but I never knew it meant THAT much.

That’s when they tell me . . . ….

THEY HATE MY BOOTS.

Haha! They’re two sizes too big and apparently EVERYONE could tell, but no one said anything ‘til now. I’m telling you, if I were back in the States this wouldn’t be that great of a problem and no one would really notice cause our shoes aren’t the first thing everyone looks at… right?? Or am I completely off… ??

Apparently shoes are a BIG deal here and because I’m an “American” I apparently get some slack because “I’m not studied” as they would say it. They all say that America has clean streets and paved roads so I just never had to worry about it and therefore don’t know how to keep my shoes clean. These people carry around separate wet naps just for their shoes in case a speck of dirt gets on it… which really, I DO NOT GET. Like I said, they don’t have paved roads here, dirt is EVERYWHERE, mud is deep and squishy, and the mixture of different farm animal poops… haha they gotta REALLY clean their shoes like crazy. But anyways, so I guess my boots were “too big for my short small body” as was said, and they were “all covered in dust/dirt” which couldn’t really be cleaned because my boots are leather… haha. I just had to say it. We laughed for a good hour about my “big dirty boots” AHAHAA.

February 13, 2013 : Jump Over Fire Day!

You jump over the fire three times… once for God, second for Jesus, third for the Holy Spirit… all so that they can give you blessings in your relationships. I still haven’t heard all about it or read up on it, but I know that it’s mainly for newly weds or couples who are serious about each other. My host mother made this mixture of barley, honey, popcorn, and candy for us to eat on this day… she said that barley was for an abundance of love, candy for sweetness in the relationship, honey to keep the couple stuck together, and popcorn… I forget.

Funniest thing about this traditional holiday? The newly weds have to jump over the fire together. Funny, right? Haha no, the man has to carry his wife over the fire three times! Can you imagine? The running joke is that he has to make sure to not catch her dress on fire! Haha it’s no joke! It’s so true… fire is so unpredictable; it can be low and small one moment, then big and flaming the next!

We made a small fire in our front yard and jumped. Good traditional safe fun! ^_^

On another not-so-fun-topic… animal cruelty. THUMP. Sorry, I just can’t NOT say anything…

The fate of animals here, especially dogs and cats… I’ve never felt worse… or rather, I’ve never felt like this before. This is a COMPLETELY different sort of sad. I used to worry my baby Romeo would be home alone for too long or that his food wasn’t tasty enough for him, but here… man, MAN OH MAN is it different! Armenia… I just. I worry the puppies here are going to freeze from the snow or get eaten by a wolf at night or even get kicked by an angry man on the street JUST BECAUSE… it’s terrible. Tragic. WTH?!? This is not a normal kind of worry. These animals are not supposed to live like this… looking into burnt trash or even eating another animal’s poop cause they are just THAT hungry. What can we do to help???

I guess I’m getting into all of this because I saved this puppy in-between all these rocks last night and just couldn’t figure out what to do with her. My heart was so torn. I was in my room and could hear this puppy crying through my double-paned window and I obviously couldn’t just sit there so I went out to see what was wrong. I found this tiny black puppy between the rocks and as I was trying to pull her out this boy comes over to help me, takes this huge stone and throws it to the side, grabs the puppy and brings her back to our garage. I held and comforted her until she warmed up and stopped crying, fed her some cheese, and wiped her tears. As I sat there wondering what to do with her, I realized this poor thing was probably thrown out or tortured by some little kids who didn’t know better and left between the rocks far from her mom… I mean, this wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this kind of story or have seen this kind of cruelty here. You can imagine my internal battle. I think I called most of my closest friends, went back and forth in my head about whether or not I should keep her, prayed like a billion times… then the next morning...

I woke up at 7am worrying about how she was and what she was doing… and well, I can’t find her anywhere. Looked in our garage, garden, barn, every crevice, and even pipes, but she was nowhere to be found. I guess He knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it, especially since I was already getting attached.

I guess a burden was lifted, but I just started to imagine all these terrible things about where she could’ve gone. As I began to walk to school I see a fighter dog with his owner getting ready to go to “the field”… it gives me chills… chills of disgust.  I continue to walk. I guess this day was either not for me or FOR ME cause the next scene ahead was a dead dog, not from a fight or a wolf or even a gun, but from starvation. Complete starvation. I almost wish it had been shot instead of having to go through the torture of being painfully hungry. Lying next to plastic bags, old wrappers, mud, and ice… I had to walk by it every day, twice a day.

There’s so much more I can say, but it won’t do anyone any good and will only anger me more and probably you as well, which isn’t something I want for either of us. You can comment all you want and any advice would be great, but for now all I can do is vent, share, and hope that if I show my neighbors and friends here in Armenia how much animals mean to me, then maybe I can change the heart of those few and those few will change a few more, etc etc.