Did you miss us?

Long, long, long lost posting….

I’m baaack! After a long, extremely busy absence from my normal posting, I am back. Lots and lots to report. Let me start with our home!

We delayed our drip back from Los Angeles because our house was not yet completed. After much grief, we came back and were able to move in. Houry ended up losing it and calling the owner and saying “Either give us our money back or let us move in!” About five minutes later 10 guys that I kindly refer to as the keystone construction guys show up and get our place ready enough to move in. So, we officially are the first people to occupy any of the apartments in our five building complex. Now for the stories!

Important word we learned in Armenia…………jamanagavor. This translated means temporary. Everything we have is temporary. We have a propane tank in our cabinet that runs our gas stove because gas is not at the complex yet. We have a temporary electric hot water tank because the master tank also runs on gas. We have a temporary electric and water connection to the building that means we have little water pressure and low voltage electricity. This pretty much means that everything electric works very, very slowly. F6 is the famous number at our house. This is the power failure code that our washing machine keeps telling us. Our sewer connection to the building is also temporary so it is a good thing that no one lives down hill from us! Our heaters are also temporary and were electic, which meant that they didn't work so good because of the weak electricity (good thing it is finally warming up!) Rumor has it that soon we are suppose to be assigned an address! At the end of the day, we have held back our final payment and are trying very patiently to work through the remaining issues—but we are finally in!!!

The view of Ararat almost makes the entire nightmare worth while. About three weeks ago, we woke up one Sunday morning and the temporary connection of the water to our building had frozen…but Ararat was in clear view…so we left the apartment and drove to Khor Virab for an amazing view. I have posted some pictures of Ararat from Khor Virab. We also went to the statue of Kevork Chavush next to Khor Virab. It was kind of cool, set up on top of a small hill. Kevork Chavush was a hero in the battle against Turkey.

Our dusty apartment is finally taking shape and becoming a home. Most of the cabinets that we had built are in place and pretty much all of our boxes are now empty. Our plan is to have Easter dinner at our house. (I hope we have electricity that day!). The mud outside as the snow melted and the rain started was incredible. It was almost more slippery than the snow. The keystone construction team figured out that they needed to do something, so they brought some dufa stone and put down some gravel and made a makeshift parking spot and side walk for the two apartment buildings. At least we can now get out of our muddy cars and walk into our apartment relatively mud free. (It also gives Goofy a mud free place to pee J)

Bad news on Ponchig…..Haroutun’s wife’s brother who is 12 took Ponchig in because he had a yard for our crazy street dog to run around. He absolutely loved Ponchig and we thought we found him a perfect home. It became clear that we could not keep him because he was not getting along with Goofy. So, off to the brother’s house he went. Well, crazy Ponchig chewed through his leash and ran into the street and is now crazy flat street dog L.

Houry broke our horn about a week ago when she got into a fight with a dumb ass construction worker who blocked the dirt road in front of one of the many construction sites. He made her wait about 30 minutes until they unloaded a truck. Houry yelled at them, but they were real assholes. So she beeped the horn for about 10 minutes straight, which ultimately caused it to break. It beeps, but it is kind of sad now. I document this terrible event to continue the story. So about a week later, Houry calls me very, very happy. On the way out on the dirt road, she sees the dumb ass guy walking in the middle of the road. So, she speeds up the car and beeps the horn (she was driving our other car this time so the horn worked!) and scared the hell out of the guy. Then as she passed buy, she smiled and flipped him off. Revenge might not be too Christian, but it can be sweet at times!

Houry has been going to the gym regularly since we got back. Her and a friend of hers meet and go together. They went to a class for yoga or something and were joking that the class seemed filled with mistresses all dolled up and ready to work out. I call it Mistress Monday’s at the Marriott. Now a month or so later, they figured out that most of them are the wives of the various ambassadors and diplomats in town.

The girls are now officially overwhelmed with school. We increased their classes to include chemistry and physics. They are doing very well, but now have little free time (which is great!).

Goofy has adjusted to the new neighborhood as well. He barks at the security guards and Ponchig's mother, father and brother who also double as our complex's security dogs (yeah right).