Conversation and Cows 6/22/16

Today I used the most Armenian in daily conversation that I have ever used in my life. I was basically telling cute little Armenian women to give me their prescriptions and to sit down outside the pharmacy. I did that maybe 100 times in one day so you can imagine just how good I was at saying the two phrases over and over again. I also had a full on conversation with a woman about glasses in Armenian and how we didn’t have anymore. She didn’t seem too happy, but I definitely was. Communicating with people has been an enriching experience that I will be sad to leave when I go back to America. Every time I can’t think of a word, I use a hand motion and they fill in the blank for me. It’s a way that we can both get our points across, but also learn at the same time.

I was simultaneously filling out the paperwork for the Armenian government about who we were giving medication to and how much of it to each person. It may seem like grunt work, but by the end I knew all the commonly prescribed drug names and what their packaging looked like. Pharmaceuticals here I come!

After working for half the day, we traveled to Stepanavan on propane buses. It only broke down ONCE the entire 45-minute drive and, after the mass hysteria, started right back up again. We arrived at the church to set up the clinic and it was a gorgeous church. There was a garden that had a fairy-like quality that had flowers native to only Armenia. Once we were done with that we got to the hotel. Our hotel is a family camp for people from Yerevan and it’s a lush green that doesn’t go away because of the constant rain. The hotel itself is relatively new – ping pong tables and chess in the lobby, marble flooring, and of course, the greatest asset of them all – WIFI.

We all decided to go for a walk because it was still very light outside and the forestry surrounding the place was worth the exercise. Fast forward an hour later (ad 2 miles later) and we had taken selfies with cows (from two feet away), walked through a muddy forest, taken pictures crouching amongst the daisies, got Communist ice cream bars, and had a Mercedes Benz with blue headlights creepily pass us three times VERY slowly. We finally made it back with severely sore feet, which is the price you pay for good memories.