March 26, 2006
Arrived
We have arrived for good. Yesterday morning, at 4:35 a.m., we made landfall at Yerevan Airport which is, incidentally, not a recommended airport. Think "Deep Space Nine" built by Communists without a good plan. It's that bad.
However, here we are. We had a great spring day yesterday, and walked the boys around a lot to tire them out. It didn't work. Meaning, they did get tired and complained a lot, but by the time we came back to the hotel, they perked right up and proceeded to watch DVDs for the rest of the evening. Jet lag in toddlers and small children is a horrible thing...
We are also battling adjusting to the high altitude and extreme dryness: dizziness, nose bleeds, fatigue, thirst. Jacob's way of dealing with this is to nurse nonstop. Ouch - he has two teeth now.
Now, here's a problem: we move into our new house tomorrow and Internet access from there is abominable. Dial-up and bad telephone lines will make my internet life quite miserable. Doug will have good enough internet access in his office but since he already works his second day here, on the weekend, I anticipate him being very, very, very busy indeed.
But don't go away quite yet, we'll find a way. Promised.
(Oh, and the local red wine is really nice! Thought you'd like to know that...)
The caravan to Yerevan has arrived! Hooray!
I can continue back-up blogging, no worries.
Posted by: Carlos at March 26, 2006 06:42 PMFor those of your readers who, like me, don't have a good sense of where Yerevan is, in terms of time zones, I did some checking. Romania is UTC+2 and Armenia is UTC+4. Two hours of jet lag is just enough to be a real nuisance! Best wishes in getting your boys to settle in. :)
Re the dryness, can you install a humidifier in the house? Or even portable humidifiers in the rooms you'll be in most often?
Posted by: Christine at March 26, 2006 08:12 PMI like the new logo. Don't suppose there are a lot of wi-fi hotspots, eh?
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at March 27, 2006 12:00 AMHooray! Congrats on the [relatively] smooth arrival in Yerevan.
As to the dryness; I remember when we moved to the glorious Mile-High City. Some of that stuff /should/ pass in the next week. OTOH, I've never been to Yerevan, so I shouldn't stick my foot in my mouth with promises. I do second the humidifier suggestion.
Best of luck sorting things out over there.
Posted by: Luke at March 27, 2006 03:34 AMThank you, all.
Christine - the time zone problem is more elaborate than that. We had been in Germany for one week prior to our arrival, so that's really three hours of time difference. On top of that, Armenia went to summer time on the weekend, adding another hour, making it four. Doug, poor thing, came almost directly from the US - so he's really ten hours off. We are running around in a constant daze of sleepiness.
As to the humidifiers - I bought a very good cold steam vaporizer which is in the airship which should arrive in about two weeks. It's funny but humdifiers and vaporizers are not your standard household appliance in Eastern European countries. They are very hard to get here.
Which brings me to another nice question: is Armenia Europe or not? Strictly speaking, it's not. It's in Asia. However, it so doesn't feel like Asia and the people surely want to be European, or so is my first impression. According to the subscription department of the "Zeit", it is still Europe and I am very grateful for that. Hm, I guess that's a good topic for another, longer post.
Today, I'll do the preliminary move into the house. We decided to sleep at the hotel for at least another two nights, just because we don't yet have everything needed to make a comfortable living in the house. I didn't bring sheets for the beds (the fact that the airship doesn't leave Germany until next week was not revealed to me until two days ago). We need to buy toilet paper, detergents of all kinds (dishes, laundry), light bulbs and some other things. There is a little IKEA store downtown which I want to check out.
Chip, chip, chip. Now let me just check the prices on those two-way satellite dishes for Internet access... :-)
Posted by: claudia at March 27, 2006 05:55 AMHuzzah! You all have arrived and in one piece!
Congratz! Lyuda, Avrora and I are headed to
Ukraine in May. I'm going for a couple weeks
and Avrora and Lyuda are going until the beginning
of July: Lyuda really misses her family and wants
Babushka Anya to get to know her granddaughter
well before coming back. It's not /quite/ your
massive trip though!
We've been watching the election there closely
because of the impacts on the extended family
/and/ what we need to do for the trip. Oy.
Congrats and the relativly smooth arival! I hope Armenia treats you all good and I look forward to hearing your stories when you have the time.
Best wishes,
Mike