Becky Does the Dancing

I have a friend! Her name is Arpine and she is my Armenian teacher. She was co-opted into the both positions of Armenian teacher and RHU bff by my Russian teacher, Larissa Markovnah (Markovnah meaning 'son of Mark,' it's called her patronic name and it indicates respect). Arpine is incredibly sweet, patient and fun. She invites me to do all sorts of things with her friends and family. She is Larissa Markovnah’s deputy at the language school and oversees a group of 23 year old girls who are all English language teachers. We went to the zoo last weekend and they tried to teach me a bunch of words.

Me the English teachers. Arpine is next to me in orange.

Note the sad-looking camel with a floppy hump.

I remember three- artiv is eagle, kapack is monkey, and Dee is Horse. The zoo was really depressing, animals in very small cages, they all looked thin and sort of sick, and people kept throwing food at them. One of the baboons flipped out after a little girl hit it in the head with an apricot. He jumped on the bars and hissed with his huge teeth showing. Scared the pants off me!

Lots of meat. This picture not dedicated to my sister. That would be mean.

Arpine also has a great group of ‘yard’ friends. They all grew up in the same or neighboring buildings, hence the name. She invited me over to her house for dinner a couple weeks ago and the whole group came over to say hi. Last weekend Arpine invited me to go to her family’s country house for what can only be described as National Water Fight Day. It’s an Armenian holiday that is supposed to date back to pagan times and involves good luck if you ‘water’ someone. This gives everyone free reign to dump water on you all day long. We took a van out the country and had to close the windows because there were children lining the streets who would launch plastic bags filled with water into the windows of the van. That was actually kind of scary.

Armenian BBQ!

We got to the country house, which is the very modest place where he grandfather spends most of his time, and immediately began setting up for the famous Armenian Barbeque. It involves lots of bloody meat and skewers and smoke but boy is it good. The country house is a two story cement building surrounded by 40 feet of grape vines and fruit trees. When the BBQ was ready we set up a big table on the porch upstairs, poured the vodka, and ate. About ten minutes into eating the toasts began. To friendship, to Americans, to love, and finally, to beautiful sex. When I heard that one I choked on my cup full of vodka.

Arpine, Becky, Rubina- post toasts

A couple brief asides:
- Russian and Armenian generally do not use articles. It’s really nice when trying to learn the language, less nice when editing legal articles. I am forever inserting ‘the’ and ‘a’ and deleting awkwardly places ones.

- During one of my Armenian lessons, I made poor Arpine describe the way dating works here. Several times I’d asked her if two people were boyfriend/girlfriend and she assured me that they were ‘just doing the friendship.’ But then there was another situation in which one of her friends was angry at a guy with whom she had done the friendship for awhile and then he moved on to another girl. So clearly there’s something else implicated in this doing of friendship. Arpine explained that it encompasses everything from the initial expression of interest through group dates until the first kiss. Pretty much, if you are going to be doing any k-i-s-s-i-n-g, you better be ready for love, marriage and the proverbial baby carriage.

So back to the toast, one of Arpine’s cousins stood up and gave a toast, in English, to beautiful sex. I choked on my vodka again and I turned with big eyes to Arpine and she explained it was a toast for women, you know, the beautiful gender. Ahhhhha.

After barbeque we cleaned up, dumped some more water on each other, played cards, the cousins and friends tried out some English words on me, and I made them laugh my asking everyone their name and birthday (my only two Armenian sentences thus far). Then someone put on some Armenian music and Arsen decided to teach me how to dance. I wasn’t horrible but I also don’t think there will be any repeat performances. Arsen and I really hit it off and by the end of the night this cheeky lil pup was looking at pictures in my camera and referring to his mother and father in law.

Becky Does the Dancing

We had a second round of food with some absolutely amazing stewed lamb and more vodka and awkward toasts in English. Then a couple strolls up and down the street, fruit, cookies, and clean up. A really fun day.

A pretty view from the country house.