Third Star the the Right and Straight on Till Morning

I spent most of my time in Armenia with girls- Arpine, the girls at Albion, ladies at work, Larissa Markovnah, Kregg’s wife. Georgia proved to be a different story. I pulled into the train station and was met by Irakli Torua, who is about two feet taller than the average Armenian guy. He drove me to Irakli Saralidze’s house, where I stayed. We had some eggs and then loaded up the SUV to head out for some rifle practice with Artur and Tengis, Counterpart’s driver. Lucky for me, I was wearing my best pink rifle practice skirt.

During my stay, I felt like Wendy to the Lost Boys of Tbilisi. They clearly do not spend much time with women and are sometimes like a group of goofy 15 year old boys. I did some dish washing, shirt ironing (only because I offered and then insisted), and tried to explain why I could not finish my liter-sized beer at lunch. Or why I was satisfied with just one full quail for dinner.

I ended up spending all three days in the office catching up on Counterpart work and recruiting nonsense but was driven around the city at night by Irakli T., who thinks we may be in love.

Heading to Istanbul today to meet Joey and Kristin, then on to Athens where we will find Nora, then Mykonos, back to Athens and finally home via London and New York.

Bangarang!

iMetaphor

At the beginning and end of each work day, I look forward to what I’ve come to think of as comfort music. Being able to put on my ipod and tune out the hustle bustle of the streets is fun. The soundtrack to Yerevan, as dj’ed by moi.

(It also helps me tune out the small man in army fatigues guarding the State Assembly who makes hideous kissing noises every time I walk by. I am about 5 inches taller, maybe about 15 pounds heavier, and I think we are looking at a 2:1 thigh ratio that does not come out in your favor, amigo.)

So I was pretty upset when I slipped on the sidewalk and fell onto the hand holding the ipod. The screen went all white with pretty rainbows, but otherwise it works fine. I can skip forward and backward through the playlists, but I never know exactly where I am or what is coming next.

As I sit on the Soviet train to Tbilisi that inexplicably takes 14 hours when you can make it in 4 hours in a car, sitting next to my new friend, the 70 year old pot-bellied man who has just taken off his shirt to sleep in our cozy little compartment, I hope you will indulge me for a minute.

Perhaps life in Armenia, the developing world, on the road, or anywhere away from a place you can comfortably call home, is a little like an ipod with no screen. It’s the same song no matter where you are. What’s different is your ability to see the menu, and control it like you would at home. But with a deep breathe and a little relinquishment of control, my favorite song still comes on, eventually. And surprise and happiness it brings when I finally hear it is a greater reward than if I were to be able to pull it up on a whim.

Hearing the same songs that I listen to in my apartment, my car, while running (figuratively because we all know I quit actually running in late 2003), is at once comforting and homesickness-inducing. In this same way, being so far away from home makes the world feel smaller on one hand, and never more vast on the other.

I’ve felt many times over the past two months that there is nothing new under the sun. Sure, there are new sites to see, people to meet, food to stuff my face with, but we are all engaged in the same basic activities- family, friends, work, births, deaths, holidays, Sunday evenings and pizza, it’s just the script is different. But at the same time, there is never, ever a place that that can fulfill what ‘being home’ does. And accepting this, that as much as you adapt and grow to love your new environment, it will never be home, is what makes the world feel so very, very big.

The Namesake

The place where Larissa Markovnah and Arpine work is called Albion and it’s an English language school. It seems that they only hire pretty, young girls (because you have to be nice looking if someone is going to pay attention to you for 2 hours!). Each one is hand-selected by Larissa Markovnah and the result is a gaggle of sweet, ambitious and lively girls. Each one has an English persona- Arpine is Susan Smart, Lucine is Tina Trust, Anna is Melanie Bright, and Mariam is Betty O’Bryan. A new girl started during my stay and guess what her name is? Becky :)

The Soviet Union Called and It Wants It Train Back

I decided to take the train from Yerevan up to Tbilisi to visit some old Counterpart friends. Armen, our driver, took me to the train station to help me buy a ticket. The train station was like being magically transported back to Armenia, or anywhere else in the Soviet Union, 20 or even 50 years ago. The building is huge, with cathedral ceilings and marble floors. There are statutes of a workers, stars, and abstract scenes expressing ‘unity.’ It could be quite grand with some paint and elbow grease but now it just seems neglected.

The first time we went, we waited in line for 25 minutes while the cashier helped the person (one person) in front of us. When it was my turn, we stepped up to the counter and the woman promptly turned the sign to close and got up to leave. We were all of 2 feet away for nearly half an hour but she didn’t feel any need to tell us she was leaving for lunch.

We came back the next day and joined the ‘line,’ which forms in a radial radial rather than linear fashion. Armen and I stood in the heat, occasionally rolling our eyes, watching the lady sell tickets. The process involved writing names down in an old notebook, the kind with the black and white marbling on the front. Then she would look at the seating plan, a packet of stapled together papers, and write your name on your seat. Then she took a booklet of tickets, and this is the part that really killed me, and cut the ticket out with scissors, like making a paper snowflake. No ticket would be complete without a stamp so she picked some special letters and numbers out of the box and loaded them into the ancient machine, like you would with an old fashion printing press. And with that, I was booked for Tbilisi.

When I look good, I feel good

When I packed for Armenia, I packed business casual, both for work and play. Modest skirts and work appropriate tops for the week, modest skirts and tank tops for the weekend. I also brought a couple ‘fun’ shirts in case there was a big night out, and some suits in case there was a formal meeting. I can safely say that I was the most conservatively dressed person in the office, possibly in the under 40 population of Yerevan.

The cleavage here is out of control. Plunging necklines everywhere, 4 inch heels on the dusty cobblestones, and just yesterday I was walking behind a woman who had a gold outline of a thong stenciled on the outside of her jeans. My suits stayed in the suitcase, but I was still the plain jane, simple sally, feeling a little silly in my button up shirt and khaki shirt.

Sometimes it is hard to keep in mind that Armenians, in general, are not very promiscuous, well, at least the women are not. We were at a case law training one weekend and there was a woman who was doing particularly well in all the competitions. It was very hard for me to hear what she was saying though, because she looks and dresses very much like the hairdresser from Legally Blond, also the same actress who played Stifler’s mom in American Pie. The jury is still out on whether she’s had plastic surgery or just looks very much like what all the plastic surgeons try to make women look like. But she wears the most outrageous outfits. Like beaded halter tops with and visible bra straps made out of tiny rhinestones, periodically gathered in heart shapes, and a short skirt covered in zippers. She had big hair, long nails, and long dangly earrings the size of a child’s fist. And she totally kicked ass at appellate brief writing. I also found out that she is a public defender and probably the only person in the history of Armenia to get a criminal case outright dismissed by citing ECHR precedent.

A little digging discovered that this trend toward the scandalous is a relatively new development, and in part a reaction to the fall of the Soviet Union. I was told that during Soviet times, there was a code of modesty enforced. Nothing more than hand holding on TV, and very little public sexiness. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sternness lifted, and voila, porn on public TV at 8 pm. (but still no pre-marital sex). Women also felt more free to dress how they pleased. At the time there was no where to go at night that was socially acceptable. Clubs were for strippers and drunken men. So the women started to dress sexily when it was socially acceptable- during the day. I suppose if I had no nightlife, no chance to get all dolled up and feel attractive, I too might look for a shorter, tighter, gaudier business casual. But I draw the line at rhinestone bra straps.

Last week I realized how far I’d come when I decided to wear one of my ‘fun’ shirts to the office. Everyone loved it.

Running on Empty

There’s a beautiful monument in Yerevan called the Cascade that is about a quarter mile of straight up stairs. Because running on streets would be an exercise in self destruction, I got a little work out by trying to run up the stairs. I looked like a really eager tourist at them bottom of the stairs and someone finishing a marathon at the top. The view of Mt. Ararat and the city at the top of the Cascade is definitely worth it.

Legal English, Oxymoron?

I realize that I never finished describing the rest of the ABA project or what exactly I am doing. Besides the Criminal Law project, there are several others:
Judicial Reform- keeping track of the judiciary, introducing case law, putting together the Legal Reform Index .
Legal Profession- working with attorneys to create professional societies, like the ABA, conducting trainings, grant writing.
Legal Education- working with law school students, introducing legal clinics in the regions, more case law

Case Law Training

Elections and Outreach- during the very controversial elections last spring, ABA was very active doing monitoring trips, responding to legal problems on election day, and supporting citizens who wanted to bring their election-related cases to court (a very brave few souls). The Outreach program had a grant to produce the ‘Alphabet of Law,’ which are colorful cartoons and programming aimed at educating children about the legal system and their rights. The program also produces a monthly newsletter describing all the legal developments that happened during the month.

My big project was teaching a Legal English class to Armenian attorneys. I really wasn’t sure what to expect and was given very little guidance on what I should teach and how I should conduct the class, but I think it turned out well in the end. Attendance varied a lot, often depended on the weather and tapered off as we got closer to August, but there was a core group of four people who came every time. We had a lot of fun together. We covered federalism, Boumediene v Bush, Loving v Virginia, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and corruption of the judiciary (the difference between making a bad decision in good faith and making a bad decision in bad faith). A former prosecutor from Brooklyn was working at the embassy and came to all the classes so it was nice to have someone who knew what he were talking about.

What I thought was really remarkable was how explaining the basic concepts of our legal system to someone else can make you understand it better yourself. All those Con law classes where I was half playing Snood and half counting minutes somehow seeped in and it was only in explaining the Constitution to someone else that I really understood what Magill was talking about.

I did some other cool projects- like summarizing ECHR decisions so that Armenian lawyers can easily reference them when arguing for things like confrontation of witnesses and bail for criminal defendants. I did some less exciting but still interesting jobs like editing the newsletters and monthly admin reports and updating the office policy manual on things like tax laws and severance packages. I also helped out a friend of the USAID director in an international child custody case.

I really liked the job this summer but unfortunately, finding a real job abroad with ABA doesn’t seem very hopeful. When ABA sends American attorneys abroad, their value added is their legal experience practicing law in the US. I’d like to skip this step and head straight for the good bits. But it seems like I’ll have to pay my dues somewhere first.

The underground music scene is so.....literal.

Heart of the Matter

When Arpine talks to me about love and dating, she talks about looking for her ‘other half,’ the one person in the world who completes you. At parties, there is always a toast to those who have their ‘other halves by their sides,’ and best wishes for those who have yet to meet him or her. My co-worker who is a translator referred to this person as ‘one’s beloved.’ In America, when we talk about love and dating, we are rarely so honest or graphic about what it is all about. In fact, hearing this reminds me of the Sex and the City episode where Carrie pretends to faint after Petrovsky buys her a Chanel dress and takes her to the opera. Like biting into something so sweet it makes your teeth hurt.

But why the cynicism, I have to ask myself. On one hand, my impression of young married couples here is that it mostly involves holding hands and looking sullen. And living with your parents, or his parents. There is also the problem of a ‘ruined woman.’ Men don’t want women who have taken a stroll around the block once or twice, so experimentation or divorce are definite nonos. It seems to me that all this leads to the incredible pressure to find the one, your other half, your beloved. You’ve got one shot, so you better do it right (or else you will be living with your mother for the rest of your life).

In my brief experience, this leads girls in their 20’s (you are only a woman after your wedding night) to be very, very picky about whom they choose to do the friendship with. It also leads to the curious and critical look in peoples’ eyes when I tell them I’m here alone, single and not actively looking. Ahhhhhh, to have traveled half way around the world, alone, self-demonstrating my independence, only to wind up in a place that views independence in girls my age as something akin to a lazy eye.

So, cultural differences aside, still- why the cynicism? I’ve seen lots of real love- my grandparents, my parents and even my friends (most often while wearing a heavy satin café/champagne/mocha colored dress). But for some reason, the other half/beloved talk makes me think you need to suspend reality in order to swallow it. What, exactly, are the details of ‘ever after’? He is still your beloved if you can’t stand the way he, oh I don’t know, leaves clothes all over the floor?

I can already hear the answers to these questions- that real love isn’t about perfect compatability, so on and so forth. But I think the minute you start making compromises to prove that he is the one, you are perched atop a slippery slope. If you forgive/accept/deal with this, why not that? And once you start making deals with true love, how do you know when you’ve talked yourself out of a bargain?

I may sound pessimistic, but I don’t think I am, really. Conversely, I think love, or maybe marriage, is all about the little compromises and deals, all done in service of the motto, ‘Better with than without.’ I don’t think it’s an easy feat, finding someone whom you are always better with than without. But it seems to have very little to do with this idea of divine intervention and ‘the one.’

Apples are from Kazakhstan; vegetarians clearly are not.

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in London across from the Borough Market. It is a small victory that I actually got here...after delays, bag issues, somehow ending up in Prague, getting lost with all my luggage after coming out from the Waterloo station at midnight (hey, things have changed around here!) I am finally enjoying all that is London. Amanda Greenwood is coming tomorrow and we will spend a whole week here going crazy, having fun and being dorks together. I walked along Southbank today and couldn't stop smiling; life is good.

Kazakhstan. So much to tell!

Firstly, let's get this out of the way: "Very niiiice! I liike!" or "High fivee!" I got it out of my system on the plane ride over (while I was sitting next to and making friends with the Ukranian Olympic fencing team) so that I didn't offend anyone. They HATE Borat. It's tough because it is really the only reference most Americans have. Most Americans would never have encountered or thought of Kazakhstan in their entire lives if it weren't for Sascha Baron Cohen. They say that there is no such thing as bad PR...but it sure stinks to have 300 million people think that in Kazahstan women are just after cockroaches, respect-wise.

This trip was with the JDC (Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) and Tufts Hillel, so we worked with the Jewish community and spent the whole week exploring our Jewish identities. Under the Soviet Union, religion was clearly not allowed, so most Jews in Almaty were completely cut off from their Jewish roots. We worked and lived with "Kazakhstani peers," a bunch of kids our age, some of whom only found out they are Jewish literally years ago. One girl in my group, Ania, got a job working for the Jewish community website just by chance. Her parents decided it was a fitting time to tell her then that she is Jewish. They were too scared to tell her before that. This was six months ago. She's 20.

All of these discussions about Judaism really got me thinking about my roots and my own Jewish identity. More on this later.

Some quick facts before I go:
Apples really are from Kazakhstan. So are yurts and Kazakh nomads.
KZ is the 9th largest country in the world.
Being a vegetarian is a little bit like being a weirdo in KZ.

More soon.

Love,
Sarah