Making Plans

Friday was a big day – I bought the tickets for my plane flights home. That was surprisingly emotional – I’ll be sad to leave here, but also happy to get back to the U.S. I am not looking forward to the job hunt that lies ahead, but I am trying to have the mindset of looking forward to the job that will result from the hunt. It helped to make the flight arrangements from the Peace Corps office and have fellow PCVs with whom to process the emotions.

A friend of mine had sent me a coupon for California Pizza Kitchen the other day, and that started me thinking about having one of their salads. I’ve also been thinking about the salad at Suki Zuki in Water Mill (near Southampton), Aroma Coffee and my pre-Armenia breakfast, protein shakes. Plus, someone recently mentioned Indonesian food…. But I really haven’t been thinking that much about food - more about people I am looking forward to seeing. I passed a bicycle-rental place the other day; I have never seen people bicycling in Yerevan and I think there is too much traffic for me to want to, but now I am looking forward to biking when I get back. There was a 5K in Southampton last weekend that I’d participated in last year and the year before; I look forward to 5Ks and more events. The National Peace Corps Association has a 50th anniversary shindig in Washington, D.C. in September; I’ve signed up for that.

Even before I bought the plane tickets, I changed the address on my magazine subscriptions. For the Philippines, I had all the magazines go to my forwarding address, Edie’s, and was stunned at the pile that had accumulated in six months (especially since I’d eliminated just about everything except the New Yorker). I’m glad I’ve been receiving them here but know that not all of them have arrived. I’d brought a few books with me and picked up a few more while here; between the books and the magazines I’ve had just about enough reading material. I brought some DVDs to watch and haven’t watched a single one! I watched much more in the Philippines (maybe I read less? I’m not comparing to Morocco because in 27 months there was time for everything and then some!).

I’ll stop in the Netherlands for a couple of days on the way back. After I COS, I plan to go to Nagorno-Karabakh for a couple of days (I cannot go while I am a PCV – and given that the situation can change at any moment, I won’t decide for sure until that day. Here’s the latest - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world/europe/12russia.html?scp=2&sq=karabakh&st=cse; this was last week’s one-sided story - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/asia/01azerbaijan.html?scp=1&sq=karabakh&st=cse). I’ll then go to Georgia – I’ve now gathered information from several people who have vacationed there, so I have a tentative route planned out. I looked at flights out of Tbilisi – no more convenient or less expensive; if I fly out of Yerevan I can keep my big luggage here while I travel. The question was how many days to spend there and will my relatives be available in Holland. Turns out that Armavia (the only option) flies direct to Amsterdam only on Thursdays – so that set the date for my flight out as Thursday, August 11. I emailed my aunt and uncle in Holland and heard back almost immediately that they would be available (now I have emails out to the cousins). Even though not much time passed, by the time I got back to the Armavia web site, the price of the ticket had gone up considerably! I had to make sure I had it though before buying Amsterdam to JFK. I promised my sister I would be home by August 15; I arrive at JFK on the evening of August 14. Now I have to look into accommodations along the way….

But first – more time here! Friday night I went to the orchestra – delightful as always – and followed that with a few minutes of watching the dancing fountains at Republic Square (almost a bonus concert!). And I went away for the weekend – more on that in the next post. My counterpart is on vacation through the end of the month, so I have time to work on my travel plans, start writing the COS documents, and maybe even send out a few resumes? I’ll also be going through the MCA-Armenia web site and making suggestions on the usage and grammar. And I’m available if anyone on the team has any projects for me.