It's Still Just the First Week...

Computer update: I called the Apple Support Center yesterday and they said they had to order a new screen for me; they don't have one in stock. So it'll be at least a week. I'm working out of the Peace Corps office today - we're aiming for one day a week here, to regroup and plan ahead. I may come back again this weekend to catch up on email and on the news. So much is happening in the world right now! I've gotten small updates on Egypt but want to read more about it.

There hasn't been much downtime so far. I've had a lot of downtime in the past - oh, eight years? Twelve? I need downtime - including more exercise time. This week so far has been the crunch of getting the airport order ready; we spent a couple of hours putting tags on yesterday, and then we delivered it to Artbridge, where the buyer also buys for the airport. She had seen some prototypes but this was the first time she had seen the completed product, and it was a learning experience to see her reactions.

We also started going through the inventory of existing products, so that we can build a database. Town, province, artisan, local NGO, local PCV, hours to make, materials, pricing, a product photo, how many sold so far and in what venue, and any particulars about the artisan. We made it through a box and a half out of six or seven total boxes. And we talked about the upcoming Valentine's Day fair - that'll be the next crunch. There's also a fair for International Women's Day, which is March 8. And I still haven't quite adjusted to the time difference. There's definitely going to be enough for two of us to do! Oh, and our counterpart is going away for a week, leaving us to do the fair!

The posts in the computer talk about the rest of orientation, an introduction to work including a field trip that we took, and my home stay and host sister. When I wrote that last one I hadn't decided what to do about dinner. We've all decided to pay our hosts to cook dinners for us, at least for a while. Breakfast was part of the rent negotiation; we'll eat lunch out and that's going to add up. Tuesday she made a lovely lentil dish, and yesterday she made pumpkin with rice, milk, dried apricots and cinnamon. Tonight will be borscht. Food costs a lot here - this was a bad weather year for the fruit harvest. And I think an oligarch tried to corner the market on eggs, so eggs are twice as expensive as they were last year. Everything's expensive here, because it's all imported. I didn't bring common toiletries because they're heavy - but they're expensive here; maybe twice what they cost in the U.S., or more. I thought I might get a bathrobe - I saw a not-very-nice one at the supermarket - maybe one that you might get at a CVS at home - for the equivalent of $82. No bathrobe! Maybe that's why I think $350 for an Apple computer screen seems reasonable!

Today we went to the U.S. Embassy, a fortress-like building on the outskirts of town, on the river, with a nice view of Mt. Ararat, for a briefing with the regional security office. Nothing we hadn't already been told, but more detail. For example, if there's a leak in the nuclear reactor, stay inside and put duct tape and plastic on all the windows until they send notice at it's safe to go outside. And if there's an earthquake? Usually it's good to be in a doorway, but maybe not in Armenia. On the Eurasia plate, there's an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 every three years - in Armenia, Turkey, Georgia or Iran. Note, he also said that our biggest danger here is the traffic - so I'll just go with that for now...