A year ago, we poured a bottle of cheap champagne off a balcony in Berlin. On a shoestring budget, the bottle was completely undrinkable, somehow all too sour and too sweet and too bubbly. We each poured a third over, and listed our goals and wishes for 2020. I don’t remember what I said. I … More A New Year Story: from pandemic winter
This is going to be a bit of a mess. Hang tight. I was in the middle of writing a different version of this blog post, one with the words “everything is normal here”, when suddenly things stopped being quite so normal. Several things happed sort of at once. Armenia reported three more cases of … More Peace Corps Armenia: the bees came back, and we’re waiting
Full disclosure: I didn’t think I would struggle this winter. My summer was so mind-bendingly hot that I couldn’t conceptualize the cold. All of the things that Peace Corps said would be hard about the winter I didn’t think applied to me, because it’s not as cold as it could be at my site, because … More Peace Corps Armenia: Things I thought I knew
They warn you about the Winter. How it’s not the cold itself, it’s that you can’t get away from it. It gets dark so early, and the winter food is different, and you have been here just long enough that it’s starting to feel long. All Januaries are long, of course. It’s a long cold … More Peace Corps Armenia: stories to keep you warm
I left Armenia for the first time in nine months. In my head, that didn’t really seem like that long of a time, but people’s lives can change a lot in nine months. I didn’t even realize mine had. I went to Berlin to meet Hannah, my friend who is studying there now. I met … More Peace Corps Armenia: Berlin, Dresden, and Home
hello stranger 