my sunday trip

So like people in Armenia know it was raining all night and most part of the day in Yerevan and in other parts of the country. Nevertheless me and mom still went to this 1-day trip. At first we went to Khor Virap.

I had taken photos of everything there already so, took only several.


Here I wanted to take a photo of myself for my 365-days project, but didn't manage to run all the way to the wall in 10 seconds (can't set timer to more). However I mdae it in the second one... but the angle was a bit different and the reflection of the wall can't be seen well enough :(


what i didn't know the last time I was here with Michael, was this path leading to the top of the hill (yes Michael, it's only a hill in Armenian standards :D) The view from there was picturesque and beautiful!


the raindrops kept falling on the lense of the cam.. that's what the blurry white spot is


mommy with her life-long friend Goharic (Gabriel's mom. Gabriel is one of childhood friends).


then we were to go to Noravank but on the way there visited house museum of Vazgen Sargsyan and Paruyr Sevak.

this was a present to V. Sargsyan... it's Noah's Arch made of stone and bronze i guess. really beautiful work!


some trees at Paruyr Sevak's garden. it was a very very beautiful garden with many trees.. but it was c-c-c-cooooooooooooooold there! so i didn't take much photos and ran back to the bus :D


then finally we arrived at Noravank. I can't describe with words how beautiful it was so i will just show it with photos... but you have to see it with your own eyes. the rocks, the gorge, the hawks (or smth like that) flying here and there...



The Noravank is a complex of 2 churches. the name means "New monastery" and the architecture was very beautiful and had unique elements that i had never seen on any other church here. For more history just visit Wikipedia article here, as i can't write better than it's written :D



The other interesting thing was that an architect had carved the image of the God the Father, which was actually forbidden and is forbidden because of the question "and what does he look like?". In the hand was Adam's head, symbolizing the world and the foundation (sorry i wasn't paying much attention to the guide's words here because was looking around :D ). Also there were signs of the Moon and the Sun carved, symbolizing changes and stability respectively... Armenian Yin-Yang :D. Then there was a water drop symbolizing the truth, the pureness, which came after the Word (and the word was the beginning). and on the final piece Holy mother of God and small Jesus are depicted. And the surprising thing is that they are on a carpet (which is unusual depiction for armenian style).



That was what the guide told, and he actually caught my attention since the story was interesting.

some photos from inside of the church:


i don't know whose bright idea it was to burry people inside of the church so that you will actually walk on graves, but i have seen this in several other places here..

Now the fun part - the stairs (no it's not just design element, they have practical use). you could fall easily from them and there was nothing to hold on from - only the wall of the church. Also it was wet and slippery but oh how could i skip the fun? (even though i had climbed them once several years ago). i'm a small girl but it was a bit difficult for me to climb, and i can say that anyone who has broader shoulders than i do (many people go under this category) will find it very difficult and dangerous... but it was worth it!



view from inside to inside and outside :D


view from outside:


landscape photos



then after we spent some time here, we started the way back. it stopped raining and the weather was fine and the sun was shining. on the way back we made a small stop at Areni village famous for its wines. we went to the wine factory and tried some wine there, but it wasn't really good (Armenian standards ;) )
so we left the factory and bought some wine from local people who made it themselves. there were stands at the road all over this village!

there IS happiness in this world! i'm in heaven! :D:D:D




I took some more photos from the road... but don't want to post them here and now. i will make a post "photos from the road" someday :)

the photos posted here can be found in this album:

Noravank

stormy soul

yeah, that's me. Had some fun with photoshop editing... however my neck is hurting badly now :((( from shaking the head to make the hair fly (as you figured i didn't take just 1 photo, i took MANY until it was what i wanted)

To see what i've been busy with these 3 days click here.

REMINDER TO MYSELF:
i need to keep some sort of list of promises i gave to random people... especially things like "we (me and Michael i mean) will visit you when we come to Armenia". today i promised that to my swimming trainer...

life is like a river...

i've finally started taking swimming lessons, and this time is for good and rather serious. i mean i don't want to skip any of the 3 days in the week and well my swimming has improved greatly! right now swimming along the pool (25 m) is a usual thing for me. of course i have to improve my crawl (or front stroke) a lot, but still :) the difficult thing for me is to throw arms in pace with breathing. but well all i need is practice now. also i've learned to swim breaststroke with head above the water (what we call 'frog') which is nice for relaxing, but again i need to work much on it. the next step will be the butterfly. Anyhow, so i go swimming 3 days a week, and each swimming lesson lasts 2 hours! then i go the sauna and relax some, then come home, and feel that my energy level is at 0. but it's really great! i can't understand how i have been missing out such a great thing for years!

right now "mini brazil" or "mega latino party 3" is taking place and i'm at home, curled up with my notebook on the sofa and don't feel like moving.

how comes i didn't go? well i have a couple of reasons...
first is that i had a very stressful evening yesterday, and then got up very early today to go to the park with Niko and Avag (we met up at 9).



what happened yesterday was that i simply wanted to install photoshop on my notebook. but to do that i needed to use image file and well it said on the disk that i will need to install alcohol 120% program first. i did install it.. after what this wonderful windows vista home edition showed me blue screen of death with a fatal error and shut down. and windows would not start until (like Michael found out) i uninstalled that damn alcohol! to run commander i would need to boot windows in safe mode and THEN call the commander! but well my captain america, my hero and rescuer, was there :D at first he told me to insert a linux live cd... but it didn't work since it didn't give access to hdd directory. then i found the original vista disk and... booted comander from there :D and deleted the files of alcohol 120 manually, after what windows loaded! hooray! but oh when it all was fixed it was around 1.30. if i was a smoker i would smoke much more than one cigarette :D

anyways... so after going to the park with Avag and Niko we went over to Niko's place for '3 minutes' to see his 3d animations (they were cool!). then we watched some 3d cartoons which were great... and the 3 minutes turned into several hours!

i was planning to come home and get some more sleep before going to the pool! but i decided i will be fine. then i remembered i had to refill the internet balance, so i met up with Helen, we walked to the isp, talking and joking on the way, then i finally went to the pool...

when i FINALLY got home (no my legs are still legs, they didn't turn into mermaid tail like mom says), i had to beat the meat for dinner.. aunt said after i beat it, it has to be twice bigger and twice thinner... it was thrice bigger and thrice thinner as a result of my work and well there was meat on walls, floor, and on me :D

then i felt HUNGER! and had to wait for aunt to feeeeeed me! and of course we had some home-made apple vodka (calvados). so after that... oh dear god how do you think i would go to the party after all that? i was just not able to move :D

and well there was more to it... lately i've been going out all the time and spent much less time talking to my sweet white bear than i wanted, than we wanted.

it feels like waiting now. i'm on the edge of saying goodbye to life in armenia and leaving... and i feel good about it. i would change anything in my life if i looked back but at the same time i just can't wait to start a new life, a new life with the best man in the world who i'll call my husband soon :) he puts me into peaceful spirits, calms me down no matter what storm i went through, and oh really... he is the best thing in my life. i love Michael :)