first full day in yerevan

well, today I woke up and made some Nescafe. Too lazy to make the English Breakfast tea I bought yesterday. Restaurants and cafes make Armenian coffee, which seems to be similar to Turkish coffee, which has been growing on me.
Sadly, produce is much less common and much more expensive than in Turkiye. Bumsies. So far, I haven't seen any street-side pomegranate juice vendors, either, but I haven't given up hope. Leslie bought some of this vegentable spread. Looks like Amenian vegemite. But it smells like a spicy eggplant salsa, if that makes sense. The label has pictures of eggplants and tomatoes and peppers and onions on it. I made dinner last night with it. Made a batch of rice, sauteed a red pepper and a tomato and then a chicken breast with spices and then put the eggplant salsa stuff all over it. Turned out pretty good.

Today we got lunch at a baked potato shop. (Caity, its just like your lunch in Turkish Times Square.) Leslie was timid and got sour cream cheese and bacon on hers. I got mine with stewed chicken and mushrooms on it. She got a mushroom soup and I got a borcht. She thought her soup was better and I thought mine was better. So we were both happy:)

We went and looked at an apartment today. She had already seen a few before I got here and then we saw another one yesterday. The apartment yesterday kind of sent me into a bit of culture shock. Like...we're lucky if we find a place with hot water? Huh? The place was very drab. Lots of concrete and ancient furniture.

Today I had a better attitude about the whole thing. Maybe I'm adjusting. But the place we saw today looked alot nicer. It was a stand-alone apartment, placed on top of a one story parking garage. Nestled in with larger, multi-storey apartments all around it. From what I heard, its a pretty nice, quiet and safe neighborhood. It is quite close to the metro, which is one line that runs across the city. It would be two stops down the line from work, so it would be a super easy commute. Owned by a spanish musician couple. They are musicians. Lots of carpets all over. Piano in one room, which is cool. It would come furnished though, which is huge. Just not trying to find cheap cups and plates and siverware and shit is a huge weight off. And it was pretty clean. 120,000 dram per month, which, at the current exchange rate, comes out to $320 a month. So I'd be paying $160 a month for rent. As long as the hot water heater works, I am down!

This afternoon, we went to the main market, which is out in the suburbs. Leslie has made friends with this Armenian guy who works in the hostel and does tours. So he knows the city really well and took us out there to buy dress shoes for the internship. For anyone that hasn't been to a bazaar in eastern europe or the middle east, its a HUGE flea market with shit-tons of cheap knock-off merch for cheap and everything else. I got a pair of dressy shoes that go up to a kind of half-boot, above the ankle. Hilarious, though, because the inside is lined in synthetic fur. For those cold Armenian nights. Ha ha. 11,000 dram, which is like $30. Whatever.

Whats got my interest piqued, though is the walk we took after, through the farmers market. Now, not quite as holy shit as the spice bazaar last week, but there was plenty of produce. And it looked cheaper than in the little marches I've seen in the city center. For dinner last night, I paid $4.75 for 4 bell peppers, two green, one red and a yellow. Yikes. Everything like that , especially this time of year, has to be imported. And with two closed borders, that makes the logistics of importing fresh food difficult and strained at best. So! Anyways, the market was dope. Huge. Dried apricots and nuts and cucumbers and oranges and apples and pomegranates and herbs and tons of different mushrooms and cheeses. Herbs and spices. So I think I'm going to be ok. Its just gonna be a schlep out there every weekend.

I still don't have much of a mental map yet, but its only been a day. I keep reminding myself that it takes time. Things are starting to get familiar, though. And maybe I'll even learn the routes of the marshutkas, which are these little buses. They are basically the size of econoline vans, with seats for like 16 people. They have a number in the windshield. The number of the route. You hop on and it lumbers along this route. Picks up more people. You just kind of let the guy know when you are getting close. Pay the 100 dram and hop of. Thats like 25 cents. It has a very soviet feel to it. Communal. But yeah. Fuck, there are like 100 different ones with 100 different routes. No map. No telling. We shall see.