Highs:
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Shawarma!! All the Shawarma
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Laundry service at the Hostel we are staying, that actually smells clean.
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Sleeping in a hostel that feels clean and allows us to actually rest really well
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Owner of the Hostel being Christian and the people being very hospitable. They make really great breakfast too!
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Handing out cookies to strangers to brighten their day.
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Leaving small pieces of art everywhere we go to hopefully bring joy to the people that find them.
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Seeing a piece of your art hanging up on the wall at the coffee shop that you left earlier in the week.
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Walking to the top of the stairs at sunrise and getting to see the sun hit mount Ararat over the city.
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Walking and praying all over the city of Yerevan. Being able to talk openly about doing missions because it is a Christian nation.
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All the dairy products. An abundance of great cheeses and the best ice cream we have had since being in the states. (Shout out to pink berry by republic square)
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Finding out there is an active young life club in the city and a young life camp only an hour from the city.
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Going to the pioneer young life camp and getting the official tour from the director of Eastern Asia and Middle East for young life. He gave us free hats too!
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Having communion (Tim and Holly style) to start our fast and then after a week of fasting, we broke our fast with communion again where Connor read us the chapter from Lion, Wich, and Wardrobe where the stone table breaks.
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Getting the best pizza with a local missionary and getting to hear his stories and wisdom. Then being invited to eat chocolate cake and ice cream at his family’s house.
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Getting to go see marvel’s endgame in English in a nice movie theater that reminded us of the states
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Going on two adventure days to different monasteries, seeing more of this beautiful country and getting to go into the countryside.
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Having a potluck dinner with my team the last night in Armenia and reminiscing about the past four months together.
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Helping Connor get to be a great older brother and surprise his sister for her graduation and his mom for Mother’s Day. So glad he got to go back to the states for a week to celebrate them.
Lows:
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Waiting in the airport for 2.5 hours for our bus to arrive to take us to our hostel and it ends up being a van, so we have to split into two groups.
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Arriving to our original hostel and it being the worst ever. (SO DIRTY, smells like B.O., only 40 somethings men living there, it is up 5 flights of stairs) …. Thankfully we ended up switching hostels to a wonderful little place that same day. Safety first!
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When handing out cookies to people on the streets, one woman starts screaming at Brook in Armenian wagging her finger at us and looks like she might punch Brook. So we ended up smiling at her and saying God Bless you, when she walked away
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Finding out Hannah had an infection from a leech who bit her in Nepal. She had to go to the doctor twice. (Thankfully she is fine but they gave her too low of dosage of antibiotic so her body had to do most of the work to fight off the infection)
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People being allowed to smoke inside. It is so hard to really enjoy a meal when all you can smell is cigarettes.
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Our hostel being at the top of many stairs and after walking around the city all day the last thing you wanted to do was walk back up to the hostel. (I called it Camino training)
Bozos:
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Handing out cookies for ministry one day and every person you hand a cookie to smells the cookie before they decide to take it or not.
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Walking down the street late at night and your knee gives out so you stumble and look like you have been drinking when really you are just clumsy.
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Walking quickly down the spiral stairs at the hostel and slipping down half the staircase.
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I was walking with my team to do ministry and was looking across the street, and walked straight into a park bench. I had a huge bruise on my legs for weeks.
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When interacting with another team that was living in the same hostel as us, we would call the activities that we did together multicultural events.
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When going to leave a coffee shop you start to walk out the door and see that it is pouring rain outside, so you turn around and sit back down at your table and your waitress comes over and says, “ I would have done the same.”
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Going to go see the water and light show in republic square. Upon arriving, it was always over or not showing each time I went.
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When handing out verses to people on the street, we handed out a couple of them to a larger group of older women and once they realized what they were each one in the group asked us for one.
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Brook was laying down on her bed and Abby was trying to pick her up and move her, Abby falls and lands on me while I was napping on the bunk across from them. (This might be one of those moments where you had to be there)
