US AID

That's right, fall into my Iowa trap. 

Finally, the US Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened and helped me out, and it was about time too.  It’s no secret that I was a little annoyed they didn’t offer me a ride in one of their howitzer-Hummers in Kosovo when I nearly died, so it was a welcome treat when an ex-Foreign Ministry worker who had rented a car and was driving around Armenia stopped and asked me if I was from Iowa.  While that seems like a pretty strange question, I was wearing a t-shirt with “IOWA” boldly emblazoned across the chest because I found it in a thrift store, it was cotton, I needed a shirt, and no one has actually heard of Iowa.  It was also dark blue so as to hide all the nasty stains I was sure to pick up from all the peaches I would be eating and then wiping my hands on my shirt.

Sometimes I take really terrible photos out the windows of moving cars.  This is arguably one of those times. 

Anyway, the driver’s dad was from Iowa so he stopped to pick me up.  You should have seen how disappointed he was when he found out not only was I not from Iowa, but from Canada.  So disappointed that he actually made me sit in the back seat, which I thought was a little weird.  But whatever, a free ride is a free ride, and I got the chance to talk about Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and hear the top-down, all-knowing and omniscient point of view from an ex-member of the diplomatic community. Enlightening!

Falling water is really in right now in Armenia. 

What was nice was the opportunity to stop and take a couple of pictures, and then get delivered right to the turnoff for the town I was going to be staying at, Sisian.  Sisian was lovely.  It reminded me of a town in Moldova. I can actually make several comparisons between Armenia and Moldova, mostly because both are shaped like a delicious cookie, as my friend Jon in Albania has oft been quoted with saying.  In Sisian I had arranged to stay with a Peace Corps worker (just like in Balboa in Moldova on my way to Transnistria, another breakaway Soviet republic!  The similarities are striking!). 

It would be so infuriating to be a regional development officer and then find out that your multi-national state was breaking up and descending into civil war when your region's main supply line is through the territory that your government is now at war with.  Like, ugh!  What a waste of sunk capital.  This isn't the 1950s.  We aren't rolling in cheap Japanese steel anymore.  Get it together, nationalist insurgents. 

Having neither a phone, or an address, or a map, or anything to reach this person, I resorted to the one think I am good at:  parking myself in the centre of town and giving the locals something to gossip about.  As usual it worked, and people were soon milling about, only too afraid to make the first move and ask what I was on about.  I surprised them by speaking first (“He speaks!” they all presumably gasped) and asking a group of teenagers if I could use one of their phones.  

Sometimes it's my lot in life to make teenage Armenian girls blush when I sit in front of the Sisian univermag looking hopeless and lost and ask to use their phones.

If it weren’t for teenagers in the former Soviet Union, I might very well be dead.  They rallied to the caused, called the only other English speaker in the city, who happened to be my Couchsurfing host, and who showed up promptly.  We then ate shashlik and he told me about Texas.  I of course paid because PCVs make $7/day and I was not paying to sleep, but in any case I still felt like a good portion of today was bankrolled by Hillary Clinton and I am very, very thankful to her.  

Thanks, guys! ;)