15 September 2013

This week we had decent internet.  Hurray!  It made my life a lot easier.  Ironically, I think I spent less time on the internet when it worked than when it did not.  When it was mostly not working, I spent a lot of time checking to see if it was working and trying to download things very s-l-o-w-l-y and multiple times.

Ryan and I continue to pick Justin up at school in the afternoon.  We leave a bit early so we can watch the frogs.  I am still having so much fun watching them, as is he.  We also go out with our cameras and a clipboard for ABC walks sometimes.  We are trying to get pictures of things that start with each letter of the alphabet.  I think we will be without a few letters, but we are having fun.  The weather has still been in the high 80s or low 90s during the day, but I know that soon it will change.

Ryan and I love to watch the frogs when we go on our walks.

 Grapes seem to be ripe now.  We pass by some houses in the neighborhood with grapes and they have more than they could possibly eat.  I wonder what they do with all of them or if some just spoil.  I was delighted to see that they are evidently ripe everywhere now and very tasty and cheap.  Better enjoy them while we can.  At least everyone in the family likes them.  With the plums, it was just me.

It is grape season!  Since these aren't ours, we bought some at the market.
They were only $1.25 a kilo!  They are small, but seedless and delicious.

 

Rob took Friday off of work because he has some comp time he needs to use before the end of the year.  It was nice to have him around and the boys gone.  We went to Yerevan City Supermarket downtown.  I would rave that it is the best supermarket I have been to here, but I realize that I have only been to Kaiser and to a small little market in the city.  I enjoy the convenience of being able to order online in English from SAS and having them deliver.  Yerevan City had a much wider selection and lower prices.  They also had some things that I haven't been able to find yet.  In the US we wouldn't consider it a particularly great store, but it is all relative.

 

That afternoon when I went to pick up Justin, Rob stayed home with Ryan.  Cyrus and his mom came over to see if Ryan could play.  Justin joined them when he and I got back.  Even more time without the boys.  It was so very quiet in our house.  It gave us some time to get ready for our dinner guests.

 

We had Elder and Sister Reese from church over for dinner.  It was nice to have them over and have time to talk a bit.  In church it can be hard to get to chat much sometimes.  Justin and Ryan were in heaven and treated them like adopted grandparents.  They loved the attention and we enjoyed being able to share an American meal with them.

 

On Saturday Rob had to work for just over an hour.  We chose to go with him and play out on the Embassy playground while he was working.  It is the only American style playground here so it is a special treat.  We drove into the city when he was done.  We decided to see the Cascades.  We parked by the Opera House in an underground lot.  The city has just started charging for street parking, but the tricky part is paying for it.  You can pay in advance at kiosks, if you know where they are.  You can also pay using your cell phone.  The problem is that our provider doesn't have that feature.  Some people have said that since we have red plates (diplomats) we would be okay.  I guess if we should ever need to park in pay parking and not find a way to pay, we can risk it.  The fine is about $12.50 US.  You can pay for parking by the hour, day, week, month, or year.  It is $5/month or $30 for a year so I guess if we think we will be parking on the street we can find a kiosk and splurge.  For now the underground opera lot is perfect for us.  It too is relatively inexpensive (under 50 cents an hour) and not in the sun since it is underground.  It also means you don't have to parallel park. :)



This is the Opera House in downtown Yerevan.  It has a great (and inexpensive!)
underground parking lot that I think will become our regular parking place.

 

It took us a few minutes to figure out where to go once we came out of the lot.  We wandered around the block until we saw it.  It wasn't like you could miss it once it was within sight.

Street signs?!  That is sadly not always common.
These have English too, a real plus.

The Cascades in Yerevan.  Would be prettier if they weren't
doing construction at the top.

Statue of someone who is probably important.

My boys. :)

 

The Cascades consists of many flights of stairs up the hill.  There are statues all along the way.  There is also an art gallery of some sort, but we opted to just check out the statues because the boys were not in the mood for walking around quietly and looking at "boring" things.  The really great thing about the Cascades is that there are escalators under the stairs.  We went in one of the little doorways and took escalators up.  Escalators are entertainment in and of themselves for our kids.  We did take the stairs down and look at the statutes on the various levels.

What could be better than a statue of a naked soldier of some sort?

City view from the Cascades

Mt Ararat would be great to see from here on a clear day.

No idea what they are still working on. 

I spotted a deux chevaux and it made me think of when I lived
in Brussels as a child.

 

 

After we were done walking around, we headed to KFC for a special lunch. Yes, KFC is a special treat here.  It isn't like there is a McDonald's, a Burger King, or Wendy's or anything.  There IS a Pizza Hut, but as was the case in China, Pizza Hut is a somewhat "fancy" restaurant compared to the US.  Maybe we will give it a try soon.  Something about American fast food can be comforting when we are overseas.  Plus it is something that the boys will eat without complaining.

 

We were able to make it home again without incident.  I tried using my phone to help with directions, but Google Maps was absolutely crazy!  When I got home I looked up the problem online and discovered that there was a mandatory update to the app.  I did the update and all is fine again.  It is a VERY helpful app in a place that has few street signs.  Sometimes seeing the street signs doesn't do much for me either because we drive past too far for me to try to match up the squiggles I see with what is on the map.

 

See what I mean?  Which KFC location would you choose and how would you know you were getting close?



Internet Woes!

I have a real excuse for not writing for awhile.  We were without the internet.  Amazing just how much I use the internet.  Anyway, I will try to catch up with the whirlwind of activity of the past couple of weeks.

The biggest news for this time of the year is, of course, the start of a new school year.  Justin is in first grade this year.  He has school from 8:15 until 3:00 and homework when he gets home.  What a change from kindergarten!  We live close enough that he can walk to school.  Right now I am still walking with him, and will probably have to walk with him at least on library days to carry his heavy backpack.

Justin on his way to school.  He wanted to wear his "best clothes" for the first day of school, thus the Pokémon shirt.

 

 On our way to school, we walk by some water that is a haven for frogs.  I have never seen so many frogs in my life!  Some are really small and some are as big as my fist.  What I have found interesting is that they are in all stages of development.  I had always assumed that you would only see tadpoles in the spring.  We can see legless tadpoles, some with hind legs, some with front and back legs and their tails, and some with shrinking tails.  Of course there are the mature frogs as well.  The water is truly disgusting, and a great place for the frogs to hide while getting plenty to eat.  When Ryan and I go to pick Justin up from school, I have to be careful that we don't spend too much time frog watching!

Can you find him?  The one I see is pretty much centered in the pic.  There may be more though.

Ryan has also had a fun time finding shells.  They are white and about the size of a thumbnail.  The first few that he found were brought home and put in his room.  He started to collect more and we realized that they weren't all empty.  This week I saw some of his collection moving, so I put those shells back outside.  They are the cutest little snails.

I don't have much to say about Justin's school because he tells me very little about his day.  I am always amazed that a child who can never be quiet can't seem to tell me one meaningful thing about his day.  There are 12 kids in his class and he seems to get along with them.  I would love to be a fly on the wall and see what he is like in school.

I asked Justin what was on his forehead.  Evidently it is showing his brain hard at work.



 Pic of Justin's class from school newsletter.






Justin's school started on August 29th.  On the 30th, we had Ryan's open house at Rainbow Preschool.  He is going three mornings a week.  Right now Justin is begging for less time at school and Ryan wants more.  Ryan had so much fun at the open house that he did not want to leave.

Ryan loves to spin until he is so dizzy he just has to lie on the ground.

Swinging boy

Super pout!

After the open house, we had Cyrus, his mother, and baby brother over for a few hours.  They had gotten locked out of their house and Miles was back in the US for a funeral.  The garage remote was dead and the key was not working in the front door lock because someone had turned the secondary lock on the inside of the door.  Justin was hoping that we would have to have an emergency slumber party, but maintenance was able to get them in by a little after 9:00 pm. 


The weekend was pretty uneventful, but then on Labor Day, Ryan started school.  Unlike Justin, he has a lot to say about it.

We've gotten into a pretty good routine with the boys going to school and me dropping them off and picking them up at the right times.  When Ryan is home alone with me I get nothing done.  I hadn't realized how much he and Justin entertained each other.   

Ryan has a new friend at preschool named Marko.  I asked him if Marko was three or four and Ryan guessed four.  He told me that they have a measuring place on the wall at school and that Marko isn't technically as tall as a four year old so he must be three.  I suggested that he ask Marko how old he is.  Turns out that Marko is four.  Ryan hopes that he can have his birthday before Marko because he says it is kind of like a competition to be five first.  Sometimes he cracks me up.

I hope that something exciting happens between now and Sunday so I have something to write about in the next entry.