After graduating with my Master’s
degree, I was looking for a way to gain some work experience. I had first been
to Armenia in the summer of 2014, a class trip orchestrated by the Armenian
Studies Department at Fresno State (I’ll probably blog about this in June).
Eager to return, I signed up with Birthright Armenia to do an internship in
Armenia. Birthright Armenia offers a unique opportunity for young Armenian
diasporans to travel to their ancestral homeland and experience it in a way
that would be impossible as a mere tourist. This organization will take you in
and find you an internship as long as you have at least a quarter Armenian
ancestry (like myself) and are under the age of 32, and will reimburse your
plane tickets if you stay in Armenia a certain number of months. They also
organize excursions nearly every weekend, and have various other meetings and
activities. They’re based mainly in the capital city of Yerevan, but during the
summer they also provide the option to intern in the cities of Gyumri or
Vanadzor (I eventually went to Vanadzor, and this would be my favorite part of
the whole trip). It was a life-changing experience for sure, and I’m really
grateful that I got to do it.
Birthright
Armenia is a great thing to do if you have the time and money for it. I had the
time after graduation, but didn’t always have the money. It was a small miracle
I got to do it at all. I really only got to go in the first place due to my
beloved Aunt Sharon giving me the money for the plane ticket (which you do have
to pay for upfront before you can be reimbursed). I would have done a lot more
while I was in Armenia if I’d had the funds (these are unpaid internships, mind
you, which is something to think about if you plan on doing this; I couldn’t
exactly get a job). They put you with a host family, who you are expected to
pay about the equivalent of $80 a month (40,000 drams); a very low and
reasonable amount compared to what you’d be paying for the same thing in the
U.S., but if you’re broke and not making any money, it still isn’t easy. You’re
supposed to pay to go on the excursions too. I understood not everything could
be free, but I also originally thought I’d be getting a monthly stipend right
away to help with expenses, but that actually doesn’t happen until you’ve been
there for four months. Until then you’re on your own. I had money when I got to
Armenia, but after about two months paying for rent, excursions, food and other
things I was barely scraping by, having my fiancé back in Florida sell off a
few of my possessions like my old game consoles and then wire me the money, and
getting help from my parents and relatives. I do think the organizers of Birthright
Armenia want their organization to be open to anyone (as long as they’re an
adult under 32 with Armenian ancestry), but the program really seems geared toward people who are much wealthier than I. An organization where
you’re supposed to travel to another country to do an unpaid internship would have
to be. But, I suppose this should have been more obvious to me at the time. It
makes sense looking back now. As I said, if you have the time and
money for Birthright Armenia, you’ll have a blast.
It’s been five years since I got on
that plane. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I felt like I was doing
something crazy, getting on that plane and traveling to the other side of the
planet all by myself. My first time doing this I’d been with a group. Now it
was just me. But, I did it anyway. It was sad saying farewell to my fiancé Deborah.
But we knew we would be reunited in six months. I was traveling to Armenia from
April 1st to the 2nd. This was almost 24 full hours of
travel with four connecting flights, during which I managed only very little
sleep, mainly during my final flight. I went from Tampa to Washington D.C.,
from there to Munich, Germany, then to Vienna, Austria, and finally to Yerevan,
Armenia. Munich to Vienna was the shortest, but also the scariest neck of the
journey, as we hit a lot of turbulence and I was almost sure we were going to
crash. But, fortunately we made it. There was something rather appropriate
about getting there via Austria. My paternal Grandmother grew up in Austria,
who married my Armenian grandfather Suren. I really wish I could have seen more
of Germany and Austria, but at least I got to enjoy their airports. Finally, my
German classes in High School paid off, for a few hours at least. I even posted
in German on Facebook while there to update my family on my trip:
“Ich bin jetzt
im Österreich! Es regnet heute und ist sehr kalt. Im München mein Wi-Fi hat
nicht gearbeitet, aber ich habe bilder genehmen mit mein Handy. Ich habe
Bratwurst gegessen und Deutsches bier getranken im ein Deutsches Restaurant. Es
war sehr lecker”.
“I’m now in Austria! It’s raining
today, and very cold. In Munich my Wi-Fi didn’t work, but I took some pictures
with my phone. I ate bratwurst and drank German beer in a German restaurant. It
was very tasty.”
Yeah, I was being a bit of a
show-off, I guess.
I got to Armenia in the dead of
night, but by then I had lost all perception of time anyway. Sleep deprived and
barely aware of my surroundings, I was picked up by a taxi driver, a ride
arranged by Birthright Armenia, and taken to an apartment building in the
northern Yerevan neighborhood of Arabkir, where I would be staying with my host
parents; a nice elderly couple named Hasmik and Alek. Hasmik was a retired
opera singer, and Alek an Armenian from Georgia who often went back to visit
relatives; I can’t remember what his profession had been before he retired. I
spent more time with Hasmik. They hosted Birthright Armenia interns as an extra
form of income. They lived on the tenth floor of the apartment building. I had
arrived on Easter of that year, so the next night we had a big dinner, with
eggs, fish and rice with raisins. This is a traditional Easter dinner in
Armenia. I had my own little spare room, with a bed, desk and wardrobe, and a
view of the hills to the northeast toward the Kotayk province, still sprinkled
with snow in early April.
I had asked for a host family that spoke English
because my Armenian was rather beginner-level, but there weren’t enough
English-speakers to go around. So, for the four months I was there we had to
make do with what Armenian I did know; mostly the Western dialect I had learned
at Fresno State, which is not the dialect spoken in Armenia. If it hadn’t been
for the language barrier maybe we would have formed a deeper bond. I kind of
regret that, for the most part, I kept to myself while I was there. I’m kind of
antisocial anyway, but with the addition of a language barrier I became even
more antisocial. Not that we never spoke of course, because we did. But I
lacked the vocabulary to properly express myself. I couldn’t very well, for
instance, tell her about my childhood, my family history, or show her the books
I’d been writing. The apartment had no internet either, so I really was quite
isolated, in a country where very few people spoke my first language.
Stupid building, blocking my view of Mt. Ararat from the kitchen window.
Eventually
I was able to get a cheap cell phone which operated much like a pay phone, so I
could call my fiancé and family. But that cost money, I wasn’t able to do it
all the time. If you’ve never gone a full day without anyone speaking to you in
English, or whatever’s your first language, you should try it sometime. It’s
kind of surreal. I think everyone should experience that at least once. It
certainly gave me more sympathy for immigrants to America who may not speak
English very well. You don’t know what it’s like until going through it yourself.
It was interesting what I gravitated towards during these isolating times,
before I eventually got used to being in Armenia. When I could get internet,
such as at the Birthright Armenia offices, I would often download videos from
YouTube onto my laptop to watch at home later. It was a small taste of the
familiar. I binged on Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges, old cartoons and
television shows I grew up with, many things. It wasn’t that I really missed
America, aside from my family of course, I just missed familiarity. I missed
hearing the English language because I had heard it every day of my life until
then.
Despite
this feeling of intense isolation for my first couple weeks or so, Armenia
feels like a second home to me and did then as well. My first outings involved
exploring the neighborhood on foot, trying and often failing to reach
landmarks, getting lost a few times and needing to take a taxi or a bus home.
My actual internship would start around two weeks after I arrived; teaching a
summer Creative Writing course at the American University of Armenia. Of
course, it would be nearly two months before this class would take place. This
would prove to be far more time than I needed to prepare. That is a blog for
another time. For the next six months, I plan on writing about the key events
that happened while I was interning in Armenia, on the 5th
anniversaries of when they happened. I’ll talk about all of the challenges as
well as the magical moments I had. Partly because I don’t want to forget that
they happened. The more time that goes by, the more the whole thing feels like
it was all just a dream. It’s sad, really. I want to go back. I haven’t been
back to Armenia since October of that year. At the time, I really thought I
would have gone back by now. It’s certainly not because I don’t want to return
to Armenia. But, money is always an issue. Such is life, sadly. I think I’ll be
back in Armenia eventually, somehow.
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