Music

I sang a recital last Sunday at the Komitas Chamber Music Hall in downtown Yerevan. This is remarkable for two reasons:

First, my voice teacher Susanna tricked me into agreeing to the recital. She asked after my first one, in December, whether I could do another before I left Yerevan, and I said no. Then she got me to agree to sing in a joint recital with her other students, and I'd only have to prepare "two or three songs." That sounded manageable. As she kept throwing more music at me, I figured that we'd choose two or three out of the bunch. We got up to about a dozen. Finally, I said "I'm the only one singing, aren't I?" She admitted I was. "And I have to sing all these songs?" She admitted I did.

Second, the Komitas Chamber Music Hall is one of basically two professional performance spaces in Yerevan for small music groups. And they let me, a complete dilletante, sing there. No audition, no questions asked. They even made a poster. Unlike at my last recital, however, the TV cameras did not show up. That was a good thing, because my singing was much worse this time than the last time.

But although I and Susanna agreed I had sung better, I received nothing but praise from my loyal friends in the audience, and from the random Armenians who came in off the street. One guy reverse-heckled me while I was singing. I don't know what else you would call it - he called out loudly and somewhat obnoxiously while I was singing and in between pieces. Things like "I love America!" "Bravo!" And then after the concert, another of the audience members handed me a card, written in Armenian sufficiently poetic that I only understood about three words of it. Roughly translated by a friend, it is an anagram poem that talks about God singing through me. Very nice, but clearly this guy doesn't know that much about singing. Or maybe he was just impressed to hear an American sing in Armenian.

Just a girl in the world

When I worked for AP, aged 22-24, I was often asked during press conferences what college newspaper I represented. And while sometimes the weight of my employer's reputation worked in my favor, often it wasn't enough to garner any respect for my still-teenaged face. Now I'm 28 years old and a U.S. diplomat, but I still find that to be the case sometimes.

To wit: This weekend, a bunch of us went out to celebrate a friend's birthday. We were at a popular downtown bar, and all of a sudden I noticed that a mid-level, middle-aged government official from an agency I regularly deal with was sitting at a corner table. Feeling ever the diplomat (we're never off-duty, you know), and not yet hit by the impact of the two tequila poppers I had just had, I decided to go over and say hi. I should mention that I had just seen him in a meeting two days earlier, in which I had quite harshly given him a piece of the U.S. Embassy's mind regarding allegations of corruption in his office. And when I said hello this weekend, he looked at me blankly. I barely had time to identify myself before he grabbed me around the waist and began to twirl me about in a bizarre, awkward version of swing dancing. As soon as I was able to disentangle myself from his grasp (about 30 seconds later), I went back to my table. (Though my friends had noticed the clearly-not-my-type middle-aged man groping me, none of them bothered to come to my rescue.) He followed me, tried to dance with me again, and when I demurred, grabbed my hand and kissed it. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and produced handfuls of carnation blossoms. He pulled them out of the outer pockets of his jacket, the inner pockets of his jacket, the pockets of his pants and who knows where else. I began to get uncomfortable by his attention (and not a little annoyed that this fellow whom I had soundly scolded was treating me like just another woman to hit on at a bar). Finally he left, and eventually disappeared out the door. He returned a few minutes later with an enormous bouquet of flowers, which he brought over to me. After that failed to produce the desired result, he let me be to flirt with other women.

Gee, wonder whether he'll take me seriously the next time I have to deliver a harsh message?

Rotten Broccoli Soup

Rotten broccoli soup is not bad-tasting or poorly made broccoli soup. Today, I made soup out of broccoli that was clearly past its prime. Brown, to be exact. See? Next to the broccoli is the rest of the pathetic produce I bought during my weekly trip to GUM, the produce market today. And this stuff wasn't cheap. (As you can see, I did manage to find one single good head of broccoli. I'm saving that one to eat steamed or raw.)

To understand why I would pay through the nose for brown broccoli, you have to understand first that broccoli only made it into the Armenian markets literally three weeks ago. It just wasn't available before that. And the funny thing is that broccoli has never been my favorite vegetable. But during last week's trip to GUM, I was on a mission to find vegetables that had not been pickled and that were not tubers. I needed something dark and green (vitamin A deficiency, anyone?) I saw the broccoli and it didn't matter how much it cost - I had to have it. Last week's broccoli was in considerably better shape than this week's. When I got home today, the dilemma of what exactly to do with three and a half pounds of brown broccoli hit me. It's only going to get browner, after all, and in the States I never would have bought it to begin with. So, rotten broccoli soup was born. I threw in the brown broccoli, some vegetable boullion, milk, lots of garlic and pepper, and it tasted pretty good. It wasn't perhaps as green as it should have been, but it passed.

I'm longing for summer. This past summer, I bought a bucket of raspberries (three kilos) every week, and froze half for the winter (and I am so glad I did). There was lettuce (now $1.30 per "bunch," which consist of about six measly, mealy leaves), cherries, apricots, strawberries, tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, dill, and loads of purple basil. I really, really miss summer.

Engaged ... and alone

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and if Punxsutawney Phil lived in Yerevan, he definitely would have predicted six more weeks of winter for us. Earlier this week, I woke up to a crystal clear morning and drank in the view of Mt. Ararat as I crossed the drunken bridge (so named because it is flanked by brandy factories) on the way to work. It was also the first time since returning from vacation in the States on January 16 that I'd had a clear view of the road from my window on the third floor of the Embassy. The Embassy sits just above Yerevani Lich (Yerevan Lake), which means that on days already prone to be foggy, it gets lost in a raw, mean cloud. Didn't think fog could be mean, did you? It can. Especially when you've been waiting a week to get out of town and the planes aren't taking off because the airport is also built in a fog pit. But that was last year.

This year, my vacation to the States went smoothly. Jeremy met me at Dulles on Dec. 30, and we spent New Year's at the newly renovated Herbst house in Virginia. The new sun room is beautiful, and it and the rest of the house is jammed with rugs and tchotchkes my parents had collected during nine straight years abroad. It was nice to be home. Jeremy played basketball and watched sports with Nick and Johnny, and my sisters and I had a chance to catch up.

But of course, the big news, is that Jeremy and I are now engaged. He proposed on January 9 in Chicago, with a beautiful ring he had designed himself, in a beautiful condo he had rented for the week that had a great view of Lake Michigan. Later in the week, we went to visit his parents in Nebraska. They threw us a lovely engagement brunch, complete with huge blinking rubber heart rings for the guests. We are very happy, but the euphoria has been tempered somewhat by the fact that I flew back to Armenia less than a week later, and we won't see each other again until my tour is up, probably sometime in early June. At least I have this rock on my hand to stare at all day. I'll let Jeremy tell you all how he is coping.

We decided to start this blog mostly because I've really enjoyed reading those kept by my Foreign Service colleagues, and also because we thought it would be a fun way to keep our families apprised of our lives as we count down the days to our wedding (still in the very early planning stages), live in the same city for the first time ever (those initial three weeks in Armenia hardly count) and prepare for our first year of marriage ... in Afghanistan.