June 23, 2001 - Personal Web Site: The Lindsey & Tony Peace Corps Armenia Web Site

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The Lindsey & Tony Peace Corps Armenia Web Site



The Lindsey & Tony Peace Corps Armenia Web Site

The Lindsey & Tony Peace Corps Armenia Web Site


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January 21, 2002

Dear Deb and Prairie Hill Students:

Hello from Goris, Armenia! We are so happy to begin our correspondence with our World Wise School, Prairie Hill Learning Center. We look forward to exchanging letters over the next year and a half!

First, we'll tell you a little bit about Tony and I, and why we decided to join the Peace Corps. I am 30 years old, and before coming to Armenia, I lived in Lincoln for almost 8 years. My family (mother, father, and siblings) live in Missouri, where I grew up. I met Tony in Nebraska. Tony grew up in Lincoln, and is 29 years old. We were married in October, 2000. We have always been interested in traveling, and especially in living and working in another country. So, when Tony finished his degree at the University of Nebraska in December 2000, we decided to apply to the United States Peace Corps program. The Peace Corps is a government organization for American citizens who are interesting in serving their country overseas. If you join the Peace Corps, you agree to volunteer your time in another country for two years, helping citizens of that country in all sorts of different ways. There are 6,800 + Peace Corps volunteers living and working in 80+ countries all over the world, including Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and Asia.

After a long application process, the Peace Corps office in Washington told us that they would like us to volunteer in Armenia. I was assigned to be a Teacher Trainer in English as a Foreign Language, and Tony was assigned to work with Health Education. Although we were very excited, we didn't know anything at all about Armenia! We have learned A LOT since then!

We arrived in Armenia on June 6th, 2001. All summer, we lived in a village, near the Northwestern city of Gyumri, with an Armenian family, while we studied the Armenian language, Armenian culture, and learned more about what we would be doing during our two years in Armenia. The city of Gyumri is infamous for the huge and devastating earthquake that hit it in December, 1988. 25, 000 people were killed in the tragedy, and the city has still not recovered very well. Much of it is still in ruins, and the people and the economy there are still suffering.

Our family in the village was very nice. Our host father was a school director; his name is Hrach. Our host mother was a math and physics teacher; her name is Saida. We had three host siblings-Lilit (age 21), who was just finishing her studies at the State University in Gyumri; Mkho, who was studying to be a Physical Education teacher (he was 19); and Zaza, who is in 8th Form (sort of like 8th grade in the United States). He knew a little English, so he was our 'translator', because we didn't know ANY Armenian at first. Now we know a little more, but it is a very difficult language to learn!

On August 24th, 2001, we had our swearing-in ceremony. That's when we took an oath (the same oath that the President of the united States takes when he becomes President!) to serve the United States as Peace Corps Volunteers for the next two years. The next day, we loaded all our clothes and books and things into Peace Corps vehicles and departed for the various regions in Armenia where we would live for the next two years.

Tony and I were assigned to live and work in Goris, in the Syunik Marz of Armenia. A Marz is kind of like an American state, except smaller (all of Armenia itself is the size of the American state of Maryland, or the European country of Belgium-about three Armenias would fit into Nebraska!) Syunik is the most remote region of Armenia-furthest away from the capitol city, Yerevan. It takes us about five hours to travel one way to the capitol. But we don't mind being so far away, because our little town has everything we need, and we have good Armenian friends here. We'll tell you more about Goris in our next letters, and we'll include a map of Armenia.

Now I'll tell you a little more about the country of Armenia itself.
Armenia is on the same latitude (approximately) as Nebraska. So we have the same length of days and nights as you do in Lincoln. We are in a temperate zone (although it doesn't feel like it right now! It gets very cold in Armenia in the winter, and no place has central heat, so we use little electric heaters and never quite get warm in January and February). But most of the food plants that can grow in Nebraska can also grow in Armenia.

Armenia, unlike Nebraska, is a very mountainous country, however, so the climate and the native plants are mostly alpine. Our city is at about 5,000 feet above sea level, and we are in a valley, surrounded by much higher mountains. In our city it gets very cold in the winter, but not too warm in the summer (at least that's what our Armenian friends say-we haven't lived in this city yet during the summer!) The capitol of Armenia, Yerevan, is on a big flat plain, and during the summer it gets terribly hot there-maybe 43 degrees Celsius (to figure out Fahrenheit, multiply 43 x 1.8 and add 32). There is no air-conditioning anywhere in Armenia, so we don't travel to Yerevan much in the summer! It's just too hot.

Armenia has a fascinating history. People have lived in these mountains for thousands of years, long before anyone, even Native Americans, lived in North America. As a country, Armenia was never really independent until 1991. The Armenian people have been part of many empires, including the Persian, the Mongol, and the Ottoman. But on September 21st, 1991, Armenia declared its independence from the U.S.S.R. (the United Soviet Socialist Republics). The Soviets conquered Armenia in 1922; it was the smallest of the Soviet Republics, which included countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and many republics in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazahkstan, Tajikistan, etc.). All of these countries are now independent, and the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more. It's just Russia now.

When the Soviets left Armenia, the country had to create a government and decide how to survive on its own. It has been a hard time for Armenia. Many people lost their jobs when the Soviet factories closed, and there was a war for about seven years with the neighboring country of Azerbajian. Our city was right on the front line, and we can see buildings that were bombed in the war.

Peace Corps came to Armenia in 1993 to provide assistance to the Armenians, who wanted to improve living conditions in the country. Peace Corps Volunteers work in three areas in Armenia-English as a Foreign Language Education, because English is the international language of business and trade in the world now, and to improve their economy Armenians want to learn to speak English; Health Education, because the Armenian Health Care system is very old and people have a lot of basic health and sanitation problems here; and Business Education, because Armenia is learning how to function as part of the global market; during Soviet times they were part of the Soviet economic system, where they traded only with the other countries in the Soviet Union. In Goris, the town where we live, there are two Health Volunteers (Tony, and Lynn from Chicago who is a nurse); a Business Volunteer (Sara from Milwaukee) and myself (Lindsey); I work as an English Language Teacher Trainer.

Now I will tell you just a little bit about language and traditions in Armenia. Armenian is totally unique in the Indo-European language family. It is an ancient language, created by a monk named Mesrop Mashtots in the 5th century. It's not related to any other language at all. That makes it very difficult to learn! We have written the alphabet (39 letters!) for you to practice if you want. If you tell us the name of each student in your class, we will write it in Armenian for them. Armenians are very literate people-everybody knows how to read and write in Armenian, and usually in Russian and one other language as well. There are a lot of famous writers from Armenia, but not many of their works have been translated into English. We are currently translating some short poems by the famous Armenian poet, Hovahnnes Tumanian, as part of our Armenian language lessons, and we will send you the translation (and the original) when we're finished.

Another interesting fact about Armenians-their last names always end in -ian; it means 'belonging to' in old Armenian. So, for example, the last name of our host family in the village this summer was Mkhitarian. A friend of mine is named is Nara Martirosian; another is Mariam Yuzbashian. There is a famous Armenian-American writer named William Saroyan (sometimes when Armenians emigrate to other countries they change the spelling a little, like -yan instead of -ian). Do you know anybody in Lincoln with a last name ending in -ian? If you do, ask them if their family is Armenian in origin!

Well, that's all for now. In our letter we have included a map and letters for everybody who has already written us! We look forward to hearing from you again!

Thank you, In Peace,

Lindsey Smith and Tony White, Peace Corps-Armenia Volunteers

P.S. If you have any pictures of your class at Prairie Hill, we'd love to have copies. Children in Armenia are always interested in knowing about children their age in the United States.
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Barev Dzez Hayistanits!

(Hello to all from Armenia!)



The Official Tony & Lindsey-Peace Corps Armenia Newsletter
Volume 1, Number 1 January / February 2002



Bari Or! (Good Day!)

It’s hard to believe, but as of February 6th, 2002, we have been living in the beautiful little country of Armenia for eight months! It’s been an amazing, challenging, and rewarding experience so far, and we want to share it with our friends and family throughout our months here. This is the first edition of our newsletter. We hope to send it out, via regular U.S. post (with the help of our overseas publishing houses, Jean White and Jane Smith) and via e-mail, every three or four months.

Where to begin? Maybe on June 6th, when we and 34 other Americans, landed at Zvartnots Airport, in Yerevan, the capitol city of Armenia. We became the 9th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to serve in Armenia since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we made a commitment to serve in Armenia for two years.

Before we entered into service, we spent three months in intensive language, cultural, and technical training in Gyumri, Armenia. Gyumri is a city in the Northwest part of the country, and very close to the Turkish border. So close, in fact, that one of the Volunteers in our group accidentally, well, crossed the border (making our group the first to cause an international incident, before our service had even begun!) It is also the city most affected by the terrible earthquake of 1988. Everybody in the region lost family members in the catastrophe.

We lived with an Armenian family in Marmashen, a small village outside of Gyumri. Talk about cultural and language immersion! Nobody in our host family spoke much English, and so we had to learn the basics of Armenian quite quickly. Our host family consisted of Hrach, our host-father and Director of a nearby village school; Saida, our host-mother and a Math & Physics teacher at the local school; and their three children, Lilit (their 21-year old daughter who was just finishing her studies at the Gyumri Polytechnical Institute, and who got married at the end of the summer!); Mkho (the 19-year old son who was studying at the Polytechnical and preparing to go into the Army in the spring); and Zaza (the 14-year old son who knew the most English and often helped translate for us).

During most of the week, we studied language with our language trainers in the village. Two days each week we went to Gyumri for cultural and technical training, Tony in Community Health Education, and Lindsey in English as a Foreign Language. It was a busy summer! We spent a week with some volunteers in Dilijan, a former Soviet resort town near Lake Sevan (the biggest alpine lake in the world), in July. Our training also included trips to Yerevan and to Sevan. Mostly, however, we stayed in our village and learned A LOT about the realities of life in Armenia, after the earthquake and after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Our permanent sites were announced in late August. We were assigned to Goris, a small town in the southernmost Marz (Province). Tony was assigned to work with a health organization and Lindsey was assigned to a Government Teacher Training Center. We took our oath of service (the same oath that the U.S. President and others in government service take) on August 24th, 2001, and left for Goris the next day! (to be continued...)

An Armenian Language Lesson

(by Lindsey, with An approximate English tranliteration!)

Hello! Barev Dzez!

How are you? Inch speses?

What’s up? Inch ka?

What are you doing? Inch es anoom?

Goodbye! Tsedestyoon

OUR FRIENDS IN GORIS

The Peace Corps experience is an interesting combination of immersion in Armenian culture and interaction with other Americans. We are lucky to have two other Volunteers from our A-9 group who live in Goris, so when we want ‘American’ interaction, we get together with them.

continued on p.2



Our Friends from p. 1

Sara Todd is from Milwaukee, where she graduated with a degree in Economics and International Relations. She works as a Business and Community Development Volunteer in Goris. She is a great cook and also a long-time vegetarian, so we cook lots of great food together! We also are honing our skills in puzzle assembly, and have plenty of conversations, both philosophical/political and goofy. It’s a relief sometimes to just chat in English, as we spend our days stumbling around in baby-level Armenian.

Lynn Noell, also our sitemate, is from Chicago. She is a nurse and public health educator, with many years of experience in Chicago hospitals. She’s working with the Goris hospital, helping them upgrade their diagnosis equipment and (hopefully) develop a mammography center. She’s got three kids in the States, and a cockatiel named Fred, and entertains us with news of all of them!

But of course, we also have lots…and lots…and lots…of Armenian friends. In fact, we suspect that in the next year and a half we’ll have had coffee in every house in Goris and some of the villages nearby! We’re well on our way! Some of our best friends are…

Nara Martirosian—Lindsey’s work counterpart and Armenian teacher. She is 22 years old, but wise beyond her years (she says it is because she is the oldest in her family of four, and also because her birth month corresponds to the month of the apple tree, which means strong and independent). She is from the village of Tatev, which is famous for its amazing 8th Century monastery/fortress. She studied Armenian language and literature at her university, but has taught herself English. Her hope is to travel abroad this year (maybe even to the United States) and although we’ll miss her, as she has done so much to help us settle into Goris, we wish her “Bari Janapar”! (Bon Voyage in Armenian!)

One of Tony’s good friends is Narek, who is fifteen years old, fluent in English (again, mostly self-taught, although he has studied it in school), and a computer genius. Really. He hopes to go to Yerevan State University (which he will start next year—Armenian college freshmen are usually 15-16 years old!) in computer engineering. Eventually he wants to work for an international computer company, preferably IBM or Microsoft. He’s incredibly busy, getting ready for the end of school, the final state exams AND the university entrance exams (separate in Armenia). But he and Tony get together and chat computer games and tech-head stuff when he has time.

We’ll tell you more about our Gorisetsi (from Goris) friends and families in the next edition of Barev Dzez!


FOOD in ARMENIA

We have had lots of opportunities to sample the cuisine of Armenia, which seems to be a mixture of Russian and Middle Eastern influences. Although we were warned that maintaining our vegetarian lifestyle might be difficult here, it hasn’t been. In fact, Armenians themselves do not, as a rule, eat a lot of meat. They can’t afford it. Once they get over the idea that we SHOULD be offered meat as their special guests, they are relieved not to have the expense. Since the most common form of hospitality here is coffee and sweets, we’ve included the recipe for Armenian coffee (Haykagan Soorch) below. More recipes in future editions!
HAYKAGAN SOORCH

Armenian coffee is thick, black and sweet—a very traditional Middle Eastern kind of coffee. To make it, you need finely ground coffee (as fine as Espresso, but NOT espresso coffee), sugar, and little tiny cups the size of doll tea-cups.

Measure into a small pot 2 tiny cups of water; 2 teaspoons of coffee, and 1 ½ to 2 teaspoons of sugar. Put on a medium flame until it just boils (it will boil over and burn quickly, so you must watch it every second). Pour the coffee, grounds and all, into the tiny cups. Serve with a cookie or sweets of some sort. Never, ever drink it alone! Armenians always drink coffee with friends. As you can imagine, Lindsey, with her caffeine addiction, is in heaven—and even Tony, who never drank coffee in his life, has begun drinking coffee Armenian-style!



Well, that concludes Edition #1 of Barev Dzez.

We love mail, by the way, and PEANUT BUTTER (it doesn’t exist in Armenia).

Our mailing address is:
Tony White & Lindsey Smith

c/o Peace Corps Armenia

33 Charents Street

Yerevan, ARMENIA 375025
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Barev Dzez Hayistanits!

(Hello to all from Armenia!)

The Official Tony & Lindsey-Peace Corps Armenia Newsletter
Volume 1, Number 2 Fall 2002

Well, here's the 2nd Edition of Barev Dzez Hayistanits. At the rate we're going, this may be a highly collectable publication in fifty years, with so few limited editions in circulation!

We're still keeping quite busy as we roll into Armenia year number 2, enjoying the lingering autumn weather that is typical from Sept-Nov in Armenia. So far, this is the trend--short, chilly winters, long long wet springs, short (so you could blink and miss them) but intensely hot summers, and glorious sunny falls. This newsletter is a collection of musings, up-dates, and a yummy recipe for Armenian Mooraba...read on to discover just what that might be!



NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH!!!!!!!!!!

We now have a web-site, the officially titled "The Tony and Lindsey Peace Corps Armenia Web-site", beautifully designed and maintained by Seth (Lindsey's brother).

Check out: http://www.missouri.edu/~sas70e/armeniahome.html for Journal postings, new pictures, and Seth's constant work to make it one of the best Peace Corps Volunteer web-sites out there. Shnorhakalutyun--Thanks, Seth!



What we're up to these days...

Hello all! Menk chenk yerevoom! (we’ve not been seen or heard from for a long time)! It's been way too long since we've written one of these! Since the first issue, we've been to France on a short but exhilarating holiday in April; had a whirlwind spring culminating in a summer of ecology camps for kids, interspersed with visits to the site where 45 new Volunteers were training, to present on various topics related to our life and work and a visit by three of those trainees to actually see our life and work in Goris for four days in July. And then the summer concluded with a wonderful visit from Lindsey's brother, Michael, and sister-in-law, Kristen, for two weeks in early August, during which we saw more churches, monuments, mountain passes, and parts of historic and modern Armenia than we had seen in all the fourteen months previously!

It's been just crazy--and though full of challenges (the darn language! the Armenian inability to comprehend the concept of privacy! the sporadic nature of our water supply!), replete with just as many rewards, some of which we see now, some of which we'll appreciate even more as time passes.

Hello from Lindsey!

The school year has started again, and that means I'm back to my real job here--teacher training. Which means many things, depending on whom you ask (including other Volunteers and Peace Corps staff). I have defined my work to be serving as a resource for local English teachers in Goris and Goris villages.

Once a week I spend a day with one of the village teachers, observing classes, making methodology suggestions, and assisting them in obtaining resources. I do the same on a more irregular basis with Goris teachers.

The teachers here face enormous challenges. These include completely out of control and under-resourced schools (the schools are chaotic, the infrastructure is crumbling--the school I visited in the village today was missing glass in many of the classroom windows--no wonder the schools are open irregularly, if at all, in the winter months), and also limited motivation to improve or even maintain standards in their teaching, which is to some degree a result of their pay ($20 a month when poverty level in Armenia is something like $33) and a lack of preparedness for the post-independence economy and related educational needs.

So I do what I can, and also give them an opportunity to practice their own English. At least 2 of the teachers I work with in the villages can't speak English really at all, which as you can imagine bodes ill for their ability to teach it!

I also conduct English language trainings at the Teacher Training Center in Goris, my primary work site, and teach oral English to the pedagogical students in the English Faculty at the local Teacher Training College.

Hello from Lindsey cont…

Besides TEFL work, I also assist my office with their resource development--they are partially funded by the Ministry of Science and Education, but rely heavily on grant funding from international organizations as well. And I work with Tony on several environmental education program. We're conducting Environmental Education Teacher Trainings this fall, and helping Peace Corps Armenia develop the new Environmental Education job sector. But I'll let Tony tell you more about that...

Hello from Tony!

As Lindsey has said, we just came off of a wild and crazy summer of youth ecology camps. We were hoping that we could look forward to a casual, yet stimulating, autumn. So far, stimulating - yes, casual - no.

Though I am technically a "Community Health Education" Volunteer, my involvement in projects here has always tended to lean back towards my greatest interest and passion -- environmental education. So I am not really surprised to find myself sitting amidst a whole bunch of environmentally-related activities.

1) The Peace Corps-Armenia "Environmental Education Advisory Committee": After many years of Volunteers implementing trash clean-ups, summer camps, and ecology classes, the Staff of Peace Corps has decided it's time to add a 4th job sector -- Environmental Education (EE). So Lindsey and I are involved in all sorts of planning, report writing, and other assorted things in an effort to get 5 new Volunteers in next summer's "A11" group who will focus strictly on EE.

2) "Environmental Education Workshop for Educators": This is a joint project between Lindsey, Sara Todd (one of our two sitemates), and I, and several of our Armenian counterparts here in Goris. These workshops will introduce local teachers, medical staff, and NGO representatives to "what environmental education is," how they can adapt and inetgrate environmental content into their exisiting projects, and a demonstration of a vareity of EE activities and project ideas. These will take place in late October and mid-November and should be fun.

3) Peace Corps "Environmental Awareness" Committee: This project consists of a group of 25 Volunteers meeting monthly in Yerevan to discuss environmental issues in Armenia, share books and other creative resources, and - if possible - plan mutual projects together, like the future of the "Armenian EcoCamp Project." Lots of interest so far, so we are optimistic that this will be a constructive endevor. At this moment, Lindsey and I are responsible for getting this group up and running.

We are also involved in several other projects that vary on these three, so I won't bore you with the details. Oh yeah!, and we are wrapping up the "2002 Armenian EcoCamp Project" with a nifty funder's report, t-shirts, and hundreds of digital pictures. If any of you are interested in any of this, please don't hesitate to drop us a letter or e-mail and ask.

Letter to a New Volunteer

Every year, a new group of Peace Corps Volunteers arrives in June, and the group of Volunteers who came the previous year all of a sudden become the 'old Volunteers', weathered and grizzled Peace Corps veterans with a year in Armenia, already under their belts...or something like that.

We started receiving e-mails, with all sorts of questions about Armenia from soon-to-be Volunteers last spring while they were still in the States. Below is a reply Tony sent to Jeremy Richart, a fellow Nebraskan who was sworn in as a new Peace Corps Armenia Volunteer in August 2002 and now serves near Goris.



"Jeremy,

Hello! Welcome aboard. You are in for quite a ride, where every moment is worth it in the long run.

I could tell you all sorts of things, but you are already packed, maybe even on your way to the airport at this very moment - so I will keep it brief.

Life here, for PC Volunteers at least, is not physically hard, but it can be very emotionally difficult. Some days you feel lonely - missing your family and friends back in the States- the next day, you are hanging out with a whole new group of friends and family. Many people here are sick, sad, and needy. Some are strong, creative, and positive. But they are, above all, people like you and I and people caught in a tough situation not of their choosing.



Letter to a New Volunteer cont…

Come ready for a challenge. Remind yourself again before you get on that long, long flight over here exactly why you applied to be in the Peace Corps. You will find yourself going back to that early inspiration many, many times during your two years here. I do.

I am a "Community Health Education" Volunteer by title, but environmental educator, computer troubleshooter, men's health roundtable facilitator, etc. by trade. Though the PC Staff may try to convince you that you will have one primary assignment, in reality, once you get to site, look around, make some contacts, and assess the situation you will realize that you will end up with your fingers in all sorts of things. That, in my honest opinion, is the beauty of the PC experience - you make it.

If you like music, mainstream stuff that is, leave it all at home. You can buy it here. It is cheap, albeit pirated. If you like indy stuff, etc. - bring it. Be ready to share however, as many of us have long grown tired of what we brought and are always looking for something new.

You like to read? Plenty of books here. Volunteers read a lot and then pass their books along. I have read more than 30 in my first year here alone. .

Leave your radio, unless it is a short-wave. You will have money in your "moving in allowance" to buy one. We bought a nice Grundig radio/tape player/CD player. For me, music of some sort is a necessity.

Dress comfortably. Bring a variety of clothing as the weather and your moods will change.
Above all, bring an open mind, a craving

for adventure, and your imagination - and you will do fine.

Well, so much for a brief e-mail. Ha ha ha! Take care Jeremy, and best of luck on the trip over. See you soon.

Tony White, A-9 Peace Corps Armenia



Hakagan Mooraba

aka Armenian Preserves...

It's the harvest season, which means that Armenians are busy preserving everything they can get their hands on. One can really track the progress of the harvest by what people are canning; for example, last week everybody was canning 'ghaviar', which is this DELICIOUS eggplant dish that, while tasting nothing like 'caviar', is certainly one of my favorite foods here in Armenia. More recently, everybody (including us!) has been canning tomatoes (so cheap--we canned 100 pounds of tomatoes for about USD $6), and pickling beets. They don't use vinegar for the beet process, but instead lots and lots of garlic and salt. It's absolutely wonderful--my mouth is watering at the thought of it right now!

Throughout the summer, Armenian families make fruit preserves. They started with strawberries way back in June, and have gradually been preserving gooseberries, currants, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, and now fruits like persimmons, figs (my least favorite kind of preserve) and something called a 'hoon', a local berry reportedly beneficial for the flu, stomach ailments, and a variety of other illnesses. The process is pretty simple--and the results delicious. We preserved 4 kilos of blackberries recently. Here's the recipe:



-4 kilos blackberries (or berries of your choice--apparently berries are all the same process, but the 'bigger' fruits, like persimmons, etc., are a bit more complicated of a process).

-4 kilos sugar



The blackberries should be picked the same day you preserve them. Clean them and remove all bad berries and stems. Then, in a big non-reactive pot, layer the berries and the sugar, finishing with a layer of sugar covering the top layer of berries. Cover the berry mixture and leave for several hours. The sugar will dissolve and the berries will get juicy.

After 6-8 hours, gently stir about a half cup of water for each kilo of berries into the berry mixture (never, never stir vigorously. I'm not sure why, but it's just not done when making mooraba). Put the pan on the stove on a low flame.

Now just let the mooraba cook. It took about an hour for the 4 kilos we made to cook. The mixture will come to a boil and should then be adjusted to simmer on low. During that period of time, you can gently mix the berries, but you don't really stir. The friend who showed me how also skimmed off the foam that forms at the top of the boiling--she said she doesn't know why they skim it off, but supposedly it retards any spoilage.

When the juice starts to thicken a little, you start to check for doneness. Mooraba is done when you can run a spoon through a drop or two on a plate and the drop doesn't run back together right away--in other words, a thin syrup has formed.

When it's done, you shut off the heat and let the mixture cool. My friend added a tablespoon of 'lemon salt' at the very end, to prevent crystallization, but I've never seen anything like this stuff in the States. But when it's done, it's done. You cool it, ladle it into sterile (boiled) jars, and either can it with sterile (boiled) lids, or put plastic caps on. The high percentage of sugar evidently makes it basically botulism-proof, and I truly haven't ever seen spoiled mooraba.

Armenians use different kinds of mooraba for different things--hoon is for illnesses, etc. However, the most common use is in the winter, with a cup of tea. You can stir it into the tea or eat it on a little plate on the side. Mmmm. Delicious!



"And that concludes Episode 2...we will return shortly."

Does anyone know what early 80s band that quote comes from? We'll send you a special Armenian surprise if you write or e-mail us with the correct answer...or the wrong answer...or heck, just e-mail or write us!

Our snail mail address is:

Tony White and / or Lindsey Smith

Peace Corps Armenia

33 Charents Street

Yerevan 375025

Armenia

Our e-mail address is: green_places@hotmail.com

And if you're just dying to send us a little something that would provide entertainment during the long, cold winter evenings and would be useful in our work, send magazines or the newspaper comics! People and US, fashion, music, science fiction magazines, Audubon, National Geographic, old and used, we'll read them all...and don't worry about the possibility of duplicates, we'll pass everything on to one of Lindsey's English teachers who are hungry for all sorts of visual aids and reading materials!) Until next time...

Tony and Lindsey







Story Source: Personal Web Site

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Armenia; PCVs in the Field - Armenia

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