Your donations

 I can finally tell you, dear readers, where donations offered by many of you will be going. As of tomorrow, I will be meeting with and disbursing funds for families who lost someone in the recent war. Although it is not a huge sum, I think the money provided to each of 50 families identified by Syunik NGO from Vayots Dzor, chosen not only because they lost a loved one, but also because the family has kids and thus it will be difficult to make ends meet as a family, will allow these families to purchase needed goods for about a month. And, since emergency funds have not yet made their way to them from the federal government (but it is forthcoming), this aid is really timely. So, this is where about half the money amassed for this mission will be going. Again, a huge thanks to all who donated!

I will write more soon. I recently returned home from the Old Bridge winery, a lovely establishment with good food and great wine. I tried four wines, and their 2015 Old Bridge Red was definitely worth the visit. The owner Armen (once a hydroelectric engineer) was truly a connoisseur, explaining the way the wine was made in detail, offering info on the process as well. It was great to go there with some of the staff from Syunik NGO, I really appreciated their հիւրընկալութիւն (hospitality). My former Armenian school classmate Kevork Kataroyan, who has a business of importing Armenian wines from Armenia to Canada, was mentioned by Armen: apparently Old Bridge wines are not available for sale in Canada: I wish they were though!

I am slightly soused (գինով), so perhaps I won't write much more tonight... hopefully tomorrow I can add some details about my day.

I will however briefly mention that I visited the Yeghegnadzor Music School (Երաժշտական դպրոց), today and was moved to tears when the spirited director of the school, Maro Simonyan, played an Arno Babajanyan piece, Elegy (the link is, of course, someone else playing it...): after she told me about the school for a while, she decided to play something on the piano conveniently available in her office. And she played it masterfully, although she mentioned that she hadn't touched a piano in months... I will add details about this on another occasion, as well as for the last two days, but I wanted to get something down for the blog.

The snow has been relentless! A good 15-20cm fell over two days where I am. Here is the view from today:









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