10 Months To Go

Here are some highlights from the summer.

I recently discovered an amazing hike really close to Ijevan. The hike takes you to the Lastivir Caves and a place called Anapat. At the start of the hike, we walked along a ridge of a gorge.

Eventually we started hiking down into the gorge.

My friends, Andy and Nicole, exploring one of the many caves.

Towards the bottom of the gorge we found a series of waterfalls.

I think these caves are the coolest historical thing that I have seen in Armenia. These are pagan carvings that could predate the arrival of Christianity or this area could have been one of the last pagan holdouts after the conversion of Armenia in 301 C.E.

Face hidden on the path.

At the bottom of the gorge is a small river. It is the cleanest river that I have seen in Armenia because there are no towns or villages along it. The water was freezing.

My friend Darryn invited a few people to his town for a birthday BBQ.

There was mandatory dancing after 4 or 5 bottles of vodka.

I was so excited to see my first boxing match ever. However, I was disappointed immensely because the matches were either heavily lopsided or maybe even rigged in favor of the Armenian boxers.

Serj Tankian played a free concert to commemorate the opening of the TUMO Center. The TUMO Center is a non-profit technology school in Yerevan. In order to get in the front row, we had to get to the concert a few hours early.

Or else we would've been stuck in the back. There were close to 10,000 people at this concert.

The band Dorians opened for Serj Tankian. They were surprisingly awesome. They sang songs in English and Armenian. Here is a link to one of their Armenian songs. The old guy in the video is a famous Armenian cellist. Here is a link to one of their English songs.

The man himself, Serj Tankian. He played an awesome show. So far, going to this concert is the most amazing thing that I have done in Armenia. Here is a link to a video of another live show Serj did with an orchestra.