Chillin’ In Moscow

As we wait in the Moscow International Airport munching on some snacks, we sit and reminisce about the last 24 hours of our journey, before we take our final flight to the motherland. As the last group is getting ready 6,000 miles away to depart from LAX, we wonder what similar obstacles they’ll encounter along the way…

Flashback 24 hours ago:

“Where are you going?”
Our response with excitement, “Armenia!”
To our utter disappointment, the ticket agent asked, “Is that a country?”

For the next twenty minutes, the three of us, our parents, siblings, and our Youth Corps coordinators, tried convincing this poor man that Armenia indeed is a country, and to his dismay, it was not located in Africa. Despite our efforts to Google Armenia on our iPad for him, he made a call to a higher authority on his handy dandy red phone, after which he was finally  convinced that Armenia was in fact a legit destination.

Flash forward to New York:

We landed and we were starving, we look to the left and look to the right. Our only options were poisonous  panini sandwiches, or a Turkish food stand with much needed Turkish (Armenian) blended coffee. Without a moment’s hesitation, we ran to the poisonous paninis. We get onto the plane, and encounter the next interesting character on our journey. As Nazeli is freaking out about the takeoff, we meet Ms. Jersey. Ms. Jersey is your typical hot Jersey Shore Russian version of a guidette. Again we get asked where we’re going…

Our response, Armenia. Her’s? “Why?? For what reason would you do that?!”

Again we go into our almost memorized dialogue at this point and the three of us simultaneously rant about Youth Corps and how great it is.

Flash forward to the now..

As we sit writing our thoughts in Moscow, we get stopped mid conversation by two cute little older ladies (Tantigs), who had just met each other and were looking for fellow Armenians. They asked us in English if we were Armenian, and as soon as we said yes, the conversation shifted into Armenian and they asked, “Where are you going, Armenia?” We said yes, and they asked why, but this time the response we received consisted of big smiles, rather than a confused stare. Excited to see three young Armenians traveling to the homeland, they asked what the purpose of our trip was. By this point we all simultaneously were able to recite the exact same things and explained the importance of the Youth Corps program, but this time in Armenian.

As we gather our food and get ready to board our flight, we say до свидания (“do svidaniya”) to Russia and բարեւ (parev) to Hayastan.

With love,
Knar, Carina, and Nazeli