To start off our lovely day, we prayed in the bus for a good trip. After a while we got to the Alexander Tamanyan statue. Alexander Tamanyan is an architect who designed the modern city of Yerevan. The statue looked very nice but the unique thing about it is that there is a map of Yerevan next to the statue.
While our class was taking a few pictures, a pigeon flew on the statue’s head! After we took pictures of us and the map, we went to the Cascades which is a big staircase that leads to a great view of Ararat mountains. We had a contest about who can get down the fastest. There was an escalator and the stairs. I took the escalator with George, Alina, Sienna, Talar and, Digin Ardemis. We were the first ones down so I said we should get points for all of us.
We walked back to the bus and drank water from the fountain, it was really pure. Then we got back on the bus. After we went to the Avedisian school and we met the kids at the school. We talked about ourselves and hanged out. We also made them presents and gave the presents to our pen pals.
After we got a mini tour of the school, we went back on the bus to go plant trees. I’m going to plant an apple tree. My buddy was not at the school so I had to be with someone else she was a girl and she is 12. She was really kind and her name is Azadouhi !
We took the bus to the youth forest in Yerevan. We walked for at least ten minutes, then met up with our pen pals. Once we met up people who were in the ATP (Armenia Tree Project), simply showed us how to get dirt and plant the tree. We all started to get with our pen pals and start planting!
There were piles of dirt scattered around us. We grabbed our shovels and put dirt where the trees were in. The trees were already in some-what of small holes, so we put dirt. We didn’t get to water the trees because we had to go.
We got to eat “catah”, a sort of sweet bread, with some juice. We hopped in the Avedisian school’s bus to head back to our bus because since we walked to the forest we had to take a bus. We had lots of fun planting trees with our pen pals!
For lunch we went to “Gaidz Lehmajon”. We ate lehmajon, pizza, and bread with zatar. We had a pretty good lunch!
We went to the Hovhannes Toumanian museum and saw cool facts. We saw manuscripts, and some of his books. We also saw a 3D movie called the Unlucky Panos. We went in groups by fours. In the museum we saw his first book, his first love poem and we saw a small some-what show of him on a projector in a room. He was doing what he would do in his life. Then we went from the museum to his last living home. In the home we saw pictures of his 6 girls and 4 boys. We saw one of the girls room, a kitchen, a balcony, and office. In his office it was very clean! He had statues, picture frames, and he had this box. This box on the wall had his heart (which isn’t there anymore). We saw some things from his book “Gigor”. We had a fascinating time at the Hovannes Toumanian home museum (wasn’t actually where he lived) and we got to see some more details about him.
For dinner we had yummy foods and yummy pasta. It was a great day!
-Sarah Joubanian and Michelle Joubanian