Mountains around Kapan Nzhde Memorial Park

Kapan, southern Armenia - Week 3

September 6, 2003

Here we are on the other side of Armenia, down in the southern region called Syunik. It's very beautiful mountainous country. Kapan is the capital of the region.

Kapan is very close to Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that was much in the news in the 1990s when Azerbaijian and Armenia fought over it. Kapan suffered attacks as well, and you can still see buildings with damage from bombs. In fact, there was a bomb disposal unit staying at my hotel. Quite a crowd gathered to watch a couple of the unit's members retrieve a spent shell from the river in front of the hotel.

We're also less than 50 miles from the Iranian border. If you want to get an idea of where we are situated, check out the map.

The bomb disposal squad, outside our hotel

Coming with us to Kapan was Lia Avetisyan, my translator for week 3. It was great to work with her. For one thing, she knows a lot about web development, especially many of the technical subjects that are not my specialty. And she is also spent a year in New Jersey as a high school student, and we could share our reminiscences of the Garden State.

We left directly from Vanadzor after Saturday's class, and drove to Yerevan to drop off Vahagn and pick up Lia. Then we drove to Kapan--altogether about 7 hours on the road. We arrived almost midnight, after a winding drive through the mountains, and I slept most of Sunday! This full-time teaching schedule definitely takes getting used to...

Lia and Jean at the ruins of a church in the moutains outside of the city

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