It’s hard to believe it has been 4 weeks since we returned from Armenia to Salt Lake City, Utah! It was SO GOOD to return to American soil, and especially to our home, that we fell apart a bit and didn’t want to do anything. Even the Hogle Zoo garden, which had been grown and cared for capably by Matthew Sorenson, Jeff Summerhays, and Serge Sergeavich (sp) was not appealing to me. I found it difficult to get myself up early in the mornings to go and weed, etc.
After Receiving a large donation of vegetable seeds from one of America’s biggest seed companies, I arranged for tickets to NYC, thinking we would transport them home ourselves. Then we instead donated them to LDS Humanitarian Services, who in turn donated them to American Indian Services, and we were relieved of the responsibility of getting about 4,000# of seeds to SLC.
Meanwhile we had one-way tickets to New York, so RATS! We had to use them, and we decided to celebrate Araksya’s 30th birthday with a trip to the East. One day in Manhattan was sufficient for us, and we opted to use our unlimited miles rental car to do much more. We visited Princeton, NJ, Philadelphie, PA, Washington, DC, Palmyra and Niagra Falls, NY, Toronto, Ontario CA, and Boston, MA in 9 days and had a great time! The rental car only put on about 1,900 miles, so I’m sure Alamo loved it too.
After returning home on 8/4 we had all of 3 days to recover before Araksya was scheduled to attend a four-day intensive Vocal Beauty Boot Camp at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. She was fearful of going, because she had almost no singing experience, but screwing up her courage she attended and had the time of her life!! We feel as if she gained at least a year’s education – from some of the best vocal professors anywhere – in less than one week, made great friends from all over the USA, and had a wonderful time. Videos taken of her progress are amazing to us, and we will treasure that experience.
Now it’s back to work in ernest. I’ll report on the progress of the project in Armenia in my next entry.
