Dancing…

Now when I passed my exams I have plenty of time to kill, so didn’t mind accompanying a friend to a concert, though didn’t even know what it was. It turned out to be a concert by “Aravot” Armenian national dance ensemble before their trip to France, Spain and Italy.

The hall at Paronyan theatre was packed – not that they were so famous, just the relatives of all hundred or more dancing children were elbowing each other carrying bouquets of flowers for their children.

Funny thing! The hall at the same theatre is half empty even during very famous and brilliant indeed performances with Honorable Artists such as Svetlanna Grigoryan and Boris Pepanyan. And ridiculously it’s always packed during such concerts and some others with Armenian cheap “pop stars”. Probably the artists simply don’t have that much relatives to call to their performances (;

(By the way, talking of cheap singers!! Didn’t have an opportunity to talk about this before. Hayko proved once more that he sucks and can’t be better. Meanwhile I’m of the opinion that someone else with proper vocal potentialities could have gained more scores had he sang the same song, though corny it might seem, but it sounded quite impressive among other cherry-merry songs. And I voted for Serbia!!)

Anyways.

The children on the stage were not bad. Some work had been done, but not enough. (For a moment I even lamented that years ago I stopped dancing at a group after attending it for a month.) Guess the quantity was stressed and not the quality. If even so, I was watching and thinking that so many children are cut off from streets and have something to busy themselves with and obviously they were dancing with great pleasure. Moreover, someone funded them a trip to Europe. And that’s commendable!!!
However, the children were enthusiastic, but more thrilled seemed their parents (;

:) !!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I guess days spent on scrutinizing what segmental relevance is, why Daniel Jones from the London phonological school talks about family of sounds, or trying to understand the difference between Old English strong and weak vowels or the theory of Nexus and Juncture by Jesperson finally gave the positive results.

People, I passed my first exam excellently!!!
Yuhoooo!!!!!!!!

Now I can breath a bit calmly, though the final exam on pedagogics and methods of foreign language teaching is still ahead. More ten days absorbing the questions from early in the morning till the point where I get exhausted. But at least, now I won’t look for stylistic devices in everything English I read or listen, trying to analyse whether it’s a metaphor, euphemism, alliteration or a stylistic inversion. Phew…

On the other hand, I’m very glad that I studied the language from its scientific points, and not the practical alone. Well, the mastery of the language comes along with the practice, while I will always have this luggage of knowledge with me. I hope so.

Yet, the next is left – now studying how to give knowledge, habits and skills to the school pupils. Let’s see how I will end up!!

Long-expected Elections in the Past

And though in some previous post I said that I wouldn’t observe this May 12 parliamentary elections because of my exams two days after it, ultimately the situation was so that firstly I had finished getting prepared for the first exam, and secondly I was needed at some polling stations.

So I got down to monitoring again.

I visited several polling stations and managed to get to one of them before closing and observe the vote tabulation. Well, the overall impression: first of all at the polling station where I was to vote, I had to wait for several minutes for my turn, because it was full of people and more people were coming yet and I can say that same was with other polling stations where I made short visits.

At 6 o’clock I went to the precinct where I was to stay after closing. It turned out that 10 minutes before my arrival the electricity of the polling station as well as the neighboring blocks went off, and it was gloomy indeed in the small room with two windows and small penetration of the sunlight. When once during a training I mentioned about torches which the observers should carry with them, someone said that we are not in 90s anymore and such incidents with electricity do not happen anymore. But it turned out that they do happen. Well, I already alarmed that someone brought a torch, as it was close to the closing hour, but soon at 7:30pm, after several calls by proxies and commission members, it was restored.

Here I should notice, and this is my personal point of view and not necesserily that of It’s Your Choice NGO, that despite the fact that most of the population and the opposition were tearing their throats by screaming that elections were falsified already, I observed rather calm and well organized elections. Of course, we heard about some cases of bickering and irregularities, but however, they couldn’t influence the outcome of elections. In fact, people were coming, being transported by buses or just walking on foot, and I know how representatives of the parties were knocking at the doors asking to go and vote.

There were 1832 voters on the voting list. By the accounts of all the 6 proxies from different parties – Republican, Orinats, Prosperous Armenia, Democratic Path, People’s party - 900 people had cast their vote before closing. The commission determined the number of voters to be 912, but the proxies didn’t argue, because usually that is an insignificant difference, if considered that proxies could miss a person, and especially when they were asking each other if they had to leave the polling station for some 5 minutes or so.

Gongradulations Aronian!!!

I’ve been very anxious the previous 3 days because of the match between Levon Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik. Though overloaded by my exam preparations I was eagerly attending the news to learn anything about the results of each day. To tell the truth I was rather pessimistic regarding Levon’s victory, as I knew that he had 3 loses during previous friendly games. But the first day’s draw gave me some hope. I was so enthusiastic the last day that decided to go and wait for the news along with the crowd gathered at the opera building. Then glorious exclamations were heard:

He did it!!! He won!! He beat him!!!
Apres Levon!!!

I am so proud, not the least because he is the world cup winner now, but also because we used to study at the same chess school when I was 6-7 and he was 8 or 9, and already he was an outstanding player.

Congradulations Levon, we are so proud of you!!!

Mysterous facts and numbers

It was a calm evening and my little brother and I decided to watch a film on DVD. Sitting on the armchairs we were enjoying the film when a boom was heard in the distance, which was followed by a flicker of a firework right in front of our window, and we didn’t even have to raise to see it. so unexpected it was.

Me: What is it?
Bro: Bargavach Hayastan’s rally, it was giving a concert.
Me: Uh, right, I forgot.
(The firework seemed to last long, more than 5 minutes or so)
Me: It’s long…
Bro: Yes, and how much money they waste on it!!! Thousands of dollars!!!…

His surprise was my surprise. He is 14, and yet realizes the amount of money being spent on such events. Don’t know whether he also meant all the rallies and concerts held by parties in other communities as well, but if he really did, I’d cry out instead…Thousands of dollars!!! Do the campaign finances include that sum??!!