The world's first Cathedral and the world's reddest Jamie: Weeks 5 and 6

Ahh, I've been really rubbish at updating this, so it's time for another epic post. Been really busy over the last 2 weeks with AIESEC work so I'm going to break my no blogging about work rule to explain what I've been up to. We've recruited a load of new members for RAU and have been training them up. Last Sunday we had our Orientation Day, where we taught our newies all about AIESEC.

I ran a session on AIESEC History, which meant actually learning the history. I'd definitely recommend AIESECers looking it up, it's quite a story. We had lots of games and things as well to keep the newies interested, and judging by the feedback everyone had a good time. Thanks to Ani, Zara, Lusine and Tatevik for helping out!

As my time in Armenia is starting to come to an end (still got 4 weeks though!) I've been trying to get out of the city and spend less time working since my teams are pretty well set up now. On Friday I went to Ejmiatsin, a small town outside Yerevan, with Elize, Ani and two Dutch journalists who have been traveling from Egypt back to Holland over land.

They ain't getting on no plane foo

We took a minibus out to the town, which took about 20 mins (Armenia is a pretty small country so it never really takes more than 2 hours to get anywhere). Ejmiatsin is pretty dominated by the cathedral and the buildings around it. The Armenian church is a separate organization, and all its priests are trained here. We saw a fair few priests wandering around in their black robes, as well as lots of tourists (which I've not really come across anywhere else in Armenia).

Bell tower of the Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral there were loads of decorations and paintings, as well as an altar in the center with a bible and a metal cross which many visitors would kneel to kiss. There was also a throne for the Patriarch (the Armenian pope) to sit in for the services and lots of incense holders.


After having a bit to eat we walked around to another church. There is a lot of building work going on, which made a difference from Yerevan where the general strategy for construction is:

1. Dig a massive hole, build the foundations and put a few cranes in before running out of money
2. ???
3. Building finished!

In the church we saw an Armenian christening, where the whole family is christened together. Afterwards they handed one of the Dutch guys a sugar sculpture of an angel. Apparently they give these to people who have not yet been christened, to remind them to get it done. I'm not sure the message sank in though, as he tried to eat it.

Yesterday we went to Lake Sevan, which is a huge lake to the north of Yerevan. It used to be larger but was massively drained by the Soviet Union . The same guy would go on to work on the Aral Sea which turned out brilliantly, I think he really hated water.

We got to Sevan town via minibus, where we met Ani and Elize's friend who lives by the lake. He had to go to a wedding, but managed to set us up with a taxi and direct us to a good beach.


Lake Sevan is pretty popular with Armenians in the summer, and the beach was pretty crowded. Much of the sand has disappeared as the lake is rising again (about 50 cm a year) and some of the resorts have already been flooded. The water was an amazing shade of blue, and apparently it changes colour a lot throughout the year.

We went for a swim in the lake, which was pretty cold even in the middle of summer, and afterwards had a picnic. Despite being careful with the sun, and trying to stay in the shade I managed to get quite burned, apparently this is normal in Sevan as the sun is very strong and the beaches quite exposed.

Even the horses needed to cool off

After a nice day by the lake we headed back to Yerevan, managed to get to the office to finish off a few things before heading home for a well-deserved rest.