People have always told me that I should write.  When I first moved to Armenia, I used to write short stories – brief snippets of what life was like and how I was adjusting.  It all went along fine until one day; someone came up and introduced themselves to me.  We had never met, but he had read all my stories.  He had gotten them by email, from a friend, of a friend, of a friend.  My humor isn’t always reverent, and I started worrying that people who didn’t know me wouldn’t understand that I wasn’t bashing my homeland, but actually enjoying the experience of the newness, no matter how scary/annoying/hilarious.  I stopped writing.

Fast forward 13 years, and there are more repats living here, more people writing about their experiences, more ways to share daily life i.e. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., and more transparency about life here in general.  The veil has been lifted, it’s not just my voice talking about crazy taxi rides.  I had been toying with the idea of writing a blog for months, ok at least a year, but every time I sat down to write, it didn’t seem all that interesting as before.  Fine, full disclosure, that’s a lie, I just got lazy.  I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how the hell a blog works.  And I didn’t.  I signed up, and put up my first post, before handling any of the basics.  So now I need to back-track a bit, and at least disclose all the * information.

* My grammar sucks.  After 12 years of living in Armenia, and adapting my English into some sort of morphed lingo that can easily be understood by non-native English speakers, (including a weird accent), I’ve lost the simple rules of grammar.  I took a stab at learning basic Armenian a while back, and it was then that I realized I had no idea how I was able to speak English.  Ever since I have been harboring a plot to kill whoever invented the term “past present perfect participle.”  I will find him someday.

* I’ve developed ADD later in life and have problems staying on topic. I like to write like I think, so if you get lost while reading, it’s not my fault, I probably should be medicated.

* I lie.  ADD wasn’t later in life, I’ve probably always had it, but it seems trendier now, so I’ll fess up.  Plus exaggerating/taking liberties with the truth is an Armenian thing.  It’s in my blood.

* Sometimes I curse.  My Dad is a retired mechanic, and although he kept the language clean while home, I like to think that I inherited my creative cursing skills from him by osmosis.  Or my Aunt Barbara, my Dad says she used to swear like a sailor.

* I have a curiosity about how life should work, that doesn’t always match up with reality.  But then, if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Those are all the disclaimers I can think of for now, but this is no guarantee, more will probably pop up later.  So, here I am, this is the post I should have started with, but didn’t.  You’re welcome.