Last Days in America

Here I am in Guyana, posting about our last week in Falls Church. I obviously have a lot to say about our new home, but I need to properly finish up on America first. :) I guess you could say DC was a training ground for Guyana. I mean, obviously it was, since Sevak was going through training there, but it also geared us up for the social changes to come…we learned to rely on little-known acquaintances to help us out. For example, Rose met a little girl at church the Sunday before we left, and she invited Rose to play at her house the day before we left. It just so happened that it was a snow day, and on the way to pick up Rose I slid, hit a curb, and popped my tire. The girl's dad put on my spare, with the help of six missionaries who just happened to be walking by at that very moment! I felt like it was an answer to prayer. 

We also asked a little-known acquaintance to help us transport our luggage to the airport on the day we left. People were reaching out right and left, and we tried to reciprocate as best we could. I feel like we made a lot of connections there. First of all, we attended three different wards on three separate occasions, so we met lots of people that way. One of the Relief Society newsletters had information about a play date at the Botanical Gardens so I went to that. They also had information about Zumba at the Stake Center, so I went to that and even ended up teaching a couple of times! We also met tons of people at our apartment complex. We would get talking and find out we were either from the same place or going to the same place. We also met people who were going to Armenia or Armenian themselves so we'd connect through that. I even had some wonderful encounters with strangers who were neither LDS, Armenian, nor from the government, but we ended up having great conversations and I went away feeling like I had made a friend. I don't know what it was about our time there, but I just felt like the world was on our side. 

I am already feeling the same to be true here in Guyana. Our host family is so amazing. Jackie is the FSO (foreign service officer…I'll probably be using a lot of acronyms from here on out) and she met us at the airport and helped us get all our bags to our place. She and her husband set up our home and got us groceries. They invited us to dinner. They've offered to take us shopping and give us rides (our car won't get here for a while). In the meantime we've also been using motor pool. Local hires from the embassy have driven us to the school to check it out, and they drove us to the Embassy this morning. All the drivers have been super nice and I've enjoyed chatting with them about their country. Maintenance people and other local staff have come to do walk-throughs, and they've all just been really nice. Wow. I know this all sounds super sweet and perhaps a bit sappy, but I think it is true, and maybe this sort of positive thinking will help me get through some of the rough spots as we transition. :) 

Anyway, more on that in another post. Here are some pics from our last days in Falls Church:

Had to have at least one pic with the Capitol in the background.

Fun exploring our frozen surroundings. We found these interesting and fragile ice formations underneath a loose pile of leaves. It's like tiny water droplets dripped down and formed mini stalactites. 

Checking out the icy stream.

National Building Museum

Fun for my little architects

Sevak salivated over the mushrooms at the Farmer's market and became nostalgic for his mushroom-picking past in the old country…we bought some oyster mushrooms to take home. :)

Rose salivated on the ride at Hershey's Chocolate World

World's cutest chocolatier 

She chose all of the specifications on the touch-screen by herself…she has a lot of experience with touch screens.

Cracked me up that Sevak needed a beard net…what was that, Sevak--one day without shaving?

My cocoa-infused chicken

Chocolate milk at lunch…of course.

She really, really loves chocolate

Jasmine is just really part of the gang now

Lovely day at a local park in Arlington

Climbing through the drainage pipes

Love it how they make friends just like that.

At the Botanical Gardens. Smelling some sort of essential oils. 

Viewing some items made from plants

They had a real, live papaya tree in DC! (We have one in our backyard now. Haha.)