Gender awareness

Today is a holiday for males in Armenia. The students celebrate in school by buying gifts for all of the boys in their class. It's not like on Valentine's Day in America when you only buy for the one you like most, here everyone gets a present. This seems like a good idea, in Hermine's seventh grade class all of the girls contributed 400 dram ($1.50) and then went to the store together to pick out a present for their classmates. But then I asked Sargis what would happen in his class, where there are 21 boys and only five girls; it seems that the holiday becomes quite a burden in the 6a classroom.

Earlier this week a new litter of pigs were born in our household. Eleven total, the last one and smallest had a difficult entry into the world. On Wednesday we brought him inside the house so that he could stay warm and get strong apart from all his brothers and sisters. It seems they're all very feisty and one of them stepped on his ear. At first he couldn't even stand and they were feeding him with a bottle. He spent two nights sleeping in a cardboard box next to the wood burner. They filled up the mini wine bottle I brought back from my AirFrance flight with hot water and he would sleep on top of it for warmth. I got pretty jealous of little Oscar (they were showing a commercial for the award event when I was asked to choose a name), he looked warm in that little box. It was fun for a few days to wake up and come downstairs to the little snorting pet, but he got rambunctious and was sent back to the pen with the rest of the piglets. Yesterday someone came to buy a pig and much to our dismay we learned that Oscar is in fact a girl. We changed her name to Oscarita and the problem was solved, but now I guess she won't get to celebrate today's holiday.