Happy Halloween Part Uno

My friend from (expat website), Ildar, messaged me to meet. We had plans to meet in the city in the evening, but he had been working pretty late.

He knew where my accommodation was as we had previously discussed the address. He directly said, “My friend is having a Halloween party. You have to come.”

Before I knew it, he was standing outside the gate and I was asking permission to go out with my friends to Luisa. I felt like a teenager sneaking out on a school night and worrying about coming back after curfew. 

Within five minutes….literally 5 minutes…he was outside the gate as I guess the party was just down the block.

Walking around during the daytime, I had no idea that the Armenians celebrated Halloween. There was no indication other than Fall pumpkins and nice decorations around restaurants and cafes.

When we arrived at his friends place, I was welcomed by Georgi and Yulia. Yulia was the owner of the house who had two kids and there were other friends all dressed up- Harry Potter, a skeleton, a Princess, and some other kinds of characters.

Georgi finds out that I lived in Argentina and he wants to speak Spanish. I share with him the differences in pronunciation with Argentinian Spanish. We drink Armenian Pomegrante wine and we start making the “Cheers.” 

The cheers of Georgia and Armenia cheers to everything you can imagine- good health, prosperity, love. Everyone was asking so many good questions to learn about me and those qualities were also used as a toast lol

"A toast to helping others, a toast to Priscilla enjoying her time in Armenia, a toast to Priscilla and her beautiful eyes."

It is so sweet when locals make you feel so special. It is really the only time when I am traveling that I can really share my life, my passions, my travels, and know that people are actually listening to me and have genuine care and interest to learn. 

When I met Yulia, we immediately just got along really well. She was charming, funny, intelligent, creative, and a mother. She came from Moscow just recently in January 2023 to escape the war and her husband decided to stay in Russia. She had a nanny named Mana who was very sweet and spoke the best English. She had a 10 year old son and a 1 year old baby. She was just so sweet in the way she spoke and had this curiosity to learn. She loved poetry and shared some of her favorite books and poets. Ildar said he loved the American author Clifford Issac.

Ildar is a lawyer, and teacher, and also a writer… and an engineer. It is not clear how he be all those things. He also comes from Turkmenistan and he has two children back in his country. His reason for moving to Gyumri is unclear, but he says that the story is quite complicated. He says that it is some kind of love story.... Yulia whispers to me, "I will tell you the real story later." 

We are all just enjoying our time and the kids are getting picked up by their parents. One of the mothers says that she is headed to a Halloween party and we all decide that we will go together. Ildar already has his costume a shirt where is wrote, “Error Costume is not Found” and on the back of the shirt, he writes “I don’t care.”  Yulia lets me borrow her black sequence jumpsuit and she wears a black sequence fitted dress with a black wig and a scarf. I throw on a witch hat and we are out the door with our 10 minute spontaneous outfits….to be continued