Wednesday 15 August 2012

Day 20


Alack and alas, the time has arrived for team Armenia to wend their merry way homewards.  Not all that merry actually partly because we didn’t want to leave and partly due to its being the middle of the night.  But I shall continue my tale of adventure, excitement and guiding in a desperate attempt to live vicariously through my own experiences.  And also to avoid leaving you hanging and wondering what became of our escapades.  And now that I’m no longer squabbling for internet access at the hostel, I can take my time and really share the details of the thing.  Remember the posts so far have been short :D

I shall resume our tale at the water park.  We queued for our tickets (and enforced our UK queuing attitudes quite firmly on some local lads) and were admitted to the land of slides.  Ditching our things on some sunbeds, we set off to explore.  And then we ran back to retrieve our flip-flops as the floor was incredibly hot.

There is a silver lining to every cloud though and the searing ground seemed to remove the layer of grime from our feet that we have not been able to budge despite our best scrubbing attempts.

We tested out a couple of slides including a huge steep yellow one.  I think I held my breath the whole way down and had no idea where I was going as the spray was everywhere.  I didn’t appreciate how this must have looked until I watched Jade descend amidst a display of facial gymnastics that would have put team GB to shame.  Sadly, I didn’t have my camera but rest assured I had to lean on something while I laughed.

Next we tried the zip-wire.  This was suspended over a pool and you hold onto a bar and leap off a tall building.  Then you hold on as long as you can sliding down the wire until either you fall  10 feet into water or you hit the end and the impact causes you to fall 6 feet into water.
Of course, we had three goes.  I think we felt a bit like naughty schoolchildren skiving school to go and mess about for a day.

We had a bit of a swim, some lunch and a lovely lounge around before taking on the next slides.  One of these was a particularly menacing enclosed black tube affair and Rachel and I opted to slide together.  We waited for our inflatable figure 8 (a bit like 2 rubber rings stuck together), hauled it to the top and prepared for our doom.  It was amazing and we shrieked the whole way down.

Once we’d used up all our energy and dried out in the hot Yerevan sun, we tootled back to the hostel to get ready for our Goodbye Gold Team outing.  We met up with lots of our new friends from camp and trainings and our terrifically talented translators and they conferred in Armenian about where they should take us.  The verdict?  We should go to that place.


We followed on placidly enough and that place turned out to a bar called That Place that was in an underground car park beneath one of the main roads in the city.  It was pretty quiet when we arrived but the Armenians love dancing and we had barely sat down before they jumped up and persuaded us to join in the dancing.  We had a lovely evening and it was a great chance to say goodbye to everyone.  We’re really going to miss their friendliness, hospitality and good humour and it’s been amazing to spend time with so many wonderful people who share our interest in Guiding.

After briefly exploring the interiors of the local Irish themed pub and the Lord of the Rings themed pub (seriously, why?) we hit the sheets for a good snooze after our day of fun.  Ah, bless.

Team Armenia, over and out

1 comment:

  1. I can't believe you went to "That place"...a place enjoyed by team Armenia 2010 a long time ago now - oh the memories!

    Just reading the whole blog, sounds like you all had an absolutely brilliant time! Love the tales of Armenian life, particularly the food (especially your love of lavash..mmmm!), bread, bread and more bread. Sounds like the trainings have all gone amazingly as well - good work girls! :)xx

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