After a short, but very pleasurable flight we finally landed in Armenia. The first thing that I saw was this beautiful big Armenian flag. When I saw that, I thought ”This is real. I’m really in Armenia. But after the airport of Istanbul, I was surprised. I thought that the airport would be really big, but it wasn’t. It was really calm also. That was my first impression: Armenia is a calm country. After that, I realized that that wasn’t the case. Armenia is a perfect harmony of calm and chaotic, but I will talk about that later. We went with the taxi to the hotel and it didn’t even feel like I was in another country than Turkiye. It was really interesting to me, because there were old houses and right after you could see for example a bar. Finally we arrived at the hotel. I didn’t expect a lot although I looked at pictures of the hotel before. They opened the door, and I was flabbergasted. It was prettier than the photo’s that I’ve seen online. Then we got our keys and information about the hotel. I went to my room and video-chatted with my family. It was so weird, they literally couldn’t believe I was not in Turkiye at the moment. I put my clothes in order and slept pretty late, but I knew this whole experience would be worth more than my sleep. I woke up early for breakfast and met all my Armenian friends and our tutors as well. That was my first time that I had Armenian breakfast, but my brain kept shouting: “That looks pretty Turkish to me!” So it wasn’t much of a culture shock. And their was this weird taste in it as well, I don’t know why… After that, I met all my Armenian friends and my Tutors. They were all so friendly, and all of them had a big smile on their face. At this point I already had little conversations with my Armenian friends. After that, Asli Perker had a session and talked about how she became a writer and journalist. She talked about how it all started since she was a little child, because her mom had a terrible car accident so her grandma – who knits sweaters for her in the summer while she is watching porn – had to look after her. After some point, Asli started to write backwards and the teachers noticed it by looking at her notes and saying ”What is this?”. She also has a very different characteristic about herself that I’ve never heard of before: She gets excited from things other people usually get upset about. She also talked about how she looked at everything the way other people don’t: She looks in detail, she looks at the stories behind. Because if you want to be a writer, you should be able to seen behind the things that you see. Finally she became a writer and a journalist. After her session, we had lunch. This time I really enjoyed the food. I had prejudices because of the breakfast but after lunch all of my prejudices were removed. Right after, we had our first group session with Anush Kocharyan at the ”writers group”. She taught us about writing in details and about the differences between description and fiction. She gave us some challenging exercises and we learned a lot by doing these exercises. Because of this I now have a different view of writing that I can use. I also told Anush that my name means ”crescent moon” and after that Anush started to call me ”my moon” and I find it very sweet. After our session, we had free hours so we went to the city with a couple of friends. From there on everything became so interesting! There are so many, so many big old buildings and so many funny statues as well. There is also like a purple sink called “purpulak” where you can drink water from. To drink water from it you literally have to bend yourself into it and drink it only using your mouth. It’s really hygienic, I liked it. But I still couldn’t find my plane boyfriend from the day before (we were sitting next to each other and got along really well) so then there’s that. Then we went to dinner, and of course, again it looked pretty Turkish to me. The food was delicious and we learned about Armenian drinking culture. Armenian people don’t just say “cheers!” before they start, no. They have a nice speech before they raise their glasses, that includes a positive message. After dinner we went outside and this time everything looked more beautiful within every step that I took. Everything was so beautiful! We went to the opera building and then to the cascade which was a five minute walk from the opera building. But the cascade… I have never seen anything in my life like that before. The children could rent like those bumper cars and there was a big round weird thing also that adults had fun with. You drive it and then it spins you. All those cars had bright neon lights in them. Also the building was full of funny statues, and we didn’t even see everything yet! It’s a place where you can stay all day long. We walked through the streets after, but of course carefull because in some other streets there was a protest happening against the government. As I said before, everything became more and more prettier by every step that I took. But unfortunately, I still couldn’t find my plane boyfriend. Should’ve got his number, right?