Am I lucky or what? Last year while I was doing a research online for a column about the “Water Feast,” an old Armenian tradition of dousing each other with water, I found pictures taken in Yerevan showing kids throwing buckets of water. I wished that one day I could be there in person, watching those kids in action and taking my own pictures.

“UNA VIDA ES POCO PARA BARCELONA…” “One life is not enough for Barcelona,” this is a motto I have on aT-shirt I bought in Barcelona a few years back.

Friday, September 21 was Independence Day for Armenia. Two days earlier, I had taken a taxi to Zvartnotz airport to pick up my cousins who were coming from Denmark for their first visit in Armenia.

Gurdjieff is an Armenian mystic and a scholar of the early 20th century. He believed that humans can transcend to higher levels of consciousness by improving their self-awareness.

When you arrive in Armenia, you are ushered to far flung places around the country to see the vestiges of an ancient kingdom that once spread across the land, dotted with thousands of world’s oldest churches and monasteries. Vanadzor, the third most populated city in Armenia, is not one of those places.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being at the opening ceremony of a day-camp at Proshyan village about 12 km outside of Yerevan. We arrived at around 11:30 a.m. at the village. Our driver took us directly to the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) center where boys and girls were playing in front of the two story building.

It was around 8:30 p.m. when I arrived at “Parev-Doon,” a hostel-type lodging in Yerevan. The aromas of homemade lasagna and pizza filled the air.

When I was growing up in Iran, Armenia was a Republic of the Soviet Union and a forbidden travel destination. By the 1980s, a small wedge had been created inside the “Iron Curtain.”

BY CATHERINE YESSAYAN
One of the main reasons I decided to visit Paris on my way to Armenia was to learn and write about the small community of Armenians living in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, a suburb located on the southwest edge of Paris.
My father’s family moved from Tehran to Paris when he was 9 or 10, and they [...]

What do you do when it’s pouring outside? The first Sunday of spring, March 25, was an unusual rainy day. Since I was not inspired to do anything I stayed home and watched TV.

What better way than to spend the first Sunday of spring, outdoors under the Southern California sun, and raising funds for a good cause! Come join us and participate in a walk-a-thon at Pasadena High School benefiting Vanadzor schools in Armenia.

Learning a slice of history from the city of Tabriz, where Armenians have thrived for centuries, is one of the attractions of a special March 10 banquet planned by “Jan Tavriz.” The group strives to preserve Armenian heritage in Tabriz and in the northwestern region of Iran known as the province of Azerbaijan.

Following the passage of the French Senate bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, the author submitted a timeline, which reflects her disappointment at President Obama for not honoring his campaign pledge to recognize the Genocide.

In Tehran, when I was growing up, my father’s side of the family belonged to the Armenian Evangelical Church, which was founded by Protestant Missionaries from United States in the mid 1800s.