If the TV show Cheers were a country, it would be Armenia. Why? “Everybody knows your name.”

Naturally, there are things that frustate me about living in Armenia, but having just returned after being away for almost three months, its absolutely wonderful to feel the impression that you make on the lives of the people around you. Some examples:

Later on that day I called for a taxi from my usual taxi company. The operator lady recognized my voice and asked me where I’d been all summer, and we had a 10 minute conversation. It was a repeat scenario with the taxi driver that subsequently showed up.

The next day we went to Artbridge, and the staff commented about how they haven’t seen us in so long, and wanted to know what we’ve been doing. This happened again at least one other restaurant we’ve gone to since then.

Even the lady that sells flowers near our old apartment stopped us to interrogate us about where we’ve been. We almost never bought flowers from her, but we had become accustomed to exchanging greetings as we passed one another during our daily routines.

Throw in about a half dozen acquaintances we’ve seen just walking around while apartment hunting, and it starts to feel like the whole city missed us while we were away. Well, perhaps they didn’t really miss us, or even care that we were gone, but they noticed, and thats a lot more than can be said of other places we’ve lived.

Its easy to be negative about living in a place like Armenia, because it doesn’t always have comforts and conveniences of our upbringing, but I’ve never experienced another place in the World where you can get a feeling like this.