The trip was wonderful! I am still mulling over all my impressions and experiences.
Thank you to you and your team for the job that you did.

Eta Markowicz (Canada)

Dear Tineke,

Thank you so much for the Armenia trip. It was extremely well organised
- I thought it was just the right balance of things arranged and free time to choose what we wanted to do - never bored but not hassled to get places either. You and Satik kept us in order (didn't lose us!) without being bossy and were always such good fun. Everyone was so nice to be with - so we must all have been feeling well entertained and looked after.

I have so many good memories - the very first day, dancing spontaneously in the car park at Geghard, we thought this is a high point, where do you go from here? but didn't get disappointed. Lunch in the village, dance classes, the lone duduk player in the temple, Yerevan restaurants and streets, the singing in the cathedral, driving through the countryside with Naira's commentary and stories, the market (carpet looks great in my appartment!) I could go on and on. The fat lady singing in the cinema!

Please give lots of thanks to Satik and our guide Naira. I hope they are both well.
Good luck with your next projects, hope to dance with you sometime soon, all the best,

Deb Collins (United Kingdom)

Tineke,

Bedankt voor deze fantastische reis. Ik huppel nog steeds. Dat is te danken aan jouw inzet en die van Satik, nogmaals, BEDANKT !!!!
Ik heb geen enkele opmerking en zelf had je al de conclusie getrokken om iets meer speling in Praag te nemen.
Een lieve groet voor jou en de dames in Armenie!

Conny Rakké (Nederland)

I would like to propose a belated TOAST (in Armenian Genats) to …… Armenian food!

It was a real treat to eat fresh tomatoes that actually had the taste of real tomatoes! The chicken and the lamb meat also tasted much more flavorful than what one normally can find where I live. I really enjoyed all of the food we ate in Armenia, and I would like to toast Satik for helping to choose restaurants and menus that introduced us to a large variety of Armenian dishes!

We got to taste yogurt soup, barley porridge made with chicken broth, several kinds of lavash, delicious chicken soup and lamb soup, and my favorite: the platter of stuffed tolmas on our second evening.
Satik, you also demonstrated for us some new approaches to: stopping traffic when crossing the street, negotiating at restaurants and hotels, and determining the number of cups of coffee and tea to order!

Tineke, you shared with us your love for Armenian culture and people, and helped us understand aspects that we could never have appreciated without you. Usually I have suggestions for improving things, but for this trip I just cannot think of any way it could have been made better! Our dance lessons and teachers were terrific. Our time was filled with enjoyable and interesting activities, and we experienced a lot of things and people that we would not have done as ordinary tourists. It was a great trip! THANKS!

And - to everybody who went on the trip - THANK YOU for being such a good and eager and thoughtful group of people!

GENATS!!!

Rita de Coursey (Nederland

One of the most striking things about this second trip for me was the difference in the group "chemistry". I enjoyed the fact that everyone seemed to want to interact with everyone else and didn't stick only to the people they knew. Of course the fact that the group was smaller (25 as compared with 45) helped, and another thing that helped was no one showed any signs of "primadonna-ism".

I loved everything connected with the dancing: the dance classes and the contrast between the two dance styles and teaching methods (although Liudwig was harder to follow); the two Kanaz groups we saw were charming and wonderful, their teacher was definitely THE authority and he was a keen observer and corrector and clearly loved the children, who weren't afraid of him despite his firmness. And his assistant was such a beautiful dancer!

I can't fail to mention the performance we saw at the Moscow Cinema. We enjoyed the young women's dances and suffered through the many songs on video with the great soprano, but that was okay because out of it came many jokes about fishnets and poor young girls flinging themselves off cliffs. Great melodrama.

Thank you for another joyful experience in Armenia. You and Satik are very special, and I can safely say that everyone I spoke to on the tour has the same opinion. I can't imagine anyone else being so concerned about the participants' welfare and organizing so many different activities (especially knowing how hard the organizing is for technical and other reasons).

Best regards,

Elise de Boyer (Canada)