The city is very active at night, with children playing in the park even at midnight. Walking around, you'll hear Armenian, Russian and English.
Most interestingly, Yerevan has a high population of free-roaming cats and dogs. Taking care of these animals is a community effort, with residents often feeding the street animals and playing with them. These free roaming animals are very friendly, and will even follow you for several blocks.
As I had written in the Nature News artcile, I was flown to Yerevan to partake in the United Nation's COP17. I was a performing artist for the opening ceremony of the conference. It felt incredibly special to share art about sustainability and biodiversity for the United Nations at such a critical time in our history. The scale of the performance was huge. We had an hour long dance performance alongside a diva (a highly celebrated female opera singer), live orchestra, lights and animation!
For this week, delegates from all United Nations countries flew to Yerevan. Security was tight, and you had to take a special bus to enter the area. We were in a specially built venue that featured many conference rooms, two large cafeterias and lots of smaller discussion rooms. There was even a special ceremony, honoring the passover of venue leadership from Armenia to the United Nations.
You could hear all sorts of languages around, though English is the primary communication language. There were also many different contributions from the various nations present. Our emergency ambulance was a South Korean vehicle, the ceremony production company was Russian and the food was Armenian.
