When the Armenian day is closing Avetisyan family gathers on the balcony of their three-room apartment to look, once again, at Mount Ararat colored by sunset.

"We always heard from our elders about this wonderful mountain but we had never seen it. Every day, every minute we look at it but still we miss it," says father of the family, 44 year old Andranik Avetisyan.

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Sometimes it is the seemingly insignificant events that say the most about the living condition: Putting a new coat of polish on worn-out shoes; sweeping trash from a sidewalk that is hardly more than dirt itself; carrying yourself with dignity on your way to borrow money . . . Such things.

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Last Friday Satik Martirosyan stood outside the new Charles Aznavour Cultural Center in Vanadzor, remembering the previous performance hall that stood on the site.

"À day before the earthquake my son was singing here, he had perfectly performed, the hall was full of flowers. How could I know that next day he would close the door of his life forever," she said.

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Crippled. Handicapped. Invalid.

The words are a throwback to days before being "politically correct" became the standard by which the West invented such phrases as "physically challenged".

And they are the words most often still applied to the impaired, by Armenian media.

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Is it possible to translate a poem? That question became a main topic of "Future of Poetry Through Translation" international conference last weekend in Yerevan. The conference - the first of its kind here - was organized by the Armenian Center of PEN International Association and was held at the Ani Hotel.

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Armenia's last football match of EURO-2004 qualifying, ended in a shutout by Spain, 0-4 at Vazgen Sargsyan Stadium last Friday evening.

The match hardly mattered for qualifying, as previous loses had already eliminated the national team from EURO participation next year in Portugal.

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