{"id":9823,"date":"2016-01-30T20:31:58","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T01:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=9823"},"modified":"2016-02-02T13:54:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T18:54:31","slug":"building-a-new-life-in-armenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=9823","title":{"rendered":"Building a New Life in Armenia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bestSuzy Daghlian <\/strong>\u201981<\/strong> used to promote the exploits of fictional characters, from Lemony Snicket\u2019s orphaned children to the colorful Fancy Nancy. But when she was downsized from her job as a marketing director at HarperCollins in 2011, Daghlian rewrote her own story\u2014and turned it into an adventure.<\/p>\n

The prologue began in 2006, when Daghlian visited Armenia for the first time. A lifelong New Jerseyan born to first-generation Armenian Americans, she joined a two-week Habitat for Humanity trip and built houses in a rural section of the former Soviet republic. She liked it so much that she returned the following year\u2014and the year after that, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I left, I would cry and then start counting the days until I could come back,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt so attached to this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she left HarperCollins, Daghlian immediately began planning her next trip to Armenia\u2014another two-week stint volunteering with Habitat. She followed that up with\u00a0four months in the Armenian Volunteer Corps. A few weeks in, she says, \u201cI knew I wasn\u2019t going home.\u201d<\/p>\n

She now lives in Yerevan, the capital city, and leads building trips for the Fuller Center for Housing. The families being helped work alongside Daghlian and her American volunteers, who do things like carrying rocks, insulating ceilings, mixing concrete, and spackling walls.<\/p>\n

She sees destitute living conditions in the villages where she builds: families living without running water, electricity, heat, or insulation. Some people were moved into shipping containers after a 1988 earthquake destroyed their homes. \u201cMost of them are still there,\u201d says Daghlian. \u201cBut now they\u2019re on to a second generation of people who grew up in those shipping containers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people here can be very poor,\u201d she says. \u201cBut they are joyous. It\u2019s a warm, inviting place. If someone asks you to coffee, you have to count on it being two hours and including at least one full meal.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Daghlian\u2019s new life were a children\u2019s book like the ones she used to market, the lesson would be obvious: Sometimes the hardest challenges lead to the sweetest changes. For now, at least, she\u2019s leaving the ending unfinished. \u201cI don\u2019t have a long-term plan,\u201d she says, \u201cbut I can\u2019t imagine going home. I love my life here, and I love this place.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Suzy Daghlian\u2019s new life were a children\u2019s book like the ones she used to market, the lesson would be obvious: Sometimes the hardest challenges lead to the sweetest changes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":9835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-winter-2016"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}