{"id":496,"date":"2010-08-10T19:06:30","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T23:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/?p=496"},"modified":"2015-02-14T13:43:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T18:43:25","slug":"frusa-cousins-thats-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/?p=496","title":{"rendered":"FRUSA Cousins – That’s Us!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Tuesday, August 10th.\u00a0 There is so much going on that I don’t know where to begin.\u00a0 I am sharing a triple room for a couple of nights with my French cousins, Francoise and Nicole and we were up until 3:00 AM talking and laughing like school girls on a sleep-over.\u00a0 We had a blast!!\u00a0 However, this morning when we went to breakfast, a tall French gentleman approached Nicole and asked that we not laugh so loud tonight because we kept him awake!\u00a0 Oh dear!\u00a0 :-)<\/span><\/p>\n

Last night I received a telephone call from Armen Aroyan, our guide in Eastern Turkey. He said that a journalist from the French daily newspaper, Le Monde would like to join us on our trip and would like to meet us.\u00a0 Then I received an email introduction and a phone call from Guillaume Perrier.\u00a0 He is a French correspondent working for Le Monde in Istanbul who covers Turkish affairs and is interested in the “Armenian Issue”.\u00a0 He said, “I always keep writing and researching about the genocide committed in Anatolia and the Turkish society questioning (the genocide) that has recently started to emerge.\u00a0 I started to travel in cities and villages in Anatolia, to collect stories and evidences of the 1915 genocide.”\u00a0 Guillaume expressed a desire to travel with one of Armen’s groups in order to learn about people’s personal experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Armen told Guillaume about our group which is an extended family of cousins from both sides of the Atlantic.\u00a0 Entire families had been broken apart during the genocide and the mass deportation of Armenians to other countries resulted in the Armenian Diaspora.\u00a0 Our parents and grandparents, who were the survivors of this holocaust, were forceably separated from their families and forced to move to France and the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our extended family of cousins met Guillaume in the lobby of the White House Hotel at 10:00 o’clock this morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

We were able to sit in the breakfast room and introduce ourselves and talk.\u00a0 Everyone immediately warmed up to Guillaume and we talked together for about an hour.\u00a0 Then Guillaume asked if we were interested in seeing the Agos newspaper offices and meeting the editor.\u00a0 Agos is an Armenian weekly newspaper published in Istanbul since 1996. It is published in Armenian and Turkish.\u00a0 Hrant Dink was its chief editor since the beginning until his assassination outside the newspaper’s offices in January 2007.\u00a0 Of course we were very interested.<\/span><\/p>\n

We all piled into two bright yellow taxi cabs and sped across Istanbul to the Beyouglu district.\u00a0 Guillaume pointed out the exact location where Hrant Dink was murdered. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Entrance to Agos Offices<\/span><\/p>\n

Then we climbed the ornate marble stairs to the Agos offices.\u00a0 We passed through their security doors and gave our names to the guard.\u00a0 We were shown around the offices and introduced to the staff.\u00a0 A tall young man appeared and escorted us to an outside terrace.\u00a0 He was Rober Koptas, the new Executive Editor of Agos who has now stepped into Hrant Dinks’ shoes and runs the newspaper. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Rober Koptas is an Armenian man with keen intelligence and much patience.\u00a0 He laughs easily, seems to genuinely like people, and appreciates the efforts that are being made on the behalf of all Armenians.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Today is Tuesday, August 10th.\u00a0 There is so much going on that I don’t know where to begin.\u00a0 I am sharing a triple room for a couple of nights with my French cousins, Francoise and Nicole and we were up until 3:00 AM talking and laughing like school girls on a sleep-over.\u00a0 We had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,8,3,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armenian","category-family","category-istanbul","category-travel","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1426,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallivantinggrandma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}