We are now back in Gyumri. These houses are pretty average. Conventional wisdom says that everyone in Armenia has electricity, and almost everyone, certainly everyone living in a city, has gas for heating. But Gyumri is still recovering from a devastating earthquake in 1988 which left 20,000 dead and thousands homeless. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, and subsequent wars and blockades with neighboring countries have left many people unemployed and desperate and sometimes burning their parquet flooring to keep from freezing to death.