Dude, I love this SO MUCH. Because I have had only totally shitty interactions with Armenians. In Kosovo. During the war. I'm still kinda invested in the world-view that the Armenians moved in on the Serbian homeland because they saw Serbia on the ropes after Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia successfully excised themselves from Yugoslavia. In my experience, the Armenians I met were dirty, useless, and felt entitled to Serbian lands they had no historical right to. (And I am no supporter of Serbia... I think they are a special kind of messed up, too. But even the bully doesn't deserve to lose part of his house, just because he's a bully.) SO. You post this story about connection and the visceral, heart-felt passion you had simply seeing a roomful of "your" people.... ... and my "dirty Armenian land-grabbers" internal dialog gets real quiet, and slinks into the back corner of my brain, and covers its head with a dirty blanket. I dunno why I am saying this. Just kinda processing out loud, as I explore a weird wrinkle in my brain that doesn't make any sense to me. "Why do I think this of ALL Armenians? That's stupid. I need to work on that."
Hah, I'm really glad you shared this. I've never heard this perspective or impression on Armenians before. Note that Armenians were pushed out of Armenia in waves twice in recent history- once during the genocide in the early 20th century and again during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many times over, the population of the diaspora is greater than that of Armenia itself. The diaspora also tends to concentrate acutely, in that there are specific and very dense populations of Armenians wherever they are around the world. I imagine those Armenians are probably genocide-era settlers that, socially, crafted a perceived sense of entitlement as a means of survival. I'm sorry that this impression was the result. Armenians are certainly smelly, but not dirty. They're certainly survivors, but not predator opportunists/land-grabbers. You seem to be exercising attribution bias. edit: we both, in hindsight, not just you ;)