Ltchadzor, literally meaning on the “banks of the lake” is a small border village in the Tavoush Provice of Armenia.

The community, with its 449 residents, used to be an administrative part of the neighboring town of Ayroum until 1990, when it was granted its own status.

Village school Principal Rouslan Malinyan proudly points out that this year eleven first graders have been enrolled. He has reason to boast. The school in the neighboring village of Artchis, three times the size of Ltchadzor, only accepted three first graders.

Sixty pupils attend the Ltchadzor school, and its ninth grade graduating class is the smallest, with only two students. After graduating, pupils attend the   school in Ayroum that goes up to the twelfth grade.

Teachers I spoke to at Ltchadzor say they try to maintain an active extra-curricular schedule, involving both pupils and parents. While German is the only foreign language taught at the school, an English club, run by the German instructor, also operates outside of normal classroom hours.

The school was renovated last year and refitted with new furnishings. What the school lacks is a gymnasium. Pupils get their exercise and play games outside, in the school yard, weather permitting.

There are plans to build a new gym on the ruins of the building once housing the school’s various clubs. It was damaged in the 1988 earthquake and was never repaired.

The only church in the village is the ruined Saint Sargis Church. Ltchadzor Mayor Souren Martirosyan says the church, built in the 1870s, was decapitated by the local authorities in the 1920s and the remaining structure used as an office.

Residents have petitioned the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin to restore St. Sargis or to build a new one. They have yet to receive an answer.

Villagers have turned a corner of the church into a small chapel where various religious items have been placed and where they light candles and pray.

There’s a small cross that has been sculpted in one of the walls. Residents believe that if one can throw a stone from a certain distance and hit the cross dead-center, that person’s wish will come true.

Ltchadzor has a working library and first-aid center, both housed in the municipal building.

The vast majority of the library’s 3,600 books are holdovers from the Soviet era

The village has no kindergarten, and never did.

Mayor Martirosyan hopes that one day his village will also establish a kindergarten. He confesses, however, that Ltchadzor has a number of more pressing problems to tackle first.