Now, I'm sure this topic is worthy of a dissertation or two, but I'm just going to offer a few thoughts. First, if you're not familiar, cultures tend to be either individualistic or collectivist. American always ranks at the extreme end of individualism. Georgia, even more so that Russia, is collectivist. Obviously 70 years of communism would encourage a collectivist culture, but the roots are much deeper and spread much wider than a political/economic system put into practice in a very flawed way. As an American, the depth of collectivism is often shocking or at the least jarring.
When we had our few language classes during training, one day we went over family words. Then my teacher told us, since it is Georgia, we needed another family word: neighbor. Neighbors are like family. They just pop in, sit for a while, feed you, bring you cake, share your joys and sorrows, etc. Our neighbors have all been very nice to me.
On the subject of family, almost everyone seems to be related somehow, but untangling that somehow is sometimes confusing (especially if they are drunk and speaking in Russian, so they repeat about 4 family words for far too many people for them all to be sisters, wives, brides, etc.) This week, we had lots of family come for a long weekend: my host mother's brother's family, someone's cousin and her son, and my host father's sister's family, which included their little granddaughter (and sometimes here mother) who had already been spending several weeks at the father's family's house. Confused yet? Most of this family lives in Tbilisi and comes to Manglisi to escape the heat and relax in the country. Some of the family was then headed to another village to visit more family. While they were here, the woman cooked (fresh xachapuri-yum!) seemingly all day long. I have no idea where everyone slept but I know that the 2nd mattress on my bed (I have essentially 2 twins stuck together) disappeared for several days.
One of my neighbors (the boy whose English is decent) told me that you could live in Georgia, especially a Georgian village, and never do any work. Your neighbors would take care of you. From what I've seen, this is true. Neighbors will share the fruit from their tree, other food, etc. They will come and go even late into the night. I am almost positive that my host mom yesterday went to a neighbor's house to hang laundry up on the neighbor's clothes line since ours was full.
I am sure once I get into the school system, I'll see this even more, but cheating is rampant here. The main issue is that culturally it isn't an issue. Students constantly "help" one another. Even in my classes with my host siblings, the older ones feed the younger ones the answers, which makes it difficult to teach, since the younger ones don't know much and the older ones know a decent amount. Deciding what to talk about is difficult, so I've been sticking with basics they all have learned but can't necessarily say correctly.
More to come on this topic in future months, but that's all for now.
When we had our few language classes during training, one day we went over family words. Then my teacher told us, since it is Georgia, we needed another family word: neighbor. Neighbors are like family. They just pop in, sit for a while, feed you, bring you cake, share your joys and sorrows, etc. Our neighbors have all been very nice to me.
On the subject of family, almost everyone seems to be related somehow, but untangling that somehow is sometimes confusing (especially if they are drunk and speaking in Russian, so they repeat about 4 family words for far too many people for them all to be sisters, wives, brides, etc.) This week, we had lots of family come for a long weekend: my host mother's brother's family, someone's cousin and her son, and my host father's sister's family, which included their little granddaughter (and sometimes here mother) who had already been spending several weeks at the father's family's house. Confused yet? Most of this family lives in Tbilisi and comes to Manglisi to escape the heat and relax in the country. Some of the family was then headed to another village to visit more family. While they were here, the woman cooked (fresh xachapuri-yum!) seemingly all day long. I have no idea where everyone slept but I know that the 2nd mattress on my bed (I have essentially 2 twins stuck together) disappeared for several days.
One of my neighbors (the boy whose English is decent) told me that you could live in Georgia, especially a Georgian village, and never do any work. Your neighbors would take care of you. From what I've seen, this is true. Neighbors will share the fruit from their tree, other food, etc. They will come and go even late into the night. I am almost positive that my host mom yesterday went to a neighbor's house to hang laundry up on the neighbor's clothes line since ours was full.
I am sure once I get into the school system, I'll see this even more, but cheating is rampant here. The main issue is that culturally it isn't an issue. Students constantly "help" one another. Even in my classes with my host siblings, the older ones feed the younger ones the answers, which makes it difficult to teach, since the younger ones don't know much and the older ones know a decent amount. Deciding what to talk about is difficult, so I've been sticking with basics they all have learned but can't necessarily say correctly.
More to come on this topic in future months, but that's all for now.
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