February Fatigue

February is finally over.  The last few days of February gave me hope that spring would indeed come.  Of course, today brought more snow.  Still, my toilet now works most of the time and most of our pipes now have water flowing through them most of the day, so there is progress.

Still, the painful month of February, coupled with plans for the future, has made it harder to be happy with Georgia.  I know that in the future, about as soon as I have a shower, good night’s sleep, and my fill of chips and salsa at home, I will start to miss Georgia.  I am constantly amazed at the bizarre life I have been given and am able to witness this slice of life in Georgia before the West comes storming in.  However, when I am looking up apartment floor plans for graduate school and planning my travels to Europe, I find myself a little less excited about roughing it here in Georgia and find myself longing for my own kitchen and more control over my own life.

There are probably several reasons for this struggle.  Chiefly, the weather has been miserable.  It’s getting better, and I’m thankful for the “warmth” of 1 C, but still, I’m sick and tired of winter.  There are so many places still to see, but I have to wait until the weather is nicer.  I want to be able to take showers at home.

Second, I had my first major issue with my host family this month. It is over now, and I think it was resolved fairly successfully, but I still feel less comfortable here than I did before.  I also am getting sick of the same food and the same routine, especially now that it seems I have even fewer classes at school so have more time to spend at home.  My excitement for learning Georgian has dimmed, and life here seems to be more of the same instead of full of charming surprises.  I find that I have a whole life of being a part, but always apart.  Some of this is self-imposed, as I spend too much time on my computer or alone on walks.  Some of this is a result of the language barrier.  Some of this is a result of me not being Georgian; there are some parts of life I won’t adapt to nor do I want to, nor can I.  It does not help that the end is in sight, I have less than 4 months here, and I can feel it.  Getting more involved is a harder sell to myself now.  Things are in a routine.  Even when I meet new people, the conversation is the same.  It’s also less amusing than it used to be to meet strangers who are convinced I should marry a Georgian and stay here forever before they know much of anything about me, like my name (yes, I had this conversation this week with a lovely old woman I met on one of my walks).

Third, is my constant need to plan for the future.  This includes plans for Turkey for Easter, but also post-school plans and thoughts for next year.  Especially as grad school news comes back (accepted to the MA at Indiana University and University of Michigan!), next year starts to become a reality with practical considerations like where am I going, where will I live, when do I need to come home, etc.  I miss the comfort of America, so thinking about a return to some form of normal life makes it harder to be content with my life in Georgia.

Fourth is missing American food.  Last weekend, a bunch of friends and I celebrated “pancake day” by making pancakes, blini, etc.  It was lots of fun.  I enjoyed cooking American food (and especially eating chocolate-chip banana pancakes, peanut butter, and cookies) and found it harder to return to potatoes, white bread, and more of the same.  I spend way too much time thinking about food, I know, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop anytime soon.

Even still, through this content and shades of homesickness, I am trying to appreciate Georgia.  I’ve been taking advantage of the decent weather and walking a lot.  The mountains with bare trees and snow in the distance really are a gorgeous sight the Midwest simply cannot offer.  I am more and more amused by the graffiti in my village, mostly cursing the police (in English), but also Shakespeare, apologies, etc.  I appreciate living in a small village when I repeatedly have to refuse offers of rides from friends, neighbors, and people who simply know who I am.  I appreciate the bizarre nature of Georgia when I cross paths with a horse-drawn cart of men sitting on a pile of chopped logs.  The marshrutka rides home from Tbilisi offer beautiful sunsets against mountains and valleys, where the white of the snow blends in with the white of the sky to create an atmosphere of being somewhere altogether foreign and yet so natural, as if out of a Washington Irving story or something similar.

 Watching 2^nd graders from a city perform makes me appreciate how different Georgian art can be, as their performance included Christmas/New Year’s greetings from queens from around the world, including such kingdoms as America (this actually bothered me), Scotland, Australia, China, Japan, France, Greece, Egypt, and others.  The queen of Egypt was dressed like an ancient Egyptian and spoke her greeting in English.  Several queens had lovely dances.  This was followed by a patriotic/religious/historical number that I did not quite understand but could sense the strong “Georgia is great” overtones.  The 4^th graders I was sitting with thought the whole thing was fantastic.  I enjoyed the performance but also felt slightly uncomfortable that this was a sign of indoctrination/a skewed view of the world that Georgian school perpetuates.

Life here does continue to surprise me, but not necessarily in the same “Georgia is amazing” way that it used to.  Yesterday, 3 women, only 1 of whom I knew, came over armed with food and drink, so we had a mini-supra.  My host mom brought out a bottle of champagne, and after 2 toasts, we were allowed to sip our champagne without toasts.  They had to explain this to me since I was so shocked no toast was necessary.  One of the other teachers might actually be trying to set me up with a male relative of hers instead of the common “you should marry a Georgian man but I will not actually do anything but tell you this repeatedly” reaction I usually get. 

I got to have a real conversation with a colleague the other day, about her life.  She’s in her seventies and spoils me, mostly by plying me with food and sweets.  She also thinks I’m wonderful, for reasons I can’t name.  I appreciate her mothering, but I also appreciate that I feel like a real person when I talk to her.  Not that I don’t with others, although sometimes I feel like a performing monkey who reprises her song-and-dance number with each new person I meet.  Instead, Eteri sits and talks to me about life, about how she didn’t really want to get married, about her daughter, and about her opinions about things that happen at school.

Perhaps as a result of my dimmed enthusiasm for Georgian, I’m trying to improve my Russian.  Thus, I am delighted that my host mom has been watching more and more Russian channels lately.  I have no idea why this is, except it occurred after my host dad fiddled with the antenna one day.  We mainly watch a music channel full of шансон, which is fine by me.  We also watch a daily fashion show, which I also enjoy.  I also like knowing what is going on instead of grasping at whatever context clues/cognates I can.

So this has been more an update on me in Georgia, instead of a travelogue, but hopefully I’ll have more exciting adventures to report soon.  I’m blaming the weather, like I have been for the last several weeks (months).