So I have a lot to catch up on. I’ll start with International Women’s Day,
because it was the first day that really started to remind me why I love this
place. The weather was not terrible, so
after sleeping in and being lazy like my teenage host siblings, I set off for
my daily walk. Aside from losing my 3rd
left glitten (glove + mitten) in 2 months, the walk was great. The ground was dry enough for me to wander
onto some hills. I forgot to take my
camera, or else I could show you more mountains and a sweet skull (probably a
sheep or dog) I found while looking for my errant glove. On my way home, I saw my friend’s
mother-in-law, and she said my friend was home, so I stopped by for over an
hour to chat with her and play with her kids.
On the way home, I met up with a woman walking home from the shop she
worked at. I had never met her before
but she knew who I was and told me we were neighbors, so we walked home
together. She is at least in her
sixties, but actually had the same pace as I do, which was a considerable feat
since most Georgians walk very slowly.
We had a lovely chat, and I remembered why I enjoy being in Georgia: the
people. When I finally remembered to
wish her a Happy Women’s Day, she in turn returned from her stop in another
shop with a Snickers bar for me, in addition to the sugar she needed
herself. (Don’t ask me why her shop
didn’t have sugar…this is Georgia). She had told me how hard life is since she is
the only one who works in her family, but she still spent money on buying me a
candy bar. I felt almost guilty. I shared it with my host family, since my
plans to make cookies for them had been foiled by my laziness and extended
walk.
Several of my friends had headed off to see Armenia again,
but I did not want to take Friday off school.
I had planned to visit a friend in Kakheti, but she needed to make other
plans for the weekend, so I needed a plan B.
One of my friends who lives in Tbilisi
also needed a weekend away from Tbilisi (I’d
spent every weekend but 1 for almost 2 months in Tbilisi), so we decided to head out
west. My friend in Ureki, a summer
vacation spot on the Black Sea, said he was
thrilled we wanted to come, so we set out on the night train. I thought we would get super cheap tickets,
but by Friday afternoon, only the renovated seats were open, so we had to pay
14 GEL (yes, that’s still so cheap, I know) for the nice sitting area instead
of a bad bench we could have stretched out on.
Tickets purchased, I wandered around the market at the train
station for a few hours, buying snacks for the train and supplies to cook
burritos for another friend, who was letting me use her shower and had made me
dinner the week before. As I was wandering around, I befriended 3
Nigerians. They stuck out and looked
like they needed help, so I spoke to them in English, much to their
delight. I found out they were students
at the American University
in Tbilisi
(didn’t even know we had one of those) and had only arrived a week before. I got to play translator to help them buy a
big soup pot, among other things. It was a lot of fun helping them, aside from
not always understanding their English and getting overtly hit on. Still, it was another encounter that made me
love Georgia. A few hours later, I was missing America
as I stuffed my face with lettuce(!), tomatoes, and other burrito fixings.
I was having too much fun that I again barely made my train,
but I met my friend and made our train.
We shared our snacks and made friends with an adorable 4-year-old girl
as we tried to sleep. The train left a
bit after 9 and got to Ureki at 5 AM.
Yes, 5AM. My friend in Ureki is
so awesome that he came to meet us at 5AM at the train station, even though he
had been up until 3. He had not
mentioned to his host family we were coming, so we put our bags down in his
room and left without waking them.
Hoping to see the sun rise, we walked to a nearby village to a
hill. Even though Ureki is always warmer
than my village and has nice weather almost all the time, it decided to snow on
us on our walk.
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| Not the greeting to Ureki I was hoping for |
Palm trees covered in
snow are a strange sight, but it was still a very tranquil walk. We headed back down to the main road in
search of tea and warmth. When the
marshrutka to Poti started running, we caught one.
Poti is a port city, and from all accounts, a dirty port
city. It also suffered during the 2008
war and has none of the charm of the other cities on the Black
Sea. The snow had stopped
but the weather was still awful when we arrived. The streets were muddier than any streets I’ve
ever seen in a city (not a village but a real city).
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| My Tbilisi friend miserable in the cold in Poti, with shoes that were no match for the dirty streets |
We had breakfast and wandered around the
market, which I always enjoy. We even
got to buy spinach(!) Yes, I am thrilled
about vegetables, since I have so few in my diet these days. After that, we headed to a hotel. The reason my Ureki friend had been up to 3
was that he had started giving English lessons to and then befriended this
amazing couple. The husband runs a hotel
in Poti and one in Ureki. The one in
Ureki only works during the summer, so Goga (the Georgian) and his family live
in the hotel in the off-season. He also
said me and my Tbilisi
friend were welcome to stay the night.
He gave us tea at his hotel in Poti and then took us back to Ureki. We met his family, including 3 adorable kids. They fed us great food (they have a cook) and
then let us take a walk on the beach.
The weather was still bitterly cold, but I was determined to put my feet
in the water, since I was on a beach. We
also got to admire the black sand, which is magnetic and supposedly has healing
properties. The wind was ripping up the
beach, stealing chunks of sand. My
philosophical friend in Ureki said it was a metaphor for the ephemeral nature
of our lives.
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| Playing in the cold water |
After taking in the sights of the Ureki strip, we returned
to warmth. After the kids went to bed,
we got to make a walnut, apple, and spinach salad for the Georgians to try and
got to eat more food. We also were
treated to good wine and started listening to music. The Georgians were incredibly nice and more than
a little crazy. They had no problem
when, at their suggestion to start making music by banging our forks against
glasses and plates, we broke a few plates.
They broke a few glasses. The
night culminated with Goga’s cousin pouring the plate of fried potatoes on his
head. This was definitely
alcohol-induced but speaks more to the crazy, carefree nature they all had than
the amount of alcohol, as this was not that atypical of the night.
It was a lot of fun hanging out with my friends and my new
Georgian friends, especially because I don’t really have equals in my Georgian
village, so people I can easily speak to who are similar in age and mindset are
great treats. The next morning, we
grabbed a marshrutka back home. I gave
myself 90 minutes of leeway for making my marshrutka in Tbilisi.
The weather was so bad that I only had 20 minutes to spare. We passed a lot of snow, accidents, and
trucks pulled over on the side of the road.
When we finally stopped for our break, I got to pay to use a Turkish toilet
with no door and not much protection from the cold. It was a reminder of how far I’d come. My friend and I were sitting next to some
young Georgian men and chatted with them some on the trip. At the end of our journey, one of the boys
gave us both a kiss on the cheek. This
is the standard way to greet or say goodbye to friends. It seemed perfectly normal, but afterward
struck me as another indication of how Georgia had molded me.
Last week was pretty good. I think TLG had told my director
some of my comments on my report because we finally have a CD player. Unfortunately, it is a giant stereo system
and large speaker that we have to get from the director’s room whenever we want
to use it. We have done this a few
times. The kids love it so much that it
seems worth the effort. It has also made
me aware that several of my classrooms don’t have a working outlet, so we have
to run an extension cord from a nearby room.
In other words, it is a huge pain, but at least we now have use of a CD
player. A few spots where the classroom
floors were really torn up have been fixed.
Also, my 2nd grade class is now going to put on a production
for the kids who came to our school a few weeks ago. This means we have to pretend they are
awesome at English. I got to look up a
few nursery rhymes for kids to learn.
Then I had to help transliterate them into Georgian, but we did not tell
the kids what they meant. The best part
was that my co-teacher and I spent half of Friday’s lesson translating an
incredibly patriotic speech from Georgian into English so the kids can spout of
love of country in 2 languages.
Apparently I’m going to get to go with them. I will enjoy helping them with their English,
but the overly patriotic/Potemkin village feel makes me slightly uncomfortable.
To end a good week, my family made khinkali on Thursday
night. I love it when I get homemade
khinkali (dumplings), and even managed to help make a few that weren’t terrible
and did not fall apart when boiled. We
even made potato khinkali, which I had never had at home before. I also got
some of the Polish vodka I had given my dad for his birthday. We toasted his father, and I finally learned
that we were having khinkali and vodka because Thursday was the 13th
anniversary of his father’s death.
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| Mari made a fish khinkali out of one of her potato khinkalis |
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| Steaming hot khinkali...mmm |
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