A little about MBA life

Sooo, grad school is busy now.  It's exhausting, overwhelming, but good.  I wrote for the Kelley Women blog here and thought you might like to see it to get a bit of an idea about what I'm doing now that I don't ever write (either here or in reply to any correspondence you might have sent-sorry).
Also, it says my friend and I wrote it.  I wrote it and she edited it, so that's why it is written with a singular pronoun.  We haven't become one person...yet.  

Translating Time and Space

An American academic gave a lecture recently in Tbilisi.  I was not impressed with it, but I was impressed with certain things he said.  He’s been studying Georgian since 1977, and when he started, he was told that he was the 29^th American to study Georgian.  Obviously that number has increased since then, but the fact that at that time they knew all the Americans who had studied the language shows how remote Georgia was.  Now all it takes is a valid passport and two plane rides.

However, the longer I live here, the more I realize separates America from Georgia.  I am loving my language lessons but the language is a huge challenge.  Since the study of Georgian by foreigners, especially Americans, is fairly limited, the materials available are also somewhat limited.  Having studied a handful of languages, the difference in approach and material is noticeable.  About halfway through my first book, one of the vocabulary words is ‘hungover’.  I’m pretty sure they never teach that in American high school language classrooms, and I don’t even think I ever had it in a Russian class even in college.  However, when you’re talking about a language spoken by people who have been making wine for centuries, if not millennia, hangovers are a part of life, especially for the male population.  A few chapters later, an entire chapter was dedicated to words regarding the Georgian supra.  ‘Supra’ actually means tablecloth, but the meaning is extended to mean a certain type of feast/party where there will be lots of great Georgian food, lots of alcohol, and lots of toasts.  It is the way Georgians celebrate almost everything.  Sitting in an American classroom, I’m sure I would think learning the word for ‘toast’ was too long and difficult to remember, especially because in America it isn’t very useful.  However, learning the lesson in Georgia means that no matter the fact that the word is long and difficult, it’s also very necessary, so I must learn it.  I also must learn a few basic toasts to go along with it.  A few chapters later, I’m learning about corruption and punishment.  I’m pretty sure I don’t even know how to say ‘to punish’ in Russian, but in Georgia, with its recent history, this seemed important enough to teach to beginners.

There are a few other sentences that have stuck out in my mind.  In my exercise book, a few of them are:

At my place, my mother is always cleaning dishes.

You should learn the road signs, but if you don’t, you can still drive.

These two sentences are pretty indicative of Georgian life.  Women are either cooking or cleaning up dishes about 75% of the time, or so it seems.  Georgians are terrible drivers, as evidenced by the statement above, which typifies Georgian sentiment about driving.  They’re sentences that only make sense and don’t seem terribly incorrect when you understand Georgian culture. 

In a story I’m reading, the street cleaners are grumbling about the weather.  However, the word for street cleaner really is yard cleaner, but the idea doesn’t translate.  An American yard is green grass and a few flower beds attached to a private single-family house. In Georgia, in the country, it’s a fenced-in area around a house where you spend a lot of time, where you might have a sink, undoubtedly have trees that will help feed you in summer and spring, and probably has no grass at all.  You might even have chickens or bees or some other animal in your yard.  In the city, the yard is a public space.  There might be a playground, there will be cars, and there might be not much more than cracked sidewalk/road.  The distinction between road and sidewalk is often blurred to the point of irrelevancy.  In summer, you might play in the yard, especially if you’re a child, in which case you mingle with neighbor children.  Young men sit and drink beer in the yard.  Your neighbors watch what goes on in the yard from their balconies.

My host family's yard in the village, with my little host bro for authenticity.  The thing that kind of resembles grass is because they haven't had as much time to care for the yard since the host dad died.  All these trees bear wonderful fruit.

 Even in American cities where high-rise buildings shoulder one another, the community aspect of apartment buildings in Georgia does not exist.  Perhaps it is because in Georgia you need at least one, if not two balconies in your apartment.  You need these for the breeze on summer nights, for a place to hang your drying laundry, for storing jars of preserves and other goodies for winter.  However, since everyone has one, and few people have air conditioners, in the summer, people are on the balcony and have their windows open.  Your neighbor’s smoke wafts into your apartment.  You can see into the half-finished apartment across the yard.  The young people blasting music until 3am keeps you up.  The ubiquitous see-through curtains don’t allow for much privacy.

A bad shot of part of the apartment 'yard' during the day

However, I’m not sure people would complain about the lack of privacy.  I think communism forced community upon people, but I think it’s been part of Georgian culture even longer.  Part of it is the village mentality.  Your family members are incredibly important and your neighbors become like family.  You know each other’s business.  Even in the city, this is not completely lost.

The other night, my host sister and I were sitting watching a Turkish soap opera my host mother got us hooked on, when the yelling from the yard grew to an unusually loud volume.  We, of course, went onto the balcony to see what all the yelling was about.  Two older women were in the middle of a yelling match, with several young people and others gathered around.  My host sister translated the gist of the conversation to me.  Apparently some of the young men had been smoking pot in the yard and one of them had reacted poorly to it.  One of the yelling women had been forced to help the young man since no one was calling the police or taking him to a hospital.  Cops showed up soon after, which is when several younger members of the crowd conveniently left.

Another bad shot, since the yard was empty for once when I actually had my camera ready.

This struck me as interesting because of how involved people were in each other’s business.  We, and several other neighbors, watched the fray from our balconies.  The women yelling may not even have known the young men involved.  Yet, they are all part of a community that feels responsible and somewhat entitled to be in each other’s lives.  They have no problem airing their dirty laundry and grievances in front of anyone else who is around.  The very environment encouraged this, with the way the buildings are constructed.  Between the balconies and public yards, people live in each other’s way.  I’m sure the lack of air conditioning has a lot to do with it, and perhaps America used to be more like this.  But, the America I grew up in was fairly private, and spacious air-conditioned homes certainly encourage that far more than apartments that give far less private space.

In undergrad, I took a class on architecture and learned about Jane Jacobs, who tried to promote the regrowth of cities and neighborhoods.  One of her mottos was about having ‘eyes on the street’.  She wanted apartments and stores to mix, so that day and night, someone was around to keep watch.  While Georgians generally have their apartments in large, separate Soviet monoliths, I still think they would make this woman proud.  Little shops are everywhere, although I’m not sure how that is sustainable.  Even at midnight, people are sitting at vegetable stands, keeping watch on the street.  Neighbors are watching anything unusual that goes on in their yard.  There is safety in this.  There might not be much privacy, but there is safety.

I’m pretty sure this way of life could never translate to modern America.  Even explaining it without living it is difficult.  Even pictures can tell only half the story.  That is what I’m learning and what I love discovering-culture isn’t easily translated.  Sometimes phrases have word-for-word translations.  Those are little surprises.  Instead, it’s interesting to find how different cultures use different words to explain similar concepts.  It’s even more interesting to learn the words for concepts you don’t have.  Like the street cleaner.  In America, street cleaners are probably men in a machine that go around after bad weather.  In Georgia, they are old men and women with small brooms and ancient dust pails sweeping up trash and dust from public spaces, rarely the street.  In the story I’m reading, I get a glimpse into Soviet life.  My teacher laughed when I asked for clarification whether the ‘taloni’ for butter was for free butter or just permission to buy it.  It was essentially a ration card, as butter was always rationed in the Soviet Union.  I should have remembered this, but the laughter that my question engendered was totally worth it.  In the story, the shopkeeper also counts on an abacus.  I had to rack my brain to remember the English word.  I don’t know when we stopped using them in America, but I’m pretty sure it was before my parents and maybe even my grandparents’ time.  I’ve seen a Georgian shopkeeper use one before.  The same story has a girl about ten doing the grocery shopping, an alien concept to modern America, where ten-year olds are probably not allowed on the street even to play, for fear of being kidnapped.

It’s things like this that remind me why I love traveling and learning new languages.  In this way, I get to unlock new cultures, I get to understand things that must be seen and tasted and experienced to understand them, concepts that cannot be packaged and explained sufficiently in a textbook or an English-language video clip.  The Turkish soap opera that has sucked my family in sucks us in because it is weaving a saga where East meets West, a theme that resonates with the Georgians and that I have begun to appreciate only after living here.  The Caucasus are the geographical dividing line between Europe and Asia, but that divide is so much more interesting as I watch in played out in the culture- the striking difference between old and new, the mixture of Asian and European values, and the influences of Islam, Orthodoxy, and Western thought on life here.

Country Mouse in the City

When I was here before, another friend and I who lived in villages used to joke about being country mice, especially when we would visit our “city mouse” friend.  After living in the village, living in Tbilisi has been a bit of an adjustment, but generally a very positive one.  I had to get used to Georgians who had nice things and weren’t uber rich.  I found out that it was possible to have a car in Tbilisi without a cracked windshield.  People on the marshrutkas frequently have fancy smartphones, although I’m still not sure how they afford them.

Tbilisi at night-I love this city a little more every day.  The city is beautiful at night, made even more so by the fact that not that long ago, there wasn't electricity to keep it lit at night.

Public transportation in general was something I had to learn.  Before, I would basically stick to the metro (subway) since it got me most places I needed to go and it was easy to understand.  A few months before I left, they installed digital signs at bus stops showing approaching bus numbers and their general destination, as well as approximate arrival times at said bus stop. The signs are in Georgian and English. It revolutionized the bus system for me, making it possible to use them.  Thanks to a handy website, I now know which marshrutkas run along paths I frequent, so I’ve started to use them too, as they are faster and more comfortable than buses.  It also requires me to use a bit of Georgian, but after the first few times, it got pretty easy, so now I feel like I’ve mastered public transportation in Tbilisi. That means, of course, that I’ve only gotten on the wrong bus or marshrutka a few times, but I’ve always figured out where I was.

The problem with public transportation is that it actually takes me a while to get places.  I used to think everywhere in Tbilisi was close, but then I realized that I stayed in one section of Tbilisi.  Now I live at one end and several places I like to go are at the other.  This is city life, I suppose, spending hours in transit.  It never took that long to get anywhere in the village.

I actually went back to my village for a visit soon after I arrived.  It was wonderful and terrible at once.  It was wonderful to see my old host family again, to walk the same streets, to breathe in the cool mountain air.  Walking around the village, I got to see a few former students and several colleagues, which was great.  I loved being able to show off my new Georgian skills, although they did not last very long.  I also loved hearing that the volunteer who replaced me was not liked nearly as much as I was.  Since he didn’t even know Russian, he did not really communicate.  I never met him, but I both pity him and am more than a little glad he wasn’t a better volunteer than I was.  The problem with going back to visit was that after a few minutes, I did not have much to say.  I exhausted my applicable Georgian quickly.  I didn’t get married in the last year and my brother still doesn’t have a kid, so basically they decided nothing new happened in my life.  I got fed a lot, quickly remembering how I had gained 25 pounds in a year, but you can eat only so much.  So it was boring.  And then, it suddenly wasn’t boring because my host dad decides we should have a mini supra to celebrate me coming home.  I actually got roped into two in the weekend I was there, even though I almost never experienced supras that weren’t connected to birthdays in the year I was there.  While it is in some ways so nice that they toasted me and told me I was their fifth child and always welcome, it was also uncomfortable because I rarely drank with my host dad and his friends in the year I lived there.  Also, trying to navigate the world of drunk drivers without offending people who treat you like their own child is awkward.

With my former host sisters

 I had forgotten what it meant to have someone else be responsible for me.  In many ways, it was great and made my life in the village easier.  However, I like my autonomy more than most people, and I had forgotten how much I give that up in the village.  Someone else decided when I would eat and where I would go.  Sure, I could have thrown a fit, but I was a guest, and these people had cared for me for a year.  I’m definitely glad I went back to see them, but the country mouse no longer prefers the country.  In Tbilisi, I have more control.  I can relate to the people I meet more.  I have an existence closer to the one I’m used to living than the one I had in the village.  And I like it.  If only it wasn’t going so quickly.

With my former host parents.  I'm pretty sure in a year of living with them, I never got a picture with both of them.

Host Family, Round 2

In my first week, I’ve thought of a hundred different things to write.  Obviously, I’ve written none of them.  I’ll try to remember a few.  First, my host family is great.  

I’ve got a little host “brother” Niko who turned six on Wednesday.  He’s absolutely adorable and speaks a steady stream of Georgian to me despite me understanding about every tenth word.  We also play Legos, a ridiculous card game, paper airplanes, and other things that remind me of the joy of an imaginative childhood.  My host family and I joke that he is my Georgian teacher.  I’m trying to teach him a few important English words and phrases, like “high five”.

His mother Nino is 25 and works too much as an import manager for a company that sells furniture and housing stuff.  I think she’s the one who agreed to host me.  Her English is the best.  In general, all the women speak English.  Their grammar and sometimes vocabulary is almost always off, but we still can communicate pretty easily and have real conversations.  Nino is a wonderful mother and driven individual, who wants to start studying Chinese (in addition to knowing Russian and English) because, as she says “I like difficult things.” 

Niko on his 6th birthday

Nino and Niko cutting his birthday cake

Her sister Anano is 20.  She is an art student and also has a job as a graphic designer.  She is incredibly sweet and generally just seems to love life.  She’s very nice to me and is wonderful with Niko.

Their mother Maia is in her late 40s but is essentially retired and babysits Niko.  When she can’t think of a word in English, she speaks in Russian.  I’ve really loved listening to her talk.  I also just love that she’s got so many plans for her family.  When her girls were little, she got them Russian and English tutors.  She plans to do the same for Niko, plus get him to take swimming and chess lessons.  She wants him to be an architect.

One day Nino and I were sitting at a nearby playground while Niko played, and she said, “Sometimes I just think and I can’t imagine my life without him.”  I know she got married young and is divorced, but I don’t know the whole story.  From what I can tell, Niko’s father has never been in his life, but all three women love and take care of him.  That’s a definite plus to having multigenerational families living together, especially since they seem to share various responsibilities.  Before Anano started working as a graphic designer, Nino’s salary paid for Anano’s school, as well as all other expenses.  This is probably something they didn’t think twice about, but coming from America, it’s still surprising.  In case you’re wondering, the girl’s father died two years ago, so Niko is the man of the house.

It’s really nice living with this family.  After a week, I already feel more comfortable than I did with my old host family, even though they were nice.  Speaking English helps so much, since I feel like I can express myself, which encourages me to speak more, so that I don’t feel awkward trying out my Georgian or asking questions.  Also, life in Tbilisi is just easier and more similar to my life in America than life in the village is.  This host family is amazed that I lived for a year in the village.  They have hot water (all the time!) so I can easily take showers (which is good because it seems like now all I do is sweat as soon as I leave the house, or even before then), good internet, and TV that has English-language channels and DVR.  My host mom (Maia) got a recipe for making blini in a bottle from a friend on Facebook.  They were delicious, plus it was just a cool thing to do.  I think that’s a big difference.

Blini (they're like crepes) and the Fanta bottle we made them in

In the village, you have TV, maybe internet, but the outside world seems fairly unreachable, like a dream.  It made me guilty to talk about my travels or life in America because I can do so much more than they can.  Here, I don’t feel that way.  Nino says she will have to travel abroad for work, although she also says she doesn’t ever want to leave Georgia.  She’s trying to find a better job and she wants to buy a car by the end of the year.  They’re not rich, but they’re not poor, and they are a very happy family who clearly loves each other very much.  They have also been incredibly nice to me.

It’s been an adjustment coming to them in a nice part of Tbilisi after the village, but it’s nice to see what life is like here.  Even though they’re comfortable now, Maia has talked about the early 1990s a bit and it sounds terrible.  I researched the Georgian economy in the early 1990s this past semester, so that time really interests me.  It’s also terribly depressing.  I asked Maia where she used to work, and she told me she worked at some scientific research place (she has a degree in Chemistry) for six years.  Then, in the early 1990s, she said she just sat there.  She said everyone just sat.  Basically, in the early 1990s, there were no jobs, no gas for heating, no light.  She said she and friends helped each other through those times.  They shared food when they got it.  They shared tips on how to clean clothes without power and other things that they suddenly had to face.  She said it was terrible as a parent during that time to see her girls cold and hungry.  In simple, broken English, she’s brought the facts I studied (and hope to work into my master’s thesis) to life, which has made it both more interesting and more heartbreaking.  Obviously, the family, and the country, has recovered from those bleak days, but the economy isn’t easy.  Maia has done a fair amount of things and her last job was as a manager at a pharmaceutical company until last year they told her they didn’t need grandmothers working there and let her go.  She’s not even fifty.  

This echoes other things I’ve heard.  In some ways it makes sense that companies would be reluctant to hire older workers who were educated in the Soviet era, aren’t necessarily adept with technology, are used to older ways of doing things, and have probably had their skills atrophy from lack of use in years when jobs were scarce.  Young people know computers and probably know English as well as Georgian and Russian, plus they’re prettier and have a host of other superficial things in their favor.  Of course, as Nino and Anano have assured me, jobs are hard to find for young people too.  Companies want to hire young people with low salary expectations but with lots of experience.  I regretfully told them that it was the same in America.  At least we get paid on time, which is often a problem here.

Being Sick is Easier in America

I'm not sure how much I emphasized it, but basically last winter I was sick from the first week in November until I went home and went to the doctor right before Christmas.  Most of spring also involved more respiratory infection fun.  I did have health insurance but with a hospital that looked like it should belong in a movie about a war-torn country and good medical care far away in Tbilisi, I decided it was best not to go to the doctor.  I ran through the OTC meds I had brought and a friend gave me fairly quickly and after that just learned to suck it up and drink lots of tea.  It got old quickly, but I realized that teaching small children in a country where washing your hands and other basics of public health were iffy meant that I was just going to have to get used to being sick.  (OK, to be fair, there are cold meds in Georgia, but basically any form of healthcare in Georgia terrified me and seemed worse than simply letting my immune system do its duty.)

Apparently I did.  When I got sick earlier this semester, it took 2 weeks and obvious sinus infection symptoms to make me drag myself to the health center, where I needed no appointment and only a $10 co-pay (since, you know, I pay a few hundred dollars a year for the service, but that's another matter).  In the meantime, a wonderful friend and neighbor had given me her collection of OTC cold medicine so I didn't have to get my own, because I probably would not have bothered.  When those drugs ran out, I bought more, although I was disappointed not to find my favorite Robitussin Cold, Cough and Flu.

I'm sick again.  I felt it Friday morning but ignored it, simply drinking even more tea than normal.  And doing things like ice skating, because, you know, that's great for sore throats.  Yesterday I laid around, drinking more tea and finishing my honey.  Only running out of honey (and the fact that I already had to leave the house to go to church) compelled me to go to the grocery store to get more honey, lemon, and cold medicine.  Now that it has kicked in, I'm starting to wonder why I didn't do this sooner, like yesterday, or Friday.  It would have been a much better form of procrastinating writing my last lit paper EVER than the forms I chose.  Regardless, I apparently have decided that sucking it up and drinking tea is a better form of dealing with being sick than getting medicine and feeling better.

It's funny how quickly some experiences can wipe out a lifetime of habits and "common sense".

 If only I was back in a culture where little packs of tissue could be bought anywhere for mere pennies, since, you know, I've now used up all my tissues but didn't buy them at the store today.  I suppose I'll take being in a culture where the toilet paper is soft and basically the same as a tissue instead of thick, gray crepe paper...

And yes, this is another form of procrastination from finishing that stupid lit paper.

Well, this is depressing

How did I never consider how depressing an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies could be?

On Mondays, I have an introductory class on the field, which is to give us an overview of the various issues in the field and help us find direction and understand what we're getting into.  We wrestle with communist legacies, memory, transitions to democracy that have been fraught with problems and corruption, ethnic tension and discrimination everywhere, environmental degradation, nationalism, and other cheery topics.

Then I go to a small group associated with the church I go to in Bloomington.  Some days, I look around this bible study and think "Library science, library science, biology, computer science, higher education...these people have normal majors.  They don't talk about authoritarian regimes as if they're normal or regularly discuss ethnic cleansing.  What have I gotten myself into?"

Because, in my field, we do regularly discuss all the ways the various groups have been horribly victimized and have also perpetrated horrifying acts against their neighbors.  The 20th century was not kind to humanity.  And, I get to wrestle with what it did to Eastern Europe and how to deal with that now.  It's not pretty.

And now, instead of going home and enjoying family and turkey, I'm spending the first part of Thanksgiving break writing about Central Asian migration to Russia for my anthropology class on Central Asia.  For those of you who don't live mired in post-Soviet space, here's a map of the 5 Central Asian republics, the Caucasus (which includes my beloved Georgia), Russia to the north, and all those countries war hawks keep in the news to the south.

This area, filled with 'stans' has "democracies" that are ruled by dictators and kleptocrats.  If that's not depressing enough, researching migration of most of the able-bodied males in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to Russia unearths the crushing poverty of these countries.  I was excited about the topic, because it's very relevant to the current political/economic situation of Russia but somehow overlooked how incredibly depressing it could be to research.  Economic constraints force men to leave their families for months, years, maybe never to return.  Women are left behind to take care of families on impossibly small salaries, and the number who are forced into illegal labor migration and sexual trafficking can be barely hinted at in official statistics.

This isn't making me regret choosing this field, but it certainly carries an unexpected burden.  I suppose it gives me even more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving where, like a normal American, I'll gorge myself on delicious food, surrounded by family in a comfortable home with heat, light, and creature comforts.

The EU is First World, Part 1: Rome

Forgive any non sequiters, rambling, typos, or grammatical errors as this was written on a midnight flight back to Tbilisi and 3am in the Tbilisi airport does not exactly make for good editing.

 

This was a very different type of travel than the trips I’ve become accustomed to taking in the last year: no friends, two parents, a much larger budget, and three European capitals.  I met my parents in Rome, the Eternal City, and the city that’s been on my bucket list the longest, more specifically, since eighth grade, when I started taking Latin for the first time and fell a little in love with the Roman Empire.  As I got to plan the trip, there was a definite focus on the ancient world; aside from the Vatican, my itinerary mostly revolved around buildings that predated the fall of Rome in 476, so Baroque churches were mostly shelved for another trip and tour guide.  My affable parents were happy to be led to ancient sites, especially since I had planned a more leisurely itinerary than I had for our England/Ireland trip six years earlier.  We mostly walked around the day I arrived, since my 7am departure meant I had stayed up all night one last time with good friends in Tbilisi and therefore I was suffering from more than your usual jet lag.  The next morning we headed to one of the four major churches (Maria Maggore) and listened to a few minutes of mass as we admired the gorgeous church.  It was only the second mass I had ever heard, and it seemed fitting to hear it in Rome.  We then toured the Catacombs of San Clemente, which meant we got to ride out on the old Appian Way, a fact which pleased me almost as much as the tour of the catacombs.  I also appreciated that both my mother and I envied the bikers we passed and thought how lovely it would be to bike the Appian Way.  

 We also toured the Basilica of San Clemente, the 4^th century basilica underneath, the 2^nd century Mithraic temple under that, and a 1^st century room with no obvious purpose but with water still running through the ancient lead pipes.  The 4^th century basilica was probably my favorite.  In addition to the first written Italian, “Pull SOBs, pull” on a fresco about St. Clement, Cyril and Methodius also got some love.  I believe they are buried there but I mostly found plaques from Slavic countries as the brothers helped Christianize the Slavs and Cyril created the precursor to the alphabet that now bears his name (for those who can’t connect the dots, Cyrillic is the alphabet for languages like Russian, hence the fact this delighted my nerdy heart).

We ate dinner with a friend of mine from St. Louis who was also touring Europe (and the DRC) with her family.  Georgia has taught me that the world is much smaller than you think, and this reunion confirmed that fact a little more.

 

We had to rise early on day two to tour the place I was most excited to see.  If I could describe in one word why I’ve wanted to see Rome, Colosseo would do it.  The Colosseum, even after being used as a quarry for centuries, was still a spectacular sight.  From the gladiator’s area underneath to the third tier overlooking the forum, the world’s best-known amphitheater was impressive.  The Romans knew what they were doing: they developed a canopy that provided shade and some air flow, built in some protection against earthquakes into the building, and created the Colosseum as a powerful political message to erase some of the injustices of Nero’s reign.  If only Titus hadn’t had to sack Jerusalem to pay for it…

We also toured the ruins of the Forum and the palaces on the breezy Palatine Hill, but after the glory of the Colosseum and several hours in scorching Rome heat, these were great but not as exciting.

That afternoon we got a special tour of the Scavi, the excavations underneath the Vatican.  In addition to some of the best-preserved pagan tombs, the Scavi holds a unique and beautiful early Christian grave with stunning mosaics that still gleam with gold, some parts of Constantine’s 4^th century basilica, and, as the Catholic Church has always held, the resting place of St. Peter.  Excavations only began in the 1940s and originally were not supposed to go under the altar, and they were done by hand in secret.  The pope at that time was all in favor of the excavations and gave the go-ahead to excavate under the altar when they got close.

A brief aside about the layers of the Scavi, from the bottom up.  After Peter was crucified upside down, he was buried nearby in a pagan cemetery, since those were the only cemeteries around.  It was a cemetery for freedmen, and it was never a desirable place to be buried until centuries later under the Catholic church.  Peter was buried in a simple grave with two slabs in a V formation over his body.  Christians quickly started making pilgrimages to the site, even though it posed significant danger to them.  The pagan cemetery built up around his grave.  Either to disguise Peter’s grave, or to mark it as a grave that had been accidentally damaged, a small red wall and small temple (OK, I forget what they called it but it has two small columns and a roof) were erected over Peter’s grave.  Constantine built a basilica over the spot, taking the tops off of the cemetery rooms and filling them in with dirt, perfectly preserving the tombs for posterity, giving his church a firm foundation on Vatican hill, and mostly abiding by the Roman law that forbid destroying graves.  He built his altar on top of Peter’s tomb, and on the level of a basilica is a wall scratched with what looked like graffiti but a lay scholar took about 10 years (she thought it would take about 2 weeks) to determine that the scrawled writing said ‘Peter is here’ more or less and had symbols for Peter, Christianity, and the papacy repeated over and over.  They found bodies nearby; at least one was a woman, but one was a man with no feet whose general physical characteristics matched those of Peter’s.  Bits of royal cloth, cloth that pilgrims had dropped over the centuries, and soil that matched that underneath the temple-like structure below were all found with the body to give about as conclusive empirical evidence that the bones were Peter’s as we can really ask for.  On top of this is Bernini's masterpiece and the current altar of St. Peter's.  The tour was fascinating on a historical level as well as a spiritual one.

We hit up the Pantheon on our own.  Many guides will tell you it is their favorite building in Rome.  I liked it but did not see quite why it got such rave reviews.  Someone told me that the Pantheon is praised as a perfect building but upon further inspection, it actually has several flaws which we’ve copied in buildings around the globe for centuries.  Since the Pantheon was converted from a temple to all the gods into a church for all the saints, it survived being taken apart by industrious Romans intent on building projects so is the oldest building in continuous existence.  I mean, it is pretty cool.

We then toured the Vatican.  To be honest, while I did appreciate seeing in person some art I had only seen in books and on posters, I mostly felt anger toward the (mostly Renaissance) Catholic church that had spent its money on building a priceless art collection instead of carrying feeding the poor and taking care of widows and orphans.  It makes sense when you view the Catholic church as the heir to the power of the Roman Empire, but not as the church built upon a simple fisherman who walked with Jesus.  I got a much greater appreciation for St. Peter’s basilica the day before when I looked up into it from a medieval chapel built over the bones of St. Peter than I did walking around in it after seeing the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s masterpieces, and a ridiculous amount of ancient works.

We had a Context Walk of Ostia Antica the next day.  Ostia Antica was the port city of Ancient Rome and grew to have over a million inhabitants in its heyday.  The Tiber silted up and the town dwindled, with its streets and buildings astonishingly well-preserved.  Our guide was incredibly knowledgeable and even took us to the current summer’s archeological dig of the synagogue.  (Context Walk guides are academics and our guide has lived in Rome since he was a Fulbrighter there a few decades ago.  He’s even taken Rick Steve’s around Ostia Antica and other places.)  While it was pretty cool to walk around a real archeological dig, the painfully slow work, multiple comments about graduate students as the modern-day equivalent to ancient slaves, and blistering summer sun made me very glad I never decided to become an archeologist.

We also explored other nooks and crannies in Italy, tried the metro, threw coins over our shoulders into the Trevi fountain, delighted in strawberry gelato from the corner restaurant, tried new Italian delicacies, and bought our fair share of tourist gifts.

There’s much more of Rome for me to explore on a future visit but I enjoyed this first taste and have only written a basic account of our adventures.  I also realized how accustomed to the chaos of live in other countries I’ve become.  My father graciously paid for several taxis for our convenience but hated every ride because he was convinced we were going to die in a new accident every few seconds while the driving seemed downright sane after Georgia.  He also fretted over the line management (or lack thereof), which again seemed mild in comparison to Georgia.  The service at restaurants seemed better than what I was used to, since I was thrilled to be given my own personal menu with decent English translations, while my parents felt the opposite, missing the tip-induced service they were accustomed to.

A Visit from Home Prompts Reflections on the Idea

I was talking with a friend yesterday about leaving Georgia and our futures, and she said that Georgia felt like home.  I have definitely been thinking about that, even if the thoughts have not crystallized thus defined in my brain.  In many ways, my life in Georgia is not as comfortable as life in the West, but there is a comfort in the familiarity of it now.  I knew I could wait until a week before my friend came to visit to ask my host mom for permission for my friend to stay because it would be shocking for a Georgian to refuse a guest (of the same gender in terms of overnight guests).  I can tell by the landscape approximately where I am on my marshrutka rides home from Tbilisi.  I can apparently sing along to a Justin Bieber song, which would never be possible in America.  I can leave my possessions on a marshrutka without fear of them being stolen.  I understand most of the strains of conversation in my family.  Tea with cheese and bread is now extremely comforting and salads of tomatoes and cucumbers seem more normal than Caesar salads.  I have come to understand, at least in the ways I can, in the subtleties of life here.  There are still times when I feel as though I will not understand Georgian culture, but they often stem from not being able to fathom the why behind something or how Georgians endure what they endure, instead of a surface-level shock at customs and practices. 

Now that my days are numbered, I find myself clinging more to this little patch of earth. I feel as though I am clenching my fist around grains of sand, which slip through my fingers even more the stronger I try to hold onto them.

I had a delightful 2-hour impromptu visit to a colleague that shed a lot of light on who she is and how she’s interacted with me this year.  It made me regret not taking more of an interest in her before and also further clarified why my school does not feel as welcoming as other schools.  The teachers are always nice to me, but more and more, I find myself doing my own thing.  This colleague described the “collective” she had experienced at her other schools previously.  The Russian word works much better than the English, but in essence, my school lacks the community that is often present at other schools and other TLGers have described, mostly in that they are included in events.  My school does not have a lot of events or parties or even impromptu gatherings, and I’m more often than not totally clueless about said events when they do occur.  Granted, I am probably gone for most of them, but my school just isn’t that way.  It made me realize that my colleague, seeing that lack, was reaching out in order to be welcoming but also to reach out to someone else whose life existed beyond the small village we both now call home.

I also have realized how much I have come to love Tbilisi. 

This is the door that welcomes new arrivals at the airport.

 No, it lacks the flash of most major capitals, but I love its ancient buildings and run-down bits more than the newly rebuilt sections of town.  I smile when I see its monuments at sundown, take great joy in counting how many Orthodox churches I can see from a rooftop, and love that I can navigate certain parts of the city better than I can almost any stretch of Springfield.  I have realized that Georgia’s beauty to me is in its rundown, undeveloped ruggedness.  When international corporations splash their billboards along roads outside of the big cities, blocking views of unadulterated mountains and valleys, I think I will weep. I see that future in my lifetime, and I hope that Georgia does not lose that untamed quality that has preserved life from another era.  Yes, Georgia must modernize, but I hope that it does not do so at the expense of its history and natural splendor.

Old and new in Tbilisi

Old Town Tbilisi

As I knew it would, having my best friend come visit me gave me fresh eyes to understand how familiar and dear Georgia had become to me.  Before I went to the airport, a friend at my hostel told me she had a friend coming in about the same time.  She had described me to him and described him to me (Asian-North American) and figured we could split a cab, since otherwise he was just going to sleep at the airport until the buses started running.  I was more than happy to oblige, especially since it meant I had someone to talk to while waiting for my friend’s delayed flight.  It also seemed so very Georgian, or totally normal here but something that would never happen at home.  I will miss things like that, when the world feels very small in very good ways.

On the first day, I took her to Mtskheta, the ancient capital, and had my friend there be our tour guide for the day.  We hiked up to Jvari Monastery, since the climb makes the church that much more impressive.  It was easier than I remembered, and the walk down was aided in its loveliness by the kilo of fresh cherries we had bought in Tbilisi.  Then I introduced my friend to lobio and let her taste lobiani in its homeland.  We got to play the ever familiar “hurry to get the 6pm marshrutka home” game I play every week, and then I showered her home.  As we lay in bed, she turned to me and said, ‘I don’t know how you do this’, which I thought was funny since I had just thought about how impressed I was that she was handling everything so well.

The next day, I showed her around Manglisi, which was more a chance to catch up and talk like we always do than much of a tour.  It was a wonderful day nonetheless.  My host mom made mchadi that night, which was a special treat.  We had gone into the kitchen to say hello to my favorite neighbor and her daughter and found the cornmeal cakes sitting there and were told to eat.  I was pleased by this surprise and in general pleased that, although they did not interact a lot and I had to play translator, my host family and friend seemed to be happy with one another.  I then took my friend to school.  I tried to include her a bit in the first lesson and realized that most of my friends probably do every day what she was doing, sitting there (bored) until the teacher includes them in an activity.  It made me thankful that I was able to teach the majority of my lessons.  I also appreciated my friend’s presence because the fifth graders were very well-behaved, which is rare.  Classes were shortened, so I was surprised by the bell, since it was International Defense of Children Day (apparently that’s a holiday here but not enough of one to call off school altogether).  Then, I should have had a break, but instead we went to 2^nd grade, so my friend got to see the chaos that rules the school, and how I have no clue as to how most things will go until they happen.  The 2^nd graders were great as usual and invited us to attend their carnival later that day.  Since we now had extra time and no one ever invites me to anything, I agreed.  We ran home and then came back a bit refreshed.  My 2^nd graders are one of my favorite classes, so I loved watching them play games, dance, and try to make khinkali.   

The girls had to ask the boys to dance for the "White Dance".

The boys had to try to make potato khinkali.

 We snuck out in time for us to pack and eat some tea, bread, and cheese before grabbing the 1pm marshrutka.  I showed my friend the most important cathedral in Georgia, Sameba.  It’s shiny and new, but I still like it.  Then we met up with friends and got our marshrutka to Kazbegi so my friend could get a taste of the Caucasus mountains.  Since Georgia does not mesh well with plans, I had no place for us to stay that night, but even before we had left Tbilisi, we had negotiated a homestay.

Our homestay turned out to be wonderful.  We could see Mt. Kazbek from the house and had plenty of room.  Dinner that night was delicious.  When we told our host that my friend was a tourist and we wanted her to try chacha, her face lit up and she procured for us a half-full bottle of homemade chacha, to which we introduced my friend.  I was also so pleased that she got to see why I have loved Georgia, as we stayed up until almost 2am sitting around the dinner table chatting.

First shot of chacha

We got up early the next morning to climb to Gergeti Trinity church, by far my favorite church in Georgia.  I love it because it seems like a Georgian church ought to.  The light pierces the dark of the church, slicing it from a high window, creating a beam straight to the door, as if God himself was beckoning worshippers to enter.  I would have taken a picture, but the holiness of the church does not allow for cameras, cell phones, pants on women, or any leg at all, just reverence and awe.  The darkness, divine smell of beeswax, unintelligible incantations of the priests, and quiet adoration of devout worshippers give the church a holy presence I have not felt anywhere else in Georgia.  Perhaps the sacrifice made to reach it or the natural beauty surrounding it help. For whatever reason, I was glad to return and pray in a church where my prayers feel like more than just a flickering flame in front of an icon.

Gergeti Sameba Church

By the time we got to the Gergeti church, Mt. Kazbek was shrouded in clouds, but the views were still stunning.  We enjoyed them for a while and decided to keep on trekking, as we had risen early so that we could hike to a nearby glacier if possible.  After another hour and a half, my friend’s feet were killing her, and a few of us were starting to wonder if it was worth it.  When it started to hail, we staged a mutiny, and all but two of us headed back.

The marshrutka back gave us some friendly Georgians and an overly friendly (read aggressive and annoying) Georgian to chat with. We had to decline an invitation for khinkali (dumplings) and pretend to sleep to ward off unwanted attention.  About an hour away from Tbilisi, the annoying Georgian found a new crop of foreigners to talk to, as several newly-minted TLGers got on our marshrutka.  I got to talk to one of them for the rest of the ride.  Her three weeks of Georgian experience made me realize how far my understanding of the culture had matured.

Thus back in Tbilisi, we had time for the baths, the one thing my friend had expressed interest in trying.  We all were also in need of a good cleansing.  So, the three of us girls headed to the baths.  I knew the best baths were closed because construction had ripped up the street in front of them.  I also knew that the public baths were little better than public showers, so we were all willing to shell out a bit more cash to indulge in the luxury of the Royal Baths.  For 50 lari (about $30), we got a private room for an hour.  We paid a bit extra for a scrub or massage, which basically meant an overweight Georgian woman in pajamas took a rough mitt and scraped off my top layer of skin and then rubbed something that frothed with bubbles over me.  My friend tried the massage, and although she described it as being violated in ways she had never been violated before, she enjoyed it, and we all considered the hour a great success.  We then attempted to eat at a restaurant which had lobio (bean) khinkali, which blew the minds of all of us when we heard about it.  Khinkali are usually filled with seasoned meat, but potatoes, mushrooms, and cheese are also possible.  Sadly, the place was packed, so we stuffed ourselves at the Russian place nearby.  Exhausted, we called it a night.

The next day, I had made plans for three of us to go to Gori and Uplistsikhe, an ancient cave town near Gori.  Time and tired feet meant we only made it to the Stalin museum and the Cake House in Gori.  I got to play tour guide, since the actual tour guides were busy with actual tourists.  When I had gone in December, my friends and I made up half the visitors at the museum.  On Sunday, the place was full of tourists, which was rather surprising.  My friend, who does not share my love of things Russian and Soviet, did not seem nearly as intrigued by the museum and Stalin’s private rail car as I was, but I enjoyed taking her nonetheless.  

Finally got my picture on Stalin's toilet!

It seemed like I would be a bad tour guide not to show her this facet of Georgian culture.  I was also quite pleased to notice a banner that stated that the museum, which was full of Soviet glory, is going to be turned into a museum of Stalinism.  The museum, aside from what my friends and I like to refer to as the ‘cupboard of repression’ largely ignores anything but what are seen as glorious deeds of one of the worst slaughterers in the 20^th century.  That will be changing, another sign of positive steps away from Georgia’s dark past.

We ended my friend’s visit basically where my Georgian journey began.  I took her to the restaurant next to my orientation hotel.  We went to say goodbye to a few friends who leave shortly and to eat with others.  We went to that restaurant for sentimental reasons but also because they have a live band that plays Georgian music in an atmosphere of old Georgia.  I’m not sure how much my friend got out of the experience other than Georgians will go to dinner at a restaurant to dance.  I was reminded how much I love these aspects of Georgian culture.  I made her do a Vakhtanguri with real Georgian wine glasses and we introduced her to a bit more of toasting culture. 

 After dinner, we finished the night sitting on the rooftop of another friend’s hostel and admired the view of Old Town Tbilisi before crashing.  I will miss that view a lot.

I have already said goodbye to four good friends and am not looking forward to the many more I will say goodbye to in the next few weeks.  I do like that it means more hugs hello are coming my way, but the closer I get to leaving Georgia, the more I want to return sooner rather than later.