Chemi dabadebis dghe!

The electricity is finally back so I can charge my computer (and phone…). This has been a rather crazy week. It’s been snowing here constantly, and the power has been out most of the time. My students had their autumn festival. They’ve been practicing their dances, thinking of games, and making decorations for days.After their musical performances, we played pin-the-face-on-the-Jack-o-Lantern. They loved it. Then they surprised me with churkhchella- making. These are the sweets I made at home a couple of weeks ago. This time, though, my students gathered around me and handed me their strings of walnuts and hazelnuts. I was stirring the pot of grape/sugar/flour-y goodness, and I would make their churkhchella and then hand the strings back. The pictures of my first-graders eating the hot  churkhchella are fantastic!

I was in much better spirits when I went home (because the blizzard has been beautiful even if not having power makes things quiet and cold). 

Then on the 9^th I turned 21. The “you can finally drink!” thing just seems trivial from this place in my life, although three years ago I never would have imagined that I would be this person in this place for my 21^st. Life is so beautifully absurd sometimes.

At school, my students gave me cards and gifts they had made. The other teachers gave me a wine cask shaped like a Georgian man. We had a puppet show, and then the teachers threw a mini-supra and brought a beautiful cake from Ambralaouri.

After school, my friend Giorgi took me to his grandmother’s house for more toasting and churchkhella-making. I couldn’t stay long, though, because I had to go home and help Eka get ready for my supra. My family threw a huge supra for my birthday. Eka invited a bunch of her work friends, with the result that I ended up sitting at a huge table with a bunch of Georgian men I couldn’t really talk to while Eka and Nona and Maguala served dinner. Luckily, Giorgi (our family’s Giorgi) sat next to me. He and I often play charades as we try to communicate, and so he was great company. He was also the tamada. This means he made all the toasts, and he sang and danced and played a small folk instrument (similar to a guitar). It was pretty fantastic.

When everyone left, I helped clean and then went in to my room to go to bed. I noticed a few wrinkles on my forehead and hoped for the millionth time that when my hair goes grey it looks like Dr. Lennox’s (one of my Gallatin professors).

On the 10^th, the power went out again and we had a lot of left-over food to eat at school. Most of the teachers at my school fast on Wednesday s and Fridays. They fast from meat, eggs, butter, milk, and cheese…so none of them were able to eat my birthday cake on my actual birthday! It was still good a day later, though, and they enjoyed a mini-supra together. I didn’t have cake, but I went to my co-teacher’s friend’s house again. They taught me to make fried fish. There was a cat who ate all the fish bones (and some chocolate) so we named him “the Glutton.” Hoorah for creative vocab teaching.