Overheard on the Subway

Location update: New York city; this is "home" again for at least a year after 2 years away.

I've been doing lots of everything between choking on formulas for my stat class and catching up with wonderful people I've missed. One of the best things about life in New York city is that nothing seems unexpected or absurd enough to mention...but this also means that every time I've sat down to write something I've started to doubt that the story is interesting enough for the internet. Real New Yorkers don't seem to blink at anything; maybe my moments of naive amusement are best kept to myself.

Maybe.

Or maybe I'll tell you what I heard on the subway this week and hope you chuckle:

Yelled by a woman waiting board AS the doors are just opening:
"'SCUSE ME"

Conversation between a woman sitting across three seats and a girl standing (not touching the woman at all, really) on a rush-hour subway:
"Can you move? Your ass is touching me."
"Where am I supposed to stand?"
"But your ass is touching me. I don't want your ass touching me."
"It's a crowded train ma'am. It happens."
"Your ass is touching me."
*sigh* "Well, I don't think it is."
"..."

Singing:
"We can talk about Jesus while you wait for your trrrraaaaiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn!"

Old man who startled me by tapping my Howard Zinn book as he passed me:
"He was a very. radical. man....But he's usually right."

A girl approaches a group of older women laughing and conversing in a foreign language:
"Excuse me. Can I ask you a strange question?"
Loudest of the women:
"Sure"
Girl:
"I'm trying to break up with my boyfriend. How should I do it?"
Woman:
"Tell him to fuck off."
Girl, before walking away:
"Ok. Thanks."
Woman to her cackling companions:
"Wait...Was she serious?"

This one, admittedly, was above-ground:

Man who really wanted a dance:
"Wait! Where are you going? Don't worry; you can't get pregnant like this! The bow-tie has to come off first!"

And lastly, from a random (since I'm pompous and trendy if I call it "obscure") documentary a friend showed me:
"You always giggle falsely! You're never genuine!"

როგორ გადის დრო...

I don't have time to write, but just to tantalize you here are some details of the past week:

1) Looked up sourdough bread and pretzel recipes
2) First sunburn of the season!!!!
3) Interviewed for a segment on Georgian television
4) Had a bunch of junior wrestlers move into (and then, thankfully, out of) our house
5) Used Facebook to follow NYUs graduation and then toasted to brilliant futures for my friends
5.2) Realized that a lot of really cool people won't be around next year when I'm finally back at school :(
6) Dipped my feet in the very cold Rioni river
7) Dreamt about riding a little black pony named Chiko
8) Threw an impromptu ice cream party for my school to celebrate a first grader's graduation
9) Played barefoot American football with a rugby ball
10) Noticed that the tadpoles I pass every morning have grown legs

Ah spring...

"Les hommes? Il en existe, je crois, six ou sept. Je les ai aperçus il y a des années. Mais on ne sait jamais où les trouver. Le vent les promène. Ils manquent de racines, ça les gêne beaucoup."

Fact: I'm my parents' tumbleweed child. A few months here; a few months there.

And for the time being it's lovely, but I have these crazy dreams of a garden with fruit trees, a big table (of recycled wood) surrounded by friends, a well-stocked spice cabinet, and a place to paint. If I'm really dreaming, I'd also like either a horse or a kayak, dishes painted by my friends, a library stocked with Dr. Seuss/Roald Dahl/Maurice Sendak/Shaun Tan, wide window-ledges to sit in, and maybe a kiln for bread-making...but that's only if I'm really dreaming. My point is, dreams like deep rooted fruit trees can't be realized unless I put down some roots myself.

Why am I posting this instead of editing and posting the pile of Georgia writings I have sitting on my hard-drive? Because--while I'm in no rush of course--thinking about future travel plans (because applications have due dates, though I'm loathe to plan) and possible places I could stay long enough to design and tend a garden, I'm surprised to find that I often think of Chester County.

I hate the suburbs. Mostly because I hate that getting anywhere requires driving. But from Philly I can get to the beach or to Lancaster or Longwood Gardens or Hibernia Park or Valley Forge. I can even take a train (or Megabus) to D.C. or New York or Boston. I can drink Hopdevil from Victory Brewing Company, eat apple cider doughnuts at Highland Orchards , or picnic during a concert at Twin Brook Winery. There's the Strasburg Railroad and the Chester County Historical Society to visit, and Marsh Creek to kayak on.

For the best ice cream, I'm a fan of the Chester Springs Creamery...And in Philly itself? The best ice cream there is probably at the Franklin Fountain. I already love the Philadelphia Orchestra, Capogiro Gelato, and the Philadelphia Art Museum. I'll even admit to enjoying an occasional cheesesteak from Pat's and a Flyers game as much as I like little old brick houses and the fact that there (is?was?) a Loving Hut on South Street. And since this has gone from a reasons-I-could-live-near-Philly to an adventure-guide-for-enjoying-whatever-area-this-is...I should also mention Doghouse Burgers in Downingtown (my family loves that place) and Baldwin Book Barn nearby. And if you're adventurous, I happen to know one of the masterminds behind Cabaret Red Light, and the tag-team comedy sketches she does with a friend of hers are (aside from being entertaining) impressive because of the brilliant acting.

And if I was to find myself back in Philly and ready for a few adventures myself? I'd pick up the latest issue of GRID, stop by the Rosenbach Museum to pay my respects, find out what Little Berlin is up to, and taste the Pub and Kitchen food I've been reading so much about.

Ta daa! Who needs travel guides? Now you know what to do in and around Philly. Go do everything so I can live vicariously through you on the next rainy day.

Easter Monday (and Tuesday, too?)

When Georgian Easter was explained to me, I was informed that Easter Monday is the best day. They explained that they pack picnics and go to the cemeteries where their family members are buried. When I woke up Monday, I realized almost immediately that this day would be nothing like I had expected. Eka and Maguala were packing the picnic; Jumberi stood watching and giving orders periodically. Then we drank coffee and watched the clock. At 11:30-ish we packed Eka’s car and drove to the path that leads up to the cemetery. We then unloaded the car and carried everything up the hill to Jumberi’s parents’ grave. There was a metal table next to it, where we unpacked and sat down. Jumberi lit candles and laid red eggs/cake/candies at his parents’ graves. But then we just sat quietly, everyone ordering each other to eat and drink but actually eating and drinking very little. I looked out over the graveyard—with it’s fences and tables, flowering trees and pictures of the deceased—and I thought about the Czech graveyards I’d found so beautiful and the Dios de los Muertos picnics that I’d read about but never experienced. Then Maguala interrupted my thoughts by calling me to follow her to her father’s grave, on the other side of the cemetery.

As we walked, I learned what the day really is about. We zigzagged between the graves, instead of taking the most direct path, so that we visited a large portion of the cemetery. Every few steps, we would stop at a grave. The family there would hand Maguala a glass of wine, and they would exchange a ritual greeting:

-Christ is risen.

-It is true.

-For the souls of your dead, your family, those you love, and you yourself, that God raises you as well.

-The same for you and yours.

The wording wasn’t always exactly the same for the last two lines, but this was the jist. Then Maguala would spill some wine on each of the graves at the family plot, kiss her glass, hand it back to the family, and call for me to follow her onward.

When we were back with our family (i.e. at her husband’s family plot), I sat at the table with everyone and joined them in handing glasses of wine to guests. I had expected the day to be about the family’s deceased: us sitting at the grave eating, with food and wine set out for them, talking about their lives. Instead the day was much more a social performance. Each person was expected to visit the graves of their relatives, friends, friends’ relatives and relatives’ friends to spill wine, bless the grave, and demonstrate to the others present that they considered their life intertwined with the lives of these others. Children went around cracking the red eggs with their friends, since they couldn’t drink the wine. Most women didn’t drink the wine at each grave; like Maguala, they kissed the glass and returned it to the family full. Many of the men drank slightly more, and many were thoroughly wasted by the time they went home.

Family members took turns circling the cemetery, keeping someone at the plot of the patriarch’s nearest relative at all times. Whoever was at the family plot offered food and wine to guests. I realized that the family wasn’t eating much because the food was first and foremost an offering to those who stopped by to pay respects to the dead or demonstrate a social connection to one of the living present. The fact that this was a spectacle became all the more obvious when guests stopped by who the family didn’t want the public (with everyone always closely observing each other, of course) to consider in relation with them. Courtesy and tradition dictated that every guest be offered wine and allowed food. Most were offered food and even entreated to sit with the family at the table for a time. But there were a few guests—a drunk man who offended Jumberi with an inappropriate question, an old woman who has repeatedly offended the women of the family with her patronizing comments, a socially out-of-tune drunk who barely knows the family but stopped by on his way to relieve himself in the trees—who (after their departures, of course) inspired scowls and scathing comments.  

We arrived at the cemetery around 11:30 and were home around 3. Jumberi laid down to nap (I feel like he’s gotten very old recently), but Eka suggested we go out for a bit. A friend of Maguala’s has three sons, who are friends of Eka’s. They were having a supra, so we went to their house. I like this form of supra attendance, usually only excusable for women who are close to the family. After the men have their long meal and have drunk most of the wine, we show up and sit at one end of the table. We sit together, and the women of the hosting family finally take a break from serving to sit down with us. We nibble on the food and have a glass of wine if we want, but there’s much less pressure than when we attend supras as official guests.

As soon as we walked into the house, I knew that this was going to be a good time. The men had already drunk quite a bit, but they were good-natured and polite regardless. One of the sons thought I was Georgian at first, and when he found out I was American he started talking a mile a minute in English. At one point he said, “I’m just talking this much so that my friends see me speaking English.” A bit later he said, “You know, there’s someone else here who speaks English well, but he is shy. He’s, in fact, sitting right next to you.” From that point on, they both chatted away at me in English, with the others occasionally slipping in a Georgian word or a toast. They were joking and laughing the whole time. Their toasts to Maguala and Eka were pointedly extravagant, and their mother called them out of a few lines of cliché, over-the-top flattery.

Then Mamuka made a toast and included a personal wish for me to get married in Georgia. I chuckled and gave my usual reply about not having the time or patience for a husband. He was aghast: “Don’t you want children?”

“I like kids, but I don’t know if I want any. And the husband bit—”

“Why are you here and beautiful?”

“Ummm…” (Here at this supra, in Oni, in Georgia? Here on Earth? Ummm…)

“Because of your parents! So you should repay them the favor and do the same and make beautiful children!”

“I don’t want—“

“In 70 years, I want your children to be guests in my house as you are now. Promise me you’ll see to that?”

“No! I can’t promise—“

And so on and on until eventually I just laughed. The other English speaking man next to me nodded and said that he for one likes my thinking. I eyed his wedding ring, wondered if he had what my students refer to as a “second wife” (or was looking for one) on the side, and again laughed instead of answering.

Then, mercifully, one of the women asked me to come outside and help her translate a document on her laptop. This was amusing, too. She asked me to come help instead of either of the two men, because I’m a native speaker. But then she didn’t believe what I translated it to, because I’m not a native Georgian speaker. So then she called one of the men out. He translated it the same way I did, and then she didn’t argue.

Neither conversation was tense at all, just interesting. Eka and Maguala seemed to have as good a time as I did. Then we went home. Eka and I worked in the yard for a while. While we were working, Jumberi came out and urgently called for me to come take a picture. I was confused: a picture of what? Eka told him that we’d be finished in 5 minutes and he could wait. He shuffled back inside, and in 5 minutes he re-appeared in dress clothes. He make his way down to the pavilion in the yard, and he pulled out one of the white plastic chairs. He set it under the pear tree and sat down to pose. Eka and I looked at each other, confused and amused, and then I hurried over with my camera. He tried a few different poses, and he told me for each picture where he wanted me to stand. When we finished, he went inside and I went to sit with Eka on the steps.

Back in October, Jumberi was old. I remember thinking that this must be the price men pay in societies with traditional gender roles: once they stop working, start collecting their pensions, and realize their children are full-grown, their contribution to daily family life becomes less clear. Sure, they still chop firewood and prune the grape-vines and make wine; meanwhile, however, their wives and daughters are still cooking, cleaning, socializing (because their social habits always involved visiting and being visited by neighboring housewives), and generally keeping the house in order as they always have. An old man here either has to find a new sense of purpose for his life or wander around the house wondering what he’s good for. It’s a depressing way to spend old-age, though perhaps life alone in a nursing home isn’t much better. The thing is, since the weather has warmed up we’ve stopped needing as much firewood. The grape-vines don’t need any care right now, and there’s already a stock of wine in the cellar. Increasingly, Jumberi spends the day sleeping, watching television, and smoking. He used to spend a lot more time watching television, but I think his hearing has gotten worse (he talks louder these days) so now he watches it a bit less. When he started sleeping during the day instead of watching television, I didn’t think much of it. Then he started smoking and eating less because he was sleeping more. At this point, he’s almost always asleep on the couch in the main room. He gets up a few times a day to eat a little food, smoke, or wander outside to talk to a neighboring man in the street. He’s become more irritable, more lethargic, more hard-of-hearing…just generally more…old.

So when he decided suddenly that it was very urgent that I take a picture of him (that he can’t access because I’m the only one in the house with a computer and they don’t have a printer), Eka asked, “He’s not losing his mind, is he?” We later learned that someone at the cemetery had asked him where he wants to be buried. The other man had honestly been thinking of his funeral arrangements and wondered what his old acquaintance thought. Though the possible connection between this question and the photography session was never discussed, I have a feeling that Jumberi may have decided that he’s not so worried about where he’ll be buried as which picture they’ll use as a reference when engraving his likeness on his tombstone. I don’t actually mind thinking about those kinds of things, but I’m not a 76-year-old, chain-smoking, Georgian man with a cough that suggests he has destroyed his lungs nearly completely. I can’t tell if he thinks about death and feels relieved or amused or scared or apathetic. He answered his acquaintance’s question, “100 years from now, I’ll be buried here, next to my parents.” Others picked up the conversation topic, but they were younger and just musing for amusement. I doubt any of them went home and ordered their young houseguest to take pictures of them to ensure that their tombstone renderings would be ones they approved of.

Tuesday, I got dressed for school and waited a half-hour at the car station for my co-teacher. Then a woman who teaches at Oni school came by and told me that we were still off school for the Easter holiday. When I’d been at school the week before, the other teachers had said multiple times to me and to each other that we would be back at school on Tuesday/Samshabati/April 17^th. I walked home, not really minding the extra holiday but wondering at the miscommunication. I dropped my bag at home, changed into jeans and boots, and went for a bit of a hike. The path I chose took me past the old Armenian cemetery, which I had expected to find empty. Instead, I saw red eggs and cakes laid at many of the graves, just as at the main Georgian Orthodox cemetery. I decided to walk through the Orthodox cemetery as well. I looked at Monday’s aftermath: the wine and broken eggs, the flowers (laid by humans and blooming on the trees), the cigarette butts, the slices of nazuki and paska, and the candles blown out by the wind. Even some over-grown graves had offerings laid at them, which reminded me of watching Giorgi’s mother wander off to leave an egg at an “abandoned” grave. We later toasted to those who don’t have families to pray for their souls or bless their graves. I thought for a brief moment about how this second condition is true of most graves in the US (we just don’t spend time in our graveyards), but then turned my thoughts to a few lines from The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Sabina, my favorite character, has lived in many countries by this point, late in the novel. In the Czech Republic, she liked walking through cemeteries, because they were peaceful and natural places. When she realized that Western European graves are covered with big, elaborate, stone grave heads or mausoleums (which, to be fair, I did see in Czech cemeteries from time to time), she is horrified. She recoils at the thought of being dropped into a deep tomb and covered with a stone; she’d rather be buried like her father, in a shallower tomb under grass and a tree. That way, she feels, her soul would better be able to escape. As she wander farther and farther from her homeland, both physically and mentally, she always remarks in each new place that she can’t stay to die there because she doesn’t want to be covered with a stone. I wonder how she would feel about the Georgian graveyard, where the stones have pictures but the length of the grave usually has grass or flowers growing on it. Would she like that there are picnic tables at the graves? Chuckle at the fences around the grave sites (to keep out cows and pigs, presumably)? Cringe at the way All Souls’ day is a day of performing social identity?

At the end of the novel, the men Sabina loved are buried under head stones with lies for epitaphs. Sabina decides to be cremated and scattered into the wind. I still think I’d prefer to be buried under a tree.

I looked wandered into an old part of the cemetery and admired the flowers, then I went home to have paska and coffee with Maguala. Which was when I was told that paska (pancetta, I think, in Italian) has a pretty grim symbolic purpose at Easter. I’d wondered at the Georgian name for it, trying to figure out if it was linguistically connected somehow to the word “pascal.” I was told that it actually is the shape that matters, because the shape looks like a mountain. Specifically, it looks like Golgatha, apparently. Makes me hesitate before enjoying another overly sweet piece of almond-covered, rainbow-raisin-filled cake. Maybe I’ll stick to the nazuki.

Tuesday night was very important for me personally, though not so much for everyone else here. At 10:30 pm Georgian time, it was 2:30 pm in New York, meaning that it was time for me to register for fall classes. I’ve been here for two semesters. Last year, I was competing against a smaller pool of students for classes because I was abroad both semesters. I’ve missed school a lot. It’s almost absurd how excited I am to get back to classes. Of course I’ve learned  a lot this semester, and it’s been good to learn from primary sources (you know, from people and experience) rather than from academic essays written by researchers about what they read from other researchers. Some of my NYU classes were very good about looking at primary sources and original resources, of course, but I did find an old paper on my computer the other day which reminded me that everything is about balance. It was from freshman year, and I wrote that I was sick of reading for the first time in my life. The reason, I wrote, had nothing to do with my interest in the material or the quantity I was expected to read. I was frustrated, I wrote, of always being fed pre-digested, pre-interpreted information. I was aching to be allowed to consider original material and think about its implications for myself. Now I’m aching to go back to an environment where I can bounce my thoughts off others and have theirs thrown at me.

Well, I’m going. And amazingly I got all the courses I wanted. Eka sat beside me watching the whole process, and I explained to her how class registration works and why it’s nerve-wracking. Now here I am, SUCCESSFULLY REGISTERED FOR ALL THE CLASSES I WANTED NEXT SEMESTER!!!!!!!!!! How is it that registration went more smoothly from here than it ever has from New York? I’m excited to go back to school and soooo excited for these classes. This semester is going to be really really challenging but absolutely fantastic. The classes have names like “Creative Democracy,” “On the Road: Tourism During the Great Depression,” “Narrative Investigations,” and “Doing Things With Words: Art and Politics.” And I have a basic sociology class with a not-so-exciting name, but it’ll complete a minor that I unknowingly fulfilled all the other requirements for already sooo that’s not bad at all. Somehow, all five classes are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. This means that I’ll spend all of those three days in lectures and discussion groups, and then I’ll have Friday through Monday to work/intern/study. Since it looks like I’ll be living in Brooklyn, I’m going to do my best to find a job there. Four days of not needing to commute (though I may still sometimes for events and clubs and such on campus) will be nice since subway fares are rising.

At the moment, it looks like I’m set for a good penultimate semester. Gmadlobt, mghertmas!

A few recipes I should mention:

Bozinaqkhi (New Year’s/Christmas sweet)

500 g. walnuts

300 ml. honey

40 g. sugar

1.       Chop the walnuts and toast them.

2.       Put the honey in a pan over low heat. Heat until thin (because fresh, local honey is thick here).

3.       Stir the sugar and walnuts into the honey.

4.       Spread on a wax-paper lined tray and let cool.

Maguala’s Blini

6 eggs

½ l. water, room-temperature

1 c. flour

½ c. sunflower seed oil

salt to taste

1.       Beat the eggs and salt together.

2.       Mix in the flour.

3.       Stir in the oil.

4.       Add the water (be sure to add the water last!).

5.       Let sit for 5 minutes.

6.       Pour into shallow oiled pan (crepe pan / blini pan) and fry.

7.       When cooked through, remove and let cool. Can be filled with savory things (Maguala likes rice and ground meat) or with sweet things (I like chocolate or fruit).

Nazuki

1 l. warm milk

1 kg. sugar

15 eggs

2 tbs yeast

300 g. margarine

assorted spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, anise, etc.)

raisins (optional)

1.       Dissolve the sugar in the milk.

2.       Melt the margarine in the milk.

3.       Beat the eggs and stir them into the mixture.

4.       Sprinkle in the yeast.

5.       Spice.

6.       Let sit 5 minutes.

7.       Knead for 1 hour.

8.       Let rise, covered and at room temperature, overnight.

9.       Shape into loaves and bake in kiln (or perhaps on a pizza stone).

Happy Easter!

I’d been looking forward to Easter here for a long time. Even though I didn’t follow the strict Orthodox fast, living and working around people who did impacted my Lenten diet. Sure, by living here I’m already fasting (for a year) from blueberries, broccoli, limes, arepas, bagels, and cream cheese. Additionally, we eat few onions and no garlic or ice cream in my host family because Eka doesn’t like them. Same for fried bacon and scrambled eggs. And Maguala likes savory blini as opposed to sweet pancakes or jam-filled crepes. Lack of these things isn’t a problem at all; two months in which most meals excluded meat, dairy, fish and eggs on top of all these other things was getting a little difficult.

Last Wednesday was our last day of school before the holiday vacation. I tried to teach the 8^th graders a team-building game that I played with classmates in 7^th grade and then with Governor School scholars in 11^th grade. It’s a very simple game in theory. There’s a rope tied between two posts/trees/fences. The height depends on the age of the group, but it’s usually at about the average chest height of the players. There is one team. They start together on one side of the rope, and the goal is to end with them all on the other side… but they have to go over the rope. It’s a good team game: challenging enough to require a bit of strategy, yet simple enough that it’s achievable with a bit of communication. I explained it in Georgian and in English but the kids didn’t understand. The boys liked the idea of throwing each other over something, but they couldn’t figure out how to do it. They called the gym teacher over, but he didn’t understand either. Finally, as an example, I talked one boy through helping me cheerleader-lift another until he could jump over the rope. The boys and the gym teacher were thrilled—they told each other that they would play exactly as they’d been shown, but they couldn’t figure out what to do with the girls in their class. I told them that the game was co-ed so they had to drop the sexism, and then I spent an hour trying everything I could think of to make them understand that this was a puzzle for them to solve together. They kept picking each other up, but the two on the ground (and it was always only two) always followed the form Tornike and I had used exactly. Meanwhile, the kid in the air never seemed to realize that jumping from his friends hands to the ground on the other side of the rope would require him to keep his feet together-ish and facing forward. When they copy sample sentences from the chalkboard, they almost always make mistakes. Here, when I didn’t want them to copy a sample perfectly, they acted like all they knew how to do was replicate. And so they had a great time, but the whole point of the game was lost on them. I’m a little sad; I had let them speak almost exclusively in Georgian because I wanted to see some creative thought and problem-solving skills from them. They can carve ping-pong paddles out of wood and turn clothes-pins into mini spring-loaded guns…but they can’t think of how to work together and help each other over a rope. Bummer.

Thursday, then, was the first day of the holiday. For me this made perfect sense. Holy week, as I was always taught to observe it, included Holy Thursday. Yet people seemed surprised to learn that there was no school. They kept asking me why. Part of me recollects how they always have to consult each other about fasting rules and Saint Day dates, and so concludes that I’m observing a rather unique phenomenon: a country in which religion—considered a central aspect of traditional culture, yet banned for 200 years—is now being re-learned (well…learned, considering there aren’t many 200 year olds to remember how things were done) by a large part of the population. It’s a curious phenomenon, and it explains a lot. Then the other part of me remembers that this isn’t exactly their first Easter…how many years of Holy Week does it take to learn that the heaviness starts on Thursday?

Regardless, I enjoyed the day. I stayed home to work a bit and to watch Maguala make blinchiki. The sun was out, so I took The Unbearable Lightness of Being (one of the few books I have on paper here) and sat outside to read.

Good Friday is called Red Friday here. It makes more sense, I think. We dyed eggs red and Maguala made nazuki- a traditional Easter cake. Many people make their nazuki in their stoves, but we made ours in the kiln. Many people say that it’s best to eat nazuki “old and cold,” but that’s only because they’re still fasting when they make it on Red Friday (masochistically, since it smells delicious). Maguala and I were both able to eat some while it was fresh and hot. And it was good.

That’s how we spent the day: baking and cleaning in the yard. Later Eka and I sat down on the steps to rest. An old woman walked by and yelled to Eka, ordering her to go to church. It’s normal to order people around here, and it’s normal to be in everybody else’s business. I don’t like it, but I’ve come to accept it as the normal conversation pattern here. i.e. I remind myself to always answer politely because the offender usually doesn’t realize that in my culture these things are considered rude. This was too far, though. A relative came over later, and a different old lady told her to put on a shorter skirt because of the hot weather. And so Eka, who’s in her early fourties, Rusiko, who’s in her late thirties, and I, the 21-year-old foreign child, stepped inside for a heated discussion about how our souls, skirts, and bodies are nobody else’s business. The two other women are recognized as women here. They obviously are old enough to know how to pray and dress themselves. I’m considered a child based on my age, but considering I’ve lived alone/in big cities/in foreign countries longer already than some of the 70+-year-old women here ever have or will, I also am obviously old enough to know how to take care of myself. We bonded over our dislike of being discussed and ordered around, and I was relieved to finally hear that sometimes even Georgians get tired of this socially induced lack of personal freedom.

Saturday was a big day. At home I don’t usually think much of Holy Saturday. When I was in school, we were reminded that it’s another solemn holy day and so we shouldn’t do anything too fun. I went to Catholic School, so holy days were normal…but usually there was some sort of story attached that we were supposed to meditate on. Holy Saturday, though, was just waiting. As a little kid, that was pretty difficult: I was told to not have fun for two days because I was thinking about being betrayed by friends, betrayed by a community, tortured and killed by a government…unselfishly and voluntarily for the benefit of all these people and their descendants. But then the third day I was told to not have fun because we were waiting for Easter. Even as a somewhat anti-social bookworm, my adolescent and then pre-teen self was always pretty restless by the end of Holy Week. Holy Saturday seemed like torture.

Here, we spent the morning cleaning, but the whole afternoon was spent preparing for the night. We showered and put on pretty clothes. We packed a bag with wine, cheese, red eggs, bread, bacon, and jerky. Then we went to the neighbors’ house and sat with the great-grandmother and her great-grandchild for a while. Half-an-hour later, Temuri and Nino, the grandson and his wife, came downstairs with their friend Eka. We piled into their car (the plural of Abby is “abiebi” or “abebi”; the plural of Eka is “ekebi”) and set off around 9:30 at night. The priest from Oni was presiding over the Easter vigil service in a village called Ghebi. It’s about an hour’s drive from Oni if there’s not snow. We forded a couple streams to get there; I was glad to be in a big truck.

The church was very large. When we entered, we saw members of Oni’s men’s choir standing by Mamao (Father, as in the priest), so we went to stand by them. Temuri disappeared, but he reappeared in church robes when the service started at 11. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur in my memory. I remember a woman rebuking Eka for chewing gum before we entered the church (because there is a mandatory fast from all food before the Easter vigil…though people argued over exactly how many hours that fast is), but then she pulled her cell phone out as soon as we got inside the church (this other lady, not Eka). The first hour was tough. The choir didn’t know their words and they were off-key; to my left people were talking loudly; to my right people were on their cell phones; behind me old women were pushing as if they wanted to move past me, but then they scowled and stayed in place when I moved aside to let them pass. Then the power went out for a moment and everything stopped (in part because no one could see their books to read prayers or lyrics). I giggled. Eka stopped chatting with Nino and turned to ask me what was funny; I said that I wanted the power to stay out because the people were finally respectful.

Unfortunately the power came back on rather quickly, but after midnight things felt slightly more church-like. Easter had arrived, and so the chants and the songs changed. “Christ is risen,” the priest would say. “It is true,” the people would reply. The song changed to one about an empty grave, and Giorgi Berishvili sang as the lead voice. We lit candles and went out into the snow to march around the church three times while a [deacon (?)] rang the church bells. This went on for about an hour, and then Father announced that we would begin the Easter service. There were readings (which are all sung) and general prayers of thanks/contrition/intercession. We were blessed. The icons were venerated. Father explained how the confession rite works and then invited the people who were interested to form a line. At first people were hesitant; one of the deacons went first. After him, most of those who approached Father were women. He stood in front of the church with a brocaded cloth. When each person approached, he held it to his or her head to separate their faces. The person would confess what they wanted, and then he would respond and bless them. I couldn’t hear any of what actually was said, but the whole process was much less formal (and less private) than Catholic confessions. At the same time, Father’s face showed that he was having real conversations with each person.

I’ve had very little contact with this priest (though I work with his wife and teach his children); second-hand I knew that people in Oni tended to love him and that people from other places tended to think him too traditional and conservative. Religion is a huge part of life here. I’ve mentioned before how it’s caused problems at times. I don’t like how the teachers at my supposedly public school lecture the students on how to be properly Georgian Orthadox. I don’t like that my third graders are sometimes excused from class to go light candles in the church next to our school. I don’t like that my enthusiastically devout co-teacher is embarrassed to have the priest see her in a jeans and a fellow teacher’s husband has ordered her not to wear pants out of their house, in both cases because the church teaches that pants are men’s clothes and so forbidden to women. When I insisted to one of my students that I wouldn’t make a good wife for any man here because I would refuse to baby him and to move in with his parents, she seriously responded that I should just be someone’s “second wife” i.e. mistress. With all the talk of dress-codes and fasting, no one seems to have time to teach marital fidelity when pontificating on religion. In short, I’ve struggled with the way religion is practiced and taught here, and consequently decided that Oni’s priest was someone I should have minimal contact with.

This was unfair of me. The Easter mass continued with more venerations and then the Eucharist. Father again explained how this ritual was to be carried out. I learned that there is a set order to the Eucharistic queue: children, then men, and women last. I’ll refrain from commenting. I will say that the people were behaving pretty terribly. I’ve been to relaxed churches of various denominations before, but this was something else. People were conversing loudly and playing with their phones (for example, looking at pictures of Tom and Jerry from the cartoon) and even talking on their phones. There was a group of women gossiping and there were two men arguing. People walked in and out of the church for bathroom breaks (where I don’t know and don’t want to know), cigarette breaks, exercise…At one point, Eka left to go sit in the car with the heat on because she was cold, so I went and stood with Nino in the front of the church. Father stopped the Eucharest at one point to remind the people to be respectful. Towards the end of the service (by which time we’re talking about 4 a.m. at least) he gave a little sermon. Maybe it was more a lecture than a sermon. I dunno. Anyway. He talked about Georgia and the importance of the church. He talked about brotherhood with other Christians, and he mentioned the “Catholic Patriarch” specifically. He talked about the meaning of Easter in the day-to-day lives of Christians and explained why it is important. Then he congratulated the villagers on their beautiful new church and gave them advice on how to care for it: open it to the people, clean it and maintain the icons, be consistent about attending services. At that point he switched to practical advice, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of his personality. He told them that if they gathered a consistent congregation, the Patriarch would surely notice. As evidence, he told them about how small and new Oni’s church is, and how even so they are often visited by the…um…the Georgian word translates to “king” but he’s the equivalent of a bishop or archbishop…because Oni’s people fill their church. However, the people in the church also needed to learn how to behave in church. Father addressed them patiently, as if instructing children. Some men had been commenting admiringly on the foreign girl who didn’t sit for the whole 6 hours. Father corrected them, saying that it’s more important to be quiet and focused and reverent. I couldn’t understand everything he said—which is lucky because when pieces were translated to me later I was a bit embarrassed to be singled out as an example—but I caught the bit where he explained that church behavior needs to be different from street behavior. Georgian’s often say, “Bazari ar aris//It’s no market” which means “There’s no chaos/upheaval/problem.” Or “It’s cool. No problem.” There’s a pretty famous bible story where Jesus storms into a synagogue and scatters the merchants and money-changers working there. He shouts (among other things), “This is no market!” (I forget the exact wording). Father stood there, speaking quietly and even smiling a little as if trying not to scare children who just don’t know any better, saying “Es bazari ar aris//This is no market,” and teaching the mostly elderly villagers in the congregation what the difference is. Before moving on to the closing prayer cycle, he told them that they can visit or call him in Oni any time they had questions or problems or a need to talk. He offered himself as completely available to them any time, impressive for someone with three congregations of his own and three children (and twins on the way). But his voice was sincere and his face was sincere. I’m not saying I was quick to judge him because he complimented me in his sermon (for not playing with my phone during a liturgy…that’s hardly something worth complimenting; it’s the minimal show of respect as far as I’m concerned). I’m saying that during that service I saw him step out of his ritual keeper-of-tradition role and become a teacher/neighbor/father interacting with others as if earnestly interested in each of their lives. He was personal and personable, and I realized that—while I’d love to see him spend more time teaching people how to live in respectful relationships with each other—he’s got his work cut out for him teaching basic church manners, answering questions about how strictly elderly/diabetic/young people should fast, and attending to calls from parishioners who want to talk about their lives. He has to teach people who grew up with state-mandated atheism what it means to identify day-to-day as having any religion at all. Changing the view and practice of marriage here requires erasing traditions that pre-date the 1801 beginning of Russian influence; it’s therefore the kind of endeavor that will require the full energy and focus of one exceptionally talented individual, or the combined efforts of several. I still don’t agree with much of what’s going on here as far as religion is concerned—I say if you can’t behave in a church then don’t go to one; they say you must go and behave as best you can—but I’m realizing that the church here is very very young in many ways. Father realizes this. Now if only the people would.

5 a.m. finally came and we sat in the car, much to the relief of our weary legs. We started to unpack our picnic, when Temuri ran out and asked if he could bring the food inside to Father and the deacons. So we were left with the wine. He came back and we indulged in the so-long-forbidden foods (or…not forbidden for me, but I was so excited to see hard-boiled eggs!) and then set off for home. I collapsed into bed around 6:30 in the morning. Happy Easter.

Easter Sunday itself was a quiet day. We woke up around 11, and I quickly learned that most people spend Easter Sunday drinking and partying. We didn’t really feel like gorging ourselves or binge drinking, so Eka and I had a lazy day at home. We showered (hoorah for solar panels!), painted our nails, drank fruit compote, watched ants, and read. Maguala made lobiani in the kiln, and then I helped her hang strings for cucumber vines. We had a simple dinner together, and then went walking to get mineral water.

By then it was dark. Most of Oni was drunk. We walked in peace for a while, and then a car pulled up next to us. A friend of Eka’s flung open the door; he was alone and he was wasted. He kept ordering her to get in the car. He turned to me, but I told him to go home to bed. He got angry. We kept walking and made it to the mineral water spring, but when we walked back (it’s the only road home) he still had the car parked in the road. It got a little scary: he grabbed at Eka and tried to pull her into the car. They were yelling and Eka told me to call one of my friends for help. Eventually the drunk sped off, but as we walked home we kept ducking into neighbors’ yards whenever we saw headlights. At first, I went along with this because I could tell that Eka was scared and I was a bit nervous, too. As we got closer to our house, though, the absurdity of it all struck me. My host mother, afraid to walk down the street she’s lived on all her life...She was worried that he would be waiting for us at the house (he wasn’t), and I wondered: if there was a problem in the street in front of the house and we yelled (or I called the police, since I have all their cell numbers), wouldn’t a neighbor or someone come out to help us?

We got home just as one of my friends drove by. Eka went into the house, but I climbed into the car and was happy to be in the company of a handful of (remarkably sober) friends. We spent the night walking around, talking to others on the street, admiring the stars, and listening to the suddenly huge river move boulders.

At one point we stopped for coffee at another friend’s house. His brother was in town, along with his wife and baby. When we arrived, the baby started crying from the bedroom. Her father shooed his wife off to go look after the child while he welcomed us in and we got settled. When one of my friends stood up to make coffee for us, the brother protested from his seat. My friend replied that he’s capable of making his own coffee; we’ve visited this house a lot and even I’ve made coffee for people there. But the brother shouted for his wife to come. Without thanking her for looking after the kid so he could relax with his guests, he ordered her to make us coffee and bring cake. When she put one coffee on the table, he growled at her for not making him a cup (he hadn’t asked for one). Instead of thanking her for his coffee, then, he barked, “What kind of woman are you?” which apparently meant that he wanted an extra spoon to eat his cake with. Back when I first got here and the old women asked if I wanted a Georgian husband, I said that I didn’t because I don’t want any husband. Now, I realize that this is actually how many (though, of course, not all) of the men here treat their wives, which turns my already firm “No” into an “Absolutely not.”

In short, the day was alright for me--I ended it back under the stars with good friends--but not without incident. And there would have been fewer incidents if this holiday wasn't celebrated with 48 hours of binge drinking by most of the adult population here. Oh well. 

ქრისტე აღსდგა

ჭეშმარიტად

What a Weekend :/

Between hours of yard and house work, I had time to catch two anti-Semitic comments and consider what happens when a non-voting country borrows television shows from voting countries.

Oni has an old synagogue that still attracts tourists, though the congregation apparently left during the war years. Their houses stand empty along one road on the edge of town. Currently, there are 6 Jews in Oni, a family, and the synagogue has no rabbi. Generally, people speak respectfully of Jews as being exceptionally intelligent people. As a curly-haired bibliophile with a Hebrew name, I’ve found that older women here sometimes ask if I’m Jewish. They always seem disappointed when I reply that I’m not. With all of these things considered, I had decided that most people here looked on Jews kindly. So I was shocked yesterday when a neighbor (it’s worth noting that she is one of the town crazies) came over and said: “If only it will rain this coming weekend! How glad I’ll be. The Jews have their holiday then; if it’s bad weather for their holiday then it will be sunny for Easter for us.” I was the only one in the room who even raised an eyebrow. Having decided long ago that it’s best this neighbor doesn’t realize that I understand or speak any Georgian, I waited to speak until she had left. Then I commented to my host-mother that I really didn’t like that remark. She shrugged, and I crossed my fingers for a sunny Passover.

Even then, I interpreted the shrug as agreement until this morning. There was an argument in my house. While I don’t need to go into the details, trust me when I say that people were unusually angry. In the US, insults are usually aimed at the victim personally: idiot, fool, jerk, bitch, etc. Here, insults usually refer to the victim’s family: your grandmother, your “patron” (owner), your mother. Sometimes they may refer to a person’s background (you’re from a village, your house has no doors, you were born in a donkey pen, etc.), but they rarely attack someone’s personality. I mean…they do, but those aren’t the common insults. Point being, during this morning’s fight my host-mom whirled and spat at her mother, “You Jew!” That was the end of the fight. I kept my head bent over my work as I felt my cheeks flush. Sure, my family here has said lots of nice things about Jews (and generally of people of different ethnicities/faiths). But in a moment of anger…

On a different topic, many popular TV shows here are copies of Western shows. We have Georgian versions of “American Idol” and “Britain’s Got Talent.” There’s a Georgian “Dancing with the Stars” and a Georgian “Top Model.” Interestingly, the translation of “Top Model” is actually “Top Girl”…because this is the ideal for all girls?? Anyway…Everyone watches these shows, and often it gives us an easy warm-up exercise for English classes: talking about what we saw that we did or didn’t like and why. “Dancing Stars” is the first show I’m actually following, and I’m noticing a few interesting things. Two, really. First, the judges always seem to score dancers neutrally between 5 and 7. 6 is the most common score from any one judge. Second, everyone talks about watching the show, but no one has mentioned actually texting in a vote. During the finale of the “American Idol” spin-off, I remember three people saying that they had voted. This is interesting. These shows were designed for audiences in voting countries. There are different contenders, official ‘experts’ who comment on their opinions of the worthiness of the contenders, and then there is a vote. Audience members watch the contenders perform, listen (somewhat) to the opinions of the experts, and then voice their (informed or un-informed) opinions. The contender who most appeals to the crowd wins. These shows were designed for people whose school grades were based off test scores, whose politicians are usually elected through popular vote, and whose culture produces slogans like “See something, say something” and “Your vote counts!” In essence, these shows assume an audience who wants to participate and be heard.

The “experts” know that they only have half of the attention of the audience. They also know that their role is two-fold: to express their opinions but also to educate the audience. The “expert” scores are educational in that they provide perspective for audience members like myself who may not actually know what a perfectly-executed waltz or tango looks like. Because of this, the “experts” use the whole range of scores available to them, for example using exceptionally low scores to communicate to the audience that a dance—however ‘pretty’ or not it may have looked—was not what it should have been.

Then we take these reality shows and try them here. The judges may or may not be more of experts than anyone else in the audience, depending on the show. Regardless, they give safe, neutral, median scores. Perhaps this is because they don’t want to be responsible for an opinion that could be considered unpopular or extreme. Perhaps this is because they want to shift responsibility for deciding the competition solely onto the audience members. Perhaps this is because they think (accurately or not) that their scores don’t communicate anything important to the audience (who may or may not be listening). And maybe it’s true that the audiences isn’t listening to the jury. But if they don’t vote it doesn’t matter. Maybe people in the cities vote. Someone must, for the shows to stay on TV. But why don’t people here? Is it because text-messages are expensive? No. They’re text-message addicted. Is it because they don’t like the shows? No. They have heated discussions about them classrooms and shops. So either they are afraid to be responsible for officially expressed opinions or they think their votes don’t matter. And…sometimes I wonder exactly how much my vote matters in American bureaucracy, but at the bottom of the bottom I want to vote. Maybe it doesn’t count in the big electoral college system, but if there’s a 2% chance that it matters than I want to cast it, and if I don’t vote then I sincerely feel I forfeit my right to comment on how things turn out. (If I have the chance to try to change things and I don’t bother then really how can I justify whining later if things don’t change?) But it’s different here. Many of my students feel like their individual thoughts and opinions don’t matter to anyone outside (or sometimes within) their close circles of friends and family. And when they see people losing their jobs for petition-signing or being interrogated for expressing agreement with an opposition candidate, they might very practically conclude that it’s safer to keep their opinions to themselves anyway. I don’t blame them, but I’m curious to see how our school-version of “Georgia’s Got Talent” differs from the televised version. In a familiar and secure community, I wonder if the judges will actually give honest scores and more importantly if the audience members will actually stand up and have their votes counted.

Where did the month go?

March is over already. Here, people are discussing (aside from the usual political and social gossip) their plans for Easter. Among the other foreign teachers, there is talk about post-contract sight-seeing trips. Part of me feels like it would be nice to go around the country for a week after contract…but life is speeding up as it always does this time of year, so I’ll be leaving as soon as the contract is up. I have a bit of ausilebeli travelling to do in the US before classes start in July.

The weather has been strange. We had a snowstorm yesterday morning and two earthquakes yesterday afternoon. Today started out sunny and warm, but now it’s raining. Eka and I have started walking to the mineral water spring each morning again (we stopped during the record-breaking cold of the past few months); usually the weather at 8, when we set out, is totally different from the weather at 10, when I’m walking to school.

Matsatso and I are planning a talent show at school, modeled off the popular television show “Nitchieri/Talented.” One of the third graders informed us she could write poems about presidents, and then she gave a poem to Matsatso as proof: “Misha is our president. Eduard is not, because Eduard did not win. And it didn’t happen with blood. It happened with roses.” That’s an approximate translation from the Georgian, with “Misha” being Saakashvili’s nickname and the “roses” being an allusion to the Rose Revolution. I remember when I was little and my parents would take me along to the firehouse where they voted. They always commented to me and my sisters that our elections were amazing because the president always stepped down and let the new president take power.  I didn’t quite understand what the big deal was; my teachers told me that we lived in a democracy and that this was how it worked, so it seemed obvious to me that elections should lead to peaceful transitions of power. If not, I thought, we obviously wouldn’t be able to keep calling ourselves a democracy, could we? Now I’m living in a country where the election is slated for “sometime in September or October,” where human rights groups have already accused (correctly) the ruling party of persecuting members of the opposition, and where a third grader praises the last peaceful transfer of power for being a bloodless revolution (though a revolution nevertheless).

Other classroom conversations this week were equally interesting. A 7^th grader asked me if the words “big bang” mean anything in English. His peers insisted that he must mean “Big Ben,” the clock. I did my best to explain big bang theory, and when they were still obviously confused I asked what they study about the beginning of everything. They were still confused, as was my co-teacher, but eventually they caught on. They told me that in the beginning humans were made from red earth by God. They also told me that they’ve heard some crazy people think we came from monkeys, but this can’t be so because 1) we’re superior and 2) how could there still be monkeys if we came from them (and there’s no way today’s monkeys could turn into people) so the theory is absurd. I asked if they had heard about other theories, and one girl pulled out a textbook with an old Indian creation story in it. But that was it. I did my best to explain about creationism and intelligent design and evolution-ism. If the partially theocratic state wants to educate children only about creationism, it can and will, but I don’t think it’s fair to neglect to inform them that other theories exist and that dismissing an idea as nonsense is only fair if you actually understand what the idea proposes.

That “We are superior because we have exclusive access to truth” attitude some religious groups have always rubbed me the wrong way. Shouldn’t religion be about compassion and brotherhood rather than fighting over who’s the favorite child? When a teacher learned today that we don’t dye eggs red on Good Friday where I’m from, she asked, “What kinds of Christians don’t know to dye eggs? Do they know nothing? What do you do on Good Friday?” I thought for a moment and just answered, “Pray.”

The Georgian Orthodox tradition is very interesting, and I’ll write more about it when “Adgoma” is actually here. What I’ve been told is that families dye eggs red on “Red Friday” (or “Good Friday”). Sunday they have big parties, and then Monday they have big parties in the cemeteries where their family members are buried. The dying of the eggs comes from a story about Mary putting eggs in Christ’s blood while he was on the cross. When she learned that he was resurrected, she took the eggs around to show people as she spread the news. Actually not a story I’ve heard before, but it would explain why we associate eggs with Easter (I always just thought it was a ‘new life’ thing, though the rabbit I still don’t understand).

Some slightly disturbing news: one of my students has herpes. My co-teacher explained, “It’s a virus. It’s common for kids to get it, but it’s still a little scary.” Sometimes I think that it must have been the study of places like this that led to the idea of genetics. In Oni, I’ve noticed both twins and diabetics to be unexpectedly common. There also seem to be quite a few alcoholics, people with blood-pressure problems, and people with hormone problems. There are few blue-eyed people, though the few I’ve met are all relatives. And a non-genetic trend has to do with more psychological factors: earthquake and bomb related phobias. A friend told me the other day that she can’t shower with the door closed because she wants to be able to run out quickly if there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it makes my heart heavy.

Then again, sometimes conversations are hilarious. It’s very normal for people to ask me if I’m bored here. When I reply that I’m not, they act surprised and tell me that I must be lying because they’re bored. When a grandmother complained to me that she’s bored with keeping house all day and always doing the same thing, I asked why she doesn’t try something new. She’s a talented musician, artist, and cook; I asked if there isn’t somewhere in Oni where she could join one of the choirs or ensembles or buy some paints. She laughed and shook her head. I suggested she play around with new recipes, since she’s mastered the ones she has. Again, she shook her head. Later, her young niece also complained to me that she’s bored. As a mother of two toddlers, I’m not sure how this is so, but again I asked why she doesn’t draw or write or knit or play piano (every house seems to have a piano, but not many people seem to play). She just shook her head. Confused, I asked my 9^th graders if they’re bored in their village. They answered that they’re bored in school, but that they’re never bored in their village. I asked what advice they have for the women whom I had been talking with. Their suggestions? Watch television, garden, sleep, drink vodka, go fishing, play with children, go fishing with children, walk in nature, ride horses, hunt birds, hunt bears, play football, and play computer games.

My to-do list is slightly different: study Georgian, read, prepare for my colloquium, walk in nature, and sometimes study Georgian cooking. Like “potato pies” or “piroshkies” (not pirogies, apparently). Matsatso and I went to her parents’ house yesterday so that I could fix her computer and she could teach me to make “potato pies.” Her mother had made dough in the morning. The dough is simple: flour, salt, yeast, and warm water or milk (water, now, because they are fasting). When we arrived at the house, we rolled the dough into balls and set them in a warm place to rest for just over another hour. Meanwhile, we boiled potatoes in a big pot. When they were boiled, we mashed them with salt and oil. We boiled rice in mushroom broth in another pot. When that was ready, we drained the rice, added black pepper and a little salt, fried some onions, and added in the onions. These were our two different stuffing options for our “pies.” They weren’t quite pies; they were too long and thin to be dumplings, but maybe they were like potato pockets? And rice pockets, too, of course. We filled the pockets and sealed them, and then we fried them lightly in sunflower oil. They were delicious.

Matsatso told me the Georgian name for them, but she used the Russian word when talking. It’s interesting. Georgians call the use of words from other languages “barbarianism.” I’ve been lectured on how English is difficult because our phonetic rules aren’t anywhere near consistent, while the Georgian alphabet has only one sound per letter. I have to remind them that the Georgian alphabet only is used in the Georgian language, and that (mostly) they (claim to) resist appropriating foreign words. I say ‘mostly’ and ‘claim to’ because they have lots of old Iranian words and Russian words and even some Turkish words that they use every day. Regardless, English uses an alphabet that they share with many other languages. Each language has slightly different phonetic rules, but English-speakers like to take words from other languages when it seems practical to do so. Thus we have ‘karaoke’ and ‘sushi’ and ‘kamikaze’ and ‘bon appetite’ and ‘borscht’ and lots of others (why can I only think of food words right now?).