It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Saturday evening, after everyone came home, the house felt like Christmas. The power was out because Nona’s brother was replacing electric outlets around the house (which involved chiseling into the stone walls…). The weather was absolutely frigid, so we were all gathered in the kitchen. There was music; Maguala made a cake; I helped make a paper swan out of many small pieces of folded paper. We played dominoes and looked at pictures. Eka even brought home a New Year’s tree.

Sunday was fairly uneventful, although I will say that I got a surprise phone call from New York that made me very happy. Monday at school, I was told that a meeting had been arranged at the Educational Resource Center. I was to go after classes and meet the new English teacher. At school, I used an Anansi the Spider story in one class and an Aesop story in another. My students gave me the lyrics to a folk song that they sing all the time. I promised to learn it in a week, but everyone I ask for help tells me that it’s too hard for me to be learning. And tomorrow is Thursday already…

After school I went and met Michael, the new English teacher. He’s in a different school than I am, but it will be nice to have him around. He seems like a nice guy. Nino wants us to teach adult classes once a week at the resource center, and we both agreed. However, she didn’t tell us when she wants these classes…so who knows if they’ll actually happen. I would like to have some extra classes…

And then it was snowing. I actually can’t remember when it started snowing exactly…at this point it’s hard to remember what my street looked like when it wasn’t “datovlili” (snow-covered). Tuesday after school, my co-teacher and her friend and I all went sledding down this enormous hill. I have a huge hill at home, but it’s a busy road so we never actually sled on it. Here, there really isn’t such a thing as a busy road. We had so much fun!!!

She invited me over again today, but I wanted to go try to find Michael because I had forgotten to give him my phone number. Maybe I should mention first that by now there is sooooooooo much snow that I fell four times on the hike to school and twice on the hike home. It’s good snow, too; it isn’t too wet and the flakes are very big. Anyway, after school I trudged off through the snow. When I got to Michael’s house, I yelled for him a few times from the street (standard protocol here). He didn’t answer, but a neighbor came out and offered to help. She yelled a few times for his host-mother, who also didn’t answer. It was nice to have someone offer to help me, though.

Since that adventure was unsuccessful, I headed towards the Resource Center. I thought I would ask Nino about those classes. But I got happily distracted when I discovered oranges in a shop. I was delighted! Oranges!!!!! So I bought a few for Maguala and a few for my friend Keti. And off I went to Keti’s house.

She was in the basement working on her puppet theater. I stayed and we ate together, but I’m going back tomorrow to help her re-build her stage. Today, we talked a bit about what we’ve been up to. She let me read to her in Georgian, and we joked about what vegetables we would like to smuggle from Western Europe. Then we got a little more serious. She told me about how she has a difficult time talking to people here—her old friends and neighbors—because of their different perspectives. She and her husband left because they were dissidents. They made the difficult decision to take their children and leave everything they knew in search of freedom from the Soviet Union. They arrived in London and were disoriented by the realization that Western life was very different from what they had imagined.

They lived in an immigrant neighborhood at first, with all its colors and warmth. Keti liked it very much, although she was often very lonely. At one point, her husband submitted a project idea to a government competition. His idea was to start a volunteer puppet-theater in the neighborhood, and he won the competition so the government gave him grant money. They worked together in the theater for some time, and it became very well known. But then her husband decided that they shouldn’t do it anymore. He made her give up puppetry all together. Then, at some point, he decided that he was a sculptor who needed to discover himself, so he left. She said he’s come back since, but she has changed. She started painting when he left, to help herself cope. She had painted a lot in Georgia, but she hadn’t touched her brushes since moving to England. In starting to create things again, she realized that she hadn’t been taking care of her inner child as she should have been. So now she is painting and writing and making puppets again. She said that she is happy again, because she’s realized that she has to trust people, she has to create things, and she has to make time to play. I think she’s brilliant.

Being back in Oni has been difficult though. She struggled a lot trying to adapt her old viewpoints, values, and definitions to what she found as reality in London when she first moved there. She couldn’t come back for 16 years, in part because her government wouldn’t let her. Now she is a British citizen…with a note in her passport saying that if she takes dual citizenship, the British government won’t be responsible for her. But at least the passport enabled her to come back. She loves the snow and the mountains, but she is a little disheartened when she speaks with people here. They think she abandoned them by leaving, and they say she can’t understand what they have been through…as though they can understand what she’s been through. They complain about Russia bombing them in 2008, but some still talk about wanting the Soviet Union back so that “Russia will protect us.” They are afraid to sign petitions and upset about new laws, because they changed their government but not their mentalities after the revolution. So there are still these old Soviets romanticizing the past and refusing to acknowledge that the real tragedy has been the loss of so many loved ones, not the loss of the USSR.

Keti said that people don’t understand what “freedom” is, what “democracy” looks like, or that life in the West has its challenges, too. She finds it frustrating and sad and a little scary. At least, she said, nationalists in England call themselves nationalists so that she knows to avoid them. Here, though, she said she isn’t sure where people actually stand because they are often afraid to openly think…let alone talk.

Then I was called home, where I ate borscht and found myself craving sweet baked quince. Maybe I’ll miss having a wood stove when I’m back in the U.S.

I don’t remember if I ever wrote about the conversation I once had with a friend about “culture shock.” I usually find the orientation session (to any abroad program) discusses “culture shock,” and I am incredibly bored. I know by now that I will go into a new adventure and at some point have to adjust myself to my new situation. I know by now that this adjustment isn’t easy or comfortable, especially if I am also dealing with difficult classes, a difficult new language, or a difficult relationship. In Georgia, the adjustment has been fairly painless, but I am certainly still adjusting in many ways. All this said, Keti had never heard of “culture shock” before, even though she described having all the symptoms of it multiple times. In the conversation with my friend some time ago, we were debating the existence of “reverse culture-shock.” He insisted that it doesn’t exist in the way “reverse racism” doesn’t exist. I beg to differ. Discrimination based on race is the same from A to B and B to A, because it is based in fear of someone different and unfamiliar (I say this because I refuse to believe that if people really took the time to know and understand each other, they would still be able to hate entire populations so ferociously). With culture-shock, however, the two scenarios are different. When you leave your home country, you know that you are going somewhere new. You expect that things will be different because you will be somewhere new and different. Maybe you can’t anticipate how different they will be or how you will be impacted, but you know that you are going somewhere “not home.” With “reverse culture-shock,” you are going to a place that you expect to understand. You expect that going home means going back to familiar people, familiar food, and familiar customs. In short, you expect to be comforted by returning to a place where you intimately understand the culture. But being away changes people, so instead of seamlessly sliding back into place upon returning home, you have to adjust yet again. Since this scenario involves discomfort in a place that should be familiar, I actually think it is more upsetting and precarious. Especially if a person has been away for a very long time, and if leaving was not a freely made decision.

It’s 2 am. I’m going to sleep now.

Indauri minda! (I want a turkey!)

Sometimes being an American abroad is pretty humorous. I can’t tell you how many people were involved in trying to find a turkey for me to cook for Thanksgiving, but I can tell you that I didn’t ask for a turkey because I knew it would be a problem. Since it was my holiday, though, I was allowed to cook. I knew I would have no turkey, cranberries, or sweet potatoes. I also knew that my Christmas would be a non-event here. So I decided to take my family’s traditional Christmas dinner, modify it based on the ingredients that are available in Oni, and cook it up for Thanksgiving. We had sausage and peppers, latkes, cheese, beer bread, lobio (Maguala’s, not mine), brownies, and sweet baked apples. My co-teacher came over for a bit to taste the “American food” (ironic considering the main dishes were Italian and Jewish), and bebia liked the apples so much that we’re making them again tonight so I can teach her. To be able to cook, I had to go grocery shopping (always daunting). Bebia took me to the market in the morning and helped me find ingredients. Thank God Thanksgiving fell on a Thursday, because otherwise there would have been no market and things would have been a bit more difficult. I’ve also learned that Georgian “sausage” is not sausage but hot dogs, and that the cheese we have in Oni doesn’t melt unless it’s in khachapuri. Cooking was fun, though. Next time, I want to make pancakes or a pie…it’s so fun to see how surprised everyone is when food I make tastes good. Rusudani’s reaction to the dinner was “You can cook! So when do you want to get married?”

School on Friday was fairly uneventful. Before school, my co-teacher’s husband had car-trouble. She was very late meeting me, as a result, and I stood in a shop to be out of the cold. I don’t usually go into this shop alone, but Lasha likes it because they have good candy. We’ve been going together often, and the shop-keeper knows me now. So yesterday morning she sent her daughter outside to invite me in. I sat with them by the fireplace behind the counter, and we ate sweets together as we attempted to converse. The shop-keeper was putting on her make-up and a man was waiting by the window for a car. I was struck by how different this shop is from the stores at home…something I had known when I first arrived here but had since stopped noticing.

Today we’ve been cleaning. I had a bit of a panic-attack when I walked in on my host-mother cleaning my room. I try to keep it clean so that this doesn’t happen, but she was going through my drawers organizing my clothes. I wasn’t sure how she would react to the bag of tampons (TMI warning: I brought a year’s supply because I had heard—correctly—that they aren’t sold here) in my bottom drawer. I kept insisting that I could clean everything myself, but she said she wanted to clean for me. So I stood there and held my breath, wondering if she would stop thinking I’m a “good girl” once she opened the bottom drawer. Thank goodness, she’s a rather open-minded lady, and she wasn’t phased at all. But I’ve never been so stressed over tampons before! It seems silly. But it’s a reminder that I’m still figuring out how to be a woman here. How to women view each other? How am I supposed to act (I think I’ve got that mostly figured out)? How do I act like enough of a foreigner that they feel I’m a worth-while investment, but still act Georgian enough that I don’t upset or offend anyone (or put myself in danger)? It’s the same situation I face with my students: how to I make sure they respect me as a teacher but also help them feel comfortable enough that they approach me to practice casual conversation (because that’s what they actually need)? I love this, but it sure isn’t easy.

Eka’s work-friends just stopped by for coffee. A football-friend of mine rode by on a horse, and I really wanted to go outside and call to him that I want a quick canter…but we had guests so I didn’t. Kargi gogo var.

I almost forgot! Another English teacher arrived yesterday. Everyone is asking if I’ve met him yet. I know his name is Michael, he’s 27, and he’s “small” (though I’m not sure what they mean by that). He’s living with the (crazy) librarian. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about having a colleague here. There’s another new teacher in the next village over, too. Smart of the government to put so many of us here—near the Russian and South Ossetian borders—just in case. I’m a bit nervous about meeting these people. Two of the six people from the group of sixty that I came over with have run into my ex while vacationing. I’ve heard a few hilarious stories (apparently a Georgian told him to bride-nap me, and he told my friends this, not knowing that they were my friends), but this small-country “of course I know such and such!” makes me a little nervous.

But I won’t say more until I actually know anything. No sense worrying over what isn’t a problem yet.

Happy Saint Giorgi's Day!

Today is “Giorgioba,” Saint George’s feast day. I have off school, and I’ll head off to church in a little bit. But I’m very behind on my writing. In part this is because I’ve been sharing my computer with our guests. Usually by the time they’re in bed, I’m far too tired to write.

I’ve wanted to jot down many things. Like how lovely I found the sight of frozen persimmons sitting on the stark white windowsill during the blizzard. Or how bebia’s mother has laugh lines that look like wings, and how I’ve decided that such regal wrinkles are something I should aspire to. How a 2^nd grader made me a very pretty necklace, how the 8^th graders want to teach me to dance, and how the 9^th grade boys now tend to answer me with “Kalo” (“lady” kindof)…

There have been many funny moments that I’ve wanted to record, too. A few days ago, I caught babua staring at my fingers. He told me that I have beautiful hands and so should get a manicure (aka paint my nails). I laughed and asked what color, and he responded that I should get a French manicure so that they stay close to their natural colors. I remember being in 5^th grade and being old enough to be socially involved but not old enough to be able to afford (or allowed to attend) big parties. So my friends and I put a lot of effort into braiding my hair, painting our nails, and changing our earrings and lip-gloss often. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to display my sociability by going out places and by hostessing, and I don’t pay attention to how I look so much because my actions say everything I want known about me. I notice here (where there is nowhere to go, there are few opportunities for adventuring, and street behavior is as a rule conservative) that people put a lot of care into their appearances and they love to host guests. I think that there could be a kind of bell-graph made about this: people with few resources display sociability by caring a lot about personal appearance, people with more resources care less because they spend their time doing things, and people with a lot of resources care a lot again…both because they want to display position and because they have time to do so. Or maybe this is all nonsense…I have a lot of time to think here.

Another funny moment (or, rather, two hours) was the day after my birthday. I walked into both my seventh and eighth grade classes pretending that I hadn’t understood the puppet-show the day before. I asked them to explain it to me. At first, my co-teacher was translating everything. I make a pointed joke about her not helping them, and she joined my side—pretending that she didn’t understand so that they had to creatively use the words they did know (and occasionally pantomime) to explain the story. It was a lot of fun.

I’ve learned to make khinkhali and to sing two Georgian songs. I haven’t figured out how everyone lights candles at church without  setting each other on fire, but I have learned that the priest—who is the father of two of my students—doesn’t like women who wear pants. Oops. I’m learning useful vocabulary, like the words for “snowflake” and “mountain” and “swan.” I’ve taught my host-grandparents “good” “ok” “I love you, too” “only a little” and “goodness!” We’ve been busy.

For the holiday today, we didn’t have school. Instead, I went to church and then had a snowball fight with our guests. As we walked home from church, we stopped for mineral water. Then Giorgi drove past and we waved him down SO we were able to hop onto his bus. He drove us to the synagogue and our guests went inside to admire the beautiful painted ceiling. Having been a few times already, I stayed outside and hoped that Giorgi’s friend would talk to me so I could practice a bit of Georgian (I’ve been teaching a lot of English lately and not studying so much myself). He didn’t, but a woman came up and started talking to me. She was smoking and had a lot of make-up on…things women don’t generally do in public here, so I was a bit wary. Soon enough, everyone was back on the bus and we went home. Lasha and I went to the store to pick up ingredients for blinis, and the rest of the night has been pretty quiet.

Happy Saint George’s Day!

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.

City Mouse, Country Mouse...Romeli var?

The upcoming month is going to be fantastic, but I’m going to end up with a linguistic headache if I don’t end up a polyglot. I’m crossing my fingers for the second option.

When I woke up, I was told that we weren’t going to church because women skip church one week a month here. Sometime I’ll have to do some research and figure out the history of women being exiled from religious ceremonies on account of our God-given fertility. Tonight I don’t have the focus.

After doing yard-work, our guests arrived. There are two young girls, a woman, and a boy. By “young girls…boy” I mean a few years older than me. One girl speaks German; the other younger guests are working on their English. This means I have young people to talk to! They’re very sweet. The girls are so fun! The boy is from Tbilisi and this is his first time living outside the city. I think we’ll have a lot to talk about, and I’ll be interested to see how he adjusts to life here. It’ll tell me something about my adjustment process, being able to compare it to that of a Georgian.

Youtube "Chveneburami" right now!

I started this morning studying, as per usual. I’m finally on the chapter of my textbook that deals with future and imperfect tenses. How strange do I sound putting all my past-tense verbs into imperfect? Very strange, I’m sure. Linguistics amaze me. It’s well known that the Georgian greeting translates to “victory (to you/us),” but the word for “sister” is also the word for “and,” the standard response to “how’s it going?” is “slowly, slowly,” and the word for “should” translates to “they want.” Oh! And imperatives are in the past tense…so “You stay (be)” becomes “You were.”

At some point I got a text and went to meet Giorgi at the sadgurze. We walked to the mineral water spring (I’m fighting a cold and wanted a drink) and waited a bit for his brother to show up. The brother never came, so we went to his grandmother’s house instead. I sat and had coffee with her while Gio was outside on the phone. Sometimes when a brain starts searching for words in a foreign language, it doesn’t differentiate between foreign languages. I’m very guilty of throwing French, Czech or German words into conversation when I’m attempting to translate and have forgotten the Georgian word. Similarly, I’ve noticed that all the old women speak to me in Russian if I don’t recognize a word in Georgian. It makes me feel a little better for my mix-ups. Anyway, I was having a lovely time with Giorgi’s grandmother. Then his friend showed up and goodness the boy was wasted! He would try to talk to me and even Giorgi would just shake his head. “I don’t understand. What do you want, boy?” we just kept answering. When we went to leave, the grandmother brought out a black brooch and pinned it to my sweater. She told me the name of the stone (unfortunately I forget) and reassured me “kargi gogo xar.”

We stood in the street outside her house as Giorgi worked to convince his friend that they should head home. One of the policemen I recognize walked by with a friend, and he did a bit of a double-take when he greeted me. The boys decided to walk me home because they live in about the same direction. When we were walking up my street, the same officer was walking down it. This time he was alone and he stopped to talk to me. I asked how he was and he informed me that the officer I’d been talking to the day before was in Tbilisi for a few days on business. He used the man’s first name in a way that implied we were friends, and it took me by surprise. I would like to be friends, but one conversation hardly counts. The officer went on his way; my friend and his friend went home; I worked a bit in the yard at my house.

The rest of the evening was spent with bebia, babua, and a different Giorgi (this one’s a relative). I learned a bit about backgammon, watched an old Georgian film about King Irakli, watched youtube videos of the Georgian folk group “Chveneburami,” and took pictures of everyone for Giorgi’s facebook. It was so much fun!

I should say though that the other day when I went out walking, I picked up two rocks along the way. The first was for bears, because I noticed that the houses on the edge of my village all had large dogs…figuring there must be a reason for this pattern, I remembered my students talking about wolves and bears, so I picked up a large stone. A little farther on, I reached a high place with only two houses. There was no one in sight, but there was smoke coming from a chimney at the house with two walls and dead grapevines. So I picked up another stone. It seemed logical…

On being a "very important guest"

Today, bebia played piano and sang with me. Then she told me how she thinks my hair looks best. I’m braiding it up in the morning!

Surprise: we have 5 guests moving in Sunday. They’ll be here for a month…which means (among many many other things) 5 extra people at my birthday dinner. BUT Eka’s still the only one I’ll be able to talk to. I’m amused and excited.

Yesterday, I went to the market with Eka before school. I watched the butcher unload his meat from his truck onto hooks...he pulled out the head just as I was noticing the hooves on a table. Can’t say I was feeling very hungry after that one.

Also yesterday, I went out walking with a friend in the evening and was followed by the police. Again… I asked at home and was told “You’re under police control. You’re a guest and an important one so they want to make sure no one gives you any problems. Don’t worry, though. They aren’t controlling you; they’re controlling the situation.” I’m trying to convince myself that this sounds as unsettling as it does only because of translation details.

But then today, as I was standing at the car-stop with my co-teacher (we usually pause here on our way home), a young police officer approached me and introduced himself. Much to my amusement, he said, “I hear you like horses…” and then offered to try to find some. He wants me to teach the police English, which I would be more than happy to do. He also offered to show me around Oni municipality, take me to Oni’s museum, accompany me to Kut’aisi...His friend came up and asked if I wanted to come with them for khinkali. When I declined, they offered me a ride home in the police truck. 

I guess it's nice to have security. I've always wondered if people who have bodyguards make friends with them. Guess I'll find out...

"Me Miqvars William Levy" (aka: teaching my students the word "soap opera")

My kids were thrilled that I brought them Halloween candy. But tomorrow is Thursday already and that means that this week is almost over already. Monday was Halloween, and it was also my first day seeing my co-teacher after sending in my monthly report on Friday and having a non-discussion about lesson plans. She’s writing lesson plans, apparently, but only in Georgian. And I haven’t seen them yet. Let’s see how this plays out…

My students have taken to bringing flowers for me, so many days I walk around school with flowers tucked into my hair. Yet again, this probably isn’t doing anything to counter the other teachers’ perception of me as the “little girl,” but it makes the kids very happy. In fact, today my co-teacher and I walked into the first/second/third-grade class and the board was covered with hearts, my name (misspelled and in all caps because we’re still learning the alphabet) and a big picture of me with curly orange hair, wearing a pink dress and carrying a bag (because I always carry a huge bag of books/pencils/chalk/notecards/etc. around school). They were so proud of themselves, too! It was beyond adorable. 

In other news, I’ve started greeting one of my 8^th graders as “Sunshine,” and my students now want to play “Bubblegum” and “Ninja” at every break between classes. And one of my classes dictated Georgian words to me because they didn’t believe that I knew the alphabet; then they complimented my penmanship. And people from the resource center came in to check on the school today, but I had class so I didn’t get to ask them when the rest of our textbooks will be in (I know the answer, but I keep hoping that if I keep asking…).

Fantastically hilarious: today I wore a few braids in my hair after the style of the female lead in the soap-opera everyone seems to watch. I cannot tell you how many people complimented me on them. I had internet during the show this evening, so I looked it up on Wikipedia for kicks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triunfo_del_Amor_(telenovela) 

The male lead looks a little familiar, which is uncomfortable at times, but people make a social event out of watching this show together so I figured I should read a plot summary…as amusing as listening to the Georgian dubbing is. I learned nothing about the show, but I did learn that William Levy (yes, I actually know the actor’s name) also stars in Jennifer Lopez’ music video for “I’m Into You.” You should go watch that now…

I have been doing productive things too. I come home from school and sit in the kitchen. Have lunch with babua. Prepare outlines and notes for my classes. Get bored. Switch to working on my colloquium, reading Georgian folktales in translation, or studying Georgian. Watch the news with babua and bebia. Have dinner with Eka. Work more until the soap opera starts, watch the soap opera with the family, half-work while they watch Russian music videos, and then go to my room to stretch a bit before bed. I’m dying for some hard physical activity, but even with Eka’s blessing there’s really nowhere I can go running or hiking where I won’t run into people and set them whispering. So I do yoga stretches in my room and dream of buying a jump rope someday when I go to a city. Of course, the food is all delicious and mostly healthy. I’ve learned to strategically eat so that I don’t end up overly-full even at supras…but I have to say I’m a little worried about next week because both home and school are planning supras for my birthday. Holy khachapuri!