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…
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