March comes in like a lion and...and...and?!?

Usually, this is the time of year when the warm weather reminds me that time always runs faster than I grasp. We did have a little warm weather this week: there was a day when I sat outside barefoot and my host-grandparents started tending to the yard. But then they stopped pruning the grapevines and roses, and I put my shoes back on, because we’re getting ready for another week of snow.

We’re being defiant, as much as we can. I made paper flowers for the windows at school, Maguala bought ingredients to make bread in her outdoor kiln, and my friends are bringing horses tomorrow so that we can ride off into the mountains…weather permitting. Will winter never end?

There are lots of interesting little happenings around town.

Ivanishvili just set up a headquarters here, as simultaneously the current government decided to fine him another million dollars for funding his presidential campaign. I’ve learned that—should Saakashvili lose the election (set for sometime in September…maybe) everyone working for the local government will lose their jobs (guess they’re appointed rather than elected…). A few people have told me that they’re nervous for September. “I’ve seen many things in my life,” one friend told me, “I don’t know what the fall will bring, but it won’t be pretty. One candidate has lots of American money, and the other has lots of Russian money. There’s no democracy here. This will be ugly, I’m sure of it.”

In other news, I’ve learned that the police here do actually pull-over drunk drivers from time to time. Somehow, a neighbor has now been stopped and fined for the second time…when most of those driving past 9 pm are drunk and worry-free.

Another story is that a man took a wife (probably literally ‘took’) last week. She stayed with him for two days, and then the third day she disappeared. She was with a different man—her new husband’s friend, apparently—for a day and a night. When she came back, she told her husband that she went because she preferred to be with the second man. When her husband called his ‘friend,’ the second man told him: “You knew I loved her. Why would you marry her?” Giorgi told me that the woman must be crazy to cheat on her husband after only two days. I responded that I couldn’t understand why she would marry the first man in the first place if she loved the second man. The silence of everyone else in the room is part of the reason I say the woman was probably literally taken to wife. *sigh*

A third super-short story: my 7^th graders want me to teach them how to make hamburgers when the weather gets nice. I want to teach them to make tacos instead, because I have a student named Tako in that class and the rest of them watch Mexican (and sometimes Argentinean) soap operas. They’re fantastic kids.