Jamie Gives Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving. I have never thought of Thanksgiving as a super exciting holiday. It mostly consists of preparing a large amount of food, eating a large amount of food, then slipping into a food coma for the rest of the day. However, this year takes the cake for the most boring Thanksgiving ever. 

I had 2 classes at school today. I didn't do any Thanksgiving-related activities with them, because in all honesty I forgot it was Thanksgiving week until yesterday. 

It was rainy and cold today, which has been the norm for the past few weeks. This creates a few difficulties. The first being that the streets are made of dirt and when it rains it takes all my effort to not slip and fall on my butt walking to school, not to mention trying to get to school with minimal mud on my shoes and pants. It has also gotten pretty cold. Yes, I'm from South Dakota, but in SD we have central heating. Here we have wood stoves. That's what they use to heat the classrooms at school and that's what we use in our house. Unfortunately, my bedroom does not have wood-stove capabilities, i.e. there is no hole in the wall to put the vent through. My host parents got me an electric heater, but this also has it's challenges. Namely, unless I have the fan on the lowest setting, and the heat setting halfway between minimum and maximum, it makes the electricity go out in the house. Even with the settings on high, it doesn't put out enough heat to actually be noticeable. But I have very warm blankets, and, since I turn my heater on when I go to bed, by the time morning comes around my room isn't exactly toasty, but it's definitely a comfortable temperature. So this just means that during the daytime, I can't get much alone time. I'm definitely getting my quality time in with the fam-damily, which can be difficult. The weather also poses some difficulties with laundry. I can leave my clothes on the line for days, and they will still be as wet as when I pulled them out of the dryer. So instead, I hang everything in my room, on my window sills, chair backs, open closet doors, and bedposts. The chairs surround the heaters, and my different pieces of clothing get rotated through.

So today was what I fear will be typical for my next 4 weeks (yes, only 4 weeks left, time is flying) in Georgia. I came home, ate lunch in the kitchen, where the stove was burning. Grabbed a book and my iPod and came back to the kitchen where I alternated between reading and playing Call of Atlantis or Tetris. After about an hour of that, my host mom came home and made us coffee, and fired up the oven in the living room. So then I switched to sitting in the living room and alternating between reading and playing Mah-Jong. Until the electricity went out and I was left in the dark with an almost dead iPod. At that point I turned to my cell phone, where I tried to beat my record at Snake. 

And now I am writing my blog. I probably won't be able to post it for a while, since my internet got taken to my cousin's house, and has not found it's way back for the past week or so. Which also makes it hard to work on my TESOL certification course, which would be a lot more productive than playing Snake. I have discovered wi-fi at my school though, so I can still check my email and facebook between classes on my iPod. 

[Update: Apparently my internet had returned from my cousin's house and had been sitting in the living room, I just hadn't noticed.]

Ok. Time to stop complaining. It is Thanksgiving after all. So here's what I'm thankful for this year:

-That I'm here. Georgia is a beautiful country and I've been able to travel all around it for next to nothing (my meager salary has surprisingly been covering most of my trips each month).

-That I'm spending 4 months living like a retiree. Let's face it, I'm not actually working hard. I have around 15 hours of classroom time per week. That's about the amount of time a retired woman would spend helping out at church each week. The rest of the time I spend reading. Not reading ethnographies, not reading Latin American short stories, not reading 16th century Spanish literature, but reading books that I want to read. And also getting pretty good at Snake. 

-I'm thankful that as I'm writing this, my host dad is sitting on the computer playing a game called Tumblebugs, and it is highly entertaining to watch a grown man do that. 

-That the people in my village have been so warm and welcoming for me. When you're having a bad day, the smallest things can make you feel a lot better. Examples: One day I went for a run, and when I was walking up to my house the old neighbor man, who had only been introduced to me once briefly and doesn't speak English, waved me over, smiled, and handed me half of a pomegranate. For no reason. Just to be nice. And yesterday, I had forgotten to bring my umbrella to school, and 2 minutes after I started walking home, it began to pour. I put up my hood and started booking it, but one of our neighbors saw me and told me to come inside. She pulled up a chair by the stove, brought me a glass of grape juice and a plate of churchkhela and I sat and dried by the fire, having as much of a conversation as possible, until they saw my host mom walking home and I went back with her. 

-I'm thankful for my students. I love the amount of Helloooo's I get from tiny Georgian children as I walk through the school. I love that 3rd grade Ani shouts at me from the other side of the hallway every time she sees me to say How are you? I love that my 4th graders come up to me every day after class to say How is baby? because my host sister told them about my new niece. I love that my 10th graders invite me to their civic club meetings, and invited me out to lunch in the restaurant in town, bought beer and khinkali, and refused to let me help pay. 

-Which brings me to my next point. I'm thankful for the experience I had at school while growing up. I'm thankful that we had computers, projectors, TV's, playground equipment, nice bathrooms, walls that weren't crumbling, chalkboards that weren't curling up and detaching from the walls, heaters, air conditioners, clubs, sports teams. I'm thankful for all our teacher's who somehow managed to not lose their minds and run screaming from the classroom. 

-I'm thankful for all my families. My "real-life" family in America (and a healthy new baby niece), my Georgian family, my German family - Regina, Toni, Tobi, Lukas and Carolin - who I miss very much, my Costa Rican mom Rosi who was a giant sweetheart, my Peruvian family in Mama Rosa's house and of course my sister Raquel, who I very much wish still lived down the hall from me.

-Now that I don't have access to them, I realize how much I'm thankful for cell phones and high speed internet which allow me to call or skype my family or friends at any time. 

-I'm thankful for the other volunteers here, who keep me sane :)

-I'm thankful for my dog Macy, who I miss terribly. 

-And for everything I've learned and experienced, and all the people I've met in the last 3 months. 

-I'm thankful that my bestie Kelsey just called me up from America!

Jamie Goes to Armenia

If you asked me what my top 5 countries to visit are before I die, Armenia would not have made that list. I have nothing against the place. In fact, if it weren't for Armenia, I would have no one to keep up with except the Jones's. (If you didn't get that joke, you need to climb down from your high horse and start watching some trashy reality television. You only live once, so you might as well spend at least some of that time living vicariously through uber-rich dysfunctional families, botoxed housewives, and celebrity has-beens). 

My point is, a few months ago, I probably would not have considered buying a plane ticket to Yerevan. Partly because I didn't know where in the world Yerevan was, but mostly because Armenia just doesn't scream "Come visit me!" However, being in Georgia, Yerevan is only a $20 train or marshrutka ticket away. So why not? And I must say, I was impressed. 

I got school off on Friday and Monday, and my friends and I grabbed the overnight train from Tbilisi on Thursday. We were seated in a compartment with a nice Armenian woman, who only spoke Armenian and Russian. To us, she only spoke Russian, assuming, despite our blank stares and shrugging of shoulders, that we understood everything she said. She immediately offered us fried potato cakes and iced coffee (sans ice). The compartment had beds for us, so after crossing the border and getting our visas around midnight, we turned in. 

We got to Yerevan quite early in the morning and grabbed a taxi to the Envoy Hostel (best hostel in the world - if you go to Yerevan and do not stay at Envoy, you are stupid, or you are rich and are staying at the Marriott or something, in which case that was probably the better move.) This began the tedious task of trying to figure out how much money we were spending on taxis, food, accommodation, etc. The currency in Armenia is the Dram, and 1000 dram is about $2.45, or about 4.50 lari. 

After a quick nap we went out to explore Yerevan. It's a beautiful city. It has a population of about 1 million. It seems fairly clean, there are some nice parks, good shopping, and as far as the restaurants go, there is some variety that is severely lacking in Tbilisi. Unfortunately, Taco Maco, which promised tacos and burritos, was not yet open for business. It's a damn shame, too. I could have used a taco. 

We made the short walk to the Cascade, which is a huge flight of stone steps leading up the side of a hill. The different levels of the steps have monuments and gardens, and built into a hill under the steps is an art gallery. When you get to the top, you see the monument commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Soviet Armenia. Once we got to the top, we went to a park down the street which led to the Mother Armenia monument, and a small and strange military museum. 

After that we went to the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum. This was definitely worth the visit. It was a very well laid-out museum, and was very informative and moving. The memorial was a stone structure built around an eternal flame in a depression in the stone. When we went there was music playing and white daisies and carnations surrounding the flame. 

Afterwards we walked around the city a bit, and at night we headed to a little cafe that promised live guitar music. The guitarist was a young Armenian woman playing Spanish guitar and singing in Spanish and French. On the way home we stopped in the Troll Bar. Because why wouldn't you? It was a little dungeon-like place decorated with medieval maps and Lord of the Rings posters. So pretty much awesome except for the awful music they were blasting. 

The next day was Education Day. We started out at the Matenadaran, which is the ancient manuscript museum. It had some really interesting manuscripts and we spent quite a while looking around. Then off to lunch. We found a shockingly cheap outdoor restaurant with good food (I had hummus, wiener schnitzel and Mexican coffee, whatever that was, for about $5). Then we were off to the State Museum of Armenian History, where we saw someone who was probably the president walk by us. He was being photographed by someone with a supernice camera and had 2 secret service looking dudes with him, so I'll just assume that's who it was. In the evening we went to an Armenian restaurant...because we were in Armenia and figured we should do that, and then went to a little cafe for a few drinks. After which I was completely exhausted and went to sleep because I am turning into a lame old person.

On Sunday we took the short trip outside the city to Echmiadzin, which is like the Vatican of the Armenian Church, and the former capital of Armenia. We saw a mass at the Mayr Tachar, which is the main cathedral, looked around the other churches and then met an American studying in Yerevan who had actually gone to the same college (and was in one of the same classes) as my friend Mary Ellen that was there with me. Small world! (Side note: Speaking of it being a small world, we talked to a woman from Canada who was doing a 3 month tour all around Europe with about 20 other people. She was staying at our hostel in Yerevan, and then a few days later, when I was in Tbilisi for my S. Korea interview, I ran into her again at a cafe and we had lunch together). We went on a trek with her to try to find the Surp Hripsime church which was built on the site where Hripsime was killed after she refused to marry a king, and it holds the stones in a little chamber in the back that apparently were used to stone her to death. Then we visited the museum at Echmiadzin where we saw a piece of the wood of Noah's Ark, the Holy Lance used to pierce Jesus' side while he was nailed to the cross, relics of various apostles, and pieces of the cross. 

We decided we should probably do something fun for our last night in the city, so we searched for the expat hangout bar Calumet. This was difficult as the entrance is sort of camouflaged into the street. We finally got there though, and hung out on floor cushions drinking Armenian beer. 

The next day we reluctantly headed to the bus station and caught a 5 hour marshrutka back to Tbilisi. It was a great trip, a nice break from Georgia, and I'm really glad I went. 

Jamie Makes Pancakes

During the first few weeks at school, I had planned on starting an English club. Each week would have a different theme. Film, games, cooking, dancing, cultural presentations... I've since learned that in Georgia, simple things require weeks of planning. Not necessarily planning, actually, that doesn't take long. They just take weeks before anyone actually carries them out. And I am completely dependent upon Georgians to help me carry out any of my plans. 

The film week, as I think I've mentioned, was a complete failure. So I moved on to cooking week. I suggested it to my coteacher, and she said she'd talk to the principal about it. About a week later, we discussed recipes, and decided on pancakes. About a week later she had me start teaching the vocab (flour, butter, melt, pour, frying pan, etc) in class. About a week later it was actually time to start making the pancakes. This delay had an actual reason. The oven, which I could have sworn existed and was in the teacher's kitchen had mysteriously disappeared. An entire oven. This makes me question my sanity a bit and wonder whether it was ever there to begin with, but the principal brought in one of those gas camping burners for us to use. Perfect! An open flame from a tank placed precariously on a chair at a perfect height for 3rd and 4th graders. That will definitely end well.

Finally the day came. I was informed I didn't need to bring anything (apparently my guest status has not worn off yet) and the kids were each assigned to bring a certain ingredient. During the 3rd grade's class time on Friday, they all marched in to the tiny kitchen and gathered around the table with their ingredients. The kids took turns dumping in the ingredients that I had measured out (although the concept of taking turns did not get through to a lot of them, so I had to fight off lots of little hands trying to grab teaspoons of baking powder out of mine). When we got to the sugar, I added the 2 tablespoons that the recipe called for, and was then told by my coteacher to add more, lots more. We ended up with probably 10 times the amount in the recipe. She also added vanilla powder for a little extra flavor. 

When it was time to add the eggs, I handed one to a little boy named Beka. He has a really hard time paying attention and sitting still in class, but he always gets super excited when he knows an answer and practically jumps out of his seat. Basically, he's extremely adorable. When I handed him the egg, the usually hyper Beka was all seriousness and concentration. He started to tap it carefully against the edge of the bowl, but the bowl was plastic with a rounded edge, and the egg didn't crack. He tapped again a little harder and a little harder, but still no luck. Just as I was about to offer to help, he smacked the egg down on the edge of the bowl and sent raw egg flying all around the table. He stared up at me with a guilty look on his face, holding out a slimy hand full of shattered egg shells, and I busted out laughing. It was definitely the highlight of my week, if not my entire semester here. For the rest of the eggs I decided to crack them myself, and let the kids pour them in. You live and you learn.

After the batter was made, we fired up the burner and the kids took turns pouring the batter. This was a bit chaotic, since they were all fighting over who would go next and crowding around the burner. While one pancake was cooking I would try to cut up the previous one and give each of the kids a bite. It was a little hectic, especially when the teacher would step out and I would try to keep 15 3rd graders under control while also trying to not burn the pancakes to a crisp. But we made it through, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. The original point was so they would have a fun way to learn the previously mentioned vocab words. I don't know how successful we were in that area, but there are a few phrases that I'm sure they picked up after 45 minutes in that kitchen. They are the following:

"Be careful!"

"It's hot! Hot, hot, hot!" - I'm not sure why, but I would always repeat it 3 times. They would then turn into little monkeys and shout "hot hot hot hot hot!" back at me

"You guys! Seriously! Calm down!"

"Wait your turn!"

"Stop grabbing!"

"No more pancakes if you don't sit down!"

"You guys are acting like a pack of wolves!"

"Don't your mothers ever feed you?!" 

Jamie Wonders...

How many pounds of grapes have I eaten since arriving at my host family's house in September? It would be interesting to know. Not only have I eaten them in their natural form, but I've also consumed a large amount of wine in my time here, in addition to churchkhela and tatara (a jelly-like think made from boiling grape juice and flour until it's thick). I'm guessing I've killed quite a few grapes. Good thing grapes are pretty much my favorite snack ever, so I haven't gotten sick of them and doubt I will. And I don't mind them in fermented form, either. 

How do they get mail here? The streets don't have names and the houses don't have numbers. I've never seen any mail, or any mailmen. Don't they get letters or bills from something? Phone bills? Electricity bills? How does that work?

Same for the trash. Where does it go? I've never seen dumpsters or garbage trucks in my village. Granted, people don't make a lot of trash since bottles are reused (beer bottle gets used to hold the homemade hot sauce, big Fanta bottles get reused for water or wine, etc.) and all the organic material is given to the pigs. But there's still some trash. I do see little fires on the side of the road quite often. Sometimes it just looks like they're burning leaves, but maybe trash too?

Why are marshmallows scarce or nonexistent in almost every foreign country I've been to? When they are available, they're a weird texture. Globalization would be much cooler if you could find Jet-puffs and graham crackers in every corner of the world instead of McDonald's and Coca-cola. In case you haven't put 2 and 2 together, I've been having a hankering for s'mores lately. 

How do you distinguish between skanky and conservative here? I was told dress was conservative, and in some ways it is. No off-the-shoulder tops. Skirts can't be too short. Necklines can't be too deep. I can't show my tattoos. At the same time, high heels are expected - no one wears flats, except me. Clothes can be much too tight. Women can wear way too much makeup (80's style, metallic blue eyeshadow, 3 times too much blush, and shiny pink lipstick). I've been asked by my host mom why I only wear a little bit of makeup, and by a 12th grader why I didn't wear any makeup (while I was wearing makeup). Shirts can be completely see through with just a bra underneath. What?? 

What does my host dad do for a living? He was always gone for the first few weeks here, and now I never see him leave? I have no idea if he has a job or not. 

And most of all I wonder....what are people saying to me all the time??

Jamie Watches TV

In the beginning, I would watch quite a bit of TV in the evenings with my host family. It was usually a Georgian news program, or a telenovela dubbed into Georgian. The telenovelas were frustrating to watch because I would be trying to pick out the few Spanish words that could be heard despite the dubbing in order to have an idea of what was going on. The news was extremely boring to watch, but did have the advantage of giving me practice with the Georgian alphabet, since I would be able to read and recognize the names of countries like Libya or Turkey in the corner of the screen. When the weather came on was when I would really test my skills at reading the names of cities before they would disappear in a few seconds, in preparation for future instances in which a marshrutka is barreling towards me and I have to quickly read the Georgian destination sign in the window to decide whether I should flag them down or not. 

A few weeks ago, my host family had some one come over and install some English language television stations, a very kind gesture on their part. Now I'd like to tell you about English language television in Georgia.

There are a few different stations that come in. The main ones that I watch are Russia Today (RT) and Deutsche Welle (DW). Besides that there's France24, which I watched once and was really bored by, a church channel, and a channel called Smile of a Child, which I've never watched, because it sounds weird. 

So let's talk about RT. It's based in Moscow, but has some programming coming out of London and New York, and most of the commentators are American, a few are British, and one lady has a really strange accent that I can't place. RT is mostly news programs. At first, it seems like a legit news station. It's got the really snazzy graphics and sets, but there's something that's a little off. The people. From what I gather, if you're trying to find work as a news anchor, but you keep getting turned down because of your lack of social skills, your obnoxious personality or your drug habit, try sending your resume to Russia. They'll probably take you. 

Meet Max Keiser. A former stockbroker, now hosting the Keiser Report, "a no holds barred look at global finance." During the first few minutes of seeing his show, he reminded me a lot of Norm MacDonald. He looks a bit like him, and has the same dry delivery and sarcasm. Then I realized there was a difference. Norm makes you laugh. Max makes you confused and uncomfortable. He never smiles, and he often goes on long rants that don't really make any sense. In one episode, he had a stuffed animal that looked like a sewer rat. I think it was a metaphor for Jamie Diamond or something. He used the sewer rat to talk about Jamie or whoever it was, at which point most sensible TV hosts (if sensible TV hosts would have the rat in the first place) would put it away. However, Max kept bringing it back. When the camera was on his co-host, Stacy Herbert (I'll get to her in a second), the rat slowly crept into the bottom corner of the frame. Hilarious, but also a little awkward. In another episode, he started talking in a robot voice. That, too, continued for much much too long. Stacy, is worse. Unlike Max, she is always smiling, in a weird, spacey way that makes you think she's probably taken a lot of pills before going on air. How does she deal with Max's crazy antics? By not even being aware of them in the first place, is what it looks like. Max will go on a 10-minute rant where's he's arguing with himself as two different characters in a very Gollum-esque style, and as soon as he stops, it will cut to Stacy, who with the same silly smile on her face, says "That's right, Max. And the New York Times reported today that...." YouTube it, it's worth it. 

Then there's Lauren Lyster. She has her own show, too, although I can't remember what it's called. Lauren is a smart lady. Which means she probably wouldn't need to wear ridiculously short skirts (I get embarrassed for her when she's sitting on a stool interviewing someone without a desk in front of her) and super low cut tops with a push up bra. She also talks like a drunk cheerleader at a frat party when she's debating with someone. "These policies are sooo NOT going to boost the economy! Like, whatever!" - OK, that's an exaggeration, but it's otherwise difficult to express the kind of obnoxious tone she uses in writing. It's also my theory that she has a rocky romantic past with one of her commentators, Demitri, who seems like kind of a jerk anyways. Because they always end up in screaming arguments with each other where you can't understand what either is saying, and you wonder whether you're watching a news show or the Jersey Shore. 

Other than that, there's a British news anchor with fascinating eyebrows. He's like a real life version of Johnny Bravo, and a foreign woman, the one with the mysterious accent, who looks exactly like one of the women on SNL. One of the new ones, whose name no one knows yet. 

In between shows on RT, there are little interesting bits about Russia. I'm learning a lot about the place. Indigenous cultures, sled dogs, reindeer, mostly things that have to do with extreme cold....

And then there's Deutsche Welle, a network based in Berlin. DW isn't as news centered as RT, so once I've caught the 20 minutes of RT news that will just keep repeating itself for the next  2 hours, I switch it over. The programs on DW are really varied and random, but usually interesting. There was one about a Scottish guy who fell in love with a German and moved to Hamburg, where he started a very successful hand-sewn kilt business. Another was about endangered frogs in Africa, and the German scientist trying to convince villagers in the reason to stop hunting them for food and to eat pork instead. Another was about a woman who gave up her baby for adoption when she was a young girl in the U.S. She never wanted to but the father pressured her to do it and she felt she didn't have another option. Years later, the son, who had meanwhile been adopted into a Jewish home, finally was able to contact his parents when he was like in his 40's, and he came to meet them in Germany. This was very touching, and I'm sure I looked like I was about to cry because my host mom looked at me strangely and asked me what the show was about. I never told her, because of course I don't know how to explain that in Georgian. During certain hours of the day, DW has German program, and the rest is English. Usually it's the same shows, just dubbed one way or the other. I like watching the German programming, because it helps me brush up on my German, and it also makes me feel good to know that I've barely lost it, as far as listening goes, anyway - speaking is another story. DW makes me very homesick for Germany, seeing all the little things that distinguish the country. The green and yellow bus stops, the perfectly landscaped gardens, hearing the sound of the language. This was why, the other night, I spent about an hour researching job prospects for English teachers in Germany. Which brings me to my next topic: The EU is stupid. It would be smart if I could get an EU passport that would allow me to easily work in Germany, Italy, Spain...As it is, I can't. And it's stupid. 

Jamie Speaks British English

Like most countries in this part of the world, the focus is on British English. Being not British, this presents a bit of a challenge for me. First of all, my English teachers can't understand me because all they hear is "arr rerr grrr irr reerrrr." Then I have to remember to talk like a Brit in order to not confuse the kids. After they've learned the phrase 'Have you got...?' I can't mess with their heads by asking 'Do you have...?' When they're learning time prepositions, I have to remember to say 'at the weekend' instead of 'on the weekend.' When I sing the ABC song, I have to remember to end it with 'Zed' instead of 'Zee.' Which is just silly, because it messes up the whole rhyme. There's trousers and knickers and trainers. Sweets not candy. Maths not math. And let's not forget. An eraser is not an eraser. It's a rubber. 

Jamie Goes to Supras

What's a supra? It's a feast where the host is expected to serve at least 3 times the amount of food and wine that the guests would possibly able to eat, and the guests are expected to eat at least twice as much as one would on Thanksgiving. 

At a supra, there is a tamada, who is the toastmaster. Why do you need one? Because in Georgia, you're not supposed to take a drink until you've toasted something. And that goes for every drink, not just the first one. That means, over the course of quite a few glasses of wine, you've toasted quite a few things. You've toasted parents, siblings, children, God, the church, Georgia, the deceased, specific people at the table, peace, and then you can go ahead and get creative. Your wine glass never gets empty, because someone is constantly going around and topping off all the glasses. Which means you also have no idea how much you drank. 

Some typical foods that are usually at a supra include slices of eggplant folded over and stuffed with a walnut paste, onions and pomegranate seeds, khachapuri, some kind of potato salad, bread and cheese of course, tomatoes, different meats, etc. Most of the time you get all these dishes at one supra, and probably more. The hostess is busy refilling all the plates of food as soon as they start to run low (hostess, notice, for anything regarding kitchen duty is not a man's job in Georgia). Everyone else is busy eating, toasting, drinking and smoking. 

Supras happen on birthdays, weddings, funerals, during harvest time, etc. Basically any occasion that calls for merry-making. Last night, we had my cousin's birthday supra. For me, this was one of the most interesting ones I've partaken in, because it was a stark contrast to an 18th birthday party in the U.S. Here's why. His mother, (my mom helped too) was expected to prepare food for roughly 30 people. This was a 2 day process. And remember the thing I said about being expected to prepare way more food than your guests could possibly eat? When you have 30 guests, that's a lot. The guest list was my cousin's entire 12th grade class, plus me and my family, plus family from the other side, plus 2 of the teachers, plus the school principal. Yep, the school principal, at your birthday party. Imagine that. Now imagine drinking with said principal at your birthday party. That's exactly what happened. The 12th graders had their own table in one room with the birthday boy, and the rest of us were in the other room at our own table. The 12th graders polished off quite a few pitchers of wine. As did we. Then the principal went over to their table to make a few toasts to them and have a few toasts made to her. The best part of the night was the dancing. They put on some traditional Georgian music and a few of them did some traditional dancing. I got a video of it, which I will upload to some social media site at some point in time when I have internet that is actually fast. It was pretty cool. After endless amounts of food (you thought an hour into it, it was over, but then they bring out the dolma for the first time), it was time for cake and coffee. They brought out plates of cake and chocolate, and I had a piece, noting that it was not the birthday cake, but different types of cake. I figure that this was because the birthday cake was not big enough to feed 30 people, and it would be saved for him and his classmates. Wrong. This was just the pre-cursor-to-the-cake cake. Then they put candles in the birthday cake, blew them out, and cut the cake to serve everyone who had already eaten cake more cake. At around midnight the teachers and principal started heading home. That's when I headed home too. Of course I couldn't walk the 200 yards by myself. I had to be escorted because otherwise I run the risk of being attacked by a rabid dog, according to my host mother, who for some reason thinks I'm 7. This is the same woman who wouldn't let me shower after the previous supra, because I'd drank wine, and according to her "wine trink, shkapi NO! [makes X with arms]" Translation: You can't take a shower after you've been drinking. Why? I question I've asked myself a lot since then. Here's what I've come up with. Because you might slip and crack your head open and bleed to death. Because you might fall asleep under the faucet and drown. Because you might think the shampoo is a bottle of wine, drink it all and poison yourself. Because showering while drunk is another of the many mysterious ways in which you can catch a cold that don't involve actual germs. 

Jamie Talks Teaching

Since I'm over here teaching English, you might be wondering why none of my blog posts talk about teaching English. Part of the reason may be because it seems like such a small part of my life here. I am only in class 16 hours a week. Actually it's less, since I have 16 classes and the classes are 45 minutes long. Out of those 45 minutes, I'm probably only leading the activity for about 15 minutes. So they're not exactly working me to death here.

I assist with 1st through 6th grades and work with 2 different co-teachers. The 1st-7th graders took English last year, and for the 8th-12th graders, this is their first year, so everyone is at a beginner level, unless they've been taking private lessons. My job is to help out with the speaking and listening for the most part. I try to come up with fun activities and exercises for the kids that pertain to the lesson. 

So far it's going quite well. The classes are good sizes (6th grade has only about 7 students, while the others average somewhere around 15). Discipline is not really a problem. There are a couple trouble-makers in a few of my classes, but it's extremely low-stress compared to the class behavior of my 4th graders in Peru. Because of some issues I've been having with one of my coteachers, I've stopped going to the 5th and 6th grade classes and have started helping out with the 9th and 10th grades with my other teacher instead. This is only my 1st week of that, but I can tell it's going to be difficult because it's a class of mixed levels (like I said, some have had private tutoring and some are starting fresh) and they are working out of a book that is too advanced for a 1st year class. However, the teacher makes it work, and I am excited to start helping out with these grades.

In addition to teaching, we're encouraged to start or participate in some kind of after-school club. My first thought was a film club, but after trying to show "Matilda" after school one day and encountering numerous technological difficulties, which resulted in not being able to watch the film at all, I've decided to just try to do some different activities that the kids might like to take part in. My current project is to have a cooking week. The plan is to cook pancakes after school with the different grades, giving them some food vocabulary, and also giving them a taste of an American staple (although they unfortunately do not have maple syrup here). I'll let you know how it goes....if it ever goes. It's been in the planning stage for about 2 weeks, and I haven't been able to get a definite answer about when we're actually going to do it.

I also have lessons with my host family for 3 hours a week. These are the most fun for me, because it's much easier to teach 2 people than it is a whole class, and we can do a lot of games and activities that don't work well in a large group. Much to my disappointment, though, my host brother seems to be picking up German a lot faster. He's in his first year, and a lot of times he'll say something to me in German, and when I ask him to say it in English, he says he doesn't know, even if it's something I've taught him. So I'm pretty much Teacher of the Year is what I'm saying. 

I have found that teaching is growing on me. Which brings me to my next topic. The rest of my life. As of now, the plan is to go to South Korea (if I'm accepted) next year and make some actual money, and then hop around the globe some more with teaching English as the means to do it. I don't want to do that for the rest of my life, although when I think about all the places I want to go (Italy, Vietnam, Germany, Russia, Japan, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, the list goes on...) it would pretty much take a lifetime to do it all. So for now I'll just take it one step at a time. There's no point in planning anyways, because in the end, plans always change. I mean really, if you'd have asked me a year ago, Georgia would have been one of the last places I would've pictured myself being, yet here I am.

Jamie Makes Apple Pie

One day, years ago, my grandma Ambur decided to pass down her famous apple pie recipe to me. This could not be done by handing me a recipe, but had to be hands on. So my grandma devised a sort of day-long pie-making boot camp for me in her kitchen in Presho, South Dakota. 

I don't know how many apples were peeled and sliced that day (although these days, says Grandma, some women just don't even peel their apples anymore, they put them right in the pie with the skins on! And you know, it doesn't even taste bad, and it sure does save a lot of work, but I still like to peel mine). I don't know how many pie crusts were rolled out and pinched together. I don't know how many tears were shed after grandma beat me on the head with a rolling pin after I accidentally got a piece of shell in with the egg. Just kidding, it didn't quite get that intense. I just know, that at the end of the day, with numerous pies cooling on the window sills, I had had grandma's secrets and techniques forever branded into my brain, so that I would be able to spread the goodness of "Grandma's Apple Pie" to the far-reaching corners of this earth. 

First, I baked it for my host family in Germany, and it held its own, even among the variety of delicious cakes that my host mom baked. I made it in Peru when the other volunteer teacher and I threw a Thanksgiving feast for our classes. And now, I've made it in Georgia. 

At this point, I must confess, it was kind of a fail. 

I'll begin from the beginning. A couple weeks ago my host mom asked me, out of the blue, "Why haven't you cooked for us yet?" 

["Well, because you will barely let me pour my own water without jumping up to do it for me, so I didn't think your strong notions of hospitality would allow such a thing."]

That's what I thought. What I said was "Uhh, ar vitsi." (I dunno.)

So she asked what I was going to make for them, and, because of their endless supply of apples, I thought apple pie would be a good idea. 

Then I caught a cold, and for 3 days I was not feeling like doing much of anything except laying in bed and playing Angry Birds. My illness did not stop my mother from asking "Why haven't you made your cake yet?" (Pie is not really a thing here).

["Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but there's been a pretty consistent stream of snot coming out of my nose lately, and I don't think that's one of the ingredients that really elevates a pie from good to outstanding."]

That's what I thought. What I said was "I'm sick! Give me a break!" But I said it in English, so she just nodded at my exasperated tone and let the subject go.

Yesterday, I was feeling much better, so in anticipation of her inevitable questioning of when I was going to make the pie, I suggested at lunch that I make it that day. 

After lunch, she went off to feed cows, or pour cement in the yard, or whatever it is they do when they're not in the house. Then, in late afternoon I got called to the porch for coffee. "Why haven't you made your cake yet?" said my host mom. 

This time, I said exactly what I was thinking, "Because you were off doing something else, and I need help, because I obviously don't know where you keep all your pans and ingredients and everything and your oven's probably in Russian, so you need to tell me when you want to help me make it." To which she responded "eeeeeh...okay."

Then I went upstairs grabbed my pie recipe with the translations I'd gotten out of the dictionary, came back down and handed it to her. She said they'd have to go to the store for the lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg (which she'd never heard of before, so it didn't sound too promising), but that they had everything else. 

So, by 8:00 pm my host brother had gone to the store and I had my ingredients. Or so I thought. 

My first problem was a pie pan. There wasn't one. The closest thing was about twice the size of a normal pie, shallower, and with straight edges. Good enough, I'll just double the recipe. 

So I started to make the crust. I had tried to look up 'shortening' in the dictionary, but it wasn't there, so I looked up 'lard' and thought she would get the idea. When I pointed to it on my paper, she said, "You don't need that, use this." and handed me a stick of butter instead. Ok, I'll give it a try. Unfortunately, the area designated for me to roll out the dough was significantly smaller than the pan itself, so my crust had to sort of be pressed together in the pan, with an end result resembling Frankenstein's face. 

Then comes the filling. My host aunt asked me if I needed a cheese grater to grate the apples, and I said that no, they just needed to be sliced. This was met with some skepticism, which was basically the theme of their reactions as they watched me throughout the cooking process. (If I could cook well, I'd be married already, right? I mean, geez, I'm already 23, and still single with no kids?)

Brown sugar apparently doesn't exist in Georgia, so I just used white. No big deal. Then I asked for the cinnamon. "You don't need it," said my host mother, "They didn't have it at the store, or the nutmeg either."

Oh....

Also, the lemon juice was in powder form, as was the vanilla. The aroma of this powdered vanilla in particular had an uncanny ability to stick to my skin even after numerous hand washings. Which definitely made me second guess using the whole packet. 

I would like to note here that I didn't have any sort of measuring tools besides a coffee cup and a spoon. 

So lets review, pie crust with butter subbed for shortening, and apple filling with no brown sugar, cinnamon or nutmeg, weird tasting vanilla powder, and powdered lemon juice. Things aren't looking good.

Then comes the baking. Their oven did not have a temperature, it simply had an on/off switch. So I put it in and crossed my fingers. About 45 minutes later it looked done, but then it was time for an English lesson with my host siblings, and by the time I was done with that it was past 10:00 p.m. Too late for pie even by Georgian standards apparently. 

But just as I suspected, it was served for breakfast this morning. Because it's never too early for pie in Georgia. Or anything for that matter. My host mom tried to get me to eat candy bars and cookies for breakfast yesterday, which, much to her bafflement, I declined. 

Let me just say that the pie was not great. The crust was a bit soggy, the filling was overpowered with the taste of artificial vanilla, and it's just not the same without the cinnamon and nutmeg. I don't think my host family hated it. It's not like it was disgusting, and they told me it was delicious of course, but they didn't seem overly enthusiastic about it. 

The bad thing is now I really want a delicious, real, homemade apple pie. 

The good thing is they probably won't bug me to cook for them again. 

And Grandma, if you're sitting at the Presho Public Library reading this, I'm sorry I've failed you. 

Jamie Sits Down for a Meal

Here's what I typically eat at my host family's house. 

Breakfast:

My host mother prepares breakfast for everyone, so when I come downstairs at 8:00, it's already laid out for me. It usually consists of a (rather large) bowl of some type of grain. Most of the time it's oatmeal, with a ridiculous amount of sugar in it. Sometimes it's buckwheat with butter and salt. Sometimes it's this other sort of malt-o-meal type grain. Not sure exactly what that is, but it's yummy. I've also a few times had pasta cooked in milk. Like regular ziti pasta. Cooked in sweetened milk. Very strange, but actually not bad.

There are also loaves of bread laid out with butter and honey, but since it's hard enough just to finish my giant bowl of oatmeal, I never have room for that. A few times a week she puts out khachapuri too. Khachapuri in a general sense is bread and cheese, but it takes many forms. Sometimes it's lasagna, but with only cheese as filling, sometimes it's the bread that we always have with meals filled with cheese slices and grilled in the panini maker, and sometimes my mom makes the bread dough, forms it into a circle, puts cheese in the middle, closes it up, flattens it, and cooks it on the skillet, so it's like a cheese filled pita bread. Usually the morning khachapuri is made panini-style.

This is all served with a cup of tea, or every once in a while, a cup of instant coffee made with milk instead of water. I've never had black coffee served to me in the morning.

Lunch:

The things that are served at every lunch, and supper for that matter, are the following:

Bread loaves 

Cheese

Tomatoes cut up with onions and sometimes parsley

Besides that, it's usually fried eggs for lunch. They fry their eggs in about an inch of sunflower oil, which, while delicious, is also setting me on my way to a heart attack before age 30. 

Sometimes she also fries up some bologna, or puts out some kind of meat, but typically eggs are just an easy thing to make after a long day of school.

Afternoon coffee:

May take place multiple times, but usually happens right after lunch.

There's two ways they make coffee in my house, and from what I've seen, in general. The first, I think, is called Turkish coffee. I've been meaning to google this. I  had no idea what Turkish coffee was, but I think if I have my stories straight, it's what we usually drink. They cook the coffee in a pot on the stove, and I'm not sure what they use, but the result is a cup of coffee where the grounds stick to the sides and settle at the bottom, so that when you get towards the last few drinks, you have to be careful and drink slowly so as not to get a mouth full of grit. That gets left in the bottom. This was quite unpleasant to me at first, but I got used to it. Lately we've just been having plain old instant coffee a lot, which dissolves all the way. My host family drinks a lot of sugar in their coffee, and no cream or milk, except as I mentioned when now and then my host mom will make me coffee with just milk, but I've never seen anyone else drink this. It took about a week for me to convince my host mom to not put so much sugar in my coffee or tea. It's still too much for my taste, but it's all about small victories, right?

With the coffee, they usually set out fruit or these Russian bite-size candy bars that are like Snickers, just not as good. The fruit is usually grapes (with seeds) from the vineyard, apples (from the apple tree) or leghvi. Leghvi is a Georgian word, which I'm using because I have no idea what it's called in English. It's this fruit that's green on the outside, but you peel the green off, and are left with a white ball. When you break it open the inside is hot pink and looks like it has tentacles or something. It's really strange, and gives the granadilla in Peru (which we nicknamed alien fetus) a run for it's money when it comes to strange looking fruit. However, it is very delicious. 

Supper:

As I mentioned under lunch, there is bread, tomatoes, and cheese. 

This is usually accompanied by a meat. A lot of the time I don't eat the meat, because I am really picky about my meat and the meat here gives me the heeby-jeebies sometimes. It's usually just chunks of beef or pork that is more fat than meat, and a lot of times it has what looks like the kind of tubes and valves that would be in a heart. Is it a heart? Or a spinal cord? Or a nasal passage? I will probably never know, but I do know it's not something I want to eat. 

One time, my mom brought out tripe stew and gave me a giant bowl. In the dim light of the porch where we were eating, I thought it might be morrell mushrooms or something. Then I took a bite, and I knew. Intestines. I tried. I really tried. But I just couldn't do it. But now my mom knows, so she always makes sure there's something else for me if they're eating tripe.

Let's talk about fish. I like fish. If it's not too fishy. I like sushi, salmon, fish sticks. I love tuna. But I've informed my host mom that I don't eat fish, like, ever. I did this because the fish here frightens me. First off, they don't cut off the head. the just take an entire fish, head, fins, everything, and fry it. I've also seen little silver fish that look like they haven't been cooked at all, being served whole. Tonight, for example, my mom served fish that had been cut into segments (some pieces were just the head) and lightly battered and fried. They've also had dry fish, again whole, that is like some sort of fish jerky, and smells disgusting. So I've thought it best to steer clear of any marine life set out on the table. 

On special occasions they usually make khinkali (see previous post) or mtswadi (I know this in America as shishkebabs - meat on a stick grilled over a fire).

Some other things we've had are: stuffed peppers, hot dogs (this is a great comfort food if you're far from home), pinto beans, green beans, fried potatoes, chadi (fried corn cakes) and pizza. The homemade pizza was not like a regular pizza. The crust was thick and made from bread dough. The sauce was the kind of ketchup-ish spicy sauce that they eat with other stuff here. The cheese was the homemade cheese that we eat with everything and use to make khachapuri. And the toppings were fresh tomatoes, peppers, bologna and mayo. Yes, mayo. This was put on before the pizza was cooked. It was quite odd. It tasted good, it just didn't taste anything like any pizza I've ever had.

Supper (and sometimes lunch, if my grandpa eats with us) is usually accompanied by the family's homemade wine. My grandpa and I are usually the only ones that drink. As is customary, he makes toasts throughout supper. He toasts to mothers and fathers, to brothers and sisters, and to Georgia and America. He also toasts to other things, but usually I don't know what they are, I just clink glasses, say "Gaumarjos!" and drink. He's gotten into the habit of trying to teach me Georgian at supper, so he always has me repeat his toasts. Or he'll grab the salt, point at it, and say "Marili!" Then signal for me to repeat. We do this about 10 times until he's satisfied that I have committed it to memory. That is actually how I learned the word for salt. The difficult part of this process is that my grandpa basically has no voice left. I'm not sure if it's from years of smoking (almost all men are smokers here) or just because he's old, but everything comes out as a screechy whisper, so a lot of times when he's asking me to repeat something, I have no idea at all what sounds he's actually trying to make. 

A note on eating habits:

I can only speak about what I've observed in my family, so I don't know if this applies to all of Georgia.

The bread that accompanies every meal is homemade bread made by my grandma. It's long loaves that are torn in half and then piled in the middle of the table. Each person grabs the loaf, tears a piece off, and sets it on the table next to their plate. This is used throughout the meal to wipe up the juices from your plate. 

At meals in America, we usually pass the different foods around, put servings of each on our plate, and then start eating. In Georgia, we use tiny plates, which means you don't have room for servings of everything, so people usually eat one part of the meal at a time. First you'll put some tomatoes on your plate, eat them, sop up the juice with your bread, then serve yourself some eggs, finish that, then put some beans on your plate. The plates of food don't really get passed around. You just grab what you want when you want it.

It's not rude to start eating before everyone's at the table. I'm usually sitting at the table alone waiting for everyone else to sit down, because they call me to dinner while they're still setting the table, and refuse to let me help with anything. So once the food is out, and I'm still waiting for everyone to sit down before I start eating, my mom usually yells "James! Tchame!!" - "Jamie! Eat!!" and gives me a look like I'm an idiot for not realizing that I'm supposed to eat all this food sitting in front of me. As someone who was raised in a culture where you don't touch your food until everyone has food on their own plate, this makes me really uncomfortable.

They rarely drink water with their meals. This drives me nuts. Wine is great, but it doesn't quench my thirst. I don't know how these people survive on coffee, wine, and coke alone. I barely ever see them drink water! And I always have to ask if I want water, because sometimes they keep it in little crockery pots, sometimes in recycled bottles. Sometimes these bottles are in the kitchen, sometimes they're in the fridge in the bedroom (yes, the fridge is in the bedroom) and sometimes they're outside on the steps. And I never know what water is for drinking and what water is for whatever else they use it for. 

The salt is not in a salt shaker. It's in a little tiny bowl and you just pinch it out with your fingers. I never do, because everything is already salty anyways, and, if you eat salt you get thirsty, which means you need to go on a water hunt. They never set out pepper, except when we're eating khinkali, but the pepper is in a pepper shaker. 

Other condiments consist of a homemade ketchup type thing, which has a little bit of a kick, or a homemade purplish salt that tastes really vinegar-y. We did have mustard once when we had hot dogs. 

And that's what the food's like.

Jamie Learns Georgian

So far, I have only dipped my toes into the Georgian language, but I have discovered some interesting things.

Their counting system is quite interesting. It seems pretty normal up til 29. This is how the direct translation would go:

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen, and so on, until you get to 40, which is it's own word again, not twenty-twenty. Fifty is forty-ten, 60 is it's own word, 70 is sixty-ten, and so on. 

I found the most difficult part of learning German to be the 4 cases. I had to figure out what case a noun was in (nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive), based on its function in the sentence. However, this information was useless unless I knew whether the noun was feminine, masculine, or neuter to begin with. If I knew that, I had to try to remember what sort of ending that gender of noun took in each case. This was much too much work for me, so usually I just added whatever sort of ending suited my fancy as I was talking. A couple years later, after turning in a paper in German on Berthold Brecht's The Life of Galileo, I was informed by the overwhelming amount of red on my draft that my fancy was usually wrong.

In Georgian, there are 7 cases, but, mercifully, no gender distinctions. I am aware that there are 7 cases, but I have no idea what most of them are. I am also unaware of how to conjugate most verbs, or how to form anything beyond the simplest of sentences. For that reason, I decided to buy a book that I saw in the English bookstore in Tbilisi called Teach Yourself Georgian. Hopefully, it would explain these things to me. I soon found that I may not learn anything useful from this book, but for entertainment purposes alone, it was worth the 25 lari. 

Here are a few of the useful phrases it teaches you:

"Mother, here is a rowing boat." 

"he/she caresses somebody/ is caressing somebody"

"sunny rain"

"If anybody says something bad about us, let the knife rip his heart out."

"What could  you make blossom?"

"one-eyed"

"I began to twitter" 

"are you not ashamed?"

"from afar I was kissing (your eyes)"

"what are we to make the dowry with?"

"How much longer shall we have our sister unmarried?"

"Why don't you mention the donkey any more?"

"I shall crow."

"Only my stupidity is to blame for what has happened to me!" -this will probably come in handy for me

"We will not let them trample [our motherland] under foot"

"he/she/it is whizzing/dashing here and there"

"strip them naked!"

"bind their hands!"

"smear them!"

"cover their bodies with honey!"

"he/she sat with grand airs"

So as you can see, once I start putting these phrases to use, I will fit right in!

Jamie Makes a Friend

After getting home from Kazbegi on Monday night, I was told we were going to my host mom's sister's house. My host mom was not there, because she was working at the poll booth in Badiauri, but the rest of us headed about 15 minutes down the highway to another village. A lot of family from my mom's side was there, most of whom I was meeting for the first time. It involved many instances of getting stared at by preteen girls while they whispered to each other behind their hands and giggled. Everyone else talked about me as if I weren't even there. They all thought I couldn't understand a word of Georgian, but they underestimate the power of living for a month in a family that doesn't speak English. You pick things up here and there.

They were also talking about one of the English teachers (TLG like me, I assumed) who lived in whatever village we were in. At one point when they were talking about her, someone got out their cell phone. I was thinking, "I really doubt they would put me on the phone with some random person I've never met." Next thing I know, a phone was shoved at me. Let me remind you, since they thought I know no Georgian, they gave me no sort of indication as to who I was supposed to be talking to and why. So if I could actually have understood no Georgian, as they thought, did they not realize this would be even more awkward?

Here's how the convo went:

Me: Hello?

Hello?

Who's this?

This is Liz....Who's this?

This is Jamie. I'm an English teacher, too. I was brought to some village to visit relatives. I'm not sure if it's the one you live in, and I guess my family decided we should talk because they just called you and handed me the phone.

[We talked about where we were living, when we arrived in the country, etc]

My Uncle Giorgi interrupts my phone call: Jane! [My name morphed from James to Jane at some point] We take... see...teacher?? Yes??

Me: Umm.....I think they're taking me to visit you. See you in a few, probably?

We got in the car and drove to her house. One of my mom's nieces goes to her school, so she knew where she lived. When we got there, they invited her to come back to my aunt's house, where we were eating. The night improved a lot, since I had someone to talk to, and someone to share half the stares with.

And now I know there's another American, only 15 minutes away!

Jamie Visits Kazbegi

Due to the elections on Monday, we had a 3 day weekend. A bunch of TLGers took the opportunity to get some traveling in, and for a few of us, the destination was Kazbegi. 

We left Friday for Tbilisi. As I was walking to the main road in my village to grab a marshrutka to the city, we saw a bunch of police cars driving through town, and some people gathered at the school. One of my brother's friends told him that the President was on his way, and he would be stopping in Badiauri! The president's doing some last minute campaigning in my little village, and I miss it. What luck. 

In Tbilisi, we went to a concert of the International Symposium of Polyphony. Georgia is famous for its polyphonic music. If you want someone to explain this concept to you, ask a musicologist. If you want to hear what I mean, consult YouTube. You can find plenty of great Georgian music there. The symposium was interesting. Most of the groups were really good. The Australian Georgian music group decided it would be wise to remix a traditional Georgian song by randomly adding in a verse from Wannabe by the Spice Girls. I'm sure you can imagine how bad of a decision that was. 

On Saturday morning we grabbed a marshrutka to Kazbegi. Kazbegi (technically Stepantsminda) is a small town famous for the Tsminda Sameba Church perched high on a hilltop next to the snow-peaked Mount Kazbek. The ride took about 3 hours, and when we arrived we went into the nearest restaurant for some tea, and found out they were also renting out rooms upstairs for a decent price. We booked a room and headed out for a hike. 

We headed up to the Tsminda Sameba Church. It was quite a hike for a girl who's main source of physical activity in the past few weeks has been lifting bread and cheese from her plate to her mouth and fending off offers of chocolate and coca-cola. But we made it to the top, and it was gorgeous. To get into the church women had to wear skirts and scarves over their heads. Luckily they provide both. I've heard that in Georgia, a lot of girls find their future husbands in church. So I was a little disappointed that I didn't get asked on any dates when I walked in with a frumpy blue skirt pulled on over my jeans, with my tennis shoes sticking out and a bright yellow scarf over my head. Maybe next time. I couldn't take pictures of the inside of the church, but it was very beautiful. Made of stone, with a dusty beam of light coming in through the windows, and paintings on the walls. A cute little baby was in there getting baptized at the time. 

One of the guys in our group is quite the tea drinker. So after visiting the church, we walked over to a nice spot on the hill, where he proceeded to start a fire, whip out a pot, some water, some tea leaves, and a few cups, and brew some tea for us, which we sipped while gazing at Mt. Kazbek in the distance and discussing the similarities between Georgia and Middle Earth. 

After the walk down, we grabbed some supper at one of the restaurants in town. Then we headed back to the hotel to drink the giant plastic bottle full of homemade wine that my friend had brought, so that those not lucky enough to be placed in the Kakheti region, would at least be able to try the wine. We sat out on the porch and toasted everything we could think of, because we're in Georgia, and that's just what you do. The church was lit up at night, and the moon lit up the snow of Mt. Kazbeg in the distance. It was a beautiful night, if not a little chilly. Thankfully, Rudolph the guy that runs the hotel and restaurant (in our Middle Earth scenario, he was Gollum, if that gives you an idea of his personality) brought us some fleece blankets. After our supply of vino ran low, we went inside, bought one more bottle of wine, and called it a night.

The next morning, we went down for the breakfast that was included in our stay. Gollum, who was well aware of the wine hangovers we had, decided to blast Middle Eastern techno music in the restaurant at 10:00 a.m. while we ate our eggs. Great start of a day. 

We decided to hike up to see a different church on the hill opposite Tsminda Sameba. When we got there, we had a little tea party with the tea and cookies (or bescuits, if you're from New Zealand) that we had bought earlier from the Google Market. (What is Google Market you ask? A tiny market with the google logo on it's sign, that is bound to get sued at some point in its future). It was a perfect day to just lay in the sun on a hillside and take a nap. So that's exactly what we did. 

We caught a marshrutka back to Tbilisi in the afternoon, and checked into a hostel. After having been in the back of a poorly ventilated, hot marshrutka driving down windy dirt roads and getting bumped and jostled for 3 hours, I was feeling like 10 kinds of crap, so my night ended there. 

On Monday we just chilled in the city. We were hoping to see some excitement going on with the elections, but it was quite uneventful, so we walked around the city, then grabbed a marshrutka home.

Jamie Makes Khinkali

Time for a recipe! Try it at home! (But don't blame me if it tastes like crap, blame your inferior cooking skills or poor reading comprehension.)

Note: This recipe does not really have measurements. Just go with your gut. Again, I take no blame for bad results.

Khinkali is a very popular Georgian food. They are dumplings that are usually filled with meat, but sometimes with mushrooms. Or probably other things. I'm not sure. I don't get out much. They have them at pretty much every restaurant serving Georgian food, and they're priced individually. Usually people order a giant plate of them for everyone to share. If you're an American who's only been in the country for a day, you might order one, just to try it. (You're on a budget, you can't be ordering entire plates of stuff you don't like.) If you do this, the waiter, already exasperated by having to match whatever item you're pointing at on the English menu to the similarly placed item on the Georgian menu, will look at you like you're an idiot and will walk away. When you get your individual khinkali, there will probably be spit inside. 

A good remedy for this situation is to make spit-free khinkali yourself in your own home.

How to make the dough:

When I've seen this made, it's been in enormous batches. The dough was made with a giant bowl of flour (find the biggest mixing bowl you own, then times that by 2). To the flower was added a couple of eggs, some salt, and I believe a little bit of baking soda. The dough was mixed until it was kind of a stretchy blob. 

On a well floured surface, roll the dough out until it is about 3/4 inch thick. Then take a water glass and cut out circles of dough. The circles will be rolled out until they are very thin. Then they are ready to form the dumplings.

How to make the filling:

Take your choice of ground meat (or veggies). We used pork, but I'm sure you could use whatever you want. Add some onion, fresh cilantro, salt, and pepper. 

Then take your rolled out circle of dough and put in about a spoonful and a half of the meat mixture. Here's the tricky part, folding up the edges. It's the blind leading the blind here. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't good at this. Basically you lift up the sides and, one fold at a time, you fold the edges up accordion style until the whole top is closed, and then you pinch it to make sure it's sealed well.

When you have made several, put them in a pot of boiling water to cook. Spoon them out and drain them, and they're ready to eat!

Khinkali is usually eaten with pepper on it. This is significant, because normally they don't have pepper at the dinner table, but with khinkali, they bring it out and everyone puts it on their dumplings. They are eaten with your hands and you usually leave the top folded part on your plate and throw it away (or feed it to the pigs) because it is just a giant clump of dough. Khinkali is usually paired with some nice homemade Georgian wine, a giant plastic bottle of beer for the table, or some moonshine. 

If you have me on facebook, I've posted pics of this process if you need a visual. I won't post them on here for now because they will take about 3 years to upload. 

Enjoy your khinkali!

Jamie Solves a Mystery

When I arrived at my host family's house, I did not see my host dad for 3 days. No one really mentioned him, or his absence for the first few days, so I was left to wonder whether maybe he had died or they had gotten a divorce. According to our cultural training, divorces are common here, but shameful. Therefore, not something you would bring up to the foreigner who just started living at your house. 

The I broke my adapter, and asked where I would be able to get a new one. My host mom told me, "Mein hosbin, Tbilisi, am Morgen!!" This, in host mom language, which is a sort of pidgin German-Georgian-English, means "My husband is currently in Tbilisi. He can get one for you and bring it home tomorrow."

So he exists! Interesting. 

Two days later, he came home. I was not told his name, he was just referred to as "mein hosbin." And he looked exactly like his brother, my host uncle, who I'd already met, as we spend a lot of time at their house down the street and they at ours.

I tried to stay one step ahead of the situation, and on the next occasion where both brothers were in the room together, I made a quick assessment of their minute differences in appearance. I found that their hairline was the feature that distinguished them from one another the most. My host dad had just a little more hair on the top of his head than my host uncle. So every time I was in the same place as one of them, I would just check the hair to see who I was dealing with. 

Then things started to get weird. My host dad was looking at something on the computer at our house, and my host aunt was standing behind him rubbing his shoulders. My host mom would sit weirdly close to my host uncle on the couch. What is going on here? Is this sort of touchy-feeliness between married-but-not-to-each-other adults acceptable in Georgian culture? Is there some sort of strange wife-swapping/brother-sharing arrangement? Gross. 

I don't see my host dad a lot. I have no idea what he does for a living, but he spends a lot of time working in Tbilisi, so I'll see him maybe a few evenings a week. Last week I noticed that my host uncle was spending a weird amount of time at our house. He was eating dinner with us, then staying to watch TV late into the evening, until after I had gone to bed.

One day my host mom was running through the house shouting and told me "Mzia, hosbin, doctor, Sagarejo. Movidivar. Shen, Mari [points to ground]." Translation: "I am going to the hospital in Sagarejo with Mzia (my host aunt) and her husband. You and Mari are going to stay here."

This meant that the neighbors were soon to show up at the house and tell us to come out into the street with them, where we sat on the bench and waited (until they drove 20 min to Sagarejo, visited the doctor, and drove another 20 min back? Yes, I later found out.) From the neighbors' conversation, I gathered that Mzia's husband, whose name I finally learned after 3 weeks, had an allergic reaction to something and had to be rushed to the hospital. 

Later that evening, my host uncle showed up at our house for dinner. He looked fine. Not like someone who'd been rushed to the hospital earlier. And then the lightbulb went on. I had spent the last 3 weeks thinking my host uncle was my host dad and vice versa. There was indeed no spouse-swapping going on. Just me, being an idiot. A perfect example, however, of how utterly clueless I am in my surroundings. 

Jamie Gets Shouted At

Georgians like to shout. At first I thought it was just my host mom, because she believed that shouting at me would give me a magical ability to understand Georgian. (In fact, it does not.)

However, I've discovered that it's just a Georgian thing. The school staff meeting that I went to was insane. It was just a bunch of women in a room shouting at each other. The principal was shouting loudest of all. I don't know what they were saying, but it sounded angry. But in reality, I don't think it is. I think people here just like to express their opinion passionately and loudly. As I was sitting there, I imagined what a staff meeting at Winner High School would have been like if my teachers behaved like Georgians and just shouted and waved their arms at each other the whole time. You should try to picture it. It's pretty hilarious. 

I was also watching one of the Georgian presidential candidates on TV being interviewed by a reporter. He was doing quite a bit of shouting as well. So much so that the reporter would try to ask him a question and he would just shout over her, much to her frustration. Again, I imagine Obama or Romney shouting and gesturing wildly during a debate. Or McCain for that matter (who, by the way, is kind of a big deal over here). I don't think it would go over well. Ask Howard Dean.

Jamie Hits the Road

The driving in Georgia scares the bejeezus out of me. 

To quote a well-known pirate: in Georgia, Traffic rules aren't really rules, they're more like guidelines. A Georgian road looks like an American road. Solid lines on the outside, and a dotted line in the middle. But in Georgia, the line in the middle means nothing. If you want to pass someone, but there's a car approaching in the oncoming lane, no problem! You just pass them in the middle because even though there are only 2 lanes, there's room for 3 cars. Hopefully. 

What if you're going down a one-way street and realize you passed your destination. Should you go over a block, go back as far as you need, then get back on the one-way? No sir! You just drive in reverse for 3 or 4 blocks, dodging the cars that are driving forward, until you've backtracked to where you want to be. Because as long as your car is facing the direction of the one-way, you're not breaking any laws!

Should you stop for pedestrians? Nope.

What happens if you're doing 50 down the road and there's a cow chilling in the middle of your lane, like they do? If there's no oncoming traffic, you're golden. If there is, hopefully the ditch doesn't drop off too far. Because you don't slow down, you just swerve. If the ditch does drop off, I don't know what you do. I'm guessing when I find out, I won't live to tell you about it. 

Jamie Takes One for the Team

On Tuesday I have a 2nd period free, so I was hanging in the teacher's lounge. Some guy that I've never seen before was in there, and when I double checked with the vice-principal to make sure I didn't have class (I had forgotten my schedule at home), he overheard, and motioned to me to come with him and made the motion of kicking a soccer ball. Really? Some random dude wants me to go outside and play soccer with him during my free time while I'm in my skirt and tights? 

No, that's actually not what was happening at all. Let me explain. I did not think there were any men employed by this school. The principal and vice-principal are women, and so are all the teachers I had met so far. So I figured any guy walking around the school was one of the repairmen that were fixing things up. It turns out this guy was not. He's the P.E. teacher and he wanted me to go to his P.E. class with him, not play soccer. When I figured this out, I agreed. It was uneventful. The kids did nothing. He sent a couple of them off school grounds to go pump up the soccer ball because it was flat. Like 20 minutes later they came back. It was still flat. They argued with the P.E. teacher for a while, then they left again. Came back. Left again. Came back with a pump. They got the soccer ball aired up. There was 3 minutes until the bell. Fail. 

The next day, the P.E. teacher came into the teacher's lounge and told the English teacher to translate for him. She told me the school sometimes has sporting events and asked if I wanted to participate. "What kind of sports?" I asked. He pointed to a printout with illustrations of kids running through tires, going around cones, playing tug-of-war. So I agreed. Then, after school, I went with my sister to the store, and on the way back we passed by the school. My host cousin grabbed me and told me I was supposed to go upstairs to the computer lab. [Note: Any time I say that a Georgian told me to do something, it's not exactly as smooth of a process as I make it sound. For example, in this case, my cousin pointed to the top floor of the school, said something really fast in Georgian, made a motion of typing on a computer, and waved me to follow him.]  When I got to the computer lab, the P.E. teacher was there, along with a bunch of students crowded around the computer. They started playing a YouTube video of the sports competition I had agreed to. It was like that old Nickelodeon show I used to watch with the red team and the blue team and they slimed people and they had that cute host named Mark something. For those of you who do not know what I'm talking about, it was a bunch of kids doing weird stuff like bouncing on a bouncy ball around cones, climbing up mats, sliding down slides, and doing potato sack relays. This is what I had agreed to. Oh god. I told myself that at least I was getting involved and I should just pretend I'm 12 and am on Legends of the Hidden Temple. (I'm on a Nick kick now.)

After watching the video we had to have practice. I started to get a little grumpy. I was supposed to be at home eating lunch, and instead, I was hanging out outside the school trying to hold a soccer ball between my head and the P.E. teacher's head without using our hands while running around cones, with the whole school watching. 

I was told the competition was today, so I brought my gym clothes with me to school. When it was time to go, we all piled into a marshrutka (mini-bus, word borrowed from Russian) and drove to Sagarejo, about 20 minutes away. When we got there, a 15-yr-old girl who spoke good English became my new best friend, because she was the only one who could tell me what was going on. Some other teams went first, so we watched them. It didn't look so bad. The reason I was recruited for this, was because each team had to have an adult male and female. I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few in the school who is not old, limping, or pregnant, so they snatched me up. Plus they knew I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Easy prey. 

As it got closer to our turn, I got nervous. The German teacher figured out I spoke German, so that's one more person at school that I'm able to talk to now. Yay! The principal told her to ask me if I was fast. I think so? Compared to who? Then my English-speaking friend (she had one of those complicated Georgian names that I forgot 2 seconds later) kept telling me to run very fast. Jeez people! Pressure!

We started out with the obstacle course relay. We had to jump over a hurdle, crawl through a tunnel, run through tires, throw a ball at some bowling pins and try to knock down as many as we could, then sprint back and the next person goes. I was second to last to go. We were a little behind, but the adult female on the other team had about 20 years on me, so I felt confident. I took the lead, the last guy went and we won! Then came tug-of-war. Another win! Last, we had a relay race where each person had to do different things while zigzagging around cones. Bounce on a ball, kick a soccer ball, dribble a basketball, hop in a sack, and then me and the adult male had to hold a giant beach ball between our heads (we got to use our hands too) while running around the cones. When it was our turn, the other team already had a pretty good lead, and we ended up losing. But when the total points were tallied, we came out 1st place! Just 1 point ahead of the 2nd place team. This close call makes me feel better about the fact that my left knee is now sore and swollen because I landed on it while diving into the tunnel. Everyone was really excited about our win. 

Now we have another match tomorrow, and the finals on Sunday. Gives me something to do this weekend. And I"m hoping that we'll win and go to Nationals in Tbilisi, so that I can be on Georgian television. Oh, the glory! 

Jamie Goes to School

[My first day of school was Monday, Sept 17th...Just now getting a chance to post this]

It is a universal truth that the morning of the first day of school is complete chaos. 

The electricity had gone out the night before and still wasn't back on in the morning. My host mom had to heat her iron on the gas burner so that she could iron everybody's clothes, and she couldn't use any of her electric hair tools, so she was stressing about that. Tornike was getting yelled at because he wouldn't sit down and drink his tea. Mari slept in her french braid, then took it out and brushed it, so she looked like a little Georgian Diana Ross. She found this hilarious at first, but after trying headbands, ponytails, and trying to flatten it with her hands, all to no avail, she started to tear up when her mom was yelling at her to hurry. I was sitting in the living room, ready to go 20 minutes early (I only possess this ability in foreign countries for some reason) so I told Mari I'd rebraid it for her. 

School was interesting. It's a bit like pulling teeth to get anyone to inform me of what's going on, ever, but hopefully that will improve. I'm the first volunteer at this school, so I have a feeling they're not really sure what to do with me yet. I did finally get my schedule, though. I come in at 9:00 almost every day (one day of the week I start at 9:55) and am never there past 12:30. Monday's I'm only there until 11:30. So, not too tough at all. We're also encouraged to start an after-school club, so I'm going to try to start an English Film Club. Cartoons for 1st - 6th grade, and real movies for the higher grades. I started brainstorming films that have limited sex and violence and clean language, but couldn't come up with a lot. If you have suggestions, feel free to leave a comment. Also, I don't even know if I'll be able to do Film Club, because I don't think my school has a TV or projector, but I'll have to ask for sure. 

I am lucky that my class sizes are so small. Today I had 3rd grade with 13 students, 4th with only 8 students, and 5th with 17. Not only are the small classes easier to control, it will also make it easier for me to remember names, since a lot of Georgian names are long and hard to remember since they sound like no name I've ever heard before. I would give you examples, but I forgot them all.

Also, they brought liquor to the teacher's lounge and were pouring shots for people. Liquor and chocolate between classes. At 10:00 a.m. Yes, please.

Jamie Gets Culture Shock

Every time I go abroad, I am briefed on culture shock. They tell me about the stages: Honeymoon, Depression/Crisis, Adjustment, Acceptance, or something to that effect. They tell me what I will feel and how to deal with it. Every time I come home from abroad, they warn me about reverse culture shock. As far as I can tell, I have never really experienced either one. 

In Germany, I think I was so busy dealing with my first host mom's mood swings for the first 4 months, that culture shock got put on the back burner. I was only in Costa Rica for 1 month, so it was more like an extended vacation. I was able to coast through on "honeymoon" mode the entire time, because if anything did bother me (e.g. eating rice and beans during every meal of every day), I knew I only had to deal with it for a few weeks. In Peru, I was with a family who had housed several gringos in the past, and I had my fellow American Raquel right down the hall. Plus most of my classes had more Europeans and Americans than they did Peruvians. Moreover, in Germany, there was almost always someone available who spoke pretty good English, and in Costa Rica and Peru, I could speak their language. 

This time I'm feeling the shock. After the first week of training, where I was cooped up in a hotel all day long with 65 other English-speakers, I got driven an hour away from Tbilisi to the village of Badiauri. According to a source I found on the internet, the population is roughly 1,600. 

My honeymoon phase lasted roughly 2 days. I was fascinated by everything. My house has chickens, ducks, pigs, cows, a donkey, and a dog right in it's backyard. The men bring the cows home at night, and they herd them right through the street in front of our house (3 of them are ours). I look out the window of my bedroom on the top floor and I see the rooftops of the houses in the village nestled between the trees, with the mountains in the background. Okay, they're not actually mountains, but when you grow up in Winner, South Dakota, any hill that would take you longer than 10 minutes to climb seems like a mountain. Now and then you see men hauling hay around in their donkey drawn cart. As you drive around the countryside, you're bound to see a fortress or cathedral on one of the hilltops. The weather is nice. The people are overly nice. I haven't had my cheek pinched this much since I was 5 years old. If you need an ego boost, come to Georgia. All you have to do is smile at people and say the 3 words you know in Georgian, and they'll think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Note: I've never actually seen sliced bread in this country. They'll think you're the greatest thing since khachapuri?) 

These, amongst other things contributed to my excitement about my new home during the first couple of days. Then I hit the crisis stage. "Crisis" sounds a bit extreme to me, so I shall instead refer to it as the Stage of Constant Frustration. I will not go into a list of all the little things that contributed to this frustration. Instead, I'll just go through a few of the biggies. 

The language. Don't get me wrong, I find Georgian to be a fascinating language and fun to learn. The problem is, I haven't learned it yet. Therefore, there is very little that I can communicate to my host family. I know a few nouns, about 4 verbs, and the rest is left to hand gestures. Hand gestures only go so far. I feel like I am in a constant state of misunderstanding with my host family. They never have any idea what I'm saying, and I never have any idea what they're saying. I'm surprised at how often I can figure out the gist of a conversation that they're having, based on the vocab I know, and I can get most of the simple things they try to tell me. The big problem lies in the verbs. I know that my host mom is saying something to me about dogs, for example. But what about them? Do I like dogs? Do I have a dog? Do they have a dog? Should I stay away from a dog? Do I hear a dog? Are we having dog for supper? (Just kidding, they don't do that here...that I know of). Point being, verbs are important things. Unfortunately, the resources available for learning Georgian are really limited. So I don't know how to learn new verbs. Hopefully I can find a tutor soon, but until then, it's all a guessing game. I never know what I'm doing, what other people are doing, what I'm supposed to be doing, or why.   

Village life. When I was a kid, I was totally a farm girl. I used to run around and play in the barn (the floor of which was composed of mostly horse poop and a little bit of dirt), I used to pet the poor dead pheasants that my dad shot, I used to swim in the nasty dam at the farm. Then I spent a couple years working at a daycare, where I was constantly disinfecting everything in the room and washing my hands every 5 minutes. I also watched a lot of episodes of House, where I learned that the tiniest bit of mold that entered your blood stream through your paper cut when you grabbed that rag that had been sitting in the sink too long can be the death of you, unless a handsome but emotionally scarred pill-addicted genius has an epiphany while making a snarky comment to his oncologist friend and injects you with life-saving medicine just as you were about to flatline. The combination of these two developments turned me into a bit of a germophobe. I'm no Howie Mandel, but I definitely obsess about who's touched that stair handle before me and I keep my anti-bac on hand at all times. This makes village life quite difficult for me. 

Independence. Practically gone. Because I have the language skills of a 2-year-old and have only been in the country a few weeks, there's not a lot that I can do without help. And there's even less that they trust me to do without help. 

That said, I've been in my village for a little over a week, and the frustration is slowly waning. I am reminding myself that I am having an amazing experience, and it is only just beginning. I know that what I see and do in the next 3 1/2 months will be unforgettable, and when I'm looking back, my little complaints will not be important, compared to the sights I've seen, the work I've done, and the people I've met.