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.
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