Georgian Halloween

We had Halloween! Reziko designed and carved his first pumpkin ever:


Here he is drawing the face he finally decided on, after we cut out the top and scooped out the innards.



And here's the final result, goopy stuff on the table included! Pretty scary, huh? Our camera died before we got a picture with the candle lit, but believe me, Reziko's jack-o-lantern delighted everyone who saw it. Added bonus: they insisted on leaving the lid on when it was lit, so a nice burning pumpkin smell filled the room. :)

On the table you can also see the first plate of about a million pirozhki, or homemade Hot Pockets, that Inga made that day. I helped with some of them - we made them with eggs and onion, potato, hamburger, and cabbage. So yummy!

Running Georgian Style

A Georgian friend and I decided to start running in the mornings. This lasted all of three days, I'm afraid I have to report, but our first run out was so funny from an American viewpoint that I just have to share.

For comparison purposes, here's what I typically do when I go for a jog: I try to run more than I walk, and I give myself time limits on how long I can walk. At my peak, I was running a good 10 or 15 minutes before walking 2-4 minutes, then repeating. The time I spent out rarely exceeded about 45 minutes.

We decided to go running on the Boulevard, a stretch of path running several kilometers along the coast of the Black Sea, which turns into a track in the early hours of the morning (although it's mostly men, and mostly older men, who are running). We met at seven and headed out, our walk to the Boulevard taking about twenty minutes.

My friend has long been off the workout wagon, and I haven't been doing too great myself, so we decided to start slow, alternating three-minute jogs with walking periods. The morning sea air was fresh and invigorating, and it was motivating to see so many other people also out exercising.

About six minutes into our exercise, which means we were already walking after an initial jog, my friend saw someone she knew, and we stopped to talk for about 10 minutes. We kept going, running three minutes at a time, but walking at least 10 minutes in between, aiming to get a total of 20 minutes of running in. We did eventually reach that goal, but it took an hour and a half! This is why even though having a workout partner is a great motivator to get out of bed in the morning, sometimes it's hard to run with a partner - if your goals or abilities are too different, you can be left feeling like you haven't worked at all, or it can take waaaay to long to reach your relatively modest goals.

The biggest kicker? On our way back, we were passing by my friend's godmother's apartment, and she decided we should stop by. The walk up to the sixth floor was a great workout, but when we arrived, we woke up her godmother, which I felt bad about (but is totally normal and acceptable in Georgia - the random stop by is the preferred method of visiting). We ended up staying there, drinking coffee and eventually eating breakfast, until almost noon... when they gave us a ride home in their car! It was nice visiting, her godmother and her husband and daughter are lovely people, but it was definitely not what I was expecting from a morning run. Especially riding home in a car afterwards....

Anyway, this was an interesting insight into Georgian social patterns and their take on fitness culture. I'd still like to go running in the morning with a partner (because I really don't seem to be able to get out of bed otherwise), but I need one who is similarly focused. Reziko has offered to go with me countless times, but this offer has the caveat that I have to wake him up, which defeats the whole point of my workout partner motivating me to get out of bed because I know they're making the effort for me, too. It's so much easier when the alarm goes off to just snuggle back in and doze off than to climb out into the cold air and try to convince a happily sleeping husband that he, too, should brace for the cold and go exercise. Just doesn't happen.

Georgian Wedding

On October 7, Reziko and I had a BIG party to celebrate our union. Well, it seemed big to me, as we had about 100 invited guests, but Georgian wedding receptions often run 300 or even 500 guests.

You can see pictures of the event here.

The morning of we were still running around, picking up sweets and khachapuri from the bakery and delivering them to the reception hall and attending to a thousand other details it seemed like we should have thought of before. At one I was dropped off at the salon to get a mani-pedi and my hair and makeup done, which took a good couple of hours. The girl who did my makeup spoke a little Russian, but everyone else was almost completely Georgian-only, so that was kind of awkward. They dressed me right there, which is good, because I couldn't have gotten into that dress without help. I was then whisked home in a taxi, where I sat very still and straight, because it's painful to slouch in a corset.

Everyone had gone to the reception hall except me and Reziko and our mejuarebi (best man and maid of honor) Tamazi and Irma. The reception started at 4, but apparently it's normal for the bride and groom to come a little later than that, so that the guests are all seated and waiting by the time they make their grand entrance. This was sort of a bummer for me because I was starving, but finally, at about half past four, the car showed up to ferry us to the event.

As is traditional, Reziko and I sat with Tamazi and Irma at the table of honor on a raised stage. However, the layout of the room was such that I couldn't see all of the guests. At the table closest to ours sat my parents with Eliko, who was interpreting, and my mother-in-law, Inga, and Gela, who was our tamada, or toastmaster.

I didn't have the benefit of the toasts being translated for me this time, but I think Gela did an excellent job of shouting over the guests to deliver his toasts. The first toast, naturally, was to me and Reziko and our happiness, and Gela toasted us with a khantsi, or bull's horn. Khantsi come in many sizes; I think the one at our wedding was a one-liter, and it was clear crystal, rather than a natural horn. After Gela toasted, other men who can handle that much wine at once also took their turns toasting us with the khantsi. Every time we had to stand up and hold our glasses, which at first were connected to each other with what looked like Mardi Gras beads (to symbolize everlasting union?). We quickly removed the beads, as they were a spilling hazard (our table, like every table in the place, was loaded with food), and we thought they looked kind of dumb anyway. Once everyone who wanted to toast with the khantsi had done so, Gela moved on to other toasts: to Reziko's parents, to my parents, to our mejuarebi, etc, and these were done with regular-sized glasses.

The party went on for a good three or four hours. There were mostly men there, people my father-in-law Basa knows from his job and neighbors on our little street. Reziko and I danced to a couple of slow tunes at the behest of our ever-more-drunken self-appointed DJ, and my Dad tried out his variation on traditional Georgian dancing (think doing the twist only real low). The Georgians just went wild over that. Dad also danced with Inga, which left her breathless and, I'm sure, will be fondly remembered for years to come.

The food was prolific and fantastic. One of my favorite dishes were these absolutely delicious, plump and juicy roasted mushrooms, prepared on traditional Georgian clay cookware. So yummy! There was roast suckling pig, beef dishes, chicken dishes, eggplant dishes, khachapuri, tons of other stuff. I even asked that they just bring me out a little plate of tomatoes and cucumbers, so as not to make myself sick eating just meat. One interesting tradition that I didn't anticipate is that the wedding cake is not cut on the day of the reception, but rather just sits in front of the table of honor, looking sparkly and pretty.

At the end of the night a couple of especially drunk and especially happy for us guys came over to personally give rambling (but heartfelt) toasts in Russian, wishing us long life and millions of babies. As the guests left, the food was packed up for day two (yes, it goes on!), and I finally got to go home and take my beautiful but heavy dress off.

On day two we prepared our living room for about twenty guests, serving some of the massive quantities of food that remained from the day before. I spent the morning cleaning chairs that had long been stored in a dusty attic and helping to put together an extended table. In a smaller room, the toasts seemed even louder than before, and I had a harder time staying smiley on day two (Georgians are very good at celebrating until it's not actually fun anymore), but they didn't stay too long, and we got to cut the cake this time, so that was good.

And then the wedding stuff was over at last! Now I've got the rest of the weekend to spend with my parents, who fly out on Sunday. It's been great to see them!

Wedding Reception Planning

Basa and Inga are throwing me and Reziko a wedding reception. Normally this would have been done right after the venchanie at the church (which we had July 26), but we wanted to wait so my parents could be present. And now I'm learning lots about wedding planning in Georgia!

Clothes: Most wedding dresses in this part of the world look like Disney princess gone awry. Here's a sampling from the first couple pages of a Google search; these are very representative of what's available in the stores around here:





Basically, they're way not my style; many of the dresses I saw here could easily be confused for the wedding cake. If I'd been more on the ball, I would have picked out a dress I liked from the internet and had someone custom make it for me, but since it didn't occur to me early enough, I was limited to what was already on the rack. Fortunately, we did find one dress that isn't shaped like a church bell, and even though it's still sleeveless (i.e. it's a corset top - don't think I'll be eating too much!) and covered in strings of blingy rhinestones, it's still a pretty nice dress. We got a little bolero to go with it, so I won't be cold or feel so naked. I also bought my very first pair of peep-toes, so it's a good thing that my salon work-up includes a pedicure (along with manicure, make-up, and hairstyle).

Of course, I'm not the only one getting a new outfit. Reziko bought his first suit and dress shoes (do you know how hard it is to find a coat and pants for someone as skinny as he?), Gogi got a snappy new shirt, pants, and dress shoes, and lovely Inga got a new haircut and a dress, and will even be wearing heels!

Food: Basa, Gogi, and Tamazi set off at about 4 AM yesterday morning to the villages in the mountains to buy meat. They came back with about 30 kilograms of cheese, an entire cow, hacked up and stuffed into grain bags, four live piglets and about twenty live chickens. Our courtyard has temporarily been turned into a barnyard. The animals are cute but stinky; the chickens are constantly knocking over their water, and one of them is an escape artist, always squeezing out through the wire. We eventually just let her roam; she can't get far anyway, as the yard is fenced. Butchering time is scheduled for four o'clock; I'm not sure yet if I'm going to watch. I'm half grossed-out and half curious, since I never have seen how animals are butchered before. So maybe I'll watch one or two and then skedaddle. All of this food will be taken to the chef at the reception hall tomorrow morning so they'll have time to cook everything by 4 PM on Wednesday.

Clean-up: We've been scurrying around getting the house guest-ready, which has involved a lot of sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, etc. I try to stay out of the way and stick to what I know how to do, which has been mostly dish-washing and sweeping. I had a little battle of wills with Inga this morning as she physically tried to stop me from moving the couch with Gogi, saying, "You can't do that, Alli! You're a WOMAN!!" Which, I know, is just how she was raised and is used to looking at the world, but it really pissed me off. And I moved the couch anyway, and explained to her that in the US I don't just wait around for a man to show up to move something marginally heavy for me, and fumed about it for awhile afterwards, and now I'm mostly over it. Most of the time I can deal with this gender-role stuff without much trouble, but when the reason why I can't do something is not because I'm not strong enough or not tall enough, but specifically because I'm a female, that irks me. Anyway, in the end we've got the house pretty presentable, which is good, because my parents arrive tomorrow!

I hope Mom brings her camera, because I don't have one, and I'd really like pictures of us looking all spiffy, and of all the food, and of the party in general. Georgian weddings typically run to 300 people, sometimes even 500, but we're keeping ours to about 100. Still, it's going to be raucous. Stay tuned for updates after Wednesday.

Allergy Update

After another miserable, snotty, sneezy morning, Reziko and I finally went to the drugstore and got me some allergy medicine. Ah sweet, sweet relief! And I'm not drowsy or loopy, and it only costs 35 tetri per pill (about 20 cents). I can handle that much per day, especially if it means I'm not going to feel like shit all winter (at least not from allergies). Yay!

Rain Rain Rain Rain Rain Rain Rain

So, guess what the weather's been like here... ugh. Apparently this has been an unusual September; normally it's considered the most beautiful month of the year in Batumi. But it's only been sunny maybe five or six days since I got here, and the rest of the time it alternates between a dreary drizzle and downright downpour. I wouldn't be so bummed about it, except I'm discovering that with all the windows closed all the time, the allergies I found tolerable this summer (to mold/mildew and cigarette smoke) are making me completely miserable now. Not only is there no air exchange with all the windows closed, but when it's pouring, we can't even go out for walks by the sea, which always clears my sinuses right up. Whaaaaaah.

But it hasn't been all bad. We have had a couple of really lovely days, during which Reziko and I went for hours-long walks that seemed to pass in minutes. Last week, in the first clear day after four or five days of rain, we walked down to the beach to watch the roily post-storm waves and look for interesting rocks. The tourists are pretty much all gone now, so we have the Boulevard and the beach and the benches and the bar by the port back to ourselves again.

We also went to the local registry the other day to find out about the process for getting me a long-term residence permit, which, as far as I knew, was required for folks planning on staying beyond the 90-day no-visa-necessary period. The girl behind the counter looked at us like we were crazy (Why do you want to stay more than 90 days? her gaze inquired), then, after consulting with some other people in the office, suggested that I simply cross the border for a day to restart the 90 days. Wow, great suggestion. I guess we could go to Turkey... Well, that just didn't sound right to me, because I was sure I'd read about the process for getting a residence permit on the Georgian Embassy's website sometime last year when I was preparing for my first visit, so we decided to check back with the ol' Ministry of Foreign Affairs online. Turns out that sometime in the last few months, the no-visa-necessary period was extended from 90 days to 360! That's almost a whole year! So, I guess THAT problem's been resolved. And the United Airlines lady in DC didn't want to let me leave without a return ticket......

My and Reziko's language lessons are heating back up, as I slowly start to chip away at my Georgian beginner's textbook, and we review the English he studied this summer in preparation for further work. I've also had a little translating work to do, but I haven't been terribly active in seeking non-Reziko students of English yet.

There has also been lots of reception planning going on, from haggling over the date (the 10th. No, the 11th. No, the 12th! No, the 11th again!), to finalizing the guest list (slashed at Reziko's insistence from 250 to around 100), to writing the grocery list (meat to vegetable ratio around 10:1). In the next couple of weeks I'll be purdied up with dress and hairstyle, myriad livestock will be handpicked and butchered from the farms around Batumi, the post-no-roof-during-rain-season disaster that is our living room will be repaired, and we'll all be ready to have a grand old time.

I'm extremely happy to report that I have not had a single intestinal problem since arriving (knock on wood), which I attribute to generally less pigging out on pork and drinking of tap water than this summer. I'm hoping my luck holds out at LEAST till after my parents' visit - they arrive next week! - so that we can have a good time together, eat a lot at the reception, and not have to worry about me feeling ill constantly. Speaking of their visit, I hope the weather clears up! We have lots of neat things to show them if the weather cooperates, but I'm afraid if it's super-rainy the whole time, our options become much more limited. This isn't exactly a huge metropolitan area, after all. Well, we'll figure it out.

Back in Batumi

Welcome to the recently renovated blog, which I am hoping to NOT abandon without warning like last time.

I got in last Saturday and had pretty awful jet lag for about three days and couldn't sleep at night, and I also came down with a cold a day after getting here (that's what I get for a week and a half of traveling around and not sleeping enough). But I appear to be pretty fully adjusted already, which is amazing, since it always seemed to take longer in Russia (same time zone). Maybe because the weather's nicer here. I've been in Batumi for a week now, and it has passed as if in a single day! We've managed nonetheless to have a few adventures. The day after I arrived, a huge storm blew in from Turkey and we had monsoon-like rains off and on for three days straight. This happens frequently, and usually isn't a problem, but this time, part of our roof was gone (it was in the rather slow process of being replaced), and so half of the upstairs got completely soaked. It also fried the electricity, so Reziko and I are still sitting in the dark in our room.

Why only in our room? Well, apparently, during the Soviet Union it was common practice to have two kinds of electricity running to your house: left and right. Right electricity was funneled through the meter; you ran your TV and lamps and whatnot on it, and you paid for it. Left electricity bypassed the meter; you ran your washing machine and other big appliances on it and got it for free. Legal? No. Widespread? Absolutely. Today the government has wiped out this practice by placing meters on the street before where the electric lines are split for each home, but the electrical systems themselves haven't been updated. Thus, our room is on left electricity, and that's the one that fried. We're still waiting for the electrician.

In other news, I've managed to get some baking done the past few days. I made peanut butter cookies and chicken pot pie, both of which went over rather well. Poor Inga's been sick (drinking bad water, perhaps?) so I've had the run of the kitchen, which has been nice. Not that I want her to be sick more often. I'm getting a little more assertive about cooking and whatnot, and now that I'm part of the family, Inga's been more willing to let me go wild with the cooking and cleaning and whatnot. It's a good feeling to be contributing, as well as to have a sense of control over my life and my space that is often lacking when you live with a host family (or your sweetheart's parents).

The past couple of days the weather has been great - it's warm and sunny during the day, but quite cool at night. Reziko and I have gone for some really great walks, and it's getting even nicer now that there are fewer tourists.

This first week has been a bit lazy, but we're gearing up to start our language lessons - Reziko learning English, of course, and me Georgian. I am still hoping to get a few English students while I'm here to help cover the cost of our plane tickets home.

Speaking of, no word yet on our visa petition. We know it's been received and it's in the works, but it can be a couple months or more before we hear anything - unless they need further documentation or something like that. Keep your fingers crossed that all will go smoothly - we'd love to be in the US as early next year as possible!

Not much else to report. Oh, except that the grapes are ripe and boy are they delicious! Nice to be living in the cradle of winemaking. :) Hope all at home is well!