Spring Break

I'm sitting in the airport in Istanbul, about halfway through a grueling 7.5 hour layover. I'm not a big fan of this airport limbo-world, all the more so since I've slept maybe an hour or two since waking up Friday morning - we left Batumi in a car bound for Tbilisi at around 10 Friday night, and I was afraid to sleep in the car lest the driver also nod off.

But this is the end of the story. Let's start at the beginning, it's easier for everyone that way.

I flew out of Piter on Friday the 13th (oo-oo-ooh!) on the emptiest international flight I've ever been on - there were maybe 40 people on the whole plane. Was that related to the date, or is there just not much traffic between Piter and Istanbul? Not sure. Anyway, it was nice, I laid out flat across three seats and got a little nap in. I arrived in Tbilisi at about 4 AM, where I was joyfully met by a freshly sheared and shaved Rezo. We immediately clambered into an SUV driven by a friend of Basa (Rezo's dad) and set out for Batumi. Batumi is only about 365 km (227 miles) from Tbilisi, but it's a five hour trip minimum, because the road looks like this:

Okay, so my representation of what the road looked like is an exaggeration. But it did wind a lot, and with the way Georgians drive, it was a pretty intense experience. However, I can't really complain, because apparently there have been vast improvements made to the roads - before, it was a 10 hour drive. Between Tbilisi and Batumi, I learned that if you happen to decide to pass a truck and find yourself face to face with another car barrelling towards you, rightfully in their own lane, there's no need to slow down and get back in your lane. Nope. Because three cars will easily fit where there's only supposed to be two. Yep.

Rezi and I slept away much of Saturday, but Saturday evening I got a full-on Georgian experience, which, admittedly, slammed me with culture shock. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep, maybe I just forgot to prepare myself, but I was completely overwhelmed by having six people talk to me at once, trying to keep up with the Georgian that switched to Russian and back to Georgian, eating delicious food, drinking homemade wine, and the shouting, oh the shouting! But after Saturday I managed to switch over to "Georgian Alli," that is, I got used to not understanding a lot of what people were saying and spending a lot of time nodding and smiling, and had a marvelous time.

Basa is determined to teach me Georgian as quickly as possible, and often spoke to me in Georgian. Amazingly, even though I don't know more than a handful of Georgian words yet, several times over the course of the week I simply knew what people were talking about. More than once I answered in Russian a question that was asked in Georgian, and I guessed right what they were asking about. In each of these cases, of course, the context was pretty clear, but all the same, I think it's a good start on the language-learning path. There are some words I understand when a Georgian says them, but I couldn't repeat them back to you. The thing about Georgian is that it's full of sounds my ears simply don't pick up on yet - for example, a word may have 4 consonants in a row, but I only hear 2 of them. I'm not a phoneticist, but my phonetics teacher explained that the ear of a native English speaker focuses on the vowels, since we have 20 vowel phonemes (which is why it's difficult for a Russian to differentiate between the words "pin" and "pen," for example. Their ears hear the short i and the short e as the same sound). Georgian has only five vowel sounds, so their words derive much more meaning from the various consonant combinations that I find so befuddling. So that's going to take some getting used to.

On this trip I met Rauli, Rezo's best friend, who is a sailor and therefore spends a good 8 or 10 months of the year at sea. Our schedules coincided at last, and I got to meet him. I also briefly met Iva, Rezi's friend who is currently living/studying/finding himself or something like that at a monastary. So now I think I've met the whole gang.

Rezi and I spent a lot of time just walking around Batumi, talking. Most of the week the weather was wonderful; on Thursday, it was actually hot. Friday it was rainy and gloomy though - as if the skies knew it was time for me to leave. On Wednesday Rauli took me and Rezo up in the mountains and we hiked around some pretty beautiful spots. I bet in summer, when everything is fully green, it's absolutely stunning. Here are pictures from our hike, plus a few others. Oh yeah, and I managed to fall flat on my butt on a slippery rock before taking my very first picture. I wasn't hurt at all, but I was concerned about the awful cracking noise of my camera meeting the stone full-force. Amazingly, despite its new, less-rectangular-than-before shape, it still works just fine.

The first couple days I ate way too much meat, and my stomach revolted. Inga, Rezi's mom, was very sympathetic, and on Wednesday we went to the store together and got everything for an American-style salad: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red and yellow bell peppers, radishes, green onions, and parsley and dill. I tossed everything together, explained that it's better when everyone adds their own oil, didn't add any at all to mine, and just about cried it was so delicious. I haven't had a real salad since I left the States last August - nothing fried, no oil, everything fresh and delicious. My guts thanked me. This was the first time my Georgian family had eaten salad, and I was worried they wouldn't like it, but it was a hit. We joked that they were the first family in Georgia to eat salad. They made me laugh: "this would go great as a garnish to meat!" I explained that you can add just about anything you want to a salad, that in the summer, I would make them different versions, and that in the US, salad often IS eaten as a side to a more substantial main dish. Rezi liked it too - and tells me that Inga is making it again today. Can't wait to hear how it turns out!

So I ate that salad for three meals in a row (it was a big one!), including breakfast. And this made me think about how much my palate has expanded since I started traveling abroad. I remember barely choking down some things in Japan and in Ukraine - in Ukraine I couldn't bring myself to eat corn for breakfast. I just had very solid notions about what can and can't constitute breakfast. In Georgia, at least in Rezo's family, breakfast is comprised of the same foods as any other meal. And I don't mind at all. What's strange is that I noticed not minding eating salad for breakfast more than I noticed the fact that salad for breakfast is kind of weird.

This post ended up a little more random than I intended, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. I had a fabulous week in Georgia, and it went by way too quickly. It was even better than in December, because Rezi and I weren't at all nervous about meeting each other, and we were immediately relaxed and chatty. Two more months in Piter, and I'll be back in Batumi. We have big plans for the summer, involving early-morning trips to the beach, grilling out, and hiking. It's going to be the best summer ever!