...And we're back!

I would like to apologize for my month-long silence. In addition to my computer being broken for most of that time (although he's all back up and running now), I had been off and on horribly depressed. My logic was that no one wants to read about a person being depressed all the time, and a depressed person doesn't have the energy to write anyway. I am extremely happy to report that I am now NOT depressed, and have not been for this entire week. Whoo! However, I still haven't written, because not-depressed Alli still has a ton of homework, and I have simply not found the time. But I'm writing now, and I'm going to do my best to not allow so much time to lapse between entries again.

I was awakened by the sun shining in my eyes this morning and yesterday morning. That's so awesome! Even though daily temperatures are still in the 30s and there's snow on the ground, it definitely feels like spring is sneaking up on us. It's light out for a reasonable number of hours each day, the birds are singing, it feels like the whole city is waking up. Kira and I went for a really nice walk yesterday; you can see pictures from that and other post-Georgia Petersburg adventures here and here.

Speaking of Georgia, I'm going back for spring break! I leave this Friday evening, and will return to Petersburg Saturday, March 21. It's a bit of a lottery as far as the weather goes in Batumi in March - it might be gorgeous and sunny the whole week, or it might rain every day. Last Monday it snowed all day in Batumi; yesterday Rezi couldn't sleep even with all the windows open because it was so hot.

Although I haven't been writing, lots of little events have occurred which I thought people at home might enjoy hearing about. Thus a return to that favorite of blog forms, the vignette.

I'm sitting in a cafe, by the window. A man just took a picture of the cafe, which I invariably ended up in. I looked hard at the guy, studying him. Why take a picture of the Ideal Teacup? He saw me staring, clipped his heels and nodded crisply. I decided that was a gentlemanly thing to do.

***

Walking home from my internship, I notice that the lights at the soccer stadium are on. I vaguely remember fighting my way past a line to the ticket windows at the stadium on my way to school a couple weeks ago. Apparently it's game night. The sidewalk across the street from the stadium, about as wide as a two-lane road, is packed with cars. Another car almost hits me as it drives past, looking for a parking spot - I grumble vaguely to myself about pedestrian rights. Despite the below-freezing temperatures and laws against public drinking, people are tailgating. The underground crosswalk, also a metro entrance, is packed with fans. So is most of the street I need to walk up to get home. I'm swimming against a current of fanatical Zenit supporters, all wearing the tell-tale blue and white football scarves and carrying flags and banners. I silently thank myself for not wearing my Freemantle football scarf that day - Zenit fans are unpredictable, and any sign of supporting ANY other team is just asking for trouble. The stream of fans headed toward the stadium finally thins out as I get closer to home. I turn the game on over dinner - I can probably see better watching on Channel 5 than most of those fans freezing their butts off in the stadium. It's snowing; the bright green field takes on a soft-mint hue. When I turn off the TV to go to bed, the roar of the fans doesn't stop - I'm hearing the real thing, live, even through my shut windows.

***

Writing class. Darya Vladimirovna, my favorite teacher here, has just passed back our essays and is giving us some general commentary and suggestions. As I dutifully write down her comments, a sinking feeling overcomes me. "Think of an interesting title. Have a title in general. Work on your conclusions - the essay isn't done just because you've stopped writing." Oh dear lord. Those are the same comments I made to my ninth graders when I was student teaching last year. 24 years old, and I'm getting the same feedback I myself gave to 14-year-olds.

At first this was somewhat depressing. But then I thought about it: we Flagshippers are at a point in our language learning journey where it's not just about choosing the right grammar forms and trying out new vocabulary anymore, although that's still a big part of what we do. The Flagship program has taken on the gargantuan task of trying to make us fully capable of doing all the things an educated Russian person can do with the language - from writing various official documents, to understanding and properly using various stylistic choices to write academic versus personal essays, to being able to pick up on cultural references in conversation. I feel like we've been given nine months to learn what Russian schoolchildren get 10 years to master, which of course, is impossible. So I'm trying to give myself a break, remind myself that we can't master everything all at once, but we need this introduction to get us started. And if that means feeling like I'm back in ninth grade every once in a while, so be it.

***

The Russian word "посторонный" (postoronnyj)means "outsider, foreigner, extraneous;" taken literally, based upon etymology, it means "someone or something by the wayside." Some days it is really hard to come to terms with what feels like a pervasive and all-encompassing Russian indifference towards "extraneous" people. Take libraries, for example. Even in the public library, you can't just go there to study, you have to take out a book to sit in the reading rooms. Kennon and I tried to go to the journalism library at the university, because we heard that we could study there, but we made the mistake of telling the guards that we were from the philology department, and they basically told us to take a hike. We were utterly extraneous. The idea of who's in and who's out, it seems to me, plays a much bigger role in day-to-day life for me here than it does in America (where, probably thanks to my citizenship and skin color, I rarely feel like I'm "out") , and as a foreigner in this city, sometimes the feeling of being extraneous is overwhelming. But it's not just foreigners - it's homeless people, immigrant workers, and anyone who doesn't know the secret code or the right people to get "in" somewhere. You're not "in"? Then they don't give a shit about you.

***

The other day on the metro, a man sitting across from me starting yelling at a young couple standing in our car. I looked over; I couldn't see the young man, just his girlfriend. I thought the old guy was yelling at them for making out in the metro; Russians aren't shy about PDA, and the guy was yelling about decency, etc. But he got more and more threatening with his remarks, saying that it was disgraceful, that he was going to beat up the young man, etc. I started to feel really uncomfortable; other Russians in the car did too, and showed it by closing their eyes. At the next stop, the young couple moved to another part of the car to get away from the yelling guy, and I finally saw what the man was upset about - the boyfriend was black. And when I realized I'd just witnessed a serious display of racism, and that this probably wasn't the first time that couple had had this problem, and that everyone just closed their eyes and probably agreed with the yelling guy, even though they weren't willing to say it themselves - I just got really angry. But I didn't do anything either, because I didn't want to get myself into trouble. And then I got depressed about that too.

***

I've been thinking a lot lately about how this city doesn't surprise me as much as it used to, which is why it's sometimes hard to find things I think it will be interesting for you to read about. I was thinking just that thought on the way to school the other day, when I saw a man run out of the metro. On one foot he had a normal dress shoe. On the other, a plastic bag. As he ran past, I couldn't help but wonder how he ended up with a plastic bag on his left foot, and why he was running. I see all sorts of odd things like that all the time; after a while, you almost stop noticing.

***

So as not to end on a negative note, I would like to point out two things that make me feel happy and sort of negate the "extraneous" thing I talked about above. The first is that most cars really do try to drive around the huge puddles in the street so as not to splash pedestrians, at least on the street I walk down every morning. That makes me feel better about humans in general. The second thing is that twice in one day I saw a bus driver wait when he saw people running to catch the bus, when he could easily have slammed the doors and driven off (I've seen that before too). So yay for caring about other people!

Well, there are probably other vignettes I could write about, but I'm on my way out the door to eat sushi with Nadya and Lyuba. Happy Women's Day to all those awesome women out there!

Demons

On Sunday Katya, Berney and I went to see the stage version of Dostoevsky's 800-page novel Demons. The play premeired in 1991 in Germany, but we went to see it at the Maly Dramaticheski Teatr Evropy (The Small Dramatic Theatre of Europe), where it's a part of the repertoire. What's so special about this play that it deserves its own blog post?

It's nine and a half hours long.

Okay, so that figure includes two 1-hour breaks. Nonetheless, we were in that theatre on Rubenshtein Street from 11:45 AM till 9:30 PM. I've been to that theatre twice before, both times to see Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and while the acting is supurb, it's one of the most uncomfortable theatres to sit in: the chairs are really hard and they're badly arranged - unless you're in one of the first three rows, you're craning your neck to see no matter where you sit in the house. This fact, more than anything, gave me pause when Katya suggested we attempt this theatrical feat. Eight hours in one of those Puritan-church-pew-hard chairs, craning my neck to see over the ample lady in front of me? No thanks. As it turns out, Katya is a genius. She got us tickets in the very last row (it's a tiny house - only 13 rows - so we weren't miles from the stage), and we were able to stand up to see better and stretch a bit whenver we needed to. This was good, because what turned out to be the most memorable and impressive scene for me took place on the4 floor in front of the stage, and if I couldn't have stood, I would have missed most of it.

If ever you plan to go see the 8-hour stage version of Demons, I have one suggestion: read the novel first. Or at least the ClifsNotes. I went in cold, and spent most of the first act trying to sort out who was who. The opening monologue by crazy Maria completely passed me by, and even at the end of the play I couldn't figure out why Nikolai Vsevoldovich and that other guy had a duel (other than the fact that no good work of 19th century Russian literature lacks a duel). I also couldn't figure out who owed who money and why - but debt is a major reoccuring theme for Dostoevsky, so it was probably important. And why was Nikolai Vsevoldovich secretly married to crazy Maria in the first place?

Anyway, the first act was just shy of three hours long, and I was pretty antsy by the end, mostly because I was really hungry. The second act when much more quickly and was very engaging. The third act had me utterly spellbound. The weird thing is that each act was equally full of Dostoevsky's philosophical monologues, orations that went on for 10-15 minutes but added nothing to the plot. When I read Dostoevsky, it's always these monologues that either stop me dead or get skimmed over so I can get the plot moving again (hence why I never got through Notes from Underground the first time - the whole first half of the book is one of those diatribes). I would have expected that my patience for these monologues would have worn thinner and thinner as the hours ticked by, but I actually found the opposite: I was completely riveted in Hour 8 by Kirillov's explanation to that scoundrel Pavel Stepanovich about why killing himself would be the highest form of evidence that he himself was God, that he refused to buy into the God that man has made up for himself to make himself feel better. That one-line summary I just gave does not do justice to the monologue.

I think from now on I should only read Dostoevsky in the original, not translated.

This play included everything a good play needs: three murders, two suicides, a duel, a secret socialist society, and one on-stage birth. Also, almost all of the women in the play had slept with or were sleeping with Nikolai Vsevoldovich, who, in my opinion, was not really worth all the fuss. The acting was really, truly excellent. I recognized several of the actors from Uncle Vanya. I was most impressed by the actors who played Kirillov and Shatov. The guy who played Nikolai Vsevoldovich did a poor job projecting, which was disappointing, as it was hard enough to understand even without straining to hear.

One thing I really love about the Maly Dramatichesky Teatr is its sets. The stage is not large, there's no curtain, and they do several different shows each week, so it's necessary that the sets and lighting be easy to change. The Demons set was very simple but very versatile. The stage was raked, sloping downwards from stage left to right. In the center was a large wooden box, about 4 meters wide and 4 meters tall. The down- and upstage sides of the box raised and lowered; the stage left and right sides could raise and lower, and were also hinged to swing downstage (to create, with the downstage side of the box, a long wall) or upstage (for the same effect). By changing the positions of the walls, we trasitioned from scene to scene and from room to room. At the very back of the stage a ladder stretched from below stage up into the rafters. Just downstage of the box, a meter-wide section of the whole length of the stage, hinged at stage right, lowered to make a ramp that led below stage and raised to bbecome a sort of inclined platform, the highest point of which was about a meter and a half above the stage. A similar platform just upstage of the box was hinged at stage left. They made really interesting use of these platforms - when a character died, they would appear laid-out on one of the platforms, which would raise to its highest point, pause, then lower below stage again. During the duel, the duelists each walked up one of the platforms (their 12 paces) as it was raising; at the summit, they shot. If I've described it well enough, you'll note that the duelists actually had their backs to each other and shot into the wings; I think this was a fantastic way to "gain" more space onstage, plus the slight disconnect of seeing one guy shoot towards stage right and the other guy react from stage left was very effective.

As I mentioned, the lighting was very simple - mostly almost plain-white light (I'm sure there were gels, but there were no obvious hues to the lighting). Despite some moments of comic relief, the play overall was pretty dark and gloomy, and the lighting reflected this - the audience ended up feeling as unclear of what they were seeing as the characters were. I could be mistaken, but I think the only brightly colored light was at the end, when blood-red light flooded the red ladder at the back of the stage.

Speaking of that ladder, it was made to be the focus of attention once in each of the three acts. In the first two, creepy music with a steady drumbeat played while a little girl climbed from the bottom to the top, while another character monologued in the foreground. Not sure what it symbolized, but it left a deep impression. And speaking of music - sound effects were minimal, but extremely well-used. I got goosebumps multiple times.

So I sort of feel like I've told you all this but described nothing of what it was really like. Simply a fantastic play. If you speak Russian and are ever in Petersburg and have 10 hours to kill on a Sunday, go see Demons.

My life is boring and that's why I'm not writing

Hi Everyone,

Nothing new has really happened since I got back from Georgia, which is why I haven't been writing much. I had a my-host-mom-is-in-Egypt party a couple weekends ago which was pretty successful. I made a giant pot of chili and a triple-batch of cornbread which everyone ate with relish.

Classes are going fine. This semester they've added a mass media class to our lineup, which I'm very much enjoying, as it forces me to engage with Russian news sources more often, and since my Russian is now good enough to understand the news, both on TV and in print, we're able to work on analysis and finding bias.

I'm climbing back on the fitness wagon after a two-month hiatus. I went to the gym at 7 AM last Friday to find that the one person who could get the key from the guard was half an hour late to work, so I just went home. It was a frustrating beginning to my new regimen. Why, I stood there wondering, can't ANY employee take the key? There were three other employees also standing outside waiting. Dumb dumb dumb system. Anyway, I was able to get in and start working out right at 7 today. I'm going to try to make it a part of my daily routine. Hope it works - I'm aiming to lose 10 pounds by May.

Ummm.... yeah, that's it. It hasn't been terribly cold here. It's getting definitively lighter every day; soon I'll have the joy of walking-to-school sunrises again.

Sorry my blog got boring. I'm sure something culturally significant will happen soon about which I can comment.

Oh, also, my computer died about two weeks ago, so if I've been slow to respond to email or Facebook posts, that's why. :)

Georgia Part 8: Tbilisi, The long road back to Piter, and what comes next

They cancelled my flight to Kiev from Batumi, so I ended up having to fly out of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Rezi, Basa and I took an overnight train to Tbilisi from Batumi. We only had a few hours in the morning to look around, so we saw very little of the city (we had hoped to get Rezi’s cousin to drive us around a bit to see the city, but there was a miscommunication about the timing and we couldn’t fit it in). However, what I did see I really liked – the architecture is beautiful, there are churches everywhere, and the whole city is nestled in a valley, so the view of the city from the hills is amazing. Rezi himself had never been to Tbilisi before (other than to transfer trains, which doesn’t count), and so I’ve made him promise that we’ll do some more exploring when I come back. One thing I wouldn’t suggest doing in Tbilisi – ordering khachapuri Ajara-style. They don’t know how to do it. Best to be in Ajara (that is, in Batumi) to get it done right.

My trip back to Piter was long, and made more so by the sudden feelings of loneliness that washed over me. For three straight weeks I’d been surrounded by people that made me feel like one of their own (not least of which was Rezi), and suddenly I was alone. I didn’t plan ahead and so didn’t have a map or guidebook for Kiev, so even though I had a few hours to kill between my flight and my train to Moscow, I ended up not seeing anything noteworthy (even though it’s a glorious city). Instead I went to the movies and saw the most awful film ever, “Tarif Novogodny” (“New Year’s Phone Plan”). It was so poorly written and badly acted that I don’t even want to talk about it. It was strange in Kiev to suddenly understand everything being said around me again; my ears had gotten used to simply not understanding most of the linguistic input they were getting in Georgia.

In Moscow I had the whole day to play, so I made my way to Red Square and went through all the hoopla to see Lenin’s mummy again. You have to go in the proper gate, pay to check your bag, go through the metal detectors, and then you get all of 15 seconds to look at the waxy, creepy corpse before it’s all over, and then you have to walk all the way back across Red Square to get your bag back. I’ve decided that seeing Lenin twice in one lifetime is enough – I won’t go back again.

Red Square was set up for some kind of concert, so there was no entrance into St. Basil’s Cathedral. However, I did spend several hours at the State Historical Museum. The rooms on the first floor are themselves worthy of a tour – they’re gorgeous! I was lucky enough to end up on a free excursion through the first floor of the museum, which started in pre-historic times and went up to the end of the 17th century. History of the Russian Empire was shown on the second floor; I perused that collection on my own, but wasn’t as impressed (maybe I was just tired, but really, the personal papers of various generals just weren’t that interesting).

I had a little return culture shock when I realized that Moscow was just teaming with cops. (Piter is the same way.) It’s always been like that, I’d just forgotten for three weeks what it’s like to see cops everywhere all the time.

So what comes next? Rezi has invited me back for the summer, so after Flagship ends on May 25 I’ll be heading back to Georgia, at least till the end of the summer. And after that, we’ll see.

Georgia Part 7: Observations about food, drinking, and driving

Eating and drinking seem to consume the vast majority of Georgian’s time and attention (evidence: on New Year’s Day, Basa’s first day off in about a month, he was called in to work on urgent business. He rushed to work to find that the “urgent business” was a full bottle of vodka and a small New Year’s feast). With food as good as theirs, it’s understandable. While I’m no food critic, and thus lack the vocabulary to write beautifully about food, I’d like to try to describe a few of my favorite Georgian dishes. I found recipes for many of these dishes on this blog, though I have yet to actually try any of them out.

• Khachapuri – see part 3. In all I tried standard khachapuri, Mengrelian-style, Royal Mengrelian-style, and Ajara-style.
• Cucumber and tomato salad – yes, this sounds simple enough, but add ground up walnuts, parsley (actually, the more general term “greenery” was used), onions (which I always picked out) and sometimes bell peppers, and you’ve got a light and tasty starter to balance all the meat, bread, and cheese that’s loading down the rest of the table.
• Gomi – this is basically boiled cornmeal with soft cheese melted into it. VERY tasty. And white – Georgian corn is white, not yellow. Goes excellent with…
• Satsivi – chicken in walnut sauce. To die for. This with gomi is my favorite Georgian dish of all time.
• Mchadi – Georgian cornbread. It’s fried. Good with things that require dipping, especially…
• Lobio – the general word for “beans.” However they make them, they’re always really tasty.
• Shashlik – “this is actually Russian,” they’d always say as they dug in to this roasted meat dish. Typically beef, pork, or veal. I avoided the veal.
• Kabab wrapped in lovash (tortilla-like flat bread) – Really loved this because it reminded me of the sausage Dadoo made when I was a kid.
• Georgian tvorog (farmer’s cheese) with mint. – I forgot the Georgian name for this dish. But it goes great with mchadi.
• A variety of carrot and cabbage concoctions. The most important element is walnut paste. It makes everything delicious.
• Churkchelo – a string of walnuts or hazelnuts which has been dipped repeatedly in concentrated grape juice and allowed to dry to make a confection. Yummy.
• Khinkali – boiled, juicy meat dumplings that “must” be eaten with your hands (“When George Bush visited Tbilisi, he LOVED khinkali,” they told me more than once). First you bite a little hole in the dumpling, suck out the meat juice, then finish eating it, leaving behind the “bellybutton” of pure crust. Good covered in pepper; when they’ve gotten cold, you can send them back to the kitchen to be fried for Round 2 of eating. I can eat about 4-5 khinkali if I’m really hungry; I heard tale of a Georgian man finishing off a tray of 30 after claiming, “I’m not really hungry.”

While we’re on the subject of not being hungry: no one ever seemed to believe me when I told them I was full. They thought I was jus saying that to be polite. Basa was all the time saying, “Don’t be shy! If you’re being shy on my account, I’ll leave!” But really, I was just full! As time went on, I got better at both slowing down at the beginning of the meal so I wouldn’t fill up so quickly (makes sense when dinner goes on for 3-4 hours or more), and at refusing more food.

And while we’re thinking about gorging, the 30 khinkali story is not the only story I heard about eating food in mythical quantities. Eliko’s dad, Avto, ate an entire suckling pig on New Year’s Day. Temuka told of a friend who, after several hours of feasting, made a bet that he could eat 15 whole quail (I’m pretty sure that’s the bird they were talking about: tiny, with edible bones, and VERY greasy). He proceeded to eat the 15 quail, plus two extra, just to prove that he wasn’t “just” finishing the bet. Basa told of a man who ate 60 pelmeni at one go. These stories baffle me – clearly it is a source of pride and evidence of manliness to be able to eat a ton, but I just don’t see the appeal of gluttony.

• Khashi – this is the only food in Georgia I categorically dislike. Rezi assures me that many Georgians don’t like it either, but it is touted as extremely healthy, good for your joints, and a sure cure for a hangover. It’s cow hooves and stomach in broth. It cooks for a long time and smells awful, then you ladle this dreadful mass into a bowl, add a ton of garlic and salt, take a shot of vodka, and eat up. It was the texture of the stomach that got me most. And if I let myself think about the fact that it was stomach, I couldn’t swallow it. I didn’t try any hoof. I’ll try anything once, and I’m glad I’ve had the experience, but I won’t be upset if this was the only time in my life I have to eat khashi.

Drinking and eating are closely related activities in Georgia. Most families have grapevines in their yards and make their own wine, which tends to have a lot more “bite” than commercial wines (also tends to be unfiltered, which I suspect may be why it gave me a headache). In restaurants you can by local wine on tap. I’ve already talked about the importance of toasting and the other rituals that go along with drinking in Georgia. I’d just like to mention here that I was overwhelmed by the frequency of drinking. Granted, I was visiting during the holidays. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for wine at breakfast, for example. I was always surprised to find the boys already hard at it when we got to Basa and Inga’s, whether we arrived at 3 PM or at 5. I’m jumping ahead to the end here, but I was completely bowled over in Tbilisi when Basa ordered a (small) bottle of vodka to go with our khachapuris. AT SEVEN AM! When he ordered a second bottle a couple hours later at a different café, where we were waiting for some friends, I brought it up to Rezi. “Why order that bottle if we’re not going to sit here very long, and you and I don’t want to drink?” “We’re sitting at a table,” Rezi explained. “If you’re sitting in a group around a table, it doesn’t feel natural to him to not be toasting. He feels uncomfortable and disrespectful if he doesn’t invite you to drink with him, no matter what time of day it is.” I love Basa, and Rezi’s explanation of his morning drinking makes sense to me, but I am so glad I’m dating the son and not the father. Rezi’s not a big drinker – his metabolism is so high that he always ends up with a hangover before the night is even over, so he tends to drink the minimum he can get away with (or at least he did while I was around).

Driving is another part of life in Georgia that takes some getting used to (and which may make a believer out of me. Miraculously escape death enough times…) For one thing, no one wears seatbelts. Wearing a seatbelt, they reason, is like asking to be in a car accident. The lines painted on the road are taken as mere suggestions, and I often saw four cars abreast where there should have been two, passing in no-passing zones, U-turns being made in front of on-coming traffic. Lots of last-second braking. Rezi and I took taxis a lot to get around town, and I often just closed my eyes and squeezed his hand, because if I was going to die, I didn’t want to see it coming. The scariest part for me is that they drink and drive all the time. They understand that drunk driving is dangerous, but they don’t consider getting behind the wheel after “just a few” as drunk driving. The roads in Batumi were of varying quality. Larger roads tended to be pretty smooth, but we went down some side streets with potholes practically as big as the car we were in. Rezi’s street, though located in the center of the city, is unpaved. On our drive to the waterfall in the mountains, there was a distinct cut-off point up to which they’d resurfaced the road, and after which was extremely bumpy. And pedestrians beware – you do NOT have the right of way. Cars will honk, but they won’t slow down, and if you don’t jump out of the way, it’s your own fault. Batumi cracked me up with their crosswalk signals – which they only had at intersections in the touristy part of town – because they turned instantly from green to red with no warning blinking, which could easily get you stuck in the middle of the street. Seems like they haven’t quite thought that one out yet.

Georgia Part 6: Meet the parents and New Year

See New Year's pictures here.

New Year’s is a family holiday in Georgia – involving, it goes without saying, lots of food and drink. Georgians put up what we call a Christmas tree, but they don’t exchange gifts on New Year or Christmas. It’s traditional around New Year and the few days after to always bring a couple pieces of candy to put on the table (usually in the bread or fruit bowl) when you go to someone’s house, because they believe it’s bad luck to be the first guest to enter someone’s house in the new year, and bringing candy somehow wards that off (appeasing evil spirits? I already don’t remember – I should have written it down when they told me about the tradition).

I was pretty nervous about meeting Rezi’s parents. Sure, I’d met his friends, and they all thought I was alright, but what would his parents think of the Internet girl? Turns out I had nothing to worry about – they both accepted me so warmly, I instantly felt at home. They really made me feel like a part of the family – actually, several times over the course of my stay I got the impression that Rezi’s friends and family are just itching for a wedding, and pretty much consider me and Rezi’s eternal bond as a done deal.

Anyway, right away on New Year’s Eve I ended up one-on-one with Rezo’s dad, Basa – a real character! 56 years old, Basa is a civil engineer with a moustache he’s NEVER shaved (for some reason, his dad forbade it) and a missing ring finger on his left hand (apparently he was wearing a ring on that finger when he decided to jump over a gate. The ring got caught at the top and stayed there – along with his finger). The funny thing about the missing finger is that Basa acts like it’s still there. He’ll hold up both hands and say something like, “We’ll leave in 10 minutes.” “More like 9 and a few seconds,” jokes Gogi. Basa, like EVERY man in Georgia, smokes like a chimney, and since he’s been at it most of his life he’s got a raspy, rumbly voice. That, coupled with the fact that he sort of mumbles anyway, made it very difficult for me to understand him at first, even though he speaks fantastic Russian (those who grew up in the Soviet system, down to about age 32, all spoke excellent Russian. For political reasons, Russian is just not a language they LIKE to speak now). Basa always has a story to tell – about what’s happening at work, about ridiculous bureaucratic adventures in the Soviet Union, about his family. Most of all I love the way he speaks with complete love, utter pride, and total devotion to his hometown, his country, and his family. He loves his boys and will do everything he can to help them out as long as he’s alive.

Rezi’s mom, Inga, is a total riot. She’s the sweetest woman ever and a fantastic cook – she makes whatever Rezi’s friends ask for when they come over, which is every day – and started calling me “moya devochka” (“my girl”) almost right away. But she cracks me up – at 47, she’s already “old.” “Oh, I’m so old,” she declares. “I wanted to sell this house and move to an apartment, but my boys won’t let me. They’re used to it here. But it’s too big for me to take care of on my own. I’m already old. Gogi used to help me, but now he’s grown up and has work. If only I had a girl, she could help me around the house.” Wow, Inga, could you drop any bigger hints? :) Inga is a master force-feeder; her habitual phrase is, “Why aren’t you eating? Eat, eat to your health!” I was a lot better off once I realized she mostly says that out of habit, and that I don’t actually have to continue eating just to avoid offending her.

New Year was a turning point in my visit. Before New Year, Rezi and I spent most of our time on our own. Though we got together with friends some evenings, for the most part it was just the two of us. After New Year, however, when I finally met Rezi’s parents, we stopped eating out every day and instead spent our days at his parents’ house (or at Eliko’s house).

On New Year’s Eve I met (or saw again) a few new friends that didn’t come out that first night in the ship restaurant. Irma, Eliko’s cousin, lives three doors down from Rezi. Tiny and bird-like, I never once saw her in a bad mood. She flits around the room, taking pictures, joking and laughing, taking people by the arm and patting them affectionately. Her addresses to me always began with, “Alli, Alli!” Always twice like that. She’s very cute. Baata, at 39, is the eldest in Rezi’s circle. He’s also gigantic – not that he’s super tall or fat, he’s just a big guy. His Russian was excellent once he broke it out for me (he even threw in a few soft consonants, which are decidedly lacking in the Georgian pronunciation of Russian, just to show off), and is always very friendly. On my last day in Batumi Rezi and I arrived at his parents house to find several of the boys, including Baata, already well into a bottle of vodka. Baata, his voice choked with emotion, toasted me, saying, “You are like a sister to us!” I was very touched, but also quite aware that he was pretty drunk. Later he gave me a dollar bill as a parting gift. Why exactly he decided to give an American a dollar, I’m not quite sure, but it probably made sense to him at the time.

New Year’s in Georgia goes on for about a week, so even though Rezi and I headed home around 2 AM after greeting the new year, we didn’t miss all the festivities. New Year’s Day I had a bit of a hangover from the homemade wine we had the night before, and when we arrived back at Basa and Inga’s house, I was immediately plied with more wine, which was not what I needed. I ate heartily at Inga’s table (including a lot of meat) – big mistake. I should have paced myself, because as it turned out, I was expected to eat ALL DAY. On New Year’s Day everyone goes around visiting, eating and drinking at every home they visit. We only went to Inga’s house and Eliko’s mom’s house, but it was way more than I was prepared to handle. In the afternoon on New Year’s Day I got my first Georgian lesson from Eliko, which was fun, but by early evening the excess food, drink, noise, and cigarette smoke had combined to give me a walloping headache. Luckily Rezi wanted to leave early, and once we got back to the quiet of our loft (and I took some ibuprofen), I felt a lot better.

When I woke up on January 2, I could tell something wasn’t quite right. I still felt full. Not just full, but as if my guts were filled with bricks. “That’s not good,” I thought. “Your stomach is sort of round and pooched out,” observed Rezi.

And it all just… sat there. And despite the fact that I felt pretty awful, I had to eat and drink a bunch more that day. Georgians say that however you greet the day on January 2 is how your whole year will go, so I tried to be cheerful all day. We started the day off at Basa and Inga’s, then went over to Irma’s house in the evening. By the time we returned to Basa and Inga’s house, my lower digestive tract had had it and finally jumped into action. I think I lost a good two pounds in about an hour. I felt so much better. Inga was very soothing, and I was like, “Well, I’m surprised the revolt didn’t happen earlier. Usually I can handle about anything, but I guess my iron guts («железный желудок») just couldn’t take New Year.” Rezi was concerned about me, and expressed it thus: “Wow, your stomach went way down! And it’s soft now, whereas it was firm before!” Thank you, sweetie. Laughter IS the best medicine…

On January 3 everyone was exhausted from so many straight days of drinking, and so everyone was lazy about speaking Russian. I felt left out all day, and started to pine for my friends at home, whose jokes I understand. In the evening Rezi, Gogi, Irma, and I went to a restaurant, but there was a kid’s birthday party and the music was really loud, so we ended up not talking there either. That was the only day I really didn’t have much fun – and it wasn’t even that I wanted to leave Georgia, I just didn’t want to feel left out all the time. Thankfully, Rezi and I spent quite a bit of time talking that evening, so by the time we went to bed I was feeling much better.

Georgia Part 5: Things I Saw

See pictures from around Batumi, Tbilisi, and a couple from Moscow here.

In addition to the aquarium and the zoo, Rezi and I made our way around to the other attractions Batumi has to offer. On December 24 we went to a fortress that was built by the Romans in the first century, but it was kind of dark by the time we got there, so I couldn’t see very well. I’d like to go back when it’s light sometime. On the way there Rezi proudly pointed out that his father and brother had built the road we were on and the bridge we drove over. We also had to brake quickly for a cow in the middle of the road, which sort of cracked me up. We had a fantastic guide – Emzari, Temuka’s friend and an archeology professor at the university here (I’m pretty sure it’s also only through his influence that they opened the fortress to visitors at all in the winter). The fortress was used by the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Turks, and Emzari explained about what historical and archeological evidence they had of activity at the fortress in various centuries. I love being in a part of the world with such a rich and long history. He invited us to visit the archeology museum, which we ended up doing without calling ahead, so our tour was in Georgian (Rezi translated bits and pieces as well as he could, but mostly I relied on the English and Russian summaries on each of the display cases). I got a big cultural lesson on that tour as well – we paid for our tickets to the museum, but when our guides later found out that we knew Emzari, they were very embarrassed that we’d paid – EVERYTHING in Georgia is done based on relationships, and they would not have let us pay had they known Emzari invited us.

Emzari’s 4-year-old daughter, Lizi, came with us on our excursion, and was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I wish I could have talked to her – she doesn’t speak Russian. But after being shy for a little while, she decided that she really liked me and gave me a lemon she picked herself from the trees in the fortress. At dinner, she refilled my juice glass for me – such a good hostess! She also recited for us the poem she’d memorized in Georgian for the New Year’s concert at kindergarten. And when her dad took her home, apparently on the way she asked if Rezi and I were an item. What a cutie!

Rezi and I also visited the other two museums in Batumi, which were admittedly less impressive. We were the first visitors at the natural and ethnographic history museum literally in months, and its sad offerings explained why. I was amazed that all the museum employees still showed up every day – what a boring job with no visitors! The art gallery was somewhat better – though Rezi found only one painting that appealed to him, I found several of the pieces quite engaging. Interestingly, I was initially not very impressed with the picture that Rezi liked – all in greys, with a hooded figure huddled under a bare tree in front of an old, ruined church. “Why do you like it so much?” I asked Rezi. “Because it is like the real Georgia,” he explained. “See how the church has been destroyed by war? And there is the sea.” While I didn’t particularly like the painting any more after Rezi’s explanation, I did appreciate hearing his point of view.

After New Year we also managed to see a pretty impressive waterfall, which was located about a 50 minute drive into the mountains. We went to the waterfall at Rezi’s father’s suggestion, and Rezi ended up being a little annoyed that we spent so much time getting there and back, as it was pretty chilly by the falling water and we only stayed about 5 minutes, and he thought it would have been more impressive had we saved the waterfall for summer. But I was glad we went – not only was the waterfall breathtaking, but I caught a glimpse of country life in Georgia, and our route, which followed a river wending lazily between two mountains, was beautiful. Georgia is fairly bursting with fresh, delicious, clear mountain spring water – on our way to the waterfall, we saw no less than a dozen mini-waterfalls coming right out of the side of the hills next to the road. You can even drink the tap water – and not only will it not make you terminally ill (like in Piter), it’s also tasty!