or Georgian reality, anyway.
I just got back from vacation! I've experienced some interesting things here. And it's about time I took a vacation. I didn't leave the country my whole first year of service, which means I was home (my second one) for the holidays. All of them. But this time I decided to forego the supra-a-day-til-February and got outta dodge just as the holiday season began. The adventure went thusly.
Zeimis and the Great Escape:
Befor I left, I had to oversee the Christmas "zeimi" or event that Madga and I cooked up for our kids. All our classes participated (3,4,5,8). You'll wish you could have seen the 3rd graders memorizing groups of sounds that, when recited, eerily resemble the first verse of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas". You'll also wish you could have tasted the delicious homemade cutout cookies I made, complete with frosting. But don't regret too much; you wouldn't have been able to squeeze in the room amongst the parents and other kids who talked through the whole thing. The 4th graders' "Some people sing songs to people in hospitals or go to church," was lost in the void that is lots of Georgians attending an event. Indeed, there was only chaos as the 5th graders raced to complete their Christmas Crossword. The fireplace didn't make an appearance, either, due to projector impertinence. I gave up.
At least the kids had fun singing their songs in class every day for the previous two weeks ("Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas), and the 8th graders pulled together a hilarious scene of a family prepping for Christmas (complete with a short, sunglassed Santa). Even the weaker students shone as Georgian emcees and dancers.
The next day I was coerced into serving as the 3rd grade's "Christmas Around the World" slideshow attendant (which I'd shown their homeroom teacher how to create :] ) as well as 8th grade's zeimi's DJ, until the time of the last marshutka to Tbilisi, when I HAD to find a replacement and cut out.
Birthday bash and Christmas Eve:
One thing I didn't get cut was my hair. Host sister-in-law said she'd cut it Thursday night but forgot. Instead she offered to straighten in the next morning before I left. So, with my freshly straightened mullet, I partied it out with the PCVs in Tbilisi. We got Indian food and had drinks at the classiest bar in town.
Scene: Radisson Rooftop Lounge.
Me: I'll have a... umm... uh... White Russian!
Jeff: Oh, me too!
Waitress brings glasses.
Jeff: Umm... a White Russian has Kahlua in it.
Waitress takes glasses, brings glasses back.
Me: It's... lumpy.
Lesson learned: even if you pay out the nose for a drink, the bartender might have no idea how to make it, so you may have to spend the night stirring out the chunks.
Whatever. We got to enjoy the lights of the most famous street in town by walking down the middle of it in the middle of the night. And a lady at the Mariott gave us glasses for our cheap Georgian champagne, and free peanuts. Little America knows customer service!
Christmas was cool, too, with eggnog and White Elephant gift exchange and a party at a friend's place with interesting people who work at the embassy and as Fulbrights and cool stuff like that.
Before leaving the country, Cara and I triumphantly found a French restaurant in the middle of nowhere that we'd wasted hours failing to find before. I wasted money on some skinny jeans, contributing to my now-impending freaking out about my finances. (They're a little too big, and the bottom button broke. And they'd have been half price in Turkey. Live and learn?) But "NO BUYER'S REMORSE ALLOWED!"
Istanbul (not Constantinople [unless you look on the Greek map]):
Barring a bomb threat at the Tbilisi airport when we arrived, causing us to freeze our toes off and have our flight delayed half an hour, we finally got OUT! And what a wonderful and mysterious land we landed in! Filled with yummy Turkish delights such as doner and hummus and Starbucks, but not real "Turkish delights"... nobody likes "Turkish delights." They're icky.
It was also cool to be in the land of mosques.
In Georgia the culture is certainly different from America. But in Georgia, the churches have familiar images: Jesus, Mary, and Saints (especially St. George). In Istanbul, throughout the day, you could hear the call to prayer in Arabic ringing from the minarets everywhere you turn. And, although you could wander into a dozen Burger Kings, you could look for a bacon cheeseburger on the menu and never find it. Visiting the mosques is a process: as in Georgia, women must have their heads covered and are recommended to wear a skirt. Everyone must be dressed modestly (no shorts!). Before entering the mosque, you have to wait outside for the tourists to finish taking off their shoes and stuff them into a plastic bag to carry inside and leave a space on the ledge so that you can rush in and do the same. Once inside, you're free to marvel. Every millimeter is decorated with intricate geometrical patterns in blue and red and black and gold and purple and you pad along the carpet and take in every millimeter by the light of chandeliers with electric candles.
Istanbul is very tourist-welcoming, too. In the Grand Bazaar, as you walk past the stalls you are enticed with "Yes, please, come in," "Madame," "Guttentag," as the multilingual stallowners try to guess your nationality and earn your business. One carpet-seller in the city greeted us with an enterprising, "Let me help you spend your money!"
And the Authentic Turkish Bath we found on the nontouristy Asian side was one of those Unique Cultural Experiences, with captial letters. We found it floundering about, asking various Turks who didn't speak English, "Hammam (bath)?" and trying to understand their pointing. When we finally got there, we had some help from a lone French tourist, which was nice because the ladies who ran the thing didn't know English and we didn't know Turkish. We got more than what we paid for, dumping water on ourselves until the lady scrubbed away the first layer of our skin with a loofah and instructed us, via hand motions, to keep dumping. ...And then we got some delicious, drippy bakhlava!!
New Year's was pretty chill. We had some drinks at a bar and then had some drinks at another bar and line danced with some Turkish dudes and watched people set off fireworks in the street. No Cozy Bar or 17.50 lira margaritas, though, sorry Jim. <3
The 70s Come Alive:
The night train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki was pretty cool. It was an olive green relic from the 70s, making me feel like some sort of James Bond movie reject. But we got to hang out with an awesome girl we met at the hostel in Istanbul, who's teaching English in Slovakia and was on vacation with her mom.
The Night When Dive Hotels Didn't Make The Best Stories, Just Higher Blood Pressure.
Staying in Thessalonika was a mistake. We walked to the hotel we'd found on hostelbookers that was near the train station. We went up to the 4 person room. When we opened the door, it was as if we'd just turned the key of a forgotten can of sardines, stored next to the formaldehyde in the morgue for 340 years after the plague. And whose fault was it that we stayed there? The poor sap who booked the room. Cough. So I was responsible for talking to the clerk and not getting us gypped into paying extra for two inhabitable rooms.
Athens!
The first time I went to Athens during study abroad, I thought it was a big, kinda dirty city with lots of ruins. This time, I thought it was a medium, kinda clean city with lots of ruins. One night, we hung out with an awesome girl we'd met at the hostel in Istanbul, gone to the Turkish baths with, and ended up taking the same train to Thessalonika and staying at the same place in Athens. Weird! The new Acropolis Museum was especially neat, showing the famous Parthenon in all its glory. Well, glorified not as an exact replica but as a reconstruction, with modern, black columns and plaster casts of the incredible sculptures that adorned its roof (many of the original pieces belong to the British Museum).But a couple days of walking around and eating delicious gyros and moussaka and looking at old things, we decided to make like Spartans and get on a ship outta there.
Island Chills:
On the Blue Star Ferry to Santorini I learned what a Muster Station is, I lost many games of spades, and I resisted many urges to buy special Blue Star souvenirs from our gift shop, now open for business (every hour and a half or so). We were then picked up by our hostel dude and driven up the volcanic island to the set for Mamma Mia! Well, it was actually filmed on a different island, but it sure looked like it. We rented a car and explored the island's black and red beaches, were disappointed again and again by the Greek desserts that look better than they taste, and tried to watch the sunset by the windmill in one of the eerie off-season ghost towns. It was great!
One thing that amazed me is that we got by in all these places only using English. Even travellers we met from Germany and France and Brazil used English with the hostel clerks and in restaurants. But learning a little of the language goes a long way-- when I said "Kali mera!" (Good morning) to one of the street artists in Athens, he stopped me and talked to me as he made a cute metal pin with a treble clef and a heart, which he gave to me as a gift.
I didn't miss all of the holiday season when I got back to Georgia. It was still happening, because they celebrate two Christmases and two New Years, according to the old calendar. We had guests and supras every day the first week I got back. Although it's a happy, celebratory time, for me it means I'm waiting for warmer weather and longer days so I can start running again and get back into shape!
Yesterday I was feeling especially bad. There's no space of my own here where I can work without feeling like I'm imposing on Shorena's cleaning habits of sweeping and mopping the floor 2-4 times a day, and that doesn't make my hands stiff from the cold after 3 seconds of being away from the one room in the house with a pechi that's only warm sometimes because everyone leaves the door wide open. Also everyone has been telling me that I've gained weight and my face looks fatter, multiple times even though it's obvious I'm not flattered by the comment the first time. Thanks for the sensitivity.
So I wanted to run. I gambled that the stadium would be free and put on my running clothes, extra-chilled. When I got there, there were kids playing football (soccer). They don't play football for one or two hours here, they play it until they can't see the ball in front of them. So I was frustrated, but there's more than one way to skin a cat. I headed the road toward the river. Seeing the way completely soaked with mud, I thought I'd try running on the street. Ten seconds later, I had three dogs barking and chasing after me, who didn't respond to me turning around and threatening them with a rock. So I was done. I fumed and took an hour-long walk. Then I went to ANOTHER supra and had some VEGETABLES and FRUIT which compared with my past two days' food (rice and muraba, bread and butter and honey, bread and matsoni, bread and butter, pickled cabbage, and a bowl of "veggie" soup featuring potatoes and beef bits.. yum...) was a FEAST FOR A MEPE!!!!
Although I love living in Georgia, I'm looking toward the future. I'm going through the book What Color Is Your Parachute and trying to figure out my "skills" and "abilities" and trying to see if I actually have any dreams. I'll keep you updated. Any advice would not be ill-taken.
So now you've gotten through this book-of-an-update! What are you going to do now?
Please say sitting freshly showered in your nice, warm, central-heated haven with hot chocolate and a salad. That's what I'd do, if I could.
Love!
