Life is Pretty Damn Grand, Part the Second

So the host family has all-around been distinctly awesome, but my also awesome American friends have hardly taken a backseat! Julie's host family has been away on vacation, and last week she, Mark, and I got together to make a proper American summer dinner.

Appetizers of beer, watermelon, and Pringles

Covered in meaty deliciousness

Julie and Mark's trademarked potato salad, corn, cheeseburger.  Amazing!! 

Afterwards we watched a couple episodes of the Simpsons.  If not for the lack of AC, I could have been home.  Must do this again!

On Thursday, the three of us met up at Oscar's for some of their good food and well-priced Georgian beer.  And then on Friday night, we had dinner at Aragvi to say goodbye to Mark, who was leaving for two weeks because his family was coming to visit.  So.  Jealous.  He was planning to meet them in Tbilisi and then travel pretty much all over Georgia.  They'll make a stop in Poti in about a week, so looking forward to meeting the Mark Clan.

Julie and I have been hanging out even more than usual, with Mark gone and her host family still out of town.  I was suuuuper broke at the end of the month (see previous Kobuleti post!), but she very generously offered to buy me dinner at Oscar's (we go there a lot), and there we met Mustafa!

Mustafa is from Turkey, and is here in Poti doing some commercial diving work down at the port.  He's also really cool, really funny, and speaks excellent English.  He's so cool, in fact, that Julie and I have spent our last three evenings hanging out with him.

Last night we met up in the afternoon at a nice place down near the port that I like a lot, although I've never been able to find out the name.  And once again... we found the hours slipping by at breakneck speed and before I knew it, it was midnight.  Really good food and ice cream and company... plus a couple shots of vodka, because after all, this is Georgia.

Julie and Mustafa

Vodka shot!  Sucks my eyes are closed for this photo.

I finally left the party a little after midnight... Mustafa got me a taxi home and I taxied right into another party.  My host family and the neighbors were doing it up Proper in front of the house again.  Before I knew it I had another cup of beer in my hand and was laughing it up with my fantastic family.

Ucha, Nata, Me

With my beautiful host sisters!

Today... today is a quiet day.  I needed one of those!  Going to take my kindle out front and read for a little bit as the weather continues to be perfect.  Loving Georgia a lot these days!

Life is Pretty Damn Grand, Part the First

Well, life is just rolling merrily along.  Internet's been out since Sunday morning, or I would have done some updating before now!  A lot has happened -- I've really had some wonderful times recently, both with the host fam and with the Poti Gang.  Been to the beach twice more with the family, including once to Grigoleti, a beach about 15 minutes south of Poti that I hadn't been to before.  Beautiful, and very clean which sadly, Poti's beach is not. I can't wait to go again with Mark and Julie.

The Black Sea through the pines on a simply perfect afternoon.

Anna, Nata, Me, host cousin Nino, Nino's friend Mari

My mosquito-ravaged feet in paradise.

Grigoleti

Light beach reading

I've also gotten out on my bike a couple times, now that the weather has drastically improved and also -- my illness finally seems to have abated.  Myositis sucks a lot for something I personally had never heard of before two months ago.  But it's probably been almost two weeks since I felt any tightness or pain in my chest.  So I brushed the dust off of Bee and took him for a spin out in Maltaqva, the pretty wooded beachside park just south of Poti proper.

Bee.  Points if you can tell me where I got his name from. :)

My "bike trail".  Black Sea in the distance.

And then, a couple of nights ago, the host family took me and the girls to an amusement park!  (I forget the name but it was just north of Kobuleti.)  It was awesome and a LOT of fun.  More spinning, twirling, jerking puke rides than you'd ever want to see, at least if you're me, whose fearless adventuresome spirit (ha) is hampered by a stomach that's embarrassingly prone to motion sickness.  Managed not to puke in the car on the way home though.  :)  Bonus.

Candyland view from the top of the ferris wheel.

This past Sunday was Miriam's Day, a Georgian Orthodox holiday devoted to the mother of Jesus.  But this is Georgia, after all, and apparently the way to honor Mary is for the men to drink many many glasses of wine.  Gaumarjos!  Being an American and (I suppose) being able to hold my own, I was given an honorary seat at the dude-only supra. :)

Rezzo, two neighbors, Ucha, Eldari

"I love the view, but I would not want the life." *

Well, after some rough patches recently, I have to say that things with my host family have been distinctly fantastic lately.  In addition to the great morning on the beach that I mentioned, we've had some pretty chill times and conversations and even a few jokes.  And let me tell you, jokes are hard to get through the language barrier.

This past Friday, we were having lunch, which included (like almost always) pitchers of their homemade wine.  My host grandpa, Eldari, was making fun of me for drinking like an American -- i.e., sipping with every toast rather than downing the entire glass in one fell swoop.  My host mom, Nana, said one of my favorite things ever (and also this really shows how her English is improving!) -- "You're in Georgia.  Drink like a Georgian."  And then, to prove her point, she went into the next room and came back with these:

May I just say, I rose to the occasion manfully.

And no -- no WAY those things were any way like full.  One brimming glassful each got poured in.  That was plenty -- believe me!

Then, after my post lunch coma nap, I was walking to the market nearby and ran into Ucha, the host cousin visiting for the summer from Tbilisi.  Sometimes we get together in the evenings and hang out with his buddies -- we generally camp out on the benches in front of my host family's house, drinking Georgian beer and cracking sunflower seeds.  It's really very Georgian and a pleasant, low-key way to pass the time.  (Plus it doesn't break my bank!  Super bonus!)

But that particular night, Ucha invited me into his house (next door), "to drink wine."  Well, it turned out that Ucha had invited four of his friends over for an utterly fantastic supra.  There was a ton of food, all of it quite tasty.  And SOOO much wine!  There was toasting and toasting and toasting and laughing and toasting.  I didn't have my camera because I had not idea what the night would turn out to be, but I had an amazing time and finally had to tear myself away at 2:00 AM.  Ucha and his buddies were still going strong!

I don't know if I've actually ever mentioned this, but for the past month, my two host sisters Anna and Nata have been away, staying with their aunt in Bakhmaro.  Bakhmaro is a teeny summers-only village way up in the mountains, and is surrounded by some of the most incredible, stunningly beautiful scenery I have ever seen or imagined.

I know this, because today the family went to go bring them home, and I asked to come along.

And so -- I dragged my happy ass out of bed at 7:30 in the morning today (ridiculous), and got in the car with my host-aunt and host-uncle.  (Rezzo would apparently be along later in a separate car.)  Georgia has some truly breathtaking mountains.  It's about two and a half hours from Poti to Bakhmaro, and I enjoyed every minute of the trip -- particularly whipping around the hairpin curves and looking down and out over an endless expanse of green rolling into hazy blue.

Bakhmaro

Anna and Nata.  I missed these girls!

When we got there, the girls were overjoyed to see everyone and their aunt was of course the perfect Georgian hostess.  I immediately got sat down for hot coffee, and fresh bread with butter and honey.  Perfect breakfast.  After I was done eating, I took the rest of my coffee outside and stared at this incredible view.

From what I could see, life in Bakhmaro is one teeny tiny step from outright camping.  Facilities are very (very) basic, and there are one or two small shops a ways up the road.  Most houses had a firepit out front.  I think I would love to stay here for a couple days... breathe the air, hike in the amazing forest, sing around the fire and not have to worry about email.  Or... showers, for that matter.  But being here a month?  Sheesh.  I think both Nata and Anna were looking forward to coming home. :)

Anna.  The whole region is just riddled with crystal-clear streams like these.  Bakhmaro is known for its spring water.

Georgian duplex.  The right side is their house.

Bakhmaro is serious horse country.  Both Nata and Anna are terrific riders.

Nata put me on that horse for a few minutes.  I managed neither to fall off nor trample the child inexplicably sleeping in the middle of the path.  (On a mattress, no less.  Don't ask.  This is Georgia.)  I did not stay up for very long though.  I figure -- why mess with a good thing?  Being up there really made me respect how these two girls can tear around on their horses though!

Some of Bakhmaro has seen better days.

Later on, I took a short hike with Rezzo and a host uncle.  I was pretty confused as to why they brought axes along on our hike, but it turned out they were going to harvest some pine saplings to re-plant in Poti.

Bakhmaro through the trees.

New favorite self-portrait

Then it was time to pack everyone and everything into the two cars and say Nakhvamdis to Bakhmaro, at least until next summer!  On the way home, the car ran into a patara problema...

But soon we were on our way again and walking in the door, to be greeted by yet another amazing supra that Nana and Izo had whipped up to welcome the girls home.

I am so glad -- so happy and so grateful -- that I got to have this wonderful adventure today!



* Quotation taken from Beyond the Sky and the Earth, by Jamie Zeppa.  Easily my favorite travel memoir I've ever read, and was pretty instrumental in bringing me to Georgia.  I recommend it wholeheartedly.

100% Shenanigans, Part the Second

Finally getting around to tackling this post... anything less than a week old is still news, right? :)

Well, a week ago today, Mark, Julie, and I marshrutkaed into Kobuleti again to see Dani and her family.  Quick round of Hellos, quick burger at the burger place (YAY!), and then it was time to head into Batumi for an afternoon, evening, and night of revelry and shenanigans of the purest form.

The first thing we did was play "ping-pong" on Batumi's lovely pedestrian Boulevard near the Sea.  Ping-Pong is in quotes because we did not bother using any sort of pesky rules or scoring system that would in any way interfere with the enjoyment of our game.  Think... ping-pong meets tennis meets wally-ball.  Good times.  When it began to rain we took shelter on the roof deck of a nearby cafe, and splurged on cocktails beecause, well, there were cocktails available to be splurged on.  And hell, Mark and Julie didn't even have my week in Tbilisi to scratch that itch recently.

My GnT was kind of crappy, actually.  Oh well.

Then it was time for a quick trek through the rain to see the Dolphin Show!

The Dolphin Show was very cool and the dolphins seemed really quite happy with their situation in life.  But the best part of the show was that we ran into Lika, our language teacher from Tbilisi!  She was in town with a friend, and later met us at Press Cafe for some catching up.

Press Cafe did not disapoint once again on a cool atmosphere and yummy western food.  Plus they had wine by the glass (this almost never happens in Georgia) for only 2.50 lari.  Win.  Press Cafe is popular with the expat crowd, and we randomly ran into two new folks in our Program -- Anna and Chris.  Very cool people.

Anna with Julie, Dani, and Mark

After Press Cafe it was time to find some dancing... so we walked to Club Sublime.  Girls got in free (thanks Georgia!) but poor Mark had to pay a 10 lari entrance fee!  We tried to make him feel better about that.

It was techno night at Sublime... and none of us are particularly into that kind of music, so after dancing for a while (and paying their ridiculous prices for drinks!), Anna said goodnight and the four of us cabbed it back to Kobuleti.

Now, the cab had a sunroof, which the driver opened for us.  I stared at that thing for a good minute, thinking "I bet this guy won't be pissed if I stand up and put my head out of the sunroof while he's going 50 miles an hour on a twisty Georgian highway."  So I did.  And it was awesome!  So much fun.  I have always wanted to do that but have never gotten the chance.  All four of us had a chance to experience the wind tunnel, and too soon we were back in Kobuleti.

And by literally following the dulcet strains of a bass beat, we found exactly the kind of beachfront dance bar we'd been looking for all night!  This place was packed and the music was good.  We had a ball.

Called it a night around 3:30, and crashed in the Guesthouse room that Dani's mom had arranged for us.  Did I mention her family is fantastic?

The next day, everyone was up for the beach, but Julie and I wanted to get a quick bite to eat first.  We found a great cafe called Bob Marley.  The bar band was there rehearsing, and we met Levon, the band's guitarist and frontman... who just got back after living all over in the US for eleven years.  He even had a southern drawl he picked up during his time in Tennessee and Mississippi!  He helped us order from the Georgian menu, and later on, surprised us with these...

Aren't they beautiful!?  I asked what they were called and got told "screwdriver."  Well, I've definitely never had a screwdriver this pretty, but I'll totally take it.  Just as we were thinking of leaving, Mark and Dani joined us.  I showed Dani the picture of my screwdriver, and she was hooked.  More cocktails, food, and a manly beer for Mark!

After THAT, everyone ordered a round of Long Islands.  And the tone for the afternoon had pretty much been set.

A few years ago, during college football season, the guy I was dating at the time wanted to see a game at a fab local sports bar in Old Town, Bugsy's.  This was before I became a die-hard Caps fan, and have never liked football, but I've always had a soft spot in my heart for good pizza and beer.  I agreed to go, and before I knew it we had been sitting at the bar in Bugsy's, drinking beer and munching when we got hungry, for eight hours.

That was the longest time I'd ever spent in one bar at a stretch.  Until last Sunday, that is.

We kind of just hung out in Bob Marley, chatting and drinking and occasionally ordering another pizza, for something like eleven hours, all told.

Dani's host family joined us around 9:00 to see Levon's band play.  Dani got up and sang with the band.

And then... I got up and sang with the band too.  Be afraid. :)

Finally, Levon helped us negotiate a decent cab fare back to Poti, and we said goodbye to Dani and her awesome host family, and to Bob Marley which had started to feel like home.

Fun overload for a weekend... and all this may have something to do with how I'm on a 5-lari-a-day budget for the rest of the month.  So worth it!

One of Those Days

So... I've been feeling really positive these past few days... sometimes I get lucky and a crash is followed almost immediately by a bounceback high.  When these things happen I always try to remember them and remember that even the crappiest moments are just that -- moments in time.  Remember that "This too shall pass."  Doesn't often do me much good next time the crappiness comes, but at least I am trying.

I had an unexpectedly awesome day today... my host Mom woke me up early to ask if I wanted to go to the Sea.  Of course, I never want to do anything early, but I said Yes anyway and got my shit together.  Well, turns out this was one of the best things I could have done... the early morning sea was warm and tranquil and the sun hadn't got its boxing gloves on yet.  I hung out with Nana and my host-cousin Ucha, swam and sunbathed, and just plain enjoyed where I was.

Host Mom Nana and I share a moment.

Me and my host cousin Ucha, visiting home for the summer.

On the way home, we picked up some fresh-baked lavashi that was still warm, came back to the house and Nana set out a breakfast of fried eggs, melon, and the lavashi which we ate with this awesome berry-dill sauce that sounds like it would be weird but is really quite delish.

Upstairs for reading and eventual nap, some work on the computer, then back down for supper with the host fam.  They had beer!  Always a good thing and pretty rare -- I think they've only stocked beer in the house one other time.  After supper I packed up my gear and set out for the 45-minute walk that eventually takes me to the beach bar -- a shack built over the water on the Black Sea.

Black Sea, with Poti's port in the distance.

I met up with Mark and Julie, and we passed a great couple of hours shooting the breeze and enjoying each other's company.  Then it was time for a cab ride home... in the door by 11:30, to have some corn on the cob with the host family, because that's what they were doing at 11:30. :)

Good day.  I needed something to remind me... and that was exactly what I got.

Another Form of Distraction

"Life might be difficult... but I would tough it out because living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once.  My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world."

That's David Sedaris, speaking out from his collection of essays, Me Talk Pretty One Day.  Of course anything that muses on living overseas is relevant to my interests these days, although to be quite fair I don't know how many of my rough provincial edges have been sanded down yet, much less if I'll ever undergo the aforementioned transformation.  In fact, one of the things my trip has taught me, so far, is that I really do like being an American. 

But that's another post altogether.  Today is about books.

Literally three hours before I was set to go to the airport and begin this nutty experiment, my Mom decided that I needed a kindle.  I'm a fairly avid reader (although certainly not as dedicated as some), and was planning on coming to Georgia armed only with several books about the country I was soon to call home, and one travel anthology meant for reading on the plane, The Best Women's Travel Writing, 2010.  I wasn't happy about this, but two giant suitcases were already packed so tight I literally could not lift them on my own.  I was going to have to discover a world without novels.

I'd had my reservations about the idea of this odd newfangled device, the kindle.  For yeeeears I had said things like "I like pages," when friends would wax philosophically romantic on the virtues of their electronic reading device.  "Reading on a screen is bad for your eyes," I would say, and pooh-pooh their assertion that Amazon's "electronic ink" had solved this problem 100%.

Luckily for me, Mom was panicking about my leaving almost as much as I was -- and a last-minute, completely generous, totally SMART gift was in the cards.  Mom actually went to Best Buy by herself to pick one up, as Dad and I raced to finish another project before the deadline -- THIS:

That's a sadly crappy picture of the awesome end table I'd been building with my father over the past year.  (No way it should have taken that long, but I am easily distracted.)  Ash with walnut, and a beautiful green tile set in the center.  It wasn't supposed to be this complicated, but I kept changing the design and making mistakes.  (I'd been hoping to work the table into a post somehow, as I'm pretty happy with how it came out.  So forgive the non sequitor.)  ANYWAY...

Let it just be said that this kindle has been my absolute crutch, my lifesaver, these three and a half months in Georgia.  And serendipity rides again, as my Tbilisi roommate Suzanne generously downloaded her entire kindle library onto mine during Orientation Week.  So now I have something insane like 980 books, just waiting to be read.  And it just so happens that a good deal of these books are right up my alley -- fantasy/sci-fi, classics, satirical social commentary, bitter humor.  During the worst of my illness I devoured the first six books in the Anita Blake series.  (Don't judge me.  My bar for entertainment value plummets when I'm sick.)  I laughed hysterically through Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography, was able to download BOTH the new Sookie book AND the new Dresden book as soon as I remembered they'd come out, and found two new favorite authors in Bill Bryson and David Sedaris.



Obviously not all these forays into modern literature require much more than the mention they just got, but I felt that some of my recent literary discoveries are worth sharing.  Honestly I can't believe I've lived my adult life without joining Bryson's or Sedaris's team until now, but at least now I have something to keep me busy.  I figure going out less will maybe help me be less broke, so that's lots of extra time to devote to the written word.

So, finally -- here we are at the POINT of the post!!!  (I know.  I'm shocked my own self.  I do like to ramble on about my own head, don't I?)  I'm hoping to maybe do one of these once in a while, when I come across something that I think my peeps will dig, or just something that struck a chord with me.

Book Review:

I'm a Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson

Hit by my first real jab of homesickness since I got here, I stopped reading Game of Thrones to charge my way through this truly enchanting collection of essays.  After living abroad in England for 20 years, Bryson returns home to America and settles in New Hampshire with his English wife and their children.

"In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where everyone else is not... the many good things about America also took on a bewitching air of novelty...(such as) the curiously giddying notion that ice is not a luxury item and that rooms can have more than one electrical socket."

Really, it's like the man tore those words straight out of my heart.

I think I may be about the only person who had NOT known about Bill Bryson until now (much like my other recent kindred spirit find, Sedaris), so it may be redundant to say this dude is definitely one of the smarter guys around.  But more importantly, you get the feeling that he knows what he is talking about because he cares about what he is talking about, and wants you to do the same.  This is a man who feels passionately getting the important facts straight -- about history and the environment, about the things people do and the reasons they do them.

His essays amused the hell out of me, and it was like balm to my spirit to be reading about my home country presented in such a compasionate, whimsical, truthful voice.  I loved his essay about the postal system -- America's versus England's -- particularly since I spent almost 50 lari one month ago sending postcards to my loved ones -- not one of which has arrived to my knowledge; and also because my mother, while vacationing in Maine and due to the fact that I had yet to supply her with my real address (because I didn't know it yet), recently addressed and sent a postcard to "Mary -----, Police Station, Poti, Georgia."  (I think it goes without saying that I have not recieved this piece of mail either.)  So yeah, I can truly appreciate the remarkable efficiency that is the U.S. postal and address system.  Never thought I'd be saying THAT, but there you have it.

So if you've somehow managed to miss this guy, like me, then I highly recommend checking him out.  Definitely worth your time.