Journal Excerpt, 3/2/12
On days like these, it is easy.
On days like these, I had just been granted a spontaneous day off because my school is having electrical problems. Because I am an old fart and my Tbilisi working days are long, last night I began my just-extended weekend by reading some Dave Barry and turning the light off at 11:30.
Friday morning, I wake up at 10:30 (guess I needed the sleep). My room is bright with morning sunlight, and this is important because it means that it is not raining like yesterday. The heat in my host family’s house, which has been out since Tuesday, is working again. The bathroom is free and there is plenty of hot water. I take a long shower. An American-length shower.
The apartment is empty. At 12:30, I wander into the kitchen and help myself to some leftover roast chicken (a rare wonderful find!) and an apple. But just as I am sitting down, my host parents come home. My host Mom shows me the cake she’d baked (I missed it, cleverly disguised in a plastic bag on the counter); my host Dad throws some sausages in a pot and asks (in Georgian, natch) if I would like some beer, because beer is very good with sausages. I hadn’t been thinking of starting my drinking at 12:30, but you know, why not? Beer IS very good with sausages.
In addition to the sausages, they’ve come home with fresh cheese and shoti, a sort of chewy flatish bread. I’ve never been able to get along with Georgian cheese, but shoti I love, and it makes an excellent addition to my rapidly-expanding lunch spread.
My host Mom rarely eats with us, and today is no exception. But my host Dad sits down with me and pours me a generous mug of Karva. We talk, in his pidgin-English and my pidgin-Georgian, about the weather. He asks me my plans for the evening. I explain that I have some work to do this afternoon, saklishi, but sheidzleba will go out in the evening, after I get it finished. All conversations with my host parents include charades, and this is no exception.
Lunch is finished. I take my refilled mug and settle back into my room, grading Midterms and doing a little writing. Mid-afternoon, I send a text and make a call, and evening plans are finalized. We’re going to happy hour at one of my new favorite places in Tbilisi – free food and 2-lari beers and one of the best views around.
__________________
On days like these, it is easy to love Georgia, to let all the accumulated frustrations and confusions evaporate like so much ephemera.
Some days, of course, it is not so easy. Days like the day before I wrote that, when I arrived at my evening job decidedly damp because I’d elected to angle my umbrella so as to protect my laptop bag instead of my actual self. When my best attempts to control and corral a classroom of exuberant fifth graders ended in defeating, abject failure. When I walked in and out of five banks before finding one that did not have a ginormous line and would agree to change my 100-lari note into smaller bills without my showing my passport (which I do not carry on me for obvious reasons). When the woman in the shop stubbornly refused to understand my (increasingly embarrassing) charades for “tissues.” No, it’s not like I got run over by a car. But I challenge anyone to maintain a rosy-cheeked disposition after all that nonsense.
Winter is not my favorite season, and the constant cold since returning from holiday travels (not to mention the only recently-disappeared ice and snow that covered all Tbilisi sidewalks) has tested my love of and enthusiasm for this country. Winter always tends to make me feel trapped, but never more so than this past season, when snow closed roads and schools and made the prospect of traveling to the store both unpleasant and dangerous, let alone traveling outside the city. Just forget it.
To put it simply, Georgia is making me grouchy, and my grouchiness had become so all-encompassing that I’m not entirely certain that it was all completely Georgia’s fault anymore.
Sort of a confusing grouchiness chicken-and-egg analogy. Just go with it. The point is that, even though there were snow flurries yesterday, it is now March and I am very eagerly anticipating Spring. This means, of course, that Spring better freaking happen, and Georgians tell me that March can be a very atmospherically schizophrenic month. Whatevs. I’m ready to put aside my wool hats and filthy white parka (never, EVER bring a white winter coat to Georgia. Ever. I mean it.), and embark on one of those long-awaited weekend trips somewhere.
On days like these, it is easy.
On days like these, I had just been granted a spontaneous day off because my school is having electrical problems. Because I am an old fart and my Tbilisi working days are long, last night I began my just-extended weekend by reading some Dave Barry and turning the light off at 11:30.
Friday morning, I wake up at 10:30 (guess I needed the sleep). My room is bright with morning sunlight, and this is important because it means that it is not raining like yesterday. The heat in my host family’s house, which has been out since Tuesday, is working again. The bathroom is free and there is plenty of hot water. I take a long shower. An American-length shower.
The apartment is empty. At 12:30, I wander into the kitchen and help myself to some leftover roast chicken (a rare wonderful find!) and an apple. But just as I am sitting down, my host parents come home. My host Mom shows me the cake she’d baked (I missed it, cleverly disguised in a plastic bag on the counter); my host Dad throws some sausages in a pot and asks (in Georgian, natch) if I would like some beer, because beer is very good with sausages. I hadn’t been thinking of starting my drinking at 12:30, but you know, why not? Beer IS very good with sausages.
In addition to the sausages, they’ve come home with fresh cheese and shoti, a sort of chewy flatish bread. I’ve never been able to get along with Georgian cheese, but shoti I love, and it makes an excellent addition to my rapidly-expanding lunch spread.
My host Mom rarely eats with us, and today is no exception. But my host Dad sits down with me and pours me a generous mug of Karva. We talk, in his pidgin-English and my pidgin-Georgian, about the weather. He asks me my plans for the evening. I explain that I have some work to do this afternoon, saklishi, but sheidzleba will go out in the evening, after I get it finished. All conversations with my host parents include charades, and this is no exception.
Lunch is finished. I take my refilled mug and settle back into my room, grading Midterms and doing a little writing. Mid-afternoon, I send a text and make a call, and evening plans are finalized. We’re going to happy hour at one of my new favorite places in Tbilisi – free food and 2-lari beers and one of the best views around.
__________________
On days like these, it is easy to love Georgia, to let all the accumulated frustrations and confusions evaporate like so much ephemera.
Some days, of course, it is not so easy. Days like the day before I wrote that, when I arrived at my evening job decidedly damp because I’d elected to angle my umbrella so as to protect my laptop bag instead of my actual self. When my best attempts to control and corral a classroom of exuberant fifth graders ended in defeating, abject failure. When I walked in and out of five banks before finding one that did not have a ginormous line and would agree to change my 100-lari note into smaller bills without my showing my passport (which I do not carry on me for obvious reasons). When the woman in the shop stubbornly refused to understand my (increasingly embarrassing) charades for “tissues.” No, it’s not like I got run over by a car. But I challenge anyone to maintain a rosy-cheeked disposition after all that nonsense.
Winter is not my favorite season, and the constant cold since returning from holiday travels (not to mention the only recently-disappeared ice and snow that covered all Tbilisi sidewalks) has tested my love of and enthusiasm for this country. Winter always tends to make me feel trapped, but never more so than this past season, when snow closed roads and schools and made the prospect of traveling to the store both unpleasant and dangerous, let alone traveling outside the city. Just forget it.
To put it simply, Georgia is making me grouchy, and my grouchiness had become so all-encompassing that I’m not entirely certain that it was all completely Georgia’s fault anymore.
Sort of a confusing grouchiness chicken-and-egg analogy. Just go with it. The point is that, even though there were snow flurries yesterday, it is now March and I am very eagerly anticipating Spring. This means, of course, that Spring better freaking happen, and Georgians tell me that March can be a very atmospherically schizophrenic month. Whatevs. I’m ready to put aside my wool hats and filthy white parka (never, EVER bring a white winter coat to Georgia. Ever. I mean it.), and embark on one of those long-awaited weekend trips somewhere.
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