Caucasus Cookies!

We got paid yesterday. Naturally, I thought of all the things I could do with this money involving food, so I decided to bake cookies!

After a quick Google search for "baking in the Caucasus region" yielded this recipe, I decided to follow it and see what all it'd taste like!

Sans oatmeal. Cause really, that just gets in the way of chocolate.

Having no real mental scale for what grams are in terms of, well, anything (THANKS STUPID AMERICA), I went ahead and started gathering these materials at the store. Surprisingly, all of them were fairly easy to scrounge up. The hardest part was realizing that the bags of white powder that were next to the salt were, actually, more salt, and not sugar like I thought. It was also amusing to me that the baking powder and vanilla powder were by the coffees and teas instead of the other baking things. Additionally hilarious was that the butter was in a freezer.

Georgian supermarket shenanigans aside, my friend Sophia came over and we started the baking process.

Ingredients!

We chopped up the chocolate bars into little chunks, and then decided that there clearly was not enough chocolate. Not pictured above is another bar of white chocolate, so we threw that in as well. My family doesn't really have a scale or measuring cups, so instead we used a wine glass to measure things, because if there's one thing that every Georgian knows, it's that the wine glasses are 100mg. We decided to double the recipe, and soon realized that the called for amounts were going to yield bizarre cookies. In the end, we put in slightly more flour (per my sisters advice), way less sugar, and a little less butter (maybe. I'm not 100% sure how much butter I even bought, let alone how much we put in, since the package was all in Georgian and was completely devoid of any type of identifiable quantity), but the taste test of the batter confirmed that we were on the right track. The crazy German brown sugar I bought is actually large crystals instead of fine granules. I debated grinding it up, but then forgot to. However, it still tasted normal and delicious, so no harm done.

After sitting in the petchi (wood burning iron stove of amazingness) for less than 10 minutes, the first batch came out. I should mention that we didn't use the actual oven on account of it being full of pots and pans and isn't actually used to prepare food. We, instead, bake with either the crazy Russian Easy Bake oven in the living room, or the lower part of the petchi. Or, like last night, we light a fire in the fireplace and then roast meat over the glowing embers, thus causing the house to smell like pinecones, fire, and barbecued pork. But back to the cookies! Since the pan was super hot, and there was no room to put it on the table, we did the natural thing:

Yeah, that's right. We just put it on the floor.
I fucking love this place.

Ani let me do the honors of taking the cookies off the pan, and even sang me a little celebratory and triumphant tune as she handed me the scraper. Myself, Ani, Sophia, and Goga (my host brother), all armed with cookies, cheers'd one another and took our first bites at the same time.

Please let it be known that I make bomb ass cookies, even with zero measuring and with less than ideal ingredients.

The cookies themselves are slightly more cakelike, almost fluffy in texture. It was weird the first bite, but considering where we are, it's almost fitting. Georgians love cakes. I've had three cakes over the last two weeks in school for various reasons. Even the baked goods here, like their sweet breads, are more akin to cakes instead of bread or American cookie textures. I think it's a part of the result of using baking powder and not baking soda maybe? Unsure, but Ani informed me that these cookies were better than the ones her last American made and really, that's all that matters.

Yum!

Skolashi

After being in the schools for over a month now I think it’s high time for a post on my school that delves a bit more into what’s going on. This is going to be part one, as I doubt I will be able to get everything out of my system without it turning into a novel.

Please note that I have no formal training in education, and that my opinions are all coming based off of having a crappy anthropology degree, as well as being the [successful] result of  crappy American public schools.

I guess the place I should start first off is my schedule. I’ve classes Monday through Friday, with four classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, which are my heaviest work loads. Yes, you heard me. Four classes in one day is the most I work any given week. The rest of the days are either one or two classes. The grades are 1-6, and although TLG strongly encourages us to get into the upper grades (7-12), I’ve elected not to.

Sidenote: I did attend a few of these classes when school first started, but I was way more of a distraction than a help to older kids. Most of them are uninterested about school and their normal teachers to begin with, let alone some random foreigner, and the ones that actually are engaged in class will endlessly hit you with a slew of highly personal questions every.single.class, much to the frustration of your host teacher. I figured it would be better if I just stopped going to these lessons…

So the whole purpose of TLG, and indeed why I am here in Georgia to begin with, is to put native English speakers in English language classrooms around the country. It was a radical new program that began a few years ago by the [at the time of this writing] current president, Mikheil Saakishvili, and it brings in people from America, Canada, and the UK. It’s a pretty great set up, actually. They fly you from your home country to Tbilisi, pay you every month, put you up with a host family that can take care of your dietary needs and creature comforts, give you health insurance and paid vacation, and will also fly you home at the end of your contract.

It used to be that they had two start dates every month, putting the number of foreigners, each month, at 120. Lots of people that did this program were just looking for something to do for a short stint, so they didn’t really invest themselves in the schools or with their families. Some saw it as an opportunity to convert this highly Orthodox country starting when they’re young, and one person was so bold as to actually lock the door of his classroom when his teacher stepped out for a moment and then start preaching his Bible to a whole room of kids. There are horror stories like that riddled throughout the programs history, so it’s no wonder that since last year they’ve cut the number of start dates to two a year and are highly selective with who they bring over. 

Volunteers are not expected, ever, to lead a class, nor teach the students by themselves. Instead, we work with the current English teachers, bringing our Western ideals into the school and helping the kids hear what English is supposed to sound like. When I say "Western ideals," I am basically talking about any type of education method that does not rely on the strictly Soviet style of read-translate-memorize which is so rampant here. 

My two coteachers are on opposite ends of the spectrum. One has been teaching for only a few years, but she's enthusiastic, open to suggestions for activities, lesson plans all the time with me, and has a pretty positive outlook on lessons. The other has been in the teaching business for 47 years. In fact, she had my host dad as a student. While she isn't as super Soviet as other teachers that I've heard of (no corporal punishment, for example!), she never deviates from the read-translate-memorize method I mentioned before. And since she has been teaching for 47 years, and I am her third volunteer, I doubt she's really going to be changing much. Both teachers are technically fluent in English, but their pronunciation of words is highly accented, and there's still a language barrier with them many times. This isn't to say that either of them aren't helpful - they really are, and I'm not trying to bash on them at all. I actually like them a lot, even the older one, who can get slightly terrifying sometimes when she screams in Georgian at the kids. I'm just trying to paint you all a picture of what, and who, I'm working with. 

The books we're using for the early grades are part of a new movement throughout Georgia for teaching English. They're decent enough, and there are a lot of exercises in them that make sense. However, they're ONLY in English. Immersion teaching is awesome and all, but that only works when it's part of a unilateral movement in school and home every single day. Most of my kids have English lessons two or three times a week, with long stretches in between. Added onto that, many times both my coteachers end up speaking mostly in Georgian, and these kids are talking roughly, and this is a very generous estimate, 20 minutes a week in English. Do you know anyone who was able to pick up a language with that little of practice? Cause I don't. 

I can understand for some abstract words, like adjectives and what not, to have a Georgian pairing so the kids can frame the foreign word in their head. However, for vocabulary that has a picture there's zero reason to even think about saying the Georgian word. I've tried to bring this up with my teachers a few times, but they keep reassuring me the students won't understand unless they tell them what it is. I'm skeptical about this, but since I have no idea what they're saying to the kids in class anyway, I'm going along with it for now. Upside is that I'm picking up a lot of vocabulary. I just wish the kids would, too!

The other thing that really bothers me is that these books focus so heavily on reading and writing. There isn't nearly enough practice for the kids to actually speak, which is unfortunate, given that this is where they're really strong. Instead, they’re forced to do the same type of exercises over and over again, never really understanding what it is that they’re saying. One of my coteachers told me the other day that, even in Georgian, kids don’t know what verbs, nouns, or adjectives are. My students are all scraping by based on the examples given in the books instead of freely constructed thoughts. Yet examples aren’t necessarily a guaranteed way to get them to form a sentence since many can’t even copy words down correctly. It’s strange, because they’re not stupid. If I sit there and verbally spell out the words, most of my kids can write them (minus the illiterate ones, of course), but they don’t really put together what the words mean in the overall context of the sentence. I’m going to go ahead and blame this one on inconsistent classes, and having English be the only lessons where the materials are encouraging new types of learning (matching, word banks, fill in the blank, etc) in their otherwise very Soviet style schooling.

So instead of encouraging the kids to speak a lot, and thus actually let them progress quickly through this bullshit language of ours, we bog them down by forcing them to read and write. Most of them don't understand the use of capital letters since Georgian only has one form of their alphabet, so all of their written answers have random capitals thrown in. Classes are full of frustrated students who feel left behind and like they are ultimately hopeless cases. I try to be as positive as I can, and always reinforce kids even TRYING to speak, and they're just now starting to get less shy about yapping at me. Most of them now run up, throw their arms around me in a hug that only a kid can give, and then immediately launch into Georgian at a million miles an hour, giggling when I look confused and say "ar vitsi" ("I don't know"). I'm hoping that this shift means that they'll all start being more involved, and since a few of my more problematic kids have already begun actually doing their homework and volunteering answers, I think we're on the right track. 

Classes are a bit chaotic since speaking out of turn isn't really discouraged. A lot of times lessons are filled with kids talking over each other, or them helping each other out immediately if one is having trouble reading something aloud. It's really cute, actually, and you can see that already in these young ages the cultural dynamics of community and cooperation are instilled. Also, every single kid here would be diagnosed with ADD in the States. And I’m not exaggerating. Even my really awesome kids, who are [mostly] quiet, always do their homework, can recite entire stories at the drop of a hat if you tell them to, would be too “unfocused” and “problematic” in America.  The problem most of the time is the disparity in mastery of the material – a few students per class have it down no problem, some kids are sprinkled in the middle who sort of get it, yet most will fall into the category of not having a clue. The best kids get bored with lessons so they zone out, the worst ones get frustrated by lessons and will just stare into space, and the mid range kids see all their friends being distracted so they, too, become unfocused. And then the teacher screams and stomps her foot, and for a second they’re startled, but nothing really changes. Repeat ad nauseum.

There are no real consequences for bad behavior or not working in class. Grades are sort of given, and while students want high marks their drive to get them is not enough to actually put the work in to earn these. So far we have had one test in my 4^th-6^th grades, and they, for the most part, all failed it. We’re talking scores of 2/40 points failed. Again, it’s not that they’re stupid, because the tests we gave them were straight out of their book, and were all exercises they have been doing for weeks. There’s just zero retention of the material, which is a problem I’ve been trying to tackle but find it challenging when my teachers don’t share the same mindset to sit and drill kids (in fun ways!) until they can answer quickly and accurately. I made flashcards for my first graders for colors, and after two meetings, and two pretty intensive flashcard games, you can bet your ass that those kids can tell you what color your shirt is, and that the leaves on that tree in your yard are green. My one teacher noticed what I was doing with the flashcards, and saw that it actually worked, and has started approaching the alphabet reviews we do in the same way. Even though a few letters still trip them up, these little five year olds are able to identify most characters out of context, and pretty quickly. Being the daughter of a behaviorist, this tickles me.

The only thing that works better than flashcards, however, is Hangman. I never saw my fifth graders try harder than the day we told them if we got through our whole lesson and they understood it that we would play Hangman at the end of class. Everyone was actively engaged, and even my shiest kids were particularly vocal. The best part of it was that after that lesson, they remembered everything from the previous class. They were all smiling, were super happy, and we have yet to have a bad class since this breakthrough. Who knew that bribing some kids with a lousy game of Hangman would ultimately be the proverbial Holy Grail of learning English?

I guess when it comes down to it, bribery really is the way to get what you want out of life.  

This is a page out of my third graders book. I forgot to mention above that while these books fundamentally are decent, they piss me off. The vocabulary that's taught is completely bogus. I think it's outrageous that by third grade, my kids don't know the days of the week, or months of the year, or hell, even ordinal numbers! However, they can tell you all about a space rocket, and Ned the astronaut that lives on a space station. Thanks, dicks.

Indy

Twelve years is a long time to be part of a family, but still not long enough.

Bye, Dinderbean.

Coming home and not seeing this face is something I don't think I'll get used to.

Normalcy

Today, as I was walking home from school, I saw some men carrying a box down my street. It was really large, made of wood, and had some kind of blue plastic inside it's open top. I quickly put the wooden box, shaped just like a casket, and the inordinately large amount of people in black slowly following it down the street (which is saying something, since this is a country where everyone's primary choice of clothing is black or some shade of grey, and everyone's preferred speed of walking is more of a stroll) together, and realized I was in the middle of a funeral procession. The parade was streaming out of a neighbors gated yard, and while I'm not 100% sure that the box actually was a casket with a body in it, I'm thinking it probably was. Because Georgia.

A lot of little things are starting to feel very normal. Like a restaurant being "nice" because it has a Western toilet, and the fact that all Western toilets here have buttons you push instead of a handle to flush. And that sometimes you need to pour water from a huge trash can acting as a cistern into the toilet since there are water restrictions depending on where you are. If you are grossed out by bathrooms, this is not the country for you. The nicer ones are about on the level of a sleazy diner in the middle of nowhere Midwestville, and the worst are Turkish toilets where there's just a dark hole of smelly grossness staring up at you from the floor.

Also, no soap, so forget about washing your hands, assuming that there's even a sink in said bathroom. And at home, unless some crazy Westerner is doing dishes (a.k.a. me) then you can also rule out having dish soap touch the dishes.

I've even gotten over the preliminary astonishment of no one refrigerating anything except for a certain type of cheese my family brings back from the village. It took some getting used to; coming home from school, looking into a pot of last nights borscht just sitting on the stove, and realizing that it had been sitting there overnight and all through the morning. I was able to skirt around this the first few weeks I was here, since there was an unending supply of cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese and bread. However, now that it's perpetually chilly in the house, I crave warm things. Most of the soups and dishes my mom makes have some kind of meat in them and, being an American who is convinced that I will most likely die of one meat based infection or another (thank you, hyperactive fear mongering media!), this was slightly horrifying. However, in the end, my stomach and good sense won over - this is how my family has been living for years now, and how their families before them were living, too. It didn't kill them, and it wouldn't kill me. I've yet to get the crippling stomach illness that so many other volunteers have been afflicted by, even with drinking weird street water of unknown origin and eating a variety of unrefrigerated meats. However, I'm sure me saying that will just mean that come next week I'll be puking my guts out, because fuck you, Universe.

Even little things, aside from microbes that could potentially prove hazardous to my coddled immune system, are starting to feel normal, like the paper. All of it is A4 sized, and while this may seem like a change that wouldn't take getting used to, having every sheet of loose paper you ever get be just SLIGHTLY longer than what you've grown up with leads to a lot of paper cuts. Thankfully, my hands are finally getting the hang of it. I guess my dexterity modifier is way lower than I thought (rimshot, RPG joke.)!

The various types of cars are becoming more familiar, too, although it's still a little weird to me to see a Jaguar rolling out of the Soviet bloc ghetto. It's been a transition, but it's most Western cars that stand out to me now instead of the Opels and Lada's that kept making me do double takes when I first got here. It's also fun to see familiar names with unfamiliar models. Ford and Nissan both have several cars here that I've never seen stateside, and they look compact and awesome, so I'm unsure why Americans are force fed overly large cars constantly. I suppose that's an entirely different rant, so I'll postpone that diatribe. Also, cars here are making me really mad that I can't buy one of those badass Toyota HiLux trucks unless I get it imported, because whoa are they awesome.
Fun Fact: My Georgian friend the other day told me that in order to get your drivers license here, you HAVE to be able to drive a manual. How cool is that? So everyone on the roads right now is fully capable of driving stick. This for some reason really amuses me, probably because I can only name a handful of people back home who can. My major gripe with this program is that I'm contractually forbidden from driving. I think when my term is done (hopefully next spring, unless they decide to not renew my contract, in which case I will cry, kill myself, and then go rent a car immediately and take it on crazy mountain roads) the first thing I'm going to do is rent a car and drive cross country. There are WAY too many awesome little side roads that I have no idea where their destination is, but I'm pretty sure me and a sturdy little 4x4 could find out what's down them. 

Life feels normal while being highly surreal. I'm finally used to the mountains over to the east constantly looking majestic, but I still smile every time I see them. And even though I've been eating fruit since Gerber's was making my mother shove it down my throat, I'm still not to be trusted around most fruit types here after the great fig fiasco a few weeks ago. It's basically like I'm a young child again, relearning all the universal truths of the world around her. Also, like a child, it's super difficult to articulate what all I'm thinking and want, since I lack the vocabulary for it. Georgian, with it's crazy infixes and postpositions, is really tripping me up. Slowly but surely, though. It's just a strange feeling to be 26 years old, and treated like I'm 23 years younger.

Here are some more pictures. I'm taking a lot, actually, but I'm finding that most of them don't do this place any sort of justice. I just reached over 2,000 pictures in my Georgia album in Aperture, and looking through them is a really big disappointment. However, that apparently won't deter me from posting them for your viewing pleasure.

Every single domicile I've been to so far has a super creepy contingent of stuffed animals in the living room. No clue why. Most of them are sold, second hand, at the bazaar. The amount of ridiculously scary dolls here is off the charts. Thankfully, none of them are in my house, and neither is Tranny Pony. Although there are two chairs outside of my room with giant stuffed gorillas sitting in them, and at night I sometimes forget they're there and I get a little startled when emerging from my room into the dimly lit upstairs common area and seeing two shadows just hanging out, waiting...

This thing is my most favorite appliance, possibly ever. It's our water heater, and you turn it on with a switch on the wall to the right (out of frame). It's ridiculously efficient, and gets water up to scalding within a minute or so. That being said, it's also partially electric, so if the electricity flickers when you're mid shower, you're kind of SOL on having warm water for the remaining time you're getting clean. This unfortunate truth leads to my showers being biweekly. Surprisingly, my hair has started to adjust. Normally it gets disgusting in a day, but now that it's learned it can either be smothered to death with baby powder, or just not get ridiculously oily, it's cut the crap. I can maintain a clean looking head of hair for up to four days now! Go you, hormones!
And in case you were wondering, yes. I was just bragging about how infrequently I bathe. What of it?

Previously mentioned Soviet bloc apartments. These start on the main road just by the bazaar, and continue down the large hill Telavi is built on. They're in pretty rough shape, most having not been updated since the 1950's when they were built. However, there's something strangely beautiful about them. As they are almost all owned by their residents, each apartments balcony is a little bit different - painted, unique railings, custom windows, laundry of various colors, frilly plants. A few have even bricked off the balcony to create a whole new room for their living space. It's really incredible to see such disregard for order and sameness that the Russians were striving for when they built these. Also, they've got a great view. 

I love how this is now a normal sight. Forget about the medieval fortress being something I see daily, but add onto it the weirdness of new buildings that look super European, and janky ass Lada Niva's around, PLUS a rainbow? I mean, it's awesome, but I still have a hard time remembering that this is my life sometimes.

I'm starting to get a feel for the mountains. We've had a long streak of very calm days this last week, with no usual howling wind at night. This means it's been incredibly hazy, and these clouds have been covering the back range of the Caucasus mountains. Normally, if it's windy at night, the mountains are crisp and clear for miles and miles back, with no clouds forming over them. As you can see, that was not the case when I took this, and since they also look incredible during magic hour, I hauled ass up behind the house into the scary ass Wolf Woods (I'm calling them that now since my host sister told me she has seen wolves in them. We can forget the fact that she also said they had red eyes, because that makes it sound like they're not real, but I'm sure they're back there, on account of us living on the edge of town, and these woods being part of the larger forest that spreads up into the middle range that runs through Kakheti.) to try to get a picture of them. This is the best I have, and it so does not do the incredible clouds any sort of kindness.
Also, speaking of incredible clouds! The other day I saw a few lenticular clouds just starting to form! Naturally it was when it was getting dark, and my iPhone's sensor just wasn't having any of it. That's what I get for leaving the Nikon at home that one time.

I don't understand why pomegranates haven't been a part of my fall life up until now, but moving forward they will certainly have to be. This one was sitting on a table that was overflowing with free grapes, apples, persimmons, and pomegranates last Saturday at a music and crafts festival in one of the parks in Telavi. Having my swiss army knife, and being able to whip it out in public with no one freaking out, is pretty awesome, and I'm fairly certain I'm going to end up in trouble when I come back to America and bust it out cause I want to dig into some tasty fruit.

In that same park here in town, there is a little amusement rides area. It has some bumper cars, a small roller coaster with a wine theme (naturally), a few other rides that you'd find at one of those traveling carnivals, and this carousel. Please note the gratuitous amounts of Disney and Harry Potter characters adorning it. All the panels on this are full of unlicensed intellectual property belonging to the major studios, and it is awesome. Actually, that's true of most of Georgia. Knock off Disney princesses are in most store fronts that cater to children, and many notebooks for students have some kind of character from these franchises on them. They look real, but are just SLIGHTLY different, and I've become so inundated with false Disney characters the last month and a half that I don't even notice they're fake now. Which is saying a lot, considering how much time I spent at Disneyland while living in California.

Another ride in the park. Please note creepy Winny the Poo, sitting on Manic Murdering Tommy the Train's face. I'm fairly certain that this thing actually embarks to Hell every night, although I don't have the evidence to back this claim up. But seriously. Look at that and tell me it's not evil.
 I'm really a fan of these little "commy fun parks" (coined by my sister, and pretty accurate!), and their goofy aesthetics. The park on top of the mountain in Tbilisi is full of stuff like this, as were the various seaside spaces in Batumi. 

The biggest thing that's become normal, however, is that food is always getting in the way of other plans.

'Lo, I am Jo, Deathbringer!

I just killed one of those wild ass millipedes. The ones with the thousands of super long legs. The thousands of super long legs that are attached to a body that's also like 2 inches long. I'm feeling pretty awesome about myself right now. Like millipedes everywhere will think twice before crossing my path, and they'll speak my name in hushed, reverent tones that are tinged with fear, as I am Death walking for their crappy little arthropod lives.

I'm sure that this feeling is shortlived, however, as inevitably when next I see one, I will [again] shriek and [again] throw my shoe at it.

Batumshi!

(Warning, this is very laden with pictures)

This past weekend I was given a choice – trek up to the remote mountain town of Mestia and go hiking around glaciers, picturesque mountains, and continue the general theme I’ve been experiencing of “cold”, or visit the sunny seaside of Batumi for a last hurrah of warmth before winter fully sets in.

Gee. I wonder which I picked.

Picking up a night train in Tbilisi, we spent the next eight hours in transit going across the countryside in the black of night. Remarkably, the train has been the most on time form of transportation I’ve used here. We left right at 10:35pm, and pulled into Batumi at 6:40am, which was our scheduled arrival. The train itself harkens back to the Soviet days, and my spot was an upper shelf bunkbed off the main aisle. Everyone was given a bag of [presumably] clean sheets, as well as a bed roll and ridiculously lumpy pillow. I decided to risk the possible lice infestation I’ve been so afraid of getting here, and curled up on my bedroll and tried to sleep out the duration of the trip. Surprisingly, it worked, and I only woke up every time it felt like we had hit a cow or something, which happened a few more times than it probably should have.

Arriving in Batumi in the predawn hour was pretty awesome. Being the largest port on the Georgian Black Sea, Batumi’s harbor was filled with huge freight boats from various coastal countries waiting to be unloaded with the numerous imported goods found on the shelves of all Georgian stores. The water was all glasslike, and was my favorite shade of blue - it reminded me a lot of Lake Superior on very still mornings. We went on a hunt in the Old Town to find our hostel and put our bags down, and I couldn’t help but be amazed at the aesthetics of the neighborhood.

Batumi is touted as one of Georgia’s premier tourist destinations, and millions of dollars have been dumped in to this city to make it a desirable location to visit. The shoreline is dotted with impressive skyscrapers, holding even more impressive names like Sheraton or Radisson. There’s a building next to the sea that has a ferris wheel built into it, and one that looks like it would be right at home in Hong Kong with it’s reflective blue windows and ultra modern architecture. Further down the boardwalk, there are enormous apartment complexes with incredibly detailed facades, beautiful views, and large windows for the occupants to look out upon. Even all through Old Town numerous buildings are under construction with the promise of fancy hotels and more luxury apartments.

Only it’s all a farce. Batumi is beautiful, and it looks like it’s a fully functional city that’s booming with money, but upon closer examination it is suffering the same fate as Sighnagi – most of these buildings are completely vacant. The structure with the ferris wheel on it’s upper levels is empty, as is the large blue modern building, and even the amazing looking apartment buildings next to the McDonald’s from the future aren’t inhabited save for some homeless guys taking a piss as you walk by.

It’s a sad state of affairs if you think about it, because incredibly wealthy people are in Batumi. Loads of casino’s dot the blocks of the town, and the governmental buildings are some of the nicest I’ve seen so far. There’s construction left and right, so money is obviously coming into the city, but it’s not being put back in ways that would legitimately rebuild it. And it’s not like these buildings look incomplete. From the outside, they are completely done, but were, for some reason, abandoned recently. I’m not really sure what made their progress halt, but it seems like a gigantic waste of resources.

However, none of this means I didn’t fall completely in love with the place.

The neighborhood we were staying in is dotted with cafes, small restaurants, and adorable houses with grape and ivy covered balconies. The streets were cobblestone and had their own contingent of uber friendly stray dogs patrolling them. There were many times that it felt I was back in Southern California, actually. Right down the road from the hostel was the Black Sea, which is lined with essentially one long park, full of statues, more café’s, and benches to sit on. The beach itself isn’t your typical sand filled crescent. It’s reminiscent of many Lake Superior beaches with its completely rounded and smooth stones. Thankfully, the city of Batumi has free lounge chairs you can use.

The best part of the Black Sea, though, is the fauna. This particular weekend there was a very large jellyfish bloom along the coast, and the cnidarians were all over in the water, and even accidentally on shore. Jellyfish are some of my favorite animals, so add onto that my sheer happiness when we saw some dolphins swimming along the coast, and this place is basically all of my favorite things in one – looks and acts like Lake Superior, and has awesome sea critters. Fun fact: the dolphins in the Black Sea are a subspecies of Bottlenose dolphin found throughout the world, but these guys have been separated from the rest of the population for so long that they’re actually genetically distinct now. How freaking cool is that?

Batumi is Jobags approved!

I really did not want to come back East at the end of the weekend. It was so nice to be able to break away from the group for a few hours and pull up a chair next to the water and just be alone and draw. Telavi is bigger than the village, sure, but it still is small enough where me sitting alone in a park drawing would be gossiped about. But Batumi is so big, and full of tourists from all over the world, that some random chick sitting alone at sunset would be one of the more mundane sights of the day. 

And now, for pictures!

First view of Batumi's port!

A statue in the park playing a euphonium? Right across from a fairy statue? It's like this place is specifically tailored to all of my super dorky obsessions!

Another statue on the boardwalk. This time of happy dolphin faces!

One of the statues on the board walk. There was a whole series of these see through guys with hearts. Pretty cool!

Massive koi at the Batumi Aquarium. They were the least depressing part of that place.

The streets around our hostel looked like this. Stupidly pretty. Also sort of reminiscent of SoCal, no?

One of the dogs that liked to lurk around the street. They're all beautiful like this guy. Well, the ones that are mange free, at least...

Most of the buildings have these crazy decorations. Each window is completely unique, and all of the facades around the tops of buildings have some kind of bearded guy staring judgmentally down on you. It's as if my father is disapprovingly watching my every move.

Hilarious sign at the train station. Because I'm 5 and think this is funny.

My most favorite thing on this planet - Adjaran khatchapuri. Yes, that rectangle is all butter. I usually hate food shots like this, but seriously it is so good that I had to partake in the food porn.

Batumi from the cable car! Please forgive the ridiculous amounts of iPhone filter - I didn't think I'd be showing this one to anyone else, so I gratuitously edited the shit out of it.

Aforementioned abandoned building with a ridiculous ferris wheel in it. Cause that's what every building needs, right?

A cabbie that looks like it rolled right out of Sherlock!

The infamous chacha fountain! Every day, for 10 minutes at night, it dispenses that drunken diesel fuel known as chacha. A random Canadian we picked up from the hostel almost got into a fight with some locals here, however, so we decided to not go back and partake in the chacha.

Beached jellyfish!

The Black Sea really could double as Lake Superior, and vice versa.

The Black Sea couldn't decide if it wanted to be blue or grey, so it split down the middle.

It was a pretty awesome sunset, the evening I had alone on the beach.

What's a dorky Jo trip without a dorky iPhone panorama?