Percy

The afternoons where I can just sit on our patio, reading and drinking coffee, are some of my favorite types of days. Now that the weather is improving, the frequency of these days are increasing. Yesterday was one such day.

I'd just finished my book, and was scrolling lazily through my other options (I wrote up a review for the Barnes and Noble Nook, an e-reader that I bought over Christmas, so I should really post that at some point), trying to figure out which story came next chronologically in the series I'm currently reading, when I heard a weird bleat.

It was definitely a goat bleat, but I was perplexed, since my family doesn't have goats, my neighbors don't have goats, and the only herds of animals I've seen in my neighborhood are some cows that used to trek up and down the dry riverbed behind the house. So I cautiously climbed down the steps to the grassy yard and there he was - a goat, with his leg tied to a post.

As soon as I saw him, my dumb brain of course gave him a name - Percy. Regret instantly hit me for naming him. "Oh you idiot," I berated myself. "Don't name the goat! You're probably going to eat him soon!" And then I thought, "Wait, we've never kept goats, and neither does anyone in the neighborhood! Maybe the family in the village is just going to come get him and take him out to the fields near Kvareli and he'll be able to lead a happy little goat life!"

I let this delusion continue, and indeed it grew once Bebo and my host mom came home and were surprised by the appearance of Percy. Neither of them seemed to be expecting it, and they didn't know why he was in our yard. My optimism for the future of this ungulate skyrocketed.

Later in the evening, Bebo informed me that we needed to take Percy to a neighbors house, because they had a shed for him. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a goat to go a specific direction, especially one that you want it to go when it doesn't want to go that way, but it's really difficult, and usually really counterproductive. The difficulty is almost exponentially more when there isn't anything around its neck that you can grab onto, and instead you're pulling it's leg, it's trying to run away, and it's screaming in pain because legs aren't supposed to bend certain ways. Bebo kept tugging at Percy, relying on the old standard of "just drag things if they won't willingly come with you," but I stopped this right quick and just picked him up. Goat screams are one of the worst sounds ever, and if Percy was ever going to go running through the grassy fields next to the Alazani River, he needed to have all of his legs.

I'd expect, in a place where people regularly carry turkeys on the roofs of Lada Nivas, and drive backwards down busy streets, and a whole plethora of other ridiculous shit, that a girl carrying a goat down the road wouldn't be that big of a scene. But it was. Bebo just followed me and Percy, laughing the whole way, and the neighbors were guffawing so much they couldn't do anything but take pictures. 

We put him in an old stable in the neighbors yard, and that was the last time I saw Percy. As Bebo and I walked home, I was pretty happy with the little life I'd constructed for him in my head.

And then I came home from school today to two fat, old, shirtless Georgian guys, chain smoking and cleaning out an animal that was hanging from a tree in the yard.

"It could be some other goat," a voice inside me said. "It doesn't have to be...oh, shit. There's his little head on the ground..."

Sorry, Percy. I wanted you to have a good little goat life, I really did. Instead, I think you're gonna be a damn tasty meal!

Hostel View

From the lofty second floor windows of the Fox Hostel, located right near Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, you can see the following:

7 pairs of shoes on the phone line
1 gay bar
3 restaurants to buy khachapuri from
1 cat on a tree stump
17 posters on the wall
5 graffiti on the wall
2 full dumpsters that were empty yesterday
3 very lost looking Europeans (Polish?)
3 parked cars - all with their front bumpers!
1 guy on a smoke break with green shoes who noticed me sitting in the window and is now staring.

Commie Fun Park

I had a pretty surreal afternoon on Saturday. My friend Christine and I ventured up to the Mtatsminda park, which is a theme park of sorts that sits on top of one of Tbilisi's hills. It's accessible one of two ways - a bus which takes you way round the back of the hill and steadily up, or by the funicular. What's a funicular, you ask? It's this weird railway train thing that has two cars. They are at the opposite ends of the line and, through a pulley system, counterbalance each other to take passengers either up or down. 

It's actually a pretty neat thing, even if it isn't the smoothest ride. The last time I was on it was during orientation, all those months ago. Young, naive Jo was slightly alarmed at the jerky ride, the heartstopping pauses and jolts, constantly worrying that one of the cables would snap and that we would all plummet down to our deaths hundreds of feet below us. 

However, since spending a little more time here, where absolutely nothing is in my control, I've become sort of a fatalist. Not that I'm hoping to die or anything, but what the hell is the point in being worried constantly about near death experiences since I can't do anything to prevent them? It's been an enjoyable time in marshrutkas since I gave up caring about how drivers liked to pass each other at absurd speeds around blind corners, and this trip up to Mtatsminda was a far more pleasant experience than it had been the first time, as well. 

It's a pretty steep ascent, and that little white dot way up there is only the halfway point where there is, naturally, a church. Because Tbilisi loves its churches.

The funicular station at the top doubles as a restaurant as well, offering stunning panoramas of Tbilisi from the highest point around which you can enjoy with some beer, wine, and decent food. Upon leaving the station, you're dumped in front of a wide, gently sloped set of stairs, generously broken up by little platforms with various carnival type rides. You can also go right, and follow the ridge of the mountain where there are a bunch of game stands with very scary looking stuffed animals as prizes. The signs are super helpful for letting you know where you need to go. I'm glad that, since this is Georgia, there is of course a wedding hall in an amusement park.

There are also really creepy statues, like the one below. The more horrifying part of them, though, is the sheer size. This way-too-pleased-with-itself fat baby cherub thing is easily 15 feet tall, and is on the main entrance for the park. 

Basically, if you take Disneyland, reduce the budget of it by millions of dollars, and add 1970's Soviet vibe to it, you'll have the decor of this park.

Which isn't to say that there is a lack of cool shit up there, because that's not true. There's a gigantic ferris wheel that goes around and around at a snails pace. It's also right at the very edge of the hill, and that makes me more than a little nervous, so I've only ever visited the bar at the bottom of it. Shocker, I know.

There's also a pretty decent looking roller coaster, but it wasn't running on Saturday. Underneath the coaster, in a concrete space reminiscent of a parking lot, is the Go-Kart track. Georgian Go-Karts are apparently just small four-wheelers. And there are only two of them. Don't worry, though. You get a helmet for the ride, too! Or at least I think you do. There were two of them off to the side at least, so they might have just been for decoration. Like the roller coaster above, the Go-Karts were also not operational.

My favorite part of the park, though, is the Dinosaur Experience. Just past the ferris wheel is a small fenced off area with animatronic prehistoric creatures. They're motion activated, and don't do anything too crazy - opening their mouths in roars that aren't synchronized with the soundtrack, blinking with eyelids that needed to be replaced ten years ago because they had holes in the lids, wagging their arms around in weird little robotic dances. The trail takes you around the perimeter of the area, and is doable in probably five minutes.

We of course took almost fifteen, since most of the robots were exceptionally hilarious, such as the Ornithomimus making some incredibly weird sounds. I've been trying to upload a video of it, but it's not letting me. However, if you have an iPhone, go to Settings>Sounds>Ringtone>Classic>Old Car Horn and that is exactly the sound that one of the dinosaurs was emitting. I'm no Robert T. Bakker, but I feel like there's something off about this interpretation of saurian vocalizations...

What I was really excited for, and what made the two lari admission price to the dinosaur area really worthwhile (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you have to pay a few lari for all the janky rides and attractions at the top, since admission is free), was the prospect of riding this Pachyrhinosaurus. The attendant lady unfortunately dashed that hope, so this was the best I could do. Which I guess for being a 27 year old in an exhibit obviously targeted at those twenty years younger than me isn't too bad. I just really liked his shocked and concerned little face.

We explored pretty much all of the park, and while it was fairly slow and quiet that day, I feel like it's anarchy and pure chaos in the warm summer months. There are a ton of water features reminiscent of Splash Mountain, as well as numerous fountains that are obviously designed for children to run around in. Take any carnival you've ever seen, put those rides on top of a park, and voila - you have Mtatsminda.

There's also a little roller coaster for children, and we of course had to ride that. We wanted to ride the big coaster, dammit, and since that was closed, this kiddy one (called the "Happy Train," just by the way) would have to do! Who cares if we were the oldest people on the ride with no youngsters of our own, and who cares if we were laughing like complete goobers the whole time, and putting our hands up on the hills that were only a five foot drop. We were having fun, dammit! Which is more than we can say about all the actual children on the ride, most of whom were just staring straight ahead and weren't smiling or giggling or giving any indication of fun-havingness. The only reaction on any of them was one girl at the very front of the train who was unafuckingmused by us, and spent the entire time glaring at the two idiotic Americans cackling in the back cart.

Christine was most excited to do the Bumper Cars, so as we were on our way out of the park we stopped by. And of course, given our location, it couldn't just be normal Bumper Cars. No. There had to be furries on them. We hypothesized that this is what bored carnies are apt to do when days are slow. They had their costume heads over on the side, and stayed in the cars for consecutive rides. I guess when your job is "Be A Dog That Gives Balloons To Screaming Children," riding the Bumper Cars endlessly and for free is a perk.

The whole day was just full of weird, surreal little things like that. There are some Saint Bernards that are an attraction all their own - they don't do anything, and you can't pet them, and they're in a really remote part of the park. They just sit/sleep and you can take pictures of them. The old and broken parts of rides and attractions are just kind of thrown behind thin stands of trees, and you're able to get back and poke around them. There's a Ghost Castle which isn't open right now either, but there are attendants on the upper balconies of it who wave at you and call out, "Hello! How are you!", because even from thirty feet away it's wickedly obvious you're a foreigner. There are big paper mache mice at a supra, and a few roundabouts and swings for kids to play on that are chained and bolted to the ground, forbidding both the roundabouting and the swinging. And maybe these are all just side effects of the park being in offseason, but part of me really doubts that it will get all that "normal" come July.

We ended our little afternoon up at Mtatsminda grabbing a beer and some snacky foods, all the while making our own version of Cards Against Humanity: Georgian Edition. Christine and I spent most of the day in the park laughing ridiculously hard and having an insane amount of goofy fun and, judging by the wi-fi password for the restaurant, Mtatsminda thinks we're just as good of a time!

It's A Love Hate Relationship

A few weeks ago I was at a party in Tbilisi with a large majority of the Tbilisi expat community. I don't know them very well, but I've met most of them a few times, and while they're nice enough they're not really any kind of group I'd go out of my way to hang out with when I have my awesome comrades in the TLG program.

Anyway, I introduced myself to one girl, a former TLG volunteer who has lived in country for the last two years, and is dating a Georgian guy. I figured, "Hey, she must be kind of cool! She's stuck around past her contract, is living in Tbilisi, and is even in a cross cultural relationship! She's got to have hilarious stories about this goofy place we both so clearly enjoy!" Naturally, after initial pleasantries, she asked me how I was liking Georgia, and I said that I loved it. I might as well have called her a stupid fat cow, because she jumped down my throat for that for the next forty minutes.

"What do you mean you LOVE Georgia? No one LOVES Georgia! Georgians don't even love Georgia!"

She had a snipe for every single reason I gave her.

"I think it's a beautiful and diverse looking landscape. I love mountains and the sea."

"Oh, so you love trash everywhere because no one gives a shit enough to throw it away properly?"

"I think the food is delicious."

"Yeah, you get sick of it. Trust me. There's only so much bread you can eat."

"I think the people are really nice and helpful."

"And judgmental and bossy and really, really rude. And will totally rip you off once they find out you're not Georgian."

And on and on it went. For over a half an hour. This person, who I'd never met, belittled me and just kept telling me how wrong I was about every single one of my thoughts.

Now, I don't handle people telling me what to do very well, let alone how to think. Disagree with me, sure, but don't sit there and tell me that I'm fucking stupid for my opinions, cause guess what? They're MINE.

There are plenty of things to be upset about this country with, and it's not like she was necessarily lying about all of her reproaches.

There is a huge amount of trash everywhere. The creek behind my house acts as my family's dump. People let trash just drop from their hands while walking down the street, or chuck it out of car windows as they go driving down the road. And sometimes, sure, it is obnoxious to be in a beautiful field surrounded by snow capped mountains and see seven plastic bags hanging on tree branches or corn stalks. But then you remember you're in a place that doesn't even have a stable electric grid, let alone a reliable and orderly trash collection system. Also, it's not like America is really that much better. The national parks are clean [for the most part], but our major cities are pretty trashed (pun intended!). Granted, it's not to the level most towns here are, but still. Environmental friendliness isn't taught here, and unfortunately that's something that has to be taught. And since this is a country where many people burn their trash in winter as supplemental fuel for their houses, I think we should, once again, be focusing on fixing the bigger issues at hand. 

As for the food, I really think this one is about where you are in country. After talking to a lot of my friends who live in the mountains, I realized I'm pretty freaking lucky about my location. Telavi is a fairly large town, and we have a bazaar that is active every day. Not only that, but we're relatively close to Armenia and Azerbaijan so we continue to get vegetables throughout the winter. My family is also fairly well off by Georgian standards, so we have a good bit of diversity when it comes to meals. Sure, most meals are some kind of brothy meat stew with potatoes and some tasty spices, but I've yet to get sick of those since they're so freaking delicious. But in the villages and mountains it's a different story. Most other volunteers have been eating some kind of bread and potato dish all winter, and up in the mountains there is basically no type of vegetable other than cabbage. So I can see where some people might grow tired of the food.

But that's not necessarily "Georgian" food. That's "being poor" food anywhere. Also, if you live in a town or a city, you have options, and I don't really understand how anyone living in Tbilisi can claim boredom of food. I mean, they have a few Indian restaurants (oh my god they're so good!), a Thai place, a Mexican joint (and they totally ripped off the graphics from Chipotle and it's hilarious!), and even a pizza place! With cheese sticks! It's legitimate pizza! And that's not counting all the Lebanese restaurants, Turkish cafes, and even the American fast food branches. There are stores that sell pretty much anything you could want, so cooking isn't even a pain in the ass in a city.

And in terms of people and their judgmental tendencies, well, it's not that I can refute that, because I can't really. Georgians are no more judgmental than most Americans are, which is to say they're a pretty judgmental group of people. I've yet to really have that big of a problem with it, however. Most of the time, if I ask someone for help I'm greeted by curious and friendly questions in hopes of helping me out. I tend to avoid talking to younger women, because I've noticed that they're exceptionally not friendly, and I also stay away from younger men since I don't want them to get the wrong idea. So by narrowing down who it is that I interact with when I need help, I've effectively cut out the major judgers. It helps, again, that I live in a bigger city, and don't have to deal with small village life. It also helps that I'm not the first American to be through here, so my being a foreigner is pretty old hat. That's not to say that the people in the bazaar don't rip me off, because they absolutely do. But the people in my life that matter - my host family and coworkers and neighbors - are pretty non-judgmental, and that's really all I care about.

Now, there is plenty of shit about this country that drives me insane. All of the double standards I have to navigate get really tiring after a while, and being treated like a four year old when I'm twenty seven is equally obnoxious. I'm saddened by the way animals are treated even though I understand why. Sometimes when I catch people blatantly staring at me I feel like yelling, "JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS IT DO I HAVE FOUR HANDS GROWING OUT OF MY EARS WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?!" Not having a car is vexing, and being reliant on a public transit system that doesn't have any kind of schedule other than, "We go when it's full, and we don't drive roads at night," is tricky to navigate sometimes. The lack of privacy with personal items, like phones or notebooks, is still a little jarring, as well.

So having said all that, you're probably wondering why it is that I say I love this place. And the truth of the matter is, I can't really give you a concrete reason why.

I think it's funny that if I want clothes without haggling at the bazaar I have to go to one of the three Chinese shops in town, all run by an unamused family of Chinese folks who all sell the exact same items of clothing, shoes, and cheap imported toys.
I like how a "big night out" in Telavi consists of sitting on a park bench and watching all the guys drive round and round the town center in their cars, most of which don't have front fenders even though they're BMWs or Audis.
I think it's fantastic that people have ridiculous decals on their car windows, like, "SORRY" or "It's My Drift, Bitch," and tinted windows on a Lada Niva are always a great sight.
I love the sound of the Tbilisi metro as it's slowing down between stops.
I don't think I really knew what beautiful was until I was in a marshrutka in the middle of the mountains while this song was playing.
I love that sometimes there's a space heater on our toilet, or pants in our hot water heater, or a stray puppy sleeping on our wood pile in the sun.
I'm tickled whenever I'm looking for our cutting board and, on a whim, decide to look out back of the house and there it is, sitting on a trash can full of distilling chacha.
I love how chacha is stored in gasoline canisters or Fanta bottles, depending on it's quality.

There are a thousand little reasons as to why this place makes me smile every day, and that's ultimately why I love it, which is a hard thing to articulate to people.

The point is that this goofy little country has, for the most part, felt very natural. Yes, it surprises me endlessly, and there are some things that I flat out do not understand. There are also a number of things that I really miss about America. But at the end of the day, Georgia has felt the most like home of anywhere I've lived, other than Upper Michigan. It makes sense to me, in a way that California or Texas, or even lower Michigan, just never did. I like that I have health insurance here, and that even though I make less than $230 USD a month, I'm able to live like an actual person, and go on weekend trips and buy decent food and see my friends. I've felt like an adult for the first time in my whole adult life, and it's something I'm not really eager to give up on my return to America.

I've been seeing a lot of articles lately about "Millennials," the name for the generation I am apparently a part of. It's a generation that's labeled as lazy in this dire economy, one who actually has to second guess our decision to get higher educations out of college because we're encumbered by crippling amounts of debt with no sort of income to properly counteract them. The articles all say the same thing - that if we just try harder, or suck it up and work crap jobs that we hate, that eventually we will be able to dig ourselves out of the financial hell in which we're stuck. And quite frankly, that doesn't sound awesome. Sure, teaching isn't my calling in life, but at least I'm making enough money right now where I don't FEEL like I'm living in some financial hell. I'm also not working sixty hour work weeks in high stress places for money that barely covers my living expenses.

America is, to me, a terrible reminder of all the things I want to do but can't due to monetary restrictions. It's working a lot for very small results, and always being painfully aware of how I should be doing better based on some self imposed ideal of what life with a college degree should be. But here, there is none of that. And I think that's what I dig the most.

The Host Family With The Mostest (I'm getting bad at naming posts...)

My family seems very a-typical to the standard copy-paste Georgian family TLG gave us advice on how to deal with.1 I'm ridiculously happy about that, because hearing stories from other peoples families I think my overall time here would've been much less enjoyable if I had another. Not that they're horror stories or anything, but just that whole pesky gender issue thing again. I knew coming into this program that I would probably be irritated by traditional gender roles, considering they annoy the hell out of me when I see them in my own country. However, it's been one thing to know about them and another thing to actually live with them, especially when I'm the gender expected to not only do domestic shit, but also conform to all sorts of social rules and cues of which I've got zero clue.

My host father is never around really. I'm alright with this because, when he is, he doesn't really have any interest in interacting with me. I can't blame him - I don't speak Georgian or Russian, and I'm a girl. My friend who can speak Russian and is a dude? Favorite person on the planet. My host dad will give us cha cha and drink with us and play backgammon, all while yapping up a storm. He's actually got a sense of humor on him, but hell if I can understand him! Just me, however, and we exchange simple pleasantries and that's that. He leaves for work before I get up, and doesn't get home until well after 8:30 at night. He is basically useless around the house, like most Georgian men tend to be, but he will, shockingly, heat up his own food. This is a pretty big thing, honestly, because there are many people whose fathers won't even do that. He also consolidates dishes and stacks them neatly up near the sink to be cleaned. He won't wash them, of course, but hey. Baby steps!

Bebia and Papa are still with us - not in an earthly "not dead yet" sense, but a "still living with us in the house cause something happened to theirs" type of way. Bebia is normally home when I get back from school, and she's always very keen to make sure I eat. Her overt concern about my lack of eating bread with every meal ("Do you not love it?" she asks whenever I turn it down) still cracks me up, as does her supreme hatred for dish soap. I really like being in the middle of Dish Turf Fights, where Bebia is standing over my shoulder at the sink, whispering at me to not use soap, and my host mom is in the doorway yelling at her to be quiet and for me to use the soap. I normally just throw my hands up in the air and walk away, saying, "Nope nope nope! You two do this!" There's a lot of laughing as all this is happening, which is good, because otherwise it would be a really confusing interaction. Papa has the same schedule as my host father, so he's not around much, either. The times he is, Ani is usually swindling him at backgammon, and then he plays me so he can win and feel better about himself. I'm alright with this role, because backgammon might just be my new favorite game.

It sounds like there's been a lot of extraneous stuff going on with the family, namely surrounding my host father's seedy brother. I felt bad when I first met him about how creepy he made me feel. He's one of those smarmy scrawny guys who looks like he'd be a really good henchman in a Tim Burton movie, only he keeps asking you if you've got a boyfriend and wants you to drink and have a cigarette with him. No, Sketchy McNasty, I don't want to do any of that! Thankfully, he didn't come around too much, and when he was at a supra I could always just pretend I didn't understand what he was saying, which wasn't hard to do, considering I actually didn't!

Anyway, the dude creeped me out, and I was justified a few weeks ago when Ani and I got a ride home from the bazaar from one of her fathers friends. The host uncle came with, cause he wanted a ride home. Sometimes it really pays to not have anyone speak your language, because while we were in the car, with the two men in the front, Ani told me that she does not like "this man." I asked her which, and she said her uncle.

"Why? He's family."

"Yes, but he is not good man. He is...hm. I do not like. Not good. Very bad. Evil. No."

I've got a feeling that all the shit with Bebo's house, and a large sum of money requiring payment, has to do directly with this sketchball. And once again, my gut and its heebie jeebie detector proves correct.

It's been a while since I've seen the rest of the extended family, come to think of it; probably not since November when we went to the village for my host mother's brother's birthday. My other set of grandparents live in said village. While I don't know its name, I do know that it takes about 40 minutes to get to on the good road, and then another twenty minutes crawling through the Kakheti countryside on potholed dirt trails where you have to dodge tractors, herds of sheep, cows, and village kids on bikes. The first thing I saw when I went to their house was a suckling pig hanging in a tree, and I remember thinking, "Alright. This is going to be a good night!" Village Bebia and Papa are ridiculously sweet, and always make sure to give me a big hug and kiss, even though they hardly know me. They're very warm and open, but also really snarky (I think. This is all going off of facial cues and intonation. I'm pretty sure I can see snark across cultural lines, though.), and it's easy to see where my host mom comes from.

My host mother is only seven years older than me, and considering she has a kid that is thirteen years old, I am freaked out by her age. What I am not freaked out by, however, is our dynamic. She's super goofy, and I really wish I could actually crack jokes with her that were more complex than calling her children turkeys when they fight. She's always yelling at them, and when they stomp away upset she smirks all proud of herself and then winks at me. Or if Bebia is being dramatic and crying (she cries about her house to me at least every other day) she'll usually roll her eyes and start mouthing mocking words. Or I'm assuming they're mocking words. There are many things that seem to be universal amongst human cultures. Silently making fun of people when they're being ridiculous is one of them.

There's something wrong with her, though. Ani says it's something with her heart, but she seems very unconcerned about it, as does my brother. I'm fairly certain my mother suffers from a mix of stress and depression, because she alternates between being really vivacious and completely drained. There are some days that she just walks around the house crying as she cleans, and others where she will lay down, silent and sullen, on the day bed across from the couch where I normally park myself. Yet occasionally she's smiley and silly and makes like four things for dinner and is highly animated. I try to make sure I help her out with whatever I can - chopping wood, keeping the petchie going, sweeping, doing dishes, getting her some tea - just so some of the strain is taken off her shoulders.

I'm always surprised at how little my host siblings do in terms of basic things around the house. Not that I was a beacon child for doing dishes or cleaning up after myself, but if my mom or dad needed help with something I'd do it, and wouldn't throw a fit like these guys. Or maybe I did have hissy fits and just am selective memory forgetting about them. Either way. It's still, almost seven months in, shocking at how little they do around the house.

My brother, well, you can refer to this post to see how I feel about him and his Georgian Boy Shit, which has, unfortunately, plateaued out at a very high frequency.

My host sister has quickly become my favorite person in this crazy little country. Being the only member of my family who truly speaks English, she and I have gotten very close, and the more she's opened up, the more I love the shit out of her.

She's at that awful, shitty age of thirteen, where you're stuck between trying to figure out who you are while simultaneously fitting in with your peers and conforming to bullshit teenage norms. Ani doesn't really have many friends who are girls, preferring the company of boys instead. The boys, her brother included, all treat her like one of them, meaning she's not exempt from the punches and smacks that Georgian boys constantly inflict upon each other. This also means that the chick has a set of lungs on her that can shame a foghorn, since while you're fighting you must also yell. She thinks most girls are very boring, and even one day called a few of her classmates "robots." I thought that was a really great observation, because I've thought that exact same thing on more than one occasion.

We've talked about her plans to go to college, about how she wants to get tattoos, and leave Georgia. When she comes to America we are going to visit national parks, and hike up Half Dome, go to Disneyland, and make delicious brownies for my family.2 Ani's great plan right now (i.e. this week) consists of getting a job as a rich and talented actress with her theater degree,3 and then moving to America where she will buy herself a big house, and a neighboring one for me, and we will go on a lot of roadtrips and take many pictures, since she also wants to be a photojournalist. The girl's got big plans for herself, and I dig that.

She doesn't want to get married, at least not for a while, and so far is the first young Georgian I've met who isn't deeply shocked by my lack of a husband/boyfriend/any type of relationship thing. She likes to draw, and is constantly doing "experiments" like the one that's hanging by the door to the kitchen consisting of an eraser, some string, and a CD. I told her it was a really cool little pulley system, but she just made a face at me and told me she doesn't like physics. She makes the same face when I try to convince her how neat science, in general, is and I think I'm finally starting to get her used to the idea that astronomy is awesome.

She also, for some reason, thinks that I'm way cool, which makes me giggle but also makes me super embarrassed, proud, and terrified all at once. I'm like the least cool person on the planet. I don't care about fashion (I say this from my stupid legwarmers and dorky flannel shirt) or celebrities and their rich person shenanigans. I don't like fancy cars, or fancy things at all, I know next to nothing about pop music and I get way too excited about dinosaurs, pens, and jellyfish to ever really be "cool." We gave a midterm presentation last semester about Kakheti, and most people spoke to the wonderful merits of this region, the people, and the rich history of the land, while I got overly enthusiastic about the tectonic plates that shaped everything. "Cool" is so not a word I would ever use to describe myself.

But here's this teenager calling me "cool," and so now I feel all this pressure to make sure that I do my best to stay "cool," which isn't really hard to do since the weirder and more like myself I get the more my cool points go up. But it also means that someone is like, looking up to me, and that's the most terrifying thing I can imagine. What if the advice I give her isn't good and she gets hurt by it? What if something terrible happens to her while she was doing something I suggested? What if she inadvertently turns her back on everything she's known culturally, socially, and hates it but can't come back to the life she knew because she alienated too many people?

I want her to have a great and interesting life. I want her to not get stuck in the rut that so many people, Georgians and Americans alike, get into and never seem to be able to escape. I want her to feel awesome about herself, because she's hilarious and so so so smart and super cute, and know that she can really do anything she wants to do if she puts her brilliant little mind to it. All I can do is hope that between me, the last American, and our host mom, we give Ani enough support where she isn't ever afraid to try new things.

My host mother and sister have, the last few weeks, been trying to convince me to stay here another semester. I keep telling them it's not that I want to leave, but that I have to, largely due to my student loans. And there's always a little voice in the back of my stupid nagging head, saying, "You know, if you had been able to come here when you originally planned, you could have stayed that extra year."

And then my practical brain, which thankfully is getting larger and larger every day, tells the dumb side, "Oh, shut the fuck up. If you had come last year you wouldn't have had these awesome people as your family, and you probably would've been stuck in the middle of nowhere with an outhouse as your bathroom and you most likely would've frozen to death in the winter while trying to pee. Stuff it."

Which is completely true.

For as much as they sometimes make me want to rip my hair out, I really do love these goofy people, which is about as close to the definition of "family" as you can get.


1. That's a shitty thing to say, because it's assuming that everyone here is the same just because they're not from where I am. That's not what I mean. I mean that during orientation we were told a lot of very general things that Georgians are known for doing that we, as Americans, might not be used to. Lack of privacy, constant physical touching, loudness, etc etc.
2. You're welcome, guys. We're getting way too good at baking things, and the brownies that have this honey/brown sugar/chocolate glaze on them are no exception! 
3. I've slowly been telling her about the cold hard facts of life, and how America isn't really paved with golden streets. The other day I introduced the concept of Student Loans to her, and how a college degree no longer gives you a high paying job, so I think I'm going to let her come to terms with that before dropping the "theater is a pretty crapshoot luck degree!" bomb on her...

Control

One of my favorite parts about my life in Telavi has been watching the evolution of computer availability with my host siblings. When the weather started to turn cold, and the kids were inside more often, they naturally began to fight over the computer. They'd fight when they got home from school, and would barrel through their homework to be the first done and secure their spot on the computer for that precious hour they [each] get. It's really incredible what flash games and Facebook will do to a sibling relationship.

Most of the vicious fights happened when it was just the two of them in the mornings before school. No one ever truly won - someone would get kicked too hard, punched too much, or in one extreme case, where Goga threw a pair of Ani's favorite pants out the back door and into the weird trash filled creek that flows behind our house, be fed up with Georgian boy shit. Their fighting would be so voracious and frequent that eventually my host mother, tired of hearing about these escapades from the wronged child day in and day out, put a password on the whole computer. That way, she would have to be home in order for them to be able to use the computer. In her mind, she was eliminating a huge aggravator from everyone's life.

Unfortunately, what this introduced was an almost blood frenzy of Internet induced angst from my siblings. Now they'd just harangue her even more the second they were ready to go online, not caring about where she was in the house, what she was doing, or who she was talking to. She'd try to hide her keystrokes, but since the passwords were like four characters long and the kids would raptor pack her (standing on opposite sides of her, with one being a distraction and the other watching diligently for what she was typing) they would figure each one out. But she wouldn't know they had figured it out until the next time they would get in a fight over the computer in the morning and the "loser" would complain to her. 

Then she started to hide the keyboard, under the assumption that if they couldn't type they wouldn't be able to log on. Which is pretty sound logic, honestly, but they're determined kids when they want to be. They found that pesky Special Assistance menu that's on Windows log in screens, which brings up a virtual keyboard. Using the mouse, they were able to select the letters needed for the super simple password. And again, they could have gotten away with this, if only they had shut the fuck up and cooperated and taken turns. But no. Shit fests ensued in the mornings again, and word finally got back to my host moms ears. Naturally she started to hide the mouse, also. 

It began in a drawer in the desk, but Ani and Goga quickly found this hiding spot. Then my mom moved them into a cabinet in the living room, changing what one she'd use every day and always hiding them underneath bedding and towels. That didn't help, either, and inevitably they'd find these peripherals and then use them when she wasn't home. Finally she just started to bring the mouse and keyboard with her to school. It was the solution she had been dreaming of! Divine retribution at last! Freedom from quarreling children always! I mean, it's a bit cumbersome having to carry a full size keyboard and a mouse in her purse day in and day out, but if it saves her a headache or twelve per week it's totally worth it.

So there I was a few weeks ago, sitting on the couch in the petchie room, reading my book. My host brother had just thrown a fit about not being able to use the computer, and stomped out of the room, leaving only my host mom and me. She waits a moment. We hear the bathroom door close, and then she hurriedly comes over to where I am and motions for me to stand up. I look at her curiously, but comply and stand by the door. "Watch for Goga," she whispers as she lifts up the cushions and pulls out the keyboard and mouse from the empty space underneath the collapsable couch bed. Of course I start busting up, because this women just pulled computer accessories out from a sofa with the same caution that someone might have when revealing the location of the hidden rebel base to a confidant. 

And that's the current resting location of the peripherals. Right under my butt as I type this up. My host siblings have yet to discover it, that's how unASSuming (RIMSHOT) it is. I've started to run interference on the kids, keeping them out of the room and occupied so my mom can safely extract the secret devices. The suspense of having the keyboard and mouse magically appear is starting to drive my host siblings insane. They keep asking me if I know where it is, but I always just play dumb and lie. Their incessant fighting makes me want to strangle both of them, and I am pretty sure my host mom is in the same boat as I am, considering she always sighs and yells that she will abandon them and come back to America with me if they keep fighting. So if they want to pull their hair out in wonder as to where the accessories are, let them!

Besides, I've got my own computer, and my own Internet, and I can do shit like this.

Since you need a nice view in order to just look at pictures of cats, right?

If you give a mouse a cookie...

...or, as I like to say, "If you let a Georgian use your iPhone once..."

I made the dangerous mistake a few weeks ago of letting Ani, my host sister, use my phone to take some photos. She was bored, and I figured this would be a good way of keeping her out of our host mothers hair. So into the App Store I went, and upon her request I downloaded a camera called Retrica. If you're not aware of Retrica, you're not missing anything. It is a program specially designed for people to take selfies. But she's a thirteen year old girl, and I thought, "What could possibly go wrong with this?"

And nothing's gone wrong, per se, except for the fact that I've created a selfie craving monster. Add in the two neighbor girls who, three times this week, wanted to go out and take pictures of themselves, and I've got a whole cluster of teenage Georgian girls who insist on posing "nicely" for 100 pictures at a time.

This is what my poor photo library looks like. 399 pictures. I'm halfway tempted to tell my host parents I will pitch in money to buy my host sister a phone of her own so my poor phone can get a god damn break!

I'm about as much of a cam whore as your average upper twentysomething year old. I don't particularly like taking pictures where I intentionally look decent, because it feels silly, so I'd much rather just look as silly as I feel. Unfortunately, Ani is a thirteen year old girl who is caught up in this web of "everything must look nice always" cultural mentality.  Naturally, my weird faces and goofy quirks when taking pictures confused her at the beginning. I think she's finally getting used to my "monkey faces" (I really must look like a monkey, because my grandfather, father, uncles, and now a Georgian girl all have called me "monkey face"), and "big arms" thing. She still yells at me about the "big arms" thing, however, so I don't know if I will ever be able to get her totally used to that. I make it a point to be even more ridiculous in these pictures that the teenage Georgian girls force me to take - and I do mean force. They grabbed my face and put lipstick on me the other day, informing me that they wanted to "look nice for Facebook."

Oh, and have I mentioned that Georgians love Facebook? Cause they do. Most teenagers I've met don't do anything on the internet EXCEPT for Facebook. My host siblings both spend hours just clicking through photos of their friends, or of random pages, or chatting with people they know. And not that this is any different than most other teenagers, because I'm sure I did the same thing, but I also remember going onto forums and participating in eRPGs (Yeah, that's right. I joined a crew of an email role playing game of a fictional Star Trek ship. Cause that's a normal thing for an eleven year old to do...?), and making websites dedicated to god knows what, and forget the day that Space.com happened, because that might've just been the most marvelous day ever in my little prepubescent life. And I guess that's yet another perk of speaking English - a lot of vary diverse content is available to us online. Content that may not even be translatable into Georgian. But my host siblings don't do ANYTHING. They know Facebook, and Youtube, and some strange Russian version of Facebook, and that's it. No emails, in fact I'm pretty sure that most kids don't know how to even compose and send an email. All Facebook. All the time.

Anyway. Sure, little Georgian teenagers. Let's make sure we "look nice for Facebook." I'm glad that you've got the priorities down!

Inevitably, once we take a minimum of 20 photos, and a maximum that so far has yet to exceed 130 (Yup.), they will want the pictures IMMEDIATELY TO PUT ONLINE. With my sister, it's easy - I just send them to her via messages on, you guessed it, Facebook. Six at a time cause that's all you can do. But that's doable. I don't mind doing that. It becomes another matter altogether when dealing with more than one Georgian girl.

We spent an hour one night this week trying to get pictures from my phone to Rusa, my neighbor, because her Internet at home was out and she did not want to wait. She brought a jump drive over, and I told her that if it was formatted a certain way that my computer would not be able to work with it. She laughed, and then was confused when, shocker, my Mac could not read her Windows formatted USB stick. I tried explaining it again, and she asked me, "But, what version of Windows do you have?" No version of Windows. It is another type of computer. Mine and Windows do not get along. They are not friends. "...Is it Windows 8? I have Windows 7. That is why." No. No it's not. Mine is not Windows. At all! She then suggested that I take my phone to her house to plug into her computer. I told her no, that it would not work (Which I mean, it probably would have, but I wasn't about to a) go outside AGAIN, b) plug my poor iPhone into some Windows machine and c) have to deal with an interface on the computer that was probably in Russian or Georgian and has god knows how many weird ass viruses on it just so an impatient 14 year old can get some glamor shots where her face is completely over exposed!), and she suggested plugging her phone into my computer. So an Android media managing app download later, and still we could not get photos onto her computer. We ended up having to take out her micro SD card, stick it in my card adapter, and just give her the pictures that way. And I guess maybe I should have thought of that first, but why would I give any more thought to getting this chick her pictures when SHE WOULD JUST BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD ALL OF THEM OFF OF FACEBOOK WHEN SHE GOT INTERNET AGAIN.

It was a really frustrating evening. Unsure if you've picked up on that one.

The whole "we must look nice constantly" thing is really starting to wear on me. It's an unrealistic expectation, and makes people just get incredibly petty and shitty with each other, all the while keeping women, especially here, in the outdated roles in which they find themselves. Which is why I insist on my default face for pictures with young Georgian girls to be silly. I want them to see that it's ok to laugh at yourself, and that you don't have to always good.

I think it's working a little bit. My host sister has gotten significantly goofier while I've been here, although whether it's her just getting more comfortable with me or I am actually making her weird is hard to say. I do know that before I came around most of her pictures on Facebook were your typical vacant eyed model inspired faces and poses that many girls here (and let's be real, anywhere with internet access) are so fond of. And now she has a few where she's got her eyes crossed, and her tongue is out, or she's making a sass face. I'd like to think a small part of that is me, but until she herself starts to do the "big arms" thing I don't think I'll be able to take any kind of credit.

Cold

Sometimes I make the very silly mistake of thinking that I look awesome.

This usually happens in the mornings, and it's usually following about a twenty minute long string of obscenities going through my head about how much I don't want to get out of bed, because outside of bed is the air known as "cold." It happens after I've stumbled to my dresser, pulled a skirt on over the long underwear I slept in, thrown a sweater over the top half of my long underwear ensemble, and then hiked up my super toasty wool socks over the long underwear bottoms - you know, so snow can't get all up in my business. Once I throw on my goober boots, I feel like one of those chic Norwegian women who always are all playful and cute in the snow. The ones who have the perfect hair and they're just loving every second of their polar afternoon because hey, they're in this super cute long underwear and pairing it with clothes and don't they look so comfortable and fashionable? They're the ones who don every winter style magazine cover, and who can make even the winteriest of the boots look good.

So as I've got this mental image of me being a super cute Swedish snow bunny in my mind (which I'm not remotely of Nordic descent, but we'll just skip right over that detail), I will, without fail, just happen to glance in the mirror on my way out the door. It's always far too late to do anything about my clothing, as I inevitably do not leave for school until the VERY last second, but I'm still always slightly horrified by the person staring back at me.

With my hood up, my look would not be considered "Norwegian Arctic Fashionista," and would instead fall into the category of "Homeless Eskimo Yooper Chic."

This is always kind of embarrassing, given how well put together everyone looks here. Women still wear very cute little boots with absolutely zero traction, and most have traded in their stilettos for the much more "practical" wedge heel. They wear sheer black tights underneath their adorable dresses, and have very black classy jackets. Their faces as they pass me in the street say, "Dear mother of tits, it is cold as all get up outside!"

And then there's me. Being all Yooper about shit. Stomping down the street with bright blue wool socks peeping over the top of my fuchsia lined stompy boots (seriously, these Columbia boots are fucking awesome), wearing my long underwear on the outside for everyone to see. My jacket is super poofy. My scarf extraordinarily fluffy. And guess what? I'm pretty warm!

The previously mentioned embarrassment of how I look always dissipates the second I see any other human being on the road, which usually means it's gone about two minutes after I step foot outside of the door. I see people sliding around on the snow because they might as well have smooth plastic trays strapped to their feet. There are folks walking in tandem clutching each other as they go so they can share body heat. The smugness I feel as I stroll on by, not slipping because my big ol' stompy boots have a crazy little thing called traction, only helps to make me warmer. It's an internal heat that starts to spread and it feels about as warm as the sunlight does on those cold winter days. I could try to dress all fashionable, but fashionable isn't warm. Fashionable will just make me cranky and cold and quite frankly that sounds just awful.

I used to be really good with the cold. I used to love winters. I used to go snowboarding with no jacket, doing runs in only a t-shirt and my snowpants, because I just didn't feel the cold. I was from upper Michigan, dammit. Lake Superior itself flowed in my veins, and that six month dead period we call winter couldn't touch me or bring me down.  And then somewhere along the way I became a wuss. Cold started to affect me. There would be a breeze on a 70 degree day and I would shiver like some simpering Floridian retiree. If it wasn't 75 degrees and sunny, I contemplated wearing a hoodie because it might get chilly, and wouldn't that be unpleasant? Living in California, where the coldest it would get is in the 40s (HA. Scare me later!), certainly didn't help, nor did my short stint in Texas. I complained if it wasn't warm enough in a house to wear only a t-shirt, and I wanted to be able to walk around barefoot regardless of the time of year and location.

My parents would keep the house at a frigid 58 degrees in the winter, letting it drop down to 55 at night. Sometimes we'd get crazy, and "crank" the heat to a balmy 62, but for the most part my folks were of the opinion that if you're cold put another "god damn shirt on." I used to think this was outrageous. I used to think it had to be some sort of child abuse. I mean, who are these fucking eskimo people that raised me? Who thinks that 58 degrees is an acceptable inside ambient temperature? Where is that considered alright?

Oh, young Jo. You were so foolish. You had no idea how good those days were.

Now that I'm living in a house that has exactly one source of heat, and it is localized in a room which is not my bedroom, I redact every single whine I've ever whined about being cold in Michigan.

Mom. Dad. This is my formal apology for being a wuss about the temperature in winter. I now know what true fucking cold feels like. Please give me 58 degrees. 58 degrees sounds fucking tropical in comparison right now.

I wasn't even this cold during the polar vortex of doom that the Midwest experienced this last December. It's 21 degrees and sunny outside right now, and I'm pretty sure it's about 29 degrees in my room. My computers battery actually stopped holding a charge WHILE IT WAS PLUGGED IN during the night because it was so cold. I think I've fixed this by dressing Helix (my computers name. Of course I had to give it a name, because god forbid I don't anthropomorphize everything in my life) in flannel shirts, as his battery was still going strong this morning.  My Nook, which is supposed to be able to last for weeks on a single charge, has yet to survive a night without dying. I've been sleeping in long underwear, wrapped up underneath my toasty sleeping bag and two big blankets, yet still my feet and hands are cold.

Ironically, the only time I'm truly warm is when I'm all "Homeless Eskimo Yooper Chic"'d up, and that's of course only when I'm outside.

As you can see through the frosted-on-the-inside glass, it's a blue and sunny day outside! If only it weren't cold as balls in my room!

It's crazy just how much the cold has permeated everything. I've been sitting in front of a burning petchie for a few hours now, even as I type this, and my fingers are little icicles. Copious amounts of tea aren't helping, and no matter how many clothes I pile onto my body still the chill advances.

If this is a prelude to getting sick, it can just stop right now. I refuse to succumb to the crippling illness that almost every other one of my fellow volunteers has contracted. That probably means it's time to go buy lemons to eat and get enough Vitamin C to say fuck off to whatever pathogens feel like attacking my immune system.

Seriously. Pretty sure if I can make it through this winter of no heat, then I can do anything.

The woods behind the house have excellent lighting when the sun is setting.

Unsure what type of pines they are (White, maybe?) but they remind me of Michigan.

Warm, soft light is always really misleading to just how fucking cold it actually is. Your iPhone's quickly depleting battery will remind you,  however, as will the lack of feeling of your face.

And then there are views like this. When the sky is super blue and the trees are all fluffy and big and covered in my favorite type of snow and the mountains are purple. I can sit and complain about how cold I am until I'm blue (and not even from hypothermia, RIMSHOT), but at the end of the day views like this make my stupid little cold heart happy and warm.

How Ballpoint Pens Gave Me An Existential Crisis

I watched a really interesting little video yesterday on drawing with ballpoint pens. While most people walk away from it with a deeper understanding on cross hatching and other basic techniques, something about the video really made me uncomfortable. 

I realized shortly afterwards that never once, in the history of ever, have I questioned how these pens work. I mean, I knew the basics - tip, ink, pressure - but I never asked "how" in any sort of greater capacity. How awful is that? 

These pens have been a part of my daily life for years, and I couldn't be bothered to fully understand how it is that they function? 

There's actually a little ball in there (hence the name, you fucking spaz!) and it acts like those analog mice from the last generation of computers. The sides around the ball trap extra ink, and it all globs up until it gets knocked loose and that's why sometimes you get gross blobs on the paper as you write or draw. 

And know why artists who use these pens as their preferred medium never have blobs of grossness on their work? 

They're professionally trained and therefor their hands are just smarter than mine?

Magic? 

They sold their soul to a devil for the low low price of no blobs? 

No. None of these, which are all theories I've considered in the past. 

Its because they're constantly wiping off their pens on a paper towel. 

...why the hell did that never cross my mind? I've spent years - YEARS - thinking that I'm clearly just doing something wrong with my pens. Like I've got too much variable pressure as I use them, or maybe there's a lot of temperature fluctuation that others lack in their professional studios, or a dozen other technical reasons to rationalize why I sucked. 

No, Jo. You weren't using a fucking towel. 

So not only do I feel awful for never wondering how these tiny writing instruments work, other than "they just do," I also feel fucking stupid for never once thinking "just wipe it off" as a viable solution for the globs I've been plagued with since forever. 

And now I'm sitting here questioning everything else in my life. 

How many other things do I completely take for granted and not even wonder how they work? 

What other things can I fix with a proverbial paper towel? 

Why didn't I spend more time paying attention to simple machines in school? 

How come I never tried harder to understand physics and go into astronomy so I could figure out how the Universe was formed and how it works and where all we fit into it?

How can I sit here and say I'm an open minded specimen of the human species if I'm so blasé about something that's been an integral part of my life for like 20 years?

Ballpoint pens are the worst. 

I hate them. 

I want to light them all on fire and you might as well toss Small Minded Jo in there with them so we can spend all of eternity harassing each other in the glorious afterlife. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go ramble in my stupid notebook with my dumb ballpoint pen that is just constantly mocking me now.