Diet

Yesterday my sister bought new pants. She was very excited about them, and couldn't wait to tell me about her purchase when I came into the room. They're pretty cool, honestly, and if I could get away with any kind of skinny cut jeans (since that's ALL they sell here!) I would totally rock these.

My brother, in typical young-Georgian-boy-with-too-much-energy fashion, decided to try on these pants, thus upsetting my sister. But what made her even angrier was the fact that he could fit into her pants at all. She promptly turned to me and said, "I am fat! I need diet! I will start tomorrow!"

Now, my host sister is not fat by any notion of the word, and being a thirteen year old girl is rough enough without having to worry about body image. So I scoffed at her and told her she wasn't fat, which she giggled and shrugged at, clearly not believing me. I then told her that if she was dieting, I would, too, so she wouldn't be alone. Was I trying to show solidarity with a younger girl so she wouldn't be riddled with insecurities for the rest of her life? Absolutely! Is it also completely self serving so that my own ass doesn't grow exponentially from here on out? Absofruitly! Either way, she was surprised and excited to have someone to do this with, so much so that we even shook hands on it.

We spent a half an hour hammering out the details of the diet - no eating past 6 o'clock at night; no sugar; no chocolate; no uncooked vegetables; no bread; no khachapuri; no cake.

Fruits are allowed (which is hilarious to me, since they're basically just sugar and water, but whatever), as are cheese khinkali (Georgian dumplings), meats, and eggs. Milk is especially encouraged in the mornings. Lots of buckwheat, oatmeal, and noodles.

I don't really understand the logic in this diet, but I was willing to give it a try. At least until this coming Saturday, where I had already informed Ani I would break all rules during our janky Developing World Thanksgiving Feast, but that's another post for next week.

Cue today at school.

My coteachers celebrate a lot of things, such as their children getting married or becoming grandparents, with cake, pop, and khachapuri. Sometimes the chacha is even busted into. So it was really no surprise when I walked into the teachers lounge this morning and there was a gaggle of my fellow teachers hovering around a large cake and khachapuri, dividing it up. One of Nato's sons had just gotten married, so she had brought us all a treat to mark the occasion. As I walked to my seat a plate was literally shoved into my hands. According to the stipulations of this diet, I wasn't supposed to eat either of the things on said plate, and I even tried to fight it by saying I could not have it. This, of course, was laughed at, and I was told, "ჭამე." Arguing with a room full of Georgian mothers will never result in you getting your way unless your way coincides with what they want, so I [really happily] ate the khachapuri and cake, since they are two of my most favorite things on the planet and I am secretly a fat kid on the inside.

Feeling ever so slightly guilty, albeit way happy, I walked home to the ever waiting arms of Bebia. Bebia, my host father's mother, is currently staying with us while something happens to her house. I'm not sure what all is going on but she's very upset about the whole thing, and all I can get out of conversations with her is "bank" and "bad." She's constantly here now, lurking, waiting for me to even look at the kitchen so she can offer me food. It was almost a full half an hour of being home with her before she got all "ჭამე" on me, and busted out the tolma (Georgian dolmades - meat, spices, and rice stuffed and rolled into cabbage or grape leaves), cheese and bread. Not wanting to break my diet for the second time in less than 24 hours after agreeing to it, I politely ignored the bread. When she insisted I have some, I reminded her, in broken Georgian,  about Ani's and my agreement from the previous night. She laughed, waved a hand at me and said "It's fine, just don't eat a lot." Like I was crazy or something for not automatically assuming this.

I love that, in this ridiculously chaotic and nonsensical place, people are most logical about food.

It's wild to me that people here care so much about body image. I mean, coming from the United States, I'm used to it. Most girls I know have some sort of insecurity about something on their person, myself included, but I've always tacked that onto a First World Problem kind of thing - something we don't NEED to gripe about, but we can afford to, both monetarily and temporally. Diet, and weight loss, is a luxury that I've attributed to vast amounts of capital, which the US has compared to most other places, especially here, hence why so many Americans in my age bracket especially do four types of yoga and try a new type of diet every other month in addition to exercising an hour every day.

Many people in Georgia are undernourished and living just on the poverty line, yet meticulous care is given to how they look. Girls here dress strikingly similarly to LA women - heels, tight pants, low cut shirts, lots of makeup, perfect hair - and also strive for the ever desirable slim figure through dieting alone. Men either look like Gucci models, or hip hop wannabe's, but both genders smell amazing thanks to watered down Chinese knock offs of various popular perfumes and colognes. Not older people, mind you. This blanket statement is only speaking to the demographic of Georgians 50 and under.

It's a weird contradiction, like most things here tend to be, and I've been trying to suss it out. Is this obsession with appearance a new trend in Georgia's desire to be more Westernized? Was everyone here so image-centric during the Soviet years, or is this just one more way Georgia is culturally rebuffing Russian sovereignty for so long? When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

However, I will unabashedly admit that I was partially looking forward to coming to a country where people had bigger fish to fry than what shoes they would wear today. Having lived in LA for a few years, I was pretty burned out on self centered people who wouldn't even leave the house before looking like they stepped out of a fashion magazine. Since I am the complete opposite of that, it was really exhausting to be around it day in and day out, and it unfortunately started making me feel crappy about my own appearance. Which is stupid, but so are girl brains. Georgia sounded like it would be the perfect get away of all of the material crap that was driving me crazy in America. But it's the same shit here, except that my choice of clothes now marks me as a foreigner instead of only someone with bad fashion sense.

When I first arrived I was very concerned about fitting in. I wanted to make sure that I didn't get too weirdly American on my family and neighborhood, to the point where tanktops and shortsleeved shirts that showed my tattoo felt wrong. I didn't like spending too much time alone, which included walking around or sitting in the park by myself, because no Georgian willingly spends that much time individually. I even felt weird wearing jeans that were slightly baggy and bootcut, since neither of those things exist for women here. I meticulously kept my Converse shoes white, which was a hassle and a half on dirt roads. Even my hair, which is always slightly frizzy due to the shampoo I use and that it hasn't been brushed in months on account of me losing my brush, made me feel like an outsider. I was self conscience of people staring at me on the streets, because I knew that they knew I was obviously NOT from here.

And then one day, one glorious day, I stopped giving a fuck.

I was sitting outside of a cafe in Batumi with a few of my TLG friends and some random Georgians we'd met, and one of the guys caught a glance at my shoes. They were my Converses, and they were incredibly dirty on account of my having a busy few weeks of adventuring around and not cleaning them. So this ridiculously drunk and very sketchy Georgian kid asks me, incredulously, "Why are your shoes dirty? They are so dirty!" Internally, I was yelling at him. "Because they go places, dammit! These shoes are transcontinental! They've walked more miles than you clearly have, ever, and I've got better things to do than keep them meticulously white!" Outwardly, I shrugged and told him that they were my traveling shoes, which he seemed weirded out by and promptly stopped talking to me. It was strangely empowering, embracing those dusty shoes, and it caused an internal chain reaction.

I'm not from here. I'm from America, from a weird little town in the middle of the woods where I spent a lot of time crawling around said woods and being generally ungirly. I still like crawling around woods, and rocks, and fucked up abandoned places, and that's frankly hard to do in six inch stiletto pumps. I've climbed Half Dome, visited ancient monasteries, and driven 1,500 miles in two days, all while not being a size zero. Some of my favorite moments in life have been while I was utterly disgusting and feeling generally gross, tired and smelly, but I would never trade these for perfect hair at the time. And now that I'm here, wearing strangely cut jeans and dirty shoes, with messy hair and almost no makeup, it's clear that I stand out, because I'm not Georgian. I don't have to fit in here, because I'm not from here, and why try to fit a mould which isn't meant for me?

It's really nice to finally feel comfortable in my own skin. It's something that I've faked for a long time to a lot of people but it's great to finally believe the crap I'm saying and embrace my inner honey badger.

So look out, world, cause old Joey is getting what she wants!

And don't call me Joey!

Because really, who else but a tacky ass American would buy purple fuzzy bunny slippers from the weird little Chinese shop in her town? 

Streets and Stereotypes

In my reading of numerous blogs, and talking to various people before coming to Georgia, several warnings stood out in my brain. The three that stuck with me the most were:

1) People are insane drivers, and take their cars up to ridiculously unsafe speeds on ridiculously unsafe roads and you will probably get hit by one if you walk in the road.

2) Georgians will feed you no matter what. They also will randomly drag you into their houses and make you eat.

3) Don’t friend them on Facebook, because the second you do, they will go through every picture of you they can and “like” all of them. 

These made me giggle, and I figured I would be spatially aware enough to realize there was a car coming and thus avoid it, and polite enough to refuse food, and that the whole “liking” pictures was one of those stupid stereotypes like “black people talk really loudly in movie theaters.” Clearly, since I knew everything about the world, I paid these no real heed.

Only, they’re fairly true (not the movie theater thing, just the general statements about Georgians). The streets here are in terrible shape. There’s no real reason that it takes almost 12 hours to get across a country that is the size of South Carolina, other than the roads are awful. The main thoroughfares in  Telavi are still riddled with potholes, and that’s to say nothing about the side streets, most of which are rubble or cobblestone. These roads have bred two very different types of drivers: ones who are arguably over cautious, and ones who think they’re F1 drivers. The F1 drivers are more numerous, and they avoid potholes and other obstacles at the very last second, often swerving several feet around it, bringing their thousand pound vehicle within mere feet, if not inches, of hitting you. Since I always walk as close to buildings as I can except in extreme circumstances (i.e. parked cars, leering elderly Georgians on a stoop, sketchy looking dogs, etc), I’ve sort of come to terms with the fact that if I get hit by a car while walking it will not be out of malice. Rather, it will be the driver legitimately losing control of their vehicle and thus obliterating me. And I'm pretty ok with that, honestly, because what use is there in worrying about this particular part of my day since I have to walk everywhere? 

As I mentioned before, my street is cobblestone, and is also on a fairly steep hill. People that go down this are generally pretty cautious, as they don't want to really mess up their suspension. The exceptions to this are the van drivers. There is a huge number of various types of vans here. Also, lots and lots of BMWs, Mercedes, and VWs. In the last few days, I've also seen a fair number of Jeeps, including one that was the same year as Nigel, which made me simultaneously happy and sad. It's stupid how heartbroken I still am over that car. But that's all besides the point. The point is that vans are really the only cars that haul ass down my street. 

I say this because last night, as I was walking down to the fountain at the bottom of our hill for water (my host mom scolds me if I drink a substantial amount of water from the tap, which makes me wonder where our water comes from, if street water is that much better...), a van came roaring down the street, and swerved to avoid a particularly jutting rock and almost nailed me. So after giving the driver a ridiculously dirty look, I started back for home, when my neighbor, T'ako saw me and came running out of her house. She lives two doors down, and threw open the gate to her yard and dragged me and my water bottle inside. After hustling me in past her grandmother, she sat me down on the couch next to her sister, and proceeded to feed me a shitload of fresh grapes, cookies, and coffee, even though I had just eaten back at the house. Her sister was watching Turkish soap operas that were dubbed in Georgian, which are super popular here. In typical social interaction fashion, there was a lot of hilarious gesticulating from all of us to figure out what the hell we were saying, although me laughing at a Georgian pad commercial was totally not understood by either of the girls, and no amount of hand waving would articulate why it was so funny. But trust me, it was wicked amusing. Anyway, T'ako herded me over to the computer once I was done with coffee, where she made me watch videos she had taped of herself dancing alone in her bedroom to really, really bad club music. She then friended me on Facebook, and we eventually struck a really good balance of talking via Google translate, and I think tonight we're scheduled to play some cards? Who knows what all I agreed to through Google translate. I guess I'll find out later!

After about an hour and a half of being force fed and laughing really hard, I returned home. Once I turned 3G back on the iPhone, my Facebook was instantly inundated with notifications of T'ako "like"ing every.single.one.of.my.pictures.from.ever. It was sort of ridiculous, but definitely made me smile.

No seriously. She went a few years back, even!

Anyway. The whole point of this very roundabout post was simply to say that stereotypes exist for a reason, and in the span of two hours last night, I experienced three very prominent ones.

Georgian Hospitality

A recent article listed Georgia as the third most hospitable country in the world. All my research of the country echoed the recurring themes of "Georgian kindness," and "the warmth of the Georgian people." Yet upon finally getting here and actually interacting with people on the street, I found it was  just the opposite. The first few days were very strange because I noticed no one smiled. I'm a pretty friendly person to strangers on the street, and will at least shoot people a smile, or a head nod if they happen to make eye contact. But everyone here walks around with a very stoney face - no expression, no looking at other people, no acknowledging other human beings exist. I found it all a little disconcerting.

And then, after having a few phrases under my belt, I noticed that the second you actually initiate a conversation, especially if you try in Georgian, folks just light up, and become incredibly animated. Having made it to my host family's house last night, I finally understand the meaning of "Georgian hospitality."

My family lives up a cobblestone street off of another rubble strewn road off one of the main thoroughfairs in Telavi. The upstairs is currently under construction (I get one of the new rooms when it's finished!), but the rest of it is very warm feeling, very homey. Especially the kitchen, which is hilariously where I have spent most of my time. My host mother, Maghka, is this really vibrant woman who doesn't speak English - she only knows a few words here and there. Naturally, upon finally meeting her, I was so nervous and excited that any Georgian I learned over the last week just went straight out of my head. Conversations right now are a weird mix of me slaughtering Georgian, just straight up making words I think COULD be Georgian (adding an -i to the end of most things seems to work well), and lots of gesticulating. When I get back Stateside you will want me to be on your charades team. However, I have gotten a lot of bonus points for keeping a little notebook where I scribble down words I'm learning using the Georgian alphabet, even if I do need help discerning a few of the p's, k's and t's still. Ani, the 11 year old daughter, and her younger brother Goga, are currently at their other grandparents house in a different village until the construction is done, but I spoke a little with Ani on the phone, and it sounds like she has a pretty good grasp on English. It will be nice to have her around, especially for those times when elaborate acting is needed.

In the four or five hours after my arrival to Telavi, I had four meals, numerous hugs, and several cheek kisses, mostly from the neighbors who kept dropping in. Georgian hospitality is outrageous - we even ran into a Polish kid who is backpacking across Georgia and needed a place to stay for the night. He was asking us if we knew where a cheap hostel was, and Maghka instead invited him to stay with us. So currently this family, whose house is under construction, kids are in another village, and both parents work, have taken in not only one foreigner, but two, neither of whom speak their language. They've fed both of us full meals, and always insisted we take more. We both have numerous blankets, pillows, and I bet if we needed clothes they would help us with that, too.

It's strange to me that the private circles of Georgians are so completely different than the public face they put on. For a group who is so welcoming and open with their house and belongings, they look completely unapproachable on the street. In fact, we were told in training that smiling at strangers, especially girls smiling at boys, is considered "flirtatious." It was slightly horrifying to find out that the first few days I was in Tbilisi everyone probably thought I was some crazy loose woman who was trying to lure men into my bed with a smile. It also explained why a couple times some men followed us for a short ways, yapping at us in Georgian or Russian. I basically just ignore everyone now, which turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. Public outings, especially if I'm by myself, are way less stressful now that I don't have to worry about social graces on the street.

Telavi unfortunately is currently under some cloud cover, as are the Caucasus mountains to the northeast of the town. Hopefully it will clear up by sunset so I can get a picture of the view outside our door. It's sort of stupid how every time I turn around it's another perfectly picturesque scene. The Caucasus are ridiculously impressive. They basically just jut a straight 11,000 feet up from the floor of the plains. The front range, which we can see from Telavi, go above treeline, and the highest one around here soars over 18,000 feet. I don't think I'll be doing that much trekking around in the high mountains, but some hiking definitely needs to be in the future. A few fellow TLGers were talking about possibly taking a trip this weekend and exploring around Kakheti, so hopefully that means mountain adventure time!

Either way, pictures to come when the weather clears up a bit!