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!

A Story

So God has finished making the world, and all the parts in it. He calls up all the humans, and starts giving them their respective countries. The Canadians receive their sprawling tundras, the Nepalese their high mountains, Kenyans their expansive grasslands. The whole endeavor took a really long time, but at the end of the day, all the peoples of the world had their own special place.

Except for the Georgians.

They had been busy partying at a supra, and missed their turn to receive their country. Stumbling up to God hours after the fact, they apologized, and asked where they could go.

"Sorry, guys," God said. "There's no world left for you."

"Vaimeeeeeeeeee!" the Georgians drunkenly cried.

God felt bad about this, and pondered what he could do for this group of people who were oozing chacha out of their very pores. He sighed with his final decision.

"There is one small part of this world left, and I had made it for myself. And since you need your own home, and I'm God, I guess I can give you my little corner."

And God transported the supra'd Georgians to their new home, which they called Sakartvelo - or Georgia.

Moral of the story, kids:

Get too drunk and fat at parties when you have important shit to do, and it will all work out in even better ways than you could have hoped for!

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!

"The Mountains Are Calling And I Must Go..."

...said John Muir, a particularly bearded nature lover whose facial hair was rivaled only by his adoration of scrounging around forests and mountains, and it was this quote that was rattling around in my brain when I randomly decided to go visit a particular stretch of mountainous land a few weeks back. 

While I normally hate the type of posts like the one I'm about to do (the ones where I just recount all the fun I had and bore you to death with some blow by blow recollection of how pretty it was while bombarding your bandwidth with a ton of pictures), I sort of don't care. Because the mountains are ridiculously pretty, and no amount of words I possess or pictures I take will begin to do them any sort of justice. But I'm only a human, and if I've learned anything from watching Doctor Who it's that we don't really give a shit about things being impossible, because we will try anyway just on the off chance that we're wrong. 

I realized the other day that I normally talk about places and don't give you a lick of perspective about where all they are. I suppose if you really cared you could Google it on your own, but I'm feeling particularly nice today, so here's a small map. As you can see, there isn't really a direct route up to Kazbegi/Stepantsminda. You have to duck down south to Tbilisi (which is right where the "Google" is in this map) and then catch a marshutka going north from there.

The climb into the mountains starts innocently enough. The sprawl of Tbilisi gives way pretty quickly to small villages and rugged farmland, but your first ascension into higher elevations is fairly sneaky. You don't realize how high up you are until you see these bad boys in front of you. 

And you still don't really feel like you're that high, until you see the semi trucks in front of you, and realize that the "small ravine" next to the road has now turned into a gigantic how-the-fuck-did-you-not-notice-it-before canyon. 

And up and up you go. The switchbacks are ridiculous, the climb is an incredibly steep one, and the whole time the driver, whose vehicle is naturally in questionable health because Georgia, is clipping along merrily at a way too fast pace. If you're in the very back of the van, like I was, you will get tossed around like a rag doll, and if you're insane like I am you'll be smiling the whole way while listening to some goofy ass music as the soundtrack to your trip. I highly suggest all of this, as it was probably the most fun I've had in a vehicle ever, and that's saying a lot.
 However, if you're a normal person who does not like being tossed around due to shitty quality of roads or if you are simply terrified of heights, do not ever, ever, in the history of ever, go up this road with a Georgian driver.

I suppose even above treeline there have to be strange abandoned buildings, and while I think this one is actually a proper monument, that doesn't mean there weren't at least a dozen abandoned houses, warehouses, or churches along the mountain ridge.

So up and up you go, until you're driving in a world that's only white and blue, and suddenly you're going down. The downward part is interrupted by a series of commie fun tubes that serve as tunnels. I call them commie fun tubes because they don't really go through the mountain like an actual tunnel would - instead they serve as a protected road so that, when the mountains inevitably destroy the parallel exposed one, trade won't come to a grinding halt.
My guess is that until the weather becomes better, the outer roads won't be opened for traffic, and when we were up there, these outer ones were still closed. However, that didn't deter our driver who, impatient for the semi trucks to creep through the tunnel, decided to say fuck that rope for telling him he couldn't go on that road, and onto the "seasonal" road we went.1
Whatever their name may be, and whatever purpose these tunnels or tubes serve, eventually they dump you into this high moraine valley.

When you're this high up, it's hard to remember that the bottom of the valley is still actually about 5,000 feet above sea level.

There are a ton of little villages sprinkled throughout the valley, although they're mainly on the side opposite the highway.2 There are remnants of cable cars across a few of the gorges, but I'd hazard that  they've been out of commission since before the fall of the Soviets based on their degradation. Otherwise, there are no roads proper over to these locations - just sketchtastic footbridges and footpaths up the little houses on the hills.   

And then the road drops down onto the grey granite floor of the valley and begins to climb upwards again, until this is what you see - Mount Kazbek, the Gergeti Trinity Church, and the tiny village of Stepantsminda (the town formerly known as Kazbegi). And yeah, that little smudge on the hill just to the left of Kazbek is the church.

I really do think that the sky is a different kind of blue in the mountains.

Kazbegi is the third highest mountain in Georgia, and reaches almost 17,000 feet. The fact that it's a dormant volcano just makes me love it even more.  

There's not a whole lot to do in Stepantsminda this time of year. Even getting up to Gergeti, one of the more famous churches in Georgia, is a hassle, and walking up is nearly impossible. The whole area is definitely a summertime paradise, I'm sure. There are all sorts of glaciers, waterfalls, alpine meadows, and birch forests to go crawling around in, either on foot, by horse, or by parasail. In mid March, however, it's fairly sleepy. You can take a stroll up to the Rooms Hotel, which lies at the topmost part of town, and get a ridiculously awesome view from their ridiculously awesome porch.

Also you will want to get a mug of their hot chocolate, because I'm pretty sure they literally just melt a bar of chocolate into a cup and call it good. So you get a warm and uber tasty drink, plus the view from above. Add in some awesome company, and who can't have a good time?
Buttmunches. That's who wouldn't have a good time. And since you, oh diligent reader, are not a buttmunch, I'm pretty sure that you'd have a fun time!

The Rooms Hotel is definitely a great little place, and quickly escalated as one of my favorites in this country. Their entire lower floor is a sitting area/coffee shop/restaurant/bar and they have a huge collection of books in multiple languages (Georgian, English and Russian of course), as well as excellent musical choices. I say this primarily because I heard several Beatles songs and none by Pink Floyd. Well done, Georgia! 

My friend and I could only spend the day up in the mountains, so we were not able to get up to the Gergeti church. Instead, we found a taxi driver who agreed to take us 10 km up the road to the Russian border and the monastery that sits next to it.
In case you had forgotten that this is a supremely Orthodox country, and you might have gone a whole ten minutes without seeing some kind of church or cathedral (blasphemy!!), there is, naturally, a little shrine along the way which our taxi driver was nice enough to stop at. 

Hello, Russia!
Well, actually, hello three miles of neutral zone and THEN Russia! I felt a little weird, being an American and taking obvious pictures of the Russian border crossing, hence why this is probably a little wonky of a shot.
Either way, the border crossing sits in an impressive gulch. 

The church, within spitting distance of the border, is for the Archangels Gabriel and Michael. It's also, strangely, made from a pink rock which isn't remotely native to the part of the mountains this was built in. It's one more time that the ancient world makes me go "Damn!"
It's also currently under heavy construction and refurbishment, like so many sacred sites here are. The narthex is done, however, so we were able to get inside.
I didn't spend that much time inside, mainly because it's all new and apparently I find new things uninteresting and bland (seriously, all the walls were white. No weird fucked up icons or anything! Why even bother going to church if you can't check out ancient paintings that have been defaced??), but also because the outside is, to quote John Muir again, "a cathedral of light." So what if he was talking about the Sierras half a world away with these words - it's applicable to the Caucus, dammit!

In summary, I hate the mountains, they're not that pretty, and I definitely won't be going back again.

1. Times like this make me remember that I've become so used to "rules" not really meaning anything. Crosswalks, "Do Not Enter" signs - they're all more suggestions instead of law. America is going to be rough.

2. It's called a highway, more specifically the Georgian Military Highway, and it's been around in some form or another since medieval times. Queen Tamar had a summer palace up in these mountains, and used this road as transportation. Nowadays, it's barely two lanes wide, and has numerous semi trucks that take their turns incredibly wide and creep up the mountain ridiculously slowly, which will infuriate your driver and make them pass trucks at really dangerous and inopportune times. Basically, what I'm saying is that "highway" is a really liberal term for the type of road that takes you up into the mountains.

Kiddos

I've spent a lot of time complaining about school, or how child shenanigans make me want to choke said children. At the end of most days I usually feel pretty useless and superfluous in the classroom knowing that most of my kids still can't say simple things such as, "This is my pencil," and they've been in English class for over three years. These crappy feelings are amplified any time I try to ask them, "How was your weekend," which is a question I pose at the start of every week to my upper grades and they still struggle to give me an answer. Tests, and grading said tests, are also heartbreaking, as it's physical proof that I really am not doing anything for these kids. It's a sneaky hate spiral where I constantly am wondering why I, an anthropology major out of school for almost five years, thought it would be a good idea to go to a country, where I don't speak the language, to teach kids my own language with it's insane rules and contradictions.

And then little things happen.

I'll come into a classroom and the first grader, who is from Russia and didn't know any Georgian so has been learning Georgian and English at the same time, will run over to me with a notebook, throw her arms around me and then show me, with an insane amount of pride, something she drew. And she'll tell me what all of the things on the paper are, in English or in broken Georgian, as well as what color they are and if she likes them or not. She's always done with her in-class work first, and it's always perfect, and I always make sure I give her, secretly, an extra sticker. Nothing big or flashy - just one of the tiny, colorful smiley face stickers they all go bananas for. She'll put it on her workbook page, and then hide it with her hand so the other kids can't see that she has a smiley and they don't, and we'll wink at each other because we know something no one else does, and then suddenly 9 am doesn't seem quite so early.

Or I'll get assaulted after a particularly trying fifth grade lesson by two of the girls - one, the top in the class, and the other her very shy friend. They'll stammer and ask me if I like My Little Ponies, and I'll exclaim happily, "I DO! I love it! It is one of my favorites!" (What? I can be a 26 year old and love the Little Ponies, dammit!). And then we will yap at each other about who our favorites are, and even the shy girl who doesn't like to speak up in class will grin and go on and on about Pinkie Pie, and they will pull out their notebooks and show me page after page of My Little Pony drawings. So now it's once a week, after class, that they will stop me on my way out of the room and show me their latest drawings, and we'll talk about how silly Spike is, or how Rainbow Dash always does the craziest things. It's my favorite part of dealing with the hell that is fifth grade.

Walking into school when it's grey and drizzling and an altogether dreary morning, one of my little fourth graders with particularly bad body odor will be waiting by the front door of the school so that he can give me a hug and a "good morning!!" before he runs off to class. There's a fifth grader who likes to lurk at the top of the stairs so she can hop over to me, arms outstretched, and grab me to give me a kiss on the cheek and say "hello" cheerfully. How can mornings be crappy after that?

I still think it's hilarious that all of my kids, with the exception of my too-cool-for-school sixth graders, love Hangman. Like, love love it. As in, beg me to play it. They come running up to me, their hands at their throat, mimicking choking (which was really startling the first time it happened, as I thought I was going to have to perform some heimlich maneuver bullshit or deal with a dead child and I was SO not prepared for that kind of thing!), saying, "Mas! Mas! Chamokchobana!" ("Teacher! Teacher! Hangman!")

My after school club originally started out as a place where kids could get help with their homework. Not many came for that, however, preferring to play Hangman endlessly on the board. They're for the most part pretty good at it, except for one girl. She is probably my favorite student of all, and she is just the absolute worst at Hangman.

What is that I don't even...

When I first started at school, I couldn't get her to talk for the life of me. She couldn't read, she didn't like speaking, even in Georgian, to the other kids. I asked my coteacher if she was alright, and was told that she is very slow. She was never called on, never offered her hand for answers, and most of the time she just stared out the window. Anna always came to English club but never participated, instead standing off to the side of the gaggle of voracious kids who all wanted to shout letters out for Hangman. And then one day, as I was walking home, I heard running little footsteps coming from behind me, and the third grader appeared at my side. She smiled shyly and said, "Hello." I was so elated that she was speaking that I may have been a little overly enthusiastic in my response of, "Hi! And how are you?" But she giggled and very haltingly said, "Fine." She giggled even more at my poor attempts of Georgian for talking about the day, and then we parted ways when she went into her house.

But the next class period, she was looking in her book and following along. The next English club I threw on a movie on my computer for the kids, and she and I went to the back of the room and worked on reading. She slowly started to raise her hand in class more to read passages or give answers. My favorite part of her transformation, though, has been her responses in dealing with the other students, particularly ones who give her crap and say she is stupid, for her to be quiet and give up trying to read. Because now she'll yell at them and keep going, and it's awesome, and I want to fucking put a million lights on her and say, "You will never be able to touch this kid as long as she wants to keep going, you little assholes!"

But I can't do that, so I just give her a lot of high fives.

She really is terrible at Hangman. Even using a book to help her with words, they always get misspelled anyway, and games always take a way long time to play. But it's alright, cause she's getting better with distinguishing between "e" and "i" (which is a super common problem across the board with most of my kids), and she'll also draw stick figures with Mickey Mouse ears. And that's all sorts of awesome.

The fact of the matter is that I will never be an effective teacher for these kids. I lack the necessary fluidity in their native language to really actually properly teach them the differences between adverbs and adjectives, or how verbs change based on their tenses. I'm pretty much demonstrative only for those things, and that's fine. But I think I'm way better for these kids than I give myself credit for (she said humbly), in that I provide a lot of positive reinforcement for them even TRYING. Especially the super shy ones. Sometimes all they need are a few weeks of friendly smiles for attempting to read, or give an answer from the book. I completely disagree with how my teachers will just write off students who are struggling, or scream at them for making mistakes, since making mistakes while speaking is a whole part of learning a language. But that's a whole cultural can of worms I can't even attempt to break into, so all I can do is work around it, offering whatever kind of support and encouragement I can to these fairly disheartened kids.

And it must be working, because sometimes I get a bunch of little flowers from my little kids.

Georgian Words I Continually Fuck Up

Somewhere around cup three and a half of coffee I decided that today I would write a blog post. But I had a problem in that I didn't know what I wanted to talk about. Occasionally I get things into my head that I have have HAVE to do, but then don't actually KNOW what I want to do about them. This is actually turning into a more and more common occurrence, and it was this exact feeling I experienced as I opened up this little composition.

Then I remembered the lists and realized that, with them, I've got at least six posts just waiting to be written up. I would say seven, but one of those lists is Doctor Who related, and since I've already talked about my favorite floppy haired Brits, I don't need to expand on that subject.

As such, today we're going to tackle the list titled, "Georgian Words I Continually Fuck Up." It looks much nicer in my notebook - there are some poofy lines and stars and little sun bursts all through the name, including some very pretty fonts. Cause nothing softens the blow of gratuitous swear words like some frilly cursive lettering!

Most of my difficulty with Georgian, other than the flat-out pronunciation of words, is found in word pairs that my head just cannot keep straight for some reason.

During orientation, we learned a lot of verbs that would come in handy with our host families. Two of them in particular, "I am going" and "I am coming," have proven to be super useful, as I like to be able to tell the family where I'll be at any given time. So these verbs and their imperatives were some of the first words I committed to memory, and they've really stuck to my brain. მოდი (modi) and მიდი (midi) are "go" and "come" respectively.

Only, ha, no Jo. You're dyslexic, and it's the other way around, with მოდი being "come" and  მიდი being "go." Only, I didn't really put two and two together about that until, shamefully, a few weeks ago when my host mom actually corrected me. So essentially, if I've been trying to say, "I am going to Tbilisi with my friends, and I come home Sunday" I'm actually saying, "I am coming to Tbilisi with my friends, and I go home Sunday." For the last six months. Whoops!

Another tricky pair that has been outsmarting me is ეს (es) and ის (ees), or "this" and "that." Why these are so problematic for my brain, I wish I could tell you. I think it's something to do with the fact that since Georgian doesn't have any articles, definite or indefinite, my poor English deprived brain keeps trying to impose English-like rules into conversation constantly, forcing me to overuse ეს to almost annoying levels. And if that's not confusing enough, ის not only means "that" but also the pronoun "it," which wouldn't be problematic except for I sometimes get nervous and use ეს when I should be saying ის because I want to say "it" and instead I say "this." If that makes sense.

No? Yeah, then now you know how any Georgian I talk to feels when trying to communicate with me.

Another pair that makes me sound like an idiot is ფული (puli) and პური (p'uri). The ფ is a soft sounding P, while პ is a more aspirated sounding P. Anyway, differing P's aside, these words mean "money" and "bread." Now, to Georgians, these words sound completely different. Not only are the beginning letters distinct, but the inner consonants are also totally unrelated. However, to my bastardized American ears, the P's are, in conversation, very similar sounding. So much so that unless it's highly emphasized, I can't tell you which P is which.

I bet you can see where this is going, right?

Yup. At the bank it's, "I need bread, please," and at a meal it's, "can I have money, please?" I was interchanging the two so much that I eventually started to avoid saying either one on the off-chance that I still had them mixed up. I've gone so far as to make a mnemonic reminder tying the consonant sounds together, ფული/lari (Georgian money), and პური/bread, which has helped some, but I still have to take a minute and think about it.

The last two tricky words are also completely unrelated, and this particular difficulty only exists in the plural, since every single noun has the same ending for plurals, and that ending is -ები. ჩიტები (chitebi) and ჩიკები (chikebi) mean "birds" and "cups." On numerous occasions, of course always at school, and of course always in front of judgmental Lamara, I will, inevitably, say, "Do we need birds for coffee?" Because god forbid I ever sound remotely intelligent when speaking this language!

So now that we've established that pairs of words are apparently my downfall, we can approach my most hilariously misused word to date. ყველაფერი. I was pretty stoked the day I found out about this word, which means "something," and I couldn't wait to start using "something," "anything," "everything," and "nothing" (all of which I learned at the same time!) as much as I possibly could because they're just so handy for conversations! I felt like such hot shit at the bazaar talking to a merchant, saying things like, "არ ვიცი რა მინდა, მაგრამ მინდა ყველაფერი!"(I don't know what I want, but I want something!), or when comforting an obviously distressed Bebia, "ყველაფერი ცუდია?" (Is something wrong?). Whenever I say this word, I get smiles, and I think, "Wow, look at me! I'm such a good foreigner that I know obscure Georgian words and they're so happy and appreciative about that! I refuse to be a shitty American that doesn't know anything past 'hello!'"

As I'm slowly discovering, I should probably remember that any time I feel really, really good about something, and believe I'm being a total badass, I'm most likely being the opposite.

My friend and I were heading down to a little shop near my house, and I asked my host mom if she needed something from the store. I always offer to pick up any small forgotten items if I'm going out, so I said the same question I'd asked literally dozens of times, "გინდათ ყველაფერი მაგაზაში?" (Do you need something at the store?)

And now we're nearing the point of the story where I stop feeling like such an amazeballs Georgian speaker.

My host mother, smiling like she always does when I ask her this question, shook her head and said, "No thank you," while my friend suppressed laughter. As we were walking down the street, she busted up and inquired, "So, what do you think you just asked her?"

"I said 'do you want something from the store!'"I proclaimed proudly.

"No," Sophia told me as she laughed. "You said, "Do you want EVERYTHING from the store?'"

So for months - MONTHS - in any situation where I thought I was saying "something" I've actually been saying "everything." My ego has taken a serious blow with this knowledge, and I've been knocked down a few pegs on the "Feeling Good About Georgian" ladder.

No wonder Georgians have been laughing at me whenever I say this stupid word! Looking back on the various instances I've used ყველაფერი in, all I can picture is me looking like this:

This is from a pretty amazing blog, written by one Allie Brosh. She is awesome and hilarious, and there are many times where I feel like she and I lead some weird parallel existence...

"I don't know what I want, but I WANT EVERYTHING!!!"

"Is EVERYTHING BAD???"

"DO YOU WANT EVERYTHING FROM THE STORE???"

Sometimes this language kills me.

But mainly it's a single letter that kills me, and that letter is ყ. Transliterated as "kgh," it essentially sounds like you're choking, but with a "k" at the beginning of your being choked. It is hands down my least favorite sound, and I will always fuck up any word that it is present within.

So naturally, judgmental Lamara thought it would be hilarious if I learned a tongue twister in Georgian (as if just normal sentences aren't enough of a tongue twister in this language, but whatever!), so she taught me a really common one:

ბაყაყი წყალში ყიყინება (bakghakghi tskghalshi kghikghineba), or "a frog is croaking in the water."

So here's how THAT went.

Sometimes it's probably better that I don't talk at all.

Unfortunately, that's never happened, not in the 26 years of my existence, and it certainly has not happened here.

I figure if I don't incessantly speak and make mistakes, I'll never learn. It might take me weeks, or even months, to sort some stuff out in my head, but hey! Baby steps! So maybe, by sounding like an idiot, I'll slowly become better at this language, while simultaneously making some Georgians laugh with my super bad accent. And who doesn't like a win-win sitch like that?

Georgian Ingenuity...

...or as I like to call it, "Why I feel at home in this janky little country."

So I'm sitting here in the teachers lounge admiring the new TV they set up yesterday. I can't help but notice the picture is fuzzy, and I consider getting up to make sure the cable is properly screwed in (in case you missed the memo, I am a tech goddess here. Stop laughing, dammit! It's true!). Before I make this [foolish] decision, I take a moment to see how they've got it hooked up, and that's when I notice the cable. 

It runs from behind the TV, across the glass faced cupboards (to which it's taped), up the window pane (to which it's also taped), and ends at the curtain rod. They've stripped the end of the cable, and hooked it over the rod, and that's how they're getting cable to their tv. 

With a curtain rod that's acting as a giant antennae. 

Honk If You Collect Baby Doll Heads

Or honk if you are passing someone.

Or honk if there's someone coming towards you.

Or honk if there is a person walking on the road.

Or honk if you're in a wedding caravan.

Basically, honk if you're a Georgian driver doing anything.

One of the first things I noticed about drivers here, other than they're fucking insane, is that everyone honks. Tbilisi is an endless stream of honking, and quite frankly, it was an alarming soundtrack for the city when I arrived initially. It only added fuel to the fire of my opinion that "every single Georgian is a shit driver and hence all of the honking - because they are all doing something stupid constantly." Which isn't fair, I admit it, but coming from a place where most people only honk if others are doing something stupid, I naturally assumed the same about here.

Except it just isn't the case.

I've tried for months to suss out just what it is that people honk about to little, or no, avail, because quite frankly everyone honks about everything.

Folks about to pass you will give you a small warning honk, in case their gut-wrenching tailgating wasn't enough of an indication that they are about to go around you.

Marshrutkas and taxis will honk at people on the side of the road if they're not paying attention, because they could possibly be paying customers and that's not an opportunity to be passed up!

There are instances of people honking when they get cut off, or if someone tries to change lanes with another car in the way, or any of the other reasons for which I'm used to people honking, but they seem few and far between on the Georgian thoroughfares.

Now, I understand all of those. They make sense to me.

The ones that are more abstract are the cases in which cars coming from opposing directions will give a small honk at each other, like an acknowledgment that they're there. Is this the Georgian equivalent of nodding and giving a small wave from the steering wheel that everyone just DOES when encountering another vehicle on a backwoods road in Michigan, only since it's Georgian it has to be louder? It also has no rhyme or reason to it, meaning a driver won't necessarily honk at every single oncoming car. But I have yet to figure out why some deserve a honk and others don't. I've thought that maybe it's because the drivers know one another, but they usually honk from a distance, and since everyone here drives some kind of black Mercedes or BMW or VW, the chances of them being able to identify friends from far away doesn't make sense. So what justifies the discrimination?

My other favorite conundrum is just the single honks drivers send out randomly while on a road alone. It's not around a curve, or a sharp turn, or anything else that would cause some kind of reduced visibility. No. Those all would merit an alert honk. But it's normally in a place where there are no cars anywhere, and no real impending crash zones, so why they feel the need to blast that horn of theirs is beyond me. They might just know something I don't. Maybe it was where there was a car crash years ago because of a herd of cows, so now everyone just honks to discourage any bovine crossings, and it's just become common knowledge that in this part of the road you honk.

This sounds ridiculous, I understand that, but that's kind of how information gets passed along here. For example, one of the most hilarious and/or irritating things about driving in this little country is that when your car is getting fueled up everyone will vacate it and stand a good twenty feet away. When asked why, I'm told it is dangerous to be in the car, and inevitably the Georgians I'm speaking with will make an explosion sound and hand gesture. So basically, the take away of this, is that one time many years ago, someone was smoking while fueling up their car and this, of course, lead to a big ol' ball of fiery gasoline powered inferno. Instead of suggesting that people NOT smoke while fueling up their automobiles - because let's be real, that will just never happen here! - it's much easier to blame it on superstition and that everyone will be much safer if they just stand off to the side since you never know when it'll blow! ....Even though you totally can predict when it will all ignite, but whatever. Georgia.

Anyway, back to honking.

After spending a few weeks in Telavi, and noting many instances of insane honking, I realized why Tbilisi is actually just one large never ending orchestra of car horns.

Weddings.

When you get married, between the church, and other churches you have to visit, and the location of the supra, everyone will get into their cars that are decorated with huge ostentatious ribbons and go careening down the roads, honking merrily all the way. Sometimes people will hang out of windows and shout and wave, and they are totally not discouraged by the ridiculous velocities at which the car is traveling. Nor are any observers remotely concerned about their safety, nor are they even phased by the amount of noise emanating from eighteen cars with whooping Georgians halfway out the windows getting drowned out by the noise of the car horns. They really are something to see. And hear. And there are so many weddings that you quickly become immune to all of the honking that is constantly going on. It's not so noticeable in Tbilisi, since all of the aforementioned reasons for honking on top of weddings are also in play, but in a smaller town like Telavi it's very easy to identify a wedding caravan.

I've honestly stopped noticing them. Or I had, until I went back to the seemingly docile in comparison streets of America for a month and then returned to the ruckus of weddings and taxis and general vehicular dumbassery that is universally worth a good honk. It was slightly jarring again, and I had to readjust myself to Georgian city norm levels of noise.

I'm sure that all the reasons above have legitimate reasons for Georgians. I'm sure a few of them are as obscure as us Americans flashing our headlights at oncoming cars to warn them of a policeman lurking ahead. Yet since I wasn't born into this place, and hold no drivers license of my own (although dear GOD I want one!), and don't even possess the linguistic prowess to ask drivers why they honk at a specific time, let alone understand their answer, I'm left to make my own guesses. And my guess is this - honk if you're a Georgian driver doing anything.

So when you come to Georgia some day, which I know you totally will because I've sold you on this place in the various charming blog posts I've written and you've read, don't be alarmed by the constant stream of car horns. Nothing serious is happening - it's just a way for Georgians to interact. There's absolutely nothing quiet about this group of people, and I love them for it. They're a loud bunch, always yelling or banging things around, or trying to make as much noise as humanly possible with whatever they have at their disposal. The sooner you can come to terms with that, the sooner you will start to feel more comfortable amidst the ensuing chaos of everyday life.

P.s. As to the title of this post, that's an actual bumper sticker available on the Internet. I haven't seen it here or anything, I just Google'd "honk if you..." so I could find something witty to call this write up, and I stumbled upon this gem. You're welcome!

An Excuse for a Photodump

I'm a big photography fan. I think it's an incredible medium, capable of freezing entire moments in time unlike any other human invention. 

While I wouldn't really count myself as an excellent picture taker (or excellent lexicon user!), I do tend to harbor a lot of happy feelings for all of my shots, especially kitchy ones. A friend and I once had a talk about how pictures aren't necessarily about capturing amazing shots, but more the memories they represent. Most of my favorite photos aren't the best ones - they're the weird few seconds that made me smile the most, or something completely random that caught my eye and made me laugh, or they're the ones that I use a crappy iPhone app to get. 

This is my favorite type of picture to take.

If you don't have Incredibooth, and you're on iOS, it's a pretty fun camera. Most people use it like you would a normal photobooth - a sequence of shots of themselves and other people making silly faces or trying to look all sexy. Unfortunately, the one person that I like looking silly with the most is on the other side of the country or planet from me usually, and my sexy face is pretty much...not... So I've reallocated this app as my go to panorama taker. Not ideal, for sure, but I always love how they come out, and that's sort of all that matters!

2012. Note how the first few are just ridiculous and I wasn't using it right at all. And then around San Francisco I get my shit together! We've got Yosemite, Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Harlow Lake, Lake Superior, Phil's, more Lake Superior, woods, Harlow Lake again, and another Phil's, all wrapped up in a neat little boxes.

2013. Lake Superior,  Lake Austin, Texas highway, Lake Austin, Yellow Dog River plains, Lake Superior, old abandoned mines, Lake Superior, Mskheta, Telavi, Prometheus caves, and the Black Sea. 

Anyway, this is the last photodump (if I'm friends with you on Facebook, I'm way sorry about the 145 pictures that I just uploaded and probably spammed your wall with!) for a while, as tomorrow I head back to Telavi and the land of tethering my 3G iPhone for internet.

It's also 2am and I really need to try to get back on a normal sleep schedule again, so I should probably do that.

And no, I'm not jetlagged.

Not a panorama at all, but a goofy bunch of memories. I got a red light ticket while living in California, and had to take a morning off of work to go to court and deal with it. I was annoyed about having to actually cough up the $400 for it, so I took a detour up to my favorite beach before I went in to work. So I'm on the beach, looking at the waves and freaking out about how I was going to pay this ticket when I got the silly idea to go running around the waves and try to get shots of them. So I did. For like a half an hour, it was back and forth in the surf with Incredibooth snapping away until I was satisfied with the amount of slides I got. It was a good way of forgetting about the massive amount of money I'd soon part with, as well as a wonderful little break before going in to work. I highly suggest it if you're ever feeling stressed or upset about something.

Georgia Is Actually Middle Earth

I'm not going to lie. The very first thing I noticed when I did my preliminary Google search on this country was that the alphabet looked outstandingly similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish. Naturally, I got ridiculously excited about this, and it sort of sealed the deal on my decision to come here. Forget the free ticket, the healthcare, and the promise of adventure and new things. No. It was that the alphabet resembled a fake language that I once knew and wrote a lot in. Oh high school...

The more time I've spent here, the more I've noticed that there are actually a lot of parallels between the fictional world of Middle Earth and the real country of Georgia. These range from the physical to the cultural, and there are so many that I'm convinced J.R.R. Tolkien had to have come here at some point in his life.

First of all, the most obvious - orthographic similarity between Tengwar (a form of Elvish) and Georgian script. While grammatically they are completely different (as Elvish is based upon Welsh and Finnish and Georgian is...well, Georgian), there are many similar shapes found in both of them, mainly of the curly variety. I messed up the drawing a bit, and used the hand written form of letters in Georgian. The formal versions of d, l and r (დ, ლ and რ) are way more Elvish looking when not being written by a spazzily excited American who's got chicken scratch handwriting in whatever language she's trying to communicate in. But you can see for yourself that they share many qualities.

Images courtesy of a Google image search.

Secondly, the landscapes are almost identical. Rolling green hills, wide plains, sharp snow capped mountains, and lush green forests are everywhere in both worlds. Even geographic parallels exist. Georgia has a dividing range of mountains - on the East are fertile green lands and forests where Samegrelo, Adjara, Imereti, and Guria lay, while the West side boasts the high plains and continental climes of Kakheti.  Middle Earth has this same type of mountain range down the middle of it, with the same biomes found in Georgia 1 - Easterly there are fertile green hills where the Shire is, while on the other side of the Misty Mountains are high plains and deep forests. Since Kakheti is on this Easterly side, there isn't a day that goes by when I look out over the Alazani plain and think, "Where am I? Rohan?"

Edoras or Sighnaghi?

Speaking of Rohan,  Georgia has it's own horse oriented group of people. Much like the skilled horsemen of the story, Georgian men from the small area of Racha have had a strong bond with equines for centuries. In fact, their horsemanship was so well known that in the 1800s several Rachan riders were brought to America by Buffalo Bill and were the stars in his show. Clearly, their popularity has declined over the decades, as now the fictional Riders are far more famous.

No, Google. I wanted the Riders that actually exist, thanks!

Next, we come to the Mines. Prominent in both worlds, the Mines of Moria and the Mines of Guria feature rare, precious metals that are highly sought after (mithril and gold, respectively). While I don't think the Georgians will be waking any evils in the depths of their excavations, I would hazard a guess that the overall safety of both mines is the same, as I doubt orcs and their ramshackle ways are concerned about danger for their workers, much like Georgians. Additionally, both of these lodes are reminiscent from days of older sovereignties - Durin and his clan of dwarves, and the former USSR.

Both lands have an ominous presence over the mountains (Mordor and Russia), as well as suffer from groups of people moving Westward (Elves and younger generations of Georgians). Both also have tenuous relations and long histories of invasions from their South Eastern boundaries (the Haradrim and the old Arab kingdoms). Both are very, very old, and sprinkled everywhere are relics of past dynasties in the forms of ruins, paintings, and even the currently inhabited cities. But perhaps the most interesting parallels between the two countries lie within the people themselves.

Georgians, as a whole, are a healthy mix of the four main races who dwell in Middle Earth - Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and, of course, Humans. Naming conventions are even similar. Gimli Son of Gloin, Aragorn son of Arathorn, Faramir of Gondor . Lineage, both genetic and locative, is constantly being used in the place of surnames in Middle Earth, and many Georgian surnames translate to roughly the same thing. For example, Makhashvili means literally "son of Makha." That's why there are so many "-shvili"'s in this country - they're tracing back their lineage with the grammatical conventions of their language. 

Humans in the Lord of the Rings universe are known for being proud, stubborn, good hearted, honorable, and have a knack for holding on to the past unflinchingly. These are not unique qualities to Georgia at all, as many groups of people from all over the world could fall under this category, but I wanted to make sure they were pointed out before I start comparing this culture to a short race with hairy feet who likes to drink.

Realistically, Georgians are Hobbits. Not physically, but in mannerisms and habits? Absolutely.  We're talking about two cultures whose main hobbies include drinking copiously, eating almost constantly, being social to the point where solitude is considered strange, and smoking. Georgians and Hobbits throw huge parties frequently, and both give very long winded toasts to prescribed appropriate subjects (family, friends, love, the wine, etc). Both cultures tend to stick close to their own borders, and the desire to go abroad isn't that common unless it's to send a young Hobbit to relatives in a different part of the Shire, or to send college bound Georgians off to Russia for school. Both groups are incredibly friendly and welcoming once they get over the sheer mystification of someone being a solo traveller, since their sociality is a given part of their daily life. 

Older men hanging out and judging the world as it passes - the popular mode of recreation for Georgians and Hobbits!

Georgians and Dwarves share a few key features, also - notably drinking (are you seeing a pattern here?), and singing. Dwarven music is usually a capella, much like Georgian traditional songs, and sung by men in several polyphonic harmonies. What I mean by polyphonic harmonies is that there is one tone, usually very basso and sung by one person who has really good lung capacity, that is sustained. Think of the drone on a bagpipe. The rest of the singers are trapped in whatever mode this one basso note dictates, and while they have a lot of variance in pitches within these scales, songs usually only have a few modal changes. 

Aside from having similar alphabets, Elves and Georgians are akin in a few surprising ways - I promise that drinking is not one of them! Rather, both cultures try to remain fairly aloof, preferring to take care of their own kind instead of interfering with their neighbors. Both are very traditional and stalwart in their ways. Their songs are long stories, almost sung poems, about heroes in ancient days and long lost loves. And while both are capable of great happiness, within every person there's a hint of a very deep sadness. It's a hard thing to describe, but it's something that I've noticed in many Georgians, and it's also mentioned in writings about the Elves.

Last, but certainly not least, and perhaps the most convincing evidence that Georgia is, in fact, Middle Earth, is the presence of red eye graffiti spray painted on a wall in Batumi. Now, whether I would rather have Sauron and his legions of evil, or the Russians and...well, more Russians, the jury is still out. Either one would be annoying to have invade, but I might be able to get some cool presents off of Elves if it's Sauron, so at this moment I'm kind of hoping for the Dark Lord. 

I have to say, having spent a large part of my childhood wishing I lived in one of the fantasy worlds that I always was reading about, it's cool to finally live in one. Because really, I bet Rivendell is right up this valley. 

Footnotes:

1. While this may seem kind of like a "duh, Jo" moment pointing out the similarity of climates which border mountains, I want to say that I doubt Tolkien did this intentionally. World building was not really a big thing back in the 1950s, and since he clearly placed mountain ranges incorrectly in accordance with any kind of tectonic plate movement which would result in mountains, as there is no way for mountains to grow at complete 90 degree angles, I find it hard to believe that he would really have given so much thought into making sure that the leeward side of the mountains was drier than that of the windward. Instead, I think he came to Georgia, said "holy shit, this is beautiful!" and based the structure of his world around the existing landscape.