I'm a Duck

On the top of a hill there was a small pool left after the rain. A duck flew up there, and settled near the pool. A frog made friends with the duck; they lived together and had a very pleasant time. When the sun grew warmer, and the summer days grew hot, the water in the pool dried up little by little; so the duck said to the frog, "Let us find another place to live in." The frog replied, "You are accustomed to knock about the world, but I cannot leave the place where my forefathers lived." The duck flew away to a spot where there was plenty of water, and the frog stayed in its native place. By and by the duck said, "I'll go and see how my brother, the frog, is getting on." When the duck alighted near the old pool it was already dry and the frog was dead. Seeing all this the duck said, "Ah! Brother, it appears, it is better to roam about as I do, than to love such a patrimony as yours."

From Soulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's, "The Book of Wisdom and Fiction"

So just remember that sometimes, when a Georgian says you're a duck, it's actually kind of a compliment.

Bako

This is Bako.

Well, her name is Bako now. Two weeks ago, when she wandered into our house, I was calling her "little dog" or "scrappy face."

It all started out innocently enough. When I first found her on our couch, I was home alone and heard a weird noise in our sitting room, kind of like a yippy whine. And that's when I saw her curled up on the cushions. I'd wondered a lot of times if my family had ever had a stray dog come into the house since we just leave the door open in the day when we're home. That query has now been answered, and it is yes - stray dogs can just wander in if they so fancy.

I brought her outside, and we ended up playing a bit in the courtyard once she stopped cowering out of fear because of the whole me being a human thing. I figured that she would be a one day visitor - a transient in our backyard, just like the little black dog from January was, and who the mangey pointer mix who roams around the neighborhood is. But the next day when I left to go to school, this little mutt came bounding over, and walked me to the gate. When I got home she crashed into my legs, tail wagging happily. The day after was the same. This dog stuck around the house, and has become our own ardent defender, barking at people down by the riverbed behind the house, and chasing birds, cats, and even the hens from nextdoor who wander into our garden.

She is really young - so young that I wonder where exactly her mother is - but she seems to have taken to us nicely. My host siblings are pretty indifferent towards her, which is weird, because they have been talking for months about how they want a dog, and now here one is and they couldn't give half a shit. Bebia and my host mom claim to not like her, yet they both collect leftover scraps of food from meals and give it to Bako in her own little dish outside. They both also talk to her when they're outside, although since it's Georgian I can never really tell if they're happy with her or want to kill her. I decided to just ask if they actually liked her so that I could stop blind guessing based on intonation and vocalization, which was getting me absolutely nowhere. My host mom said that she likes her outside only, but not when she is inside, where Bako frequently tries to sneak into.

Or, should I say, she did try to frequently sneak into. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, my host mother returned home to another pair of chewed slippers. Bako has the unfortunate [puppy] habit of gnawing on things, particularly shoes that are just left outside the front door, which is where my family just happens to leave most of theirs. I suppose the third pair of outdoor shoes was the last straw, so my mom got a belt. I was unaware of the previously mentioned chewed slippers, so I was really happy to see that the family was finally embracing this little puppy, and was giving her a collar of her own! I figured an old belt, one that no one cared about, would be the perfect puppy collar if you poked a hole in it at the right place and cut the excess down!

Only, that's not what happened.

 What happened instead was a little horrifying to watch, even though it wasn't all that surprising.

My host mom left the long bit of the belt and tried to use it as a leash. Bako has a tendency of cowering down and not moving if you pay direct attention to her while you are walking, so onto her belly she went, and was essentially dragged across the yard. Not in a malicious way or anything, but still it was pretty jarring to see. My mom then got a long piece of old electrical wire we're not using anymore and looped it through one of the belt holes, tying this to a tree by our wood pile.

So that's where Bako is now. This little puppy is confined to the circle that her five foot long lead will allow, half of which is woodpile and rock wall. She has food, water, and a sled to lay on, sure, but she's a puppy, and she sort of needs more than that.

And at least Bako is better off than my friend Chris's dog Maximus, who has a broken leg (from being hit by a fucking car) that's never healed so he can't walk on it. This dog was also, over Thanksgiving, shot or stabbed or something, which is where he got this nice little gaping wound from. He's still alive and kicking, happily living his life which is full of chasing cars down the street and trying to hump every dog in the Akhmeta district. So I mean, shit could be worse.

I'm really conflicted about all of this. I'm absolutely not ok with it, because I'm a dog person, and have issues with how this country handles dogs and their training - or should I say lack thereof - but I understand why it's happened.

This is the easiest solution to the problem of a stray dog coming into the house and serial eating your slippers and shoes.

The second easiest solution is to not leave the front door of your house wide open, and keep your shoes inside. But this house runs cold, and keeping the door open in the day helps get some warm air inside. So I get why my family doesn't want to have the door closed. And as far as the shoes being outside, I think this is just a habit that they don't want to give up, because in winter we kept all our shoes right by the door inside no problem.

The third easiest solution is to get a screen door, or a gate. But again, this is assuming the capital to do either of those things, and while my family is pretty well off I don't think a screen door to keep a stray dog out from their house is seen as a wise investment. Even if it is, but whatever. Their house, their decisions.

I wish I could be more bent out of shape about this, but every time I try to write something expressing my indignation I remember where I am and I just can't keep it on the page.

This country, like most developing places - I won't say countries, because there are plenty of locations inside countries that are better off than Georgia where dogs are treated this bad or worse - doesn't have the economic hardiness to deal with humans taking care of humans, let alone humans taking care of animals in a non working or livestock fashion. And even then, I've yet to see a horse or a cow here who isn't completely shaggy and in bad need of a brush.

But pet culture just isn't a thing here. People want to say they have pets, because they see it in movies; they see the whole Western world running around in yoga pants with some purebred dog on a beach and they want that, too. They just are unable to have that idealized vision for numerous reasons - lack of understanding of dog training; lack of capital to provide the animal it's own basic needs; lack of willingness to allow something into your house which culturally is seen as either a nuisance or an outdoor worker. I've yet to meet a dog anywhere in Georgia that lives in the house. I just don't think it happens all that much, especially in the smaller towns and villages.

So I understand all of it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with it.

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?

A Nice Chart

The dotted line represents my level of acceptance and tolerance for Georgian Boy Shit.

It's amusing, because right as I was making the y-axis for this graph, something happened. 

Ani, earlier tonight, changed the password on her Skype account so that Goga could not get online and talk to her friends. I think that's a pretty fair thing, honestly, especially because most Georgian boy interactions with people involve them just yelling or making really loud and obnoxious noises or banging their hands on something. Basically, as long as they can make a lot of noise, and get a response out of you, Georgian boys are all about it.

So Goga gets on the computer at his designated time (my host sibs get into a lot of fights about who gets the computer for how long), which is just after Ani has relinquished the device. She comes over and sits next to me on the couch, and I quickly hide my Photoshop activities because her English is good enough to see what I'm doing. She's very proud of herself for changing the password, and tells me so. About six seconds later, a dismal cry comes from Goga, and he grabs a pencil and throws it at her. She laughs as she ducks away from it, and laughs more as he grabs another pencil and chucks it in the direction of her head.

And this is where things really escalated quickly.

We went from the pencils, to the foot long metal tongs that we use to stoke the petchie fire with, to a chair, and then a stool, and then just fists and feet. My host sibs were throwing the chairs and stools, punching each other, kicking each other, crying the whole time, running around the room crashing into things, and then just screaming at each other. All the while, my host grandmother is yelling at them, trying to get in between them, hitting Goga on the back while saying, "BOY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING" and my host mother, serenely, gets up from the couch and shuts down the computer without saying a word.

Once that happened, Goga ran into the living room bawling, and Ani screamed at him more before storming, also crying furiously, into the bathroom which, subsequently, sports the only lockable door in the house. 

And I'm just sitting here now, asking myself, "What the fuck just happened?" What more perfect timing for all this shit to go down than when I'm in the middle of making a graph to deal with my wanting to choke my host brother.

Oh, life. You've a funny way of working.

But seriously. They really need to go back to school. I cannot deal with another week of them being HOME constantly. When it's just the three of us in the early afternoon it's alright. Not the best, not the worst. Ani and I have a good time, but Goga is an eleven year old boy who loves to harass his older sister, and he knows exactly how to push her buttons so that even a very pleasant moment of us making cookies suddenly turns into a screaming match in Georgian where I feel like they're going to kill each other. 

Goga is your typical boy, especially for here. He gets into fights at school, he laughs way too loud, yells about most things instead of just speak at a normal volume, cries when he doesn't get his way (like when he doesn't know how to do his math homework so he whines at Ani and if she ignores him he cries and starts throwing things at her until she finally gives in and does the equations for him. That happens all the fucking time and it is infuriating.). You know, all sorts of things that I hate when anyone anywhere from any culture does. 

He's also, this week, started to do the most annoying thing ever. It's something that my particularly crappy students do, and I cannot express to you the level of homicidal feelings it induces in me.  I can't help but think they believe they're being hilarious because they know how fucking annoying it is. It happens no matter what question you ask of them - "How are you," "How is your day," "What day is it today," "Do you like the color blue." Questions that they know. Questions that are posed to them every single day. Questions that, even if you ask in Georgian, they answer "Yes" or "No" until my coteacher screams at them to not be smart asses. 

I'm used to it at school. Not at home. Home is like my sacred space for non-assholery child interactions. Ani is hilarious and awesome and we get along great. I'm not super close with my brother, though, because Goga's English is not that good. He knows more than he thinks, and can understand a good bit, but he is nowhere near the level that Ani is. I always make sure I speak to him only in English, and I always keep it even more simple than I do with my sister, but this week he's really pushing my buttons. His response, to anything, is always, "Yes." Or, "No, no no!" 

Now, you might be saying, "Wow, this chick is just a bitch with children!"

No, I'm really not. I've actually got a pretty decent maternal side [sometimes]. I just really hate assholes. Unfortunately, many children go through phases of being assholes as they grow, so I'm naturally disinclined to like them. I don't discriminate by age or gender or anything like that - an asshole is an asshole and they really just make me want to punch them in the face. Do I feel bad that sometimes it just happens to be a fifth grade boy? No. I don't.

So a typical interaction for us will be something like this:

Me, sitting on the couch, mindlessly surfing around on the internet. Goga comes and sits next to me and just watches my screen.

Me: What're you doing, tough guy? (a really frequent question I ask him or my sister.)

Goga: Yes, yes.

Me:  What? That's not an answer. How are you?

Goga: Yes. ....No. No! 

Me: Shen "yes" khar? (sometimes when I phrase what the fuck it is that they're saying, in Georgian, they realize how stupid they sound.)

Goga: laughs and claps his hands loudly Fine, thanks, and you? 

Me: I'm good. notice him looking at my screen and trying to figure out what the weird nebula picture Hubble took is Do you like space?

Goga: points at the screen and then claps his hands all while yelling Yes, yes yes yes yes really loudly and laughing

Me: Wow! I like space a lot, too! High five! puts hand up for a high five

Goga: high fives and then springs up from the couch, making incomprehensible loud yelling noises of a really ear shattering high pitched frequency, while stomping his feet and clapping his hands and then waving his hands in my face before he backs up about four feet from the couch and starts doing random Georgian traditional dance moves. All while yelling.

I really wish I was exaggerating, but that exact scenario happened a few days ago, and the laughing and making loud noises part has been a common interaction between us for while now. The difference being the kind of shit I just described isn't very frequent - on average it happens maybe once a month. And I can deal with that. 

What I can't deal with is this shit happening every.single.day.this.week. He's like a bored puppy. He's just been sitting around the house and has all of this energy and the only way he seems able to get rid of it is by being an asshole. His level of douchebaggery has skyrocketed over the last few days, and all I want to do is punch him in his smug little face.

I think I'm extra annoyed by my host siblings skipping school because it means they're always HERE. Normally, after school, I get a few hours of quiet time to myself. Time where I can put on some music and drink some tea and draw or read or write or do whatever the hell I want. It's wonderful. It's oftentimes my favorite part of the day because apparently I'm an antisocial bitchzoid. So this week has been extra taxing on top of the increased levels of Georgian Boy Shit that my brother is exuding. 

I love my host family. I really do. They're really great, and funny, and have been nothing but fucking wonderful with me. However, if my siblings do not go back to school next week, I will probably kill them. Or go insane and run out of the house laughing and ripping my hair out. Either way, it won't be pretty. So let's all hope that next week brings warmer temperatures, yeah?

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.

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.

Deutschland and Other Stuff

I’m currently stuck in the Tbilisi airport, at 5 am local time, waiting until 7 for the busses to run, so I figured I might as well write something while I drink my wicked expensive airport coffee.

Break was good. It was exhausting, though, which is strange because I didn’t really DO that much. Being home for a month was deceptive – I kept thinking I had all the time in the world to see everyone and eat all the food I wanted, and it so did not happen that way. The polar vortex was pretty intense, and we didn’t even get it that bad thanks to Lake Superior and its awesome protective ways. Figures that when I had originally planned on going to Thailand Nature would be a dick and say, “Listen chick, this is what you get for wanting warmth. ENJOY YOUR SUB ZERO TEMPS, LOLOLOLOLOL!” Since weather patterns on a hemispheric scale totally revolve around me, didn’t you know?

My eight hour layover in Munich was pretty awesome. Lufthansa has now replaced Air Canada as my favorite airline, simply because they organized us into lines pre-boarding based on our seat rows. For some reason, it reminded me of Disneyland rides, and I got ridiculously happy about that. And then the equally ridiculously strong gin and tonic the steward poured also made me pretty happy, as did the two glasses of wine he gave me during the meal. If I could have that man just be my bartender for life, I’d be way ok with that. And maybe it was because I was a little tipsy, but I also got super happy about the pretzels they gave us which were a bunch of different shapes, including a hat, some lips, and hearts. Basically, Lufthansa encouraged me to be a snacking lush, so now I love them.

 

I was so stoked about the amount of gin this man gave me that I just had to draw a picture of it to remind myself later about how stoked I was! But really, I'm not exaggerating these ratios.

Unsure what it is about in-flight entertainment, but for some reason I’ve noticed international flights are full of two things – screaming children, and at least three people in my immediate vicinity watching the Big Bang Theory on their personal screens. It’s happened the last few legs of this increasingly long journey, so maybe I need more data to fully back up this claim, but for now my hypothesis is that the Big Bang Theory must be the only decent thing on airplanes that people can choose to watch. I don’t need more flights to tell you that screaming youngsters are obnoxious, however.

Germany is beautiful, especially down by Munich. It’s all forests with these weird trees that look like they’re made of frosted glass and green green farmland and the Alps looming over on the horizon. Every person I interacted with was incredibly friendly, which was not something I was really expecting. The only person who was unamused was the exchange teller, and me exclaiming, “Jesus Christ! Seriously!?” when he handed me my fewer-than-anticipated euro’s probably didn’t help. Whoops. But really now. Dollar. Holy crap. Step up your game! I want to come back to Europe in this life, and apparently I will need like $70,000 USD just to have a somewhat enjoyable time!

Well, that’s not entirely true. I had a pretty enjoyable time for the four hours I was there. The train between the airport and the town center took 48 minutes (German precision!), and was clean, quiet, and balls expensive. Ok, so 11 euro for a day pass probably wouldn’t be that expensive under normal circumstances, but given the current exchange rate it totally is, and like hell was I going to sit in some airport for eight hours! The Marienplatz (city center) of Munich seems pretty lackluster based on the dingy underground metro stop. It was actually more depressing than Tbilisi’s metro platforms, which made me wonder what I’d find above ground. Instead of equally shady and run down buildings, I was greeted with a cheery cherub and fish fountain surrounded by gothic and modern architecture in a weird conglomeration of local bars and major retail chains for electronics, clothing, and furniture.

Stop it, Munich! I can't handle you!

I spent a good two and a half hours just wandering around, exploring little side streets and alleys, and being almost dumbfounded by the sheer SIZE of everything. There were huge plazas every few blocks, and ostentatious statues of giant lions, fat gargoyles, and judgmental Austro-Hungarian leaders staring at you from each nook and cranny. Every building towers overhead, to the point where most of the streets are incredibly shaded until you come to the inevitable open plaza that is bound to be three minutes away from where ever you are. Due to the insane number of churches sprinkled around the Marienplatz, every 15 minutes there was a chorus of mismatched bells that would drown out the numerous street performers who were either playing solo or in groups of strangely combined instruments. Trombone, guitar, and upright bass? What? They sounded cool, though,  and I especially appreciated that the chick was not only playing the trombone but that she was a pretty big badass on it. There was an inordinately scary number of mimes in spray painted gold or silver trench coats, hats, and faces, who just honked a horn at people as they passed by. Ok, so there were only two, but that's two too many in my book.

Everywhere there are cafes and restaurants, most of which have outdoor seating on the sidewalk. It was an unseasonably nice day, with a high of I think 45ish, so I was able to grab a coffee outside and draw for a bit before striking out in a new direction again. The open air market down one of the streets was in full bustle, selling a huge variety of fruits, vegetables, cheeses, meats, breads, and beer. I ducked into one of the little restaurants in there which had canopied outdoor seating. For some reason it was decorated with really tacky garland, and a lot of scary clown masks, all of which I didn’t notice until I had sat down and ordered a beer. In fact, my exact words were, almost pathetically, “I just want a beer,” to which the reply was, “Well, you are in luck, because we have much beer!” Thanks, super cute German guy! I ended up getting a locally brewed brown ale which was beyond tasty. I don’t think the guy at the table across from me enjoyed my shit eating grin while I was drinking this beer and scribbling in my notebook, because every time I looked up he was just staring with the biggest stink eye ever. Sorry dude, I was having a good little time drinking beer and listening to some Rammstein, so you can just deal with it!

 

Took a selfie without looking like I was taking a selfie, due to previously mentioned unamused older German man glaring at me. 

Super tasty dark beer that super cute German boy suggested. Also, some of the [non] creepy clown decor at the bar. The stuff on the walls was way scarier! 

Munich is definitely a place I want to come back to, especially in the summer. Even today, mid January and not particularly nice weather, it was bustling with activity. Everyone was walking a well behaved dog, or laughing outside of the café’s with their friends, or taking pictures of the beautiful architecture all around them. It had such a good feeling to it, and I’d love to stay a bit longer next time.

 

German seriously cracks me up. Even something simple, like "bison meat" sounds like something a person would just scream at you. "Yes, hello. Welcome to my butchery. Would you like some BISONFLEISH!?!?!?" 

Child laderhosen. Adorable.

Every single window that wasn't for some posh clothing company was basically just a shitshow sampling of the items for sale inside the store. The one for the camera shop was insane. It was like a photography porno with all of the Leica lenses on display that I will never be able to afford!

A wide pedestrian avenue that wasn't really a pedestrian avenue. It was labeled as foot traffic only, but there were about five different vans and taxi's that rolled on down this stretch in the time it took for me to snap this shot and get to the plaza at the end.

I felt pretty silly most of the day. Not only was I super touristy with my gigantor DSLR around my neck and a goober backpack strapped to my shoulders, but I was also alone. It’s lucky that every person I encountered spoke English, because I was unable to think of a single German word the whole time I was in country. My dumb brain kept jumping to Georgian, and while that is awesome now that I’m back in Tbilisi, at the time it was very frustrating. I couldn’t even remember how to say, “hello!” I mean, we’re talking about basic 7^th grade German shit that I should know, aside from the fact that I’ve been listening to Rammstein for years! However, I was once again reminded how lucky I am to be an English speaker given its global presence. Is there any reason that a waitress at a coffee shop should know English in Germany? Not so much. Nor is there a reason for the random person waiting for the train to know enough English to answer my stupid question about the train. I was impressed with how well I got along today not being able to say a single word in German while in Germany.

And now I’m back in Tbilisi, with its nebulous timetables, infrastructure that is precarious at the best of times and nonexistent at the worst (for example, in the last two weeks I’ve gotten two emails from TLG – one to tell us that they’ve recently restructured the whole programs administrative staff, and the second to tell us that our insurance company has gone bankrupt and we do not have insurance right now. Actually, the email was pretty hilarious, so let me finish this thought and I’ll come back to this tangent in a moment!), and flocks of birds that live inside the airport. After spending a month in America, and dealing with all non smoking public spaces, it made me smile to sit at a table in the café next to baggage claim and see all the other patrons smoking like chimneys inside. Ah, Eastern Europe. I’ve missed you.

Ok, so this aforementioned email is basically a great introduction to the type of country Georgia is:

“Dear TLGers,

You know that TLG is providing certain types of services including health insurance. We are sorry to inform you that the insurance company taking care of our volunteers’ health has gone bankrupt. Due to this fact we cannot offer health insurance for some period of time.

We are writing to notify you that temporal improper fulfillment of obligations are caused by force majeure circumstances. TLG is working hard over this issue and we are trying our best to make health insurance active in a timely manner. New insurance will be available in some period of time.

You will be informed about the updates of this health insurance matter as soon as possible.

We hope all of you will stay healthy and won't need any medical services!”

Love it.

Almost as much as I loved watching a homeless guy hug a gigantic mean ass goose today on the street. It must have been his pet or something, because it was just chilling next to him until he decided he had to hug it like right then, so he was laughing and smiling and sweet talking it (or I assume sweet talking, because everything in German sounds like they’re pissed) while it was squawking and biting the shit out of his jacket. I smiled at him as I walked past the pair of them, and he looked at me and said, “Liebe!”

Liebe indeed, sir.