"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.

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. 

A Belated Thanksgiving

This lapse in updates has been largely due to my time management skills and my notebook problem. I call it a problem because I have this strange urge to buy like a hundred notebooks at any given time, and keep highly specialized notes in each one. But then I get shy about it, and don't think anything is good enough to go into them, so I stop. A few weeks ago, I started an Ultimate Georgian Notebook (which is the title I gave it in my head), where I was slowly working through crazy linguistic books to try to learn this insane language. However, I discovered I was suffering from a huge amount of downtime at work, and so I just started writing random things in that notebook. It now has morphed into this stream of consciousness journal, where I end up scribbling all my thoughts in some sad attempt to feign productivity at school. Unfortunately, this means that my need to write things down in electronic format has declined. Not that this blog is a chore or anything - just that it was also partially therapeutic and it no longer bears that burden alone.

Another factor in this lapse has been my own personal psychosis about what my next post will be. Last week I started drawing out something for a post I've been wanting to address for a while now, and I got it into my head that there would be no other updates until that's done. As you can see, I've told my brain to get over itself, so you will just have to wait for the nerd post to end all nerd posts for a few more days.

Anyway, onwards and upwards! Since last week was the one day that Hallmark told us to be thankful for all the good things in our lives, I figured I'd make a post about all the stuff I'm glad about. And there's a lot, so buckle up, buckaroo!

First off, I'm thankful for the two Thanksgiving dinners I had this year. The first was with an American family who is now based in Telavi, and the second was a few days later with my TLG family. I'm rubbish with words, and a picture is worth a thousand of them, so I'm gonna do the rest of this via photos.

This past weekend, a small group of Kakheti folks went to Akhmeta to stay with a friend of ours. The original plan was to just bum around that part of the region, get a turkey, and have a little Thanksgiving dinner of our own. While we mostly stuck to the plan [mostly], a good chunk of the day Saturday was spent in the Pankisi Gorge. My friend's host mother's brother has a marshutka, and we each chipped in five lari for gas and got a private ride up to the gorge. The uncle was insanely friendly, and made numerous stops along the way for picture taking. Every time I meet someone new here, I fall in love with Georgia all over again. The generosity people have towards strangers is outrageous, and even though we might not REALLY count as strangers to him, this was our introductory trip with one another. He absolutely did not have to offer to take us up a crazy road to a beautiful mountain valley, but he did. 

In case you're wondering why Pankisi sounds familiar, just think back to 2003. This region,  very close to Chechnya, was thought to contain a terrorist cell of Al-Quaeda. Currently, the main demographics in Pankisi are not Georgians, but Chechens and Kists. The road up the gorge is littered with little villages, each one boasting a mosque. It's a very strange sight in this highly Christian country. We stayed with the main road, ignoring the little trails that branched out numerous times. I want to go walking down those at some point - maybe in the spring when we come back...

The end of the trail (or as far as the marshutka could go, anyway) is a dam and large spillway. It's currently dry, as the water flowing from this river goes into grates and comes out underneath the spillway. The dam is apparently a well known tourist attraction, as there are several ladders and a little path for you to climb. After clamoring over the ladders and stairs and bridges, you come out onto a large platform on top of the dam, where you can clearly see the waterfall. However, if you want to get closer to said waterfall, you need to cross the spillway, and climb up some slippery rocks and boulders to get a better view.

Naturally, we all decided we wanted to see that thing up close. I'm glad my friends here share the same stupid love I have for rule breaking (namely since there are no rules about anything here, let alone where you can and cannot go up in a gorge in the middle of nowhere). We had to cross this gem of a bridge, as well as go down several flights of stairs that were made in the same fashion as this.

I mean, why not have a bone in a pipe on a dam?

You can see the platform where the other picture was taken over in the right, as well as the spillway we crossed.  There were a few points in this climb where Chris's host brother, a 17 year old behemoth of a boy, pulled me to the rocks above like I weighed nothing. Even though my ego was slightly bruised by this, I got over it once I looked down the valley.

This was a rock formation opposite the waterfall. It looks like something out of concept art, and I'm thankful that growing up my parents encouraged me to question everything, including how something like this was made. The Caucasus mountains were formed when two tectonic plates collided, pushing the then Tethys seabed up and up. Over the epochs, and through a lot of volcanic activity in the region, the mountains have slowly climbed upwards, with their current composition being mainly shale, granite, limestone, and sandstone, mixed with metamorphic rocks from vulcanism. Wind and water erosion, paired with the ever present grinding of the Eurasian and Arabian plates, continue to shape this place. Anyone that says science kills the romance of nature is an idiot. That shit is cool!

The waterfall I've been going on and on about. While it might not make any lists in terms of impressive falls, it's still beautiful, and that is only magnified by the lack of people who've visited it. Call me an environment hipster, but I think it's pretty cool that the number of people who know about this particular landmark and have seen it with their own eyes is in the low thousands, and that I'm one of them.

I'm glad I'm janky as hell, and can use rocks and my camera strap as a tripod if need be. Spending all those years around weird makeshift Yooper things has certainly come in handy here!

The sky seems bluer in the mountains. I know it's not, but colors just look so much more vibrant in the fall afternoon light.

The road up the gorge follows a river that is full of huge smooth white boulders and small black stones. Most of the time, the water lies about 20 feet below the road, with no discernible trail down to it. However, there are so many little pools that would be amazing to swim in during the spring and summer, and we wanted to see them up close. So down the shale embankment and impending landslide we went, and over slippery round rocks we hopped until we got to this gem. The water itself is pretty deep here - probably at least 8 feet - and there's a series of little caves off to the right that go underneath boulders and trees. While I've got zero interest in checking those out, as I'm terrified of undertows and drowning (thanks, Lake Superior), I still want to spend a day just lounging in the sun in that water. Or maybe not IN the water, since it's glacially fed and therefor cold as a witch's tit.

Pankisi really is breathtaking. This was right before it started to lightly snow, so we got the sunshine and little sparkly snowflakes at the same time. It was pretty freaking magical.

What I love about the Caucasus mountains is that every time you think you're up so high you catch a glimpse of another peak and realize you're so not. Maybe I've got a weird inferiority complex, but I love things that remind me just how tiny we are, and these mountains definitely do that on a regular basis.

We ended up being very Georgian about our Thanksgiving; i.e. next to nothing in terms of planning. We weren't able to get a turkey, since Akhmeta doesn't sell them except for Sundays at the huge bazaar, nor were we able to find milk for mashed potatoes. In the end, we made sour cream mashed potatoes, some stir fried veggies, an Uzbek dish of chicken and rice, fresh homemade bread, pickled weeds called jongjoli, and lots of homemade wine. Not to mention the weird semi cheesecake that we made from yogurt for dessert. It was still an incredible meal, mainly because we were all on a high from the earlier adventuring in the mountains.

I'm thankful that I'm in this goofy and beautiful country, and that places like this exist on our planet. The mountains are incredible, and fill me with all sorts of really stupid happy feelings. I'm glad my parents raised me and my sister to do what makes us happy instead of what will make us money, and while I joke that sometimes I wish they had pushed me to do engineering or something useful instead of anthropology, I don't think I would be here if that had been the case. 

I'm thankful for my goofy little Kakheti family. When I joined this program, I was really worried that I wasn't going to be able to find actual friends - that I would only hang out with other TLGers in some strange form of solidarity and not actual enjoyment. Luckily, the people near me are some of my favorites in the program, and we genuinely get along. They all have a healthy mix of adventure, hilarity, and downright goofiness in their personalities, which ensures that every trip we take together is always fun. I probably would have lost my shit if it wasn't for these mugs. 

Last but not least, I'm thankful for all my friends and family back home. It's not every day that you find yourself a group of people who are so thoughtful and care about you enough to chip in their hard earned money to buy you a super nice camera that has taken all the incredible pictures in this post. I don't know how I lucked out finding them all, but I'm glad I did.

Normalcy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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