Batumshi!

(Warning, this is very laden with pictures)

This past weekend I was given a choice – trek up to the remote mountain town of Mestia and go hiking around glaciers, picturesque mountains, and continue the general theme I’ve been experiencing of “cold”, or visit the sunny seaside of Batumi for a last hurrah of warmth before winter fully sets in.

Gee. I wonder which I picked.

Picking up a night train in Tbilisi, we spent the next eight hours in transit going across the countryside in the black of night. Remarkably, the train has been the most on time form of transportation I’ve used here. We left right at 10:35pm, and pulled into Batumi at 6:40am, which was our scheduled arrival. The train itself harkens back to the Soviet days, and my spot was an upper shelf bunkbed off the main aisle. Everyone was given a bag of [presumably] clean sheets, as well as a bed roll and ridiculously lumpy pillow. I decided to risk the possible lice infestation I’ve been so afraid of getting here, and curled up on my bedroll and tried to sleep out the duration of the trip. Surprisingly, it worked, and I only woke up every time it felt like we had hit a cow or something, which happened a few more times than it probably should have.

Arriving in Batumi in the predawn hour was pretty awesome. Being the largest port on the Georgian Black Sea, Batumi’s harbor was filled with huge freight boats from various coastal countries waiting to be unloaded with the numerous imported goods found on the shelves of all Georgian stores. The water was all glasslike, and was my favorite shade of blue - it reminded me a lot of Lake Superior on very still mornings. We went on a hunt in the Old Town to find our hostel and put our bags down, and I couldn’t help but be amazed at the aesthetics of the neighborhood.

Batumi is touted as one of Georgia’s premier tourist destinations, and millions of dollars have been dumped in to this city to make it a desirable location to visit. The shoreline is dotted with impressive skyscrapers, holding even more impressive names like Sheraton or Radisson. There’s a building next to the sea that has a ferris wheel built into it, and one that looks like it would be right at home in Hong Kong with it’s reflective blue windows and ultra modern architecture. Further down the boardwalk, there are enormous apartment complexes with incredibly detailed facades, beautiful views, and large windows for the occupants to look out upon. Even all through Old Town numerous buildings are under construction with the promise of fancy hotels and more luxury apartments.

Only it’s all a farce. Batumi is beautiful, and it looks like it’s a fully functional city that’s booming with money, but upon closer examination it is suffering the same fate as Sighnagi – most of these buildings are completely vacant. The structure with the ferris wheel on it’s upper levels is empty, as is the large blue modern building, and even the amazing looking apartment buildings next to the McDonald’s from the future aren’t inhabited save for some homeless guys taking a piss as you walk by.

It’s a sad state of affairs if you think about it, because incredibly wealthy people are in Batumi. Loads of casino’s dot the blocks of the town, and the governmental buildings are some of the nicest I’ve seen so far. There’s construction left and right, so money is obviously coming into the city, but it’s not being put back in ways that would legitimately rebuild it. And it’s not like these buildings look incomplete. From the outside, they are completely done, but were, for some reason, abandoned recently. I’m not really sure what made their progress halt, but it seems like a gigantic waste of resources.

However, none of this means I didn’t fall completely in love with the place.

The neighborhood we were staying in is dotted with cafes, small restaurants, and adorable houses with grape and ivy covered balconies. The streets were cobblestone and had their own contingent of uber friendly stray dogs patrolling them. There were many times that it felt I was back in Southern California, actually. Right down the road from the hostel was the Black Sea, which is lined with essentially one long park, full of statues, more café’s, and benches to sit on. The beach itself isn’t your typical sand filled crescent. It’s reminiscent of many Lake Superior beaches with its completely rounded and smooth stones. Thankfully, the city of Batumi has free lounge chairs you can use.

The best part of the Black Sea, though, is the fauna. This particular weekend there was a very large jellyfish bloom along the coast, and the cnidarians were all over in the water, and even accidentally on shore. Jellyfish are some of my favorite animals, so add onto that my sheer happiness when we saw some dolphins swimming along the coast, and this place is basically all of my favorite things in one – looks and acts like Lake Superior, and has awesome sea critters. Fun fact: the dolphins in the Black Sea are a subspecies of Bottlenose dolphin found throughout the world, but these guys have been separated from the rest of the population for so long that they’re actually genetically distinct now. How freaking cool is that?

Batumi is Jobags approved!

I really did not want to come back East at the end of the weekend. It was so nice to be able to break away from the group for a few hours and pull up a chair next to the water and just be alone and draw. Telavi is bigger than the village, sure, but it still is small enough where me sitting alone in a park drawing would be gossiped about. But Batumi is so big, and full of tourists from all over the world, that some random chick sitting alone at sunset would be one of the more mundane sights of the day. 

And now, for pictures!

First view of Batumi's port!

A statue in the park playing a euphonium? Right across from a fairy statue? It's like this place is specifically tailored to all of my super dorky obsessions!

Another statue on the boardwalk. This time of happy dolphin faces!

One of the statues on the board walk. There was a whole series of these see through guys with hearts. Pretty cool!

Massive koi at the Batumi Aquarium. They were the least depressing part of that place.

The streets around our hostel looked like this. Stupidly pretty. Also sort of reminiscent of SoCal, no?

One of the dogs that liked to lurk around the street. They're all beautiful like this guy. Well, the ones that are mange free, at least...

Most of the buildings have these crazy decorations. Each window is completely unique, and all of the facades around the tops of buildings have some kind of bearded guy staring judgmentally down on you. It's as if my father is disapprovingly watching my every move.

Hilarious sign at the train station. Because I'm 5 and think this is funny.

My most favorite thing on this planet - Adjaran khatchapuri. Yes, that rectangle is all butter. I usually hate food shots like this, but seriously it is so good that I had to partake in the food porn.

Batumi from the cable car! Please forgive the ridiculous amounts of iPhone filter - I didn't think I'd be showing this one to anyone else, so I gratuitously edited the shit out of it.

Aforementioned abandoned building with a ridiculous ferris wheel in it. Cause that's what every building needs, right?

A cabbie that looks like it rolled right out of Sherlock!

The infamous chacha fountain! Every day, for 10 minutes at night, it dispenses that drunken diesel fuel known as chacha. A random Canadian we picked up from the hostel almost got into a fight with some locals here, however, so we decided to not go back and partake in the chacha.

Beached jellyfish!

The Black Sea really could double as Lake Superior, and vice versa.

The Black Sea couldn't decide if it wanted to be blue or grey, so it split down the middle.

It was a pretty awesome sunset, the evening I had alone on the beach.

What's a dorky Jo trip without a dorky iPhone panorama?

Cheating

Tonight I did something pretty unforgivable - I taught my host sibs how to play Egyptian Rat Slap. Apparently, much like "Johanna," "Egyptian Rat Slap" is too much, so Ani calls it "reetchee."  This game, if you're not familiar with it, is one of the most disruptive card games on the planet. There's lots of slapping, and yelling, and sometimes even some hand injuries. Neighbors hate this game, especially due to the slamming of extremities on wood and the profanities. My host mom seemed unphased by it (no, I was not swearing around them - I'm able to keep my sailor mouth in check when I want!), which isn't surprising given Georgians natural volume is 11.

My sibs, in keeping with typical kids all over the world, unabashedly cheat. Constantly. Blatant, look-you-in-the-eyes-as-they-do-it, cheating. It made me remember the days when I was that small and adorable that I, too, could bend the rules to my every whim with little to no consequence.

It's fun having little kids around, even if they're not that little. Being the youngest, I never understood a few very important things, like how little siblings are constantly in your shit, and how they will make you play the same thing over and over and over again because they are just having too much fun. Mary, I am so, so sorry. I almost understand the level of my obnoxiousness. Almost. 

My host sister is pretty badass. The other day she completely floored me. She was saying how my being 26 and unmarried was weird because she is in school with some girls who are already married. So I asked her if she wanted to be a wife soon, and her response was, "No, I do not want to get married. When you get married you cannot go on walks when you want, you cannot see who you want when you want, you cannot wear whatever clothes you want. You stop having fun, and I do not want that." Pretty incredible mindset in a culture laden with such traditional gender roles. She also wants to go to university in Tbilisi, as well as go to America someday (hence the reason she works so hard to be a good English speaker). It's a really, really nice change of pace to see such a radical opinion on her future from a little girl. And it's even nicer to know that my host mom is clearly the big push behind all of this, as she is constantly encouraging Ani to talk to me and ask questions. 

It's fun to hang out with my family a bit more. My brother and father have both gotten much friendlier, and I'm able to talk to my mom in a slightly more conversational way as I pick up more and more Georgian. I'm looking forward to the day that I can say exactly what I want to say and have someone understand me immediately. That will be so nice!

This past weekend I went to the Black Sea coast, and I'll put up a post about that tomorrow. For now, enjoy a teaser pic! 

I've a problem

I stupidly grin a lot.

Like a lot, a lot.

I've found it's most prominent while riding in cars, because there's just something absurd to me about listening to ridiculously bad club music while careening down ill kept roads, passing at the most inopportune times, and dodging some kind of livestock herd that will inevitably be in the middle of a twisty mountain highway. Someone pointed out that Georgia is where the one hit wonders of the world come to die. This is probably one of the truest statements on the planet. I'm fairly certain that the radio waves here are the audible equivalent of the red headed stepchild - the amount of stuck-in-the-90s techno is comparable only to the bad remixed dance music and typical [bad] "American" rock classics. With a dash of local traditional music thrown in, too, just for good measure. It's a safe bet, however, that if you're in a public place, and there is some kind of music playing, you will hear Pink Floyd's "Brick in the Wall" and at least one Radiohead song.

It's funny to me how big rap is here. Tonight, for instance, I'm going to the concert of our prime minister's son, who is an albino, and also a rapper. Because...Georgia? But every other person here loves the shit out of Tupac, so I've heard a lot of N-bombs dropped. I'm sure they have no idea the connotations that word actually has, or the years of racism and hatred tied to it, and if they ever do go to America I sure as hell hope they drop that word from their lexicon. But, and I'm probably a horrible person for this, hearing an 8 year old Georgian boy say "mah n-gga" is one of the funniest things ever.

Also, in sort of the same vein, my host mom has sweat pants that say "GOLDDIGGA" in gold fake jewels. So that's awesome.

 The rest of the ridiculous things that have made me stupidly grin lately will be in picture form. Cause sometimes you really need to just see things.

Street vendor in Tbilisi. She sits outside what I assume to be her house every day with a bunch of adorable kittens. I'm not sure what all she sells, but she has a donation jar out, so I'm guessing she plays panduri (that string instrument next to her) while kittens play and that's entertainment enough to merit you throwing some tetri her way. Seen here, she is positioning the dog that she picked up from the alley next to that pile of newborn kittens. Also, please note the kitten in the box. And no, that bird cage is not, as you would think, for birds. It had a kitten laying inside it.

We were asked numerous times in Tbilisi for cigarettes by kids who were 10 years old or younger. So seeing this was not all that surprising.

Star Wars graffiti?? Tbilisi! I love you!

MORE Star Wars graffiti?? Tbilisi is just toying with my heart now!

Frigid morning walks aren't half so bad when the Caucasus mountains poke their head out of the clouds they've been hiding in for the last week. I'm really, really upset that they look like thirty times less impressive and pretty in pictures than they do standing on the street looking at them. One day I'll get a good majestic shot of them for you, my diligent reader. 

A guy that works at my school (I don't think he's a teacher, but maybe?) asked me today if I had ever had "new wine," which my English teacher explained to me was wine from September or October harvests. I said no, and he told me he would bring me some to try. I figured this would be in a few days or weeks. No. I come back to the teachers room less than an hour later and this 1.5 L of homemade wine was waiting for me.

When I left for school there was no construction on the road. Three hours later, a backhoe was tearing it up. No signs. No warnings. A brave Lada still tried driving on this, bless his soul, until a guy who was literally just moving gravel around with a shovel yelled at him.

And last but not least. Mary, this one is for you.

Just be a kargi gogo for Christ's sake...

I had an absurdly good little weekend. Well, actually the last two weekends have been good. A lot has been going on in little old Kakheti! I guess the shorthand form of all of these events would be this:

Wedding! Time to supra and dance and drink!

Door upstairs installed. Supra!

Leftovers from last night. Supra!

Birthday. Let’s go to the village and have a supra!

Friday. Take a shower, get in a taxi, go to Tbilisi, eat [super tasty!] Thai food, go to a house party with some random people your friend knows, at 2 a.m. decide that you want to go dancing, proceed to the [one] gay club in Tbilisi and dance to really awful techno until 4:30 am. Pass out at hostel.

Saturday. Wake up, eat McDonald’s cause you can, spend the day walking around eating delicious food and drinking wine and watching the festival, chug 2 lari liters of wine with your friend, go running around the streets, go falling in the streets, go to a strip club accidentally?, go to a bar that has a huge beer pong tournament, decide you are done with the fun and want to sleep so trek back to hostel. Pass out, but not before sending some wild ass text messages.

Sunday. Everyone hungover, insist on listening to a brass ensemble and get a lot of dirty looks from the hungovers, sit on the roof of a building and listen to Alt-J while watching Georgian shenanigans in the square below, leave Tbilisi, resume semi normal life.

It was really great to see a bunch of TLG people from the other regions. Not that I don’t love my Kakheti friends, cause they’re a very goofy group of people and great to travel with, but it was cool to see a few folks who are in the West that I haven’t really talked to since orientation. I find it strange we all get along so well. There aren’t really a lot of similar personalities here, and while there are a couple people I have zero interest in ever spending any sort of quantifiable time with, the rest are actually very fun to be around. I guess that’s what happens when your common denominator is English and being foreign in a country together. 

Even though I’ve been told numerous times that I look Georgian, my whiteness feels very obvious. Being stared at on the street, or in stores, is not something I’m used to yet. That's one great thing about trapsing around with other TLG people - I don't feel quite like the star attraction of a three ring circus. The other thing I'm not used to is my role as a foreign woman, since women in Georgian culture already exist in a very contradictory bubble.

Traditionally, women are supposed to be virginal until they get married, while their husbands are expected to be educated in sexual ways by the time they take a wife (can you see where this is going?). Women take great pride in how they look, and often dress way non conservatively. Think of Hollywood and how girls dress there – stilletos, mini skirts, see through shirts, boots, tight dresses. Now apply this to a culture where women are, theoretically, not sexually active when single, and are regarded as these innocent creatures. Strange? Oh yes. What’s even more strange is that, as a foreigner, I can’t dress like that without eliciting many negative outward opinions. Georgians who see women from other countries dress the.exact.same.way.georgian.women.dress. think that these foreign women are either prostitutes, or clearly have no kind of self respect for themselves. Unless, of course, that foreign woman has a boyfriend or husband. A significant other is kind of a do-whatever-you-want card as a foreign woman here. Smoking and drinking in public are also right out, as only prostitutes would do those.  So, permutations of wearing any kind of suggestive clothing, smoking, and drinking in public as a foreign woman is basically an invitation for Georgian men to assume that you are loose and would therefor be down for a one night stand so they can get some experience under their belt. It makes sense that, when your native demographic of women is virginal and your men are expected to know what ding dong to put in what hoo ha or what have you, these men would naturally turn to women NOT from inside their culture.

Navigating what’s culturally polite and acceptable is a bit of a challenge. I’ve accepted that I will already stand out like a sore thumb no matter what, namely because of my complete lack of fashion sense. A lot of times I think Georgians are torn between proving they’re ridiculously wonderful hosts and dealing with the seemingly wrong feeling of giving a girl a lot of wine at a supra. I try to ease this a bit by just refusing to drink quickly with everyone else at these events, but I’m still curious as to what all I’m socially “allowed” to do.

Another thing I’m not used to worrying about is my so-called reputation. Even in Marquette, which is just slightly larger than Telavi, I could basically do whatever I wanted and no one said boo about it. But here, everyone knows everyone else, and everyone talks. So if one passerby on the street sees me having a beer outside a café, alone during the day, they will assume that I’m open for business, and this reflects poorly on my host family. Running, actually any form of exercise, is also strange here, and while part of me wants to rebel and say “You know what, I have changed a lot of stuff to fit in culturally, I think these folks can deal with me doing one or two weird foreigner things,” the lazy part of me actually likes this as an excuse NOT to run. This reputation thing is one wonderful reason to travel on the weekends, however. Tbilisi is large enough that you can do whatever you want and no one will really care one way or another, while other towns and villages don't have anyone in them whose opinion of me I care about. It's a very wonderful feeling to have a day beer and not worry about it effecting my job as a teacher. 

This seems like it’s been a very negative post. I don’t mean it to be. I love Georgia. I think this place is bizarre, and strange, but weirdly logical in some ways. It’s beautiful, the people are very friendly and appreciative. It’s just got a few gender issues that I’m having a hard time sorting out. I knew this coming in; it’s just one thing to read about it and it’s another thing to realize that you have, actually, changed a lot of stuff all because of what’s in between your legs. This country is wonderful if you’re a man. It may just be paradise, in fact. But there are a lot of unspoken rules that women need to follow to be considered a kargi gogo (“good girl”), and let’s be real, at the end of the day, that’s all we want to be!  

P.s. kargi gogo might just be the most hilarious and best phrase ever.

Emily

I had this big long post typed up about our cat, whom my parents recently put down, and it was basically just me being ridiculously sad about the whole ordeal. However, I realized by the end that none of the stuff I said mattered. Feeling guilty about it wasn’t going to change anything, and the “what if” game that I had been playing over and over in my head certainly wasn’t making me feel any better. So I’ve shortened this considerably.

Lemmers, you were a goofy little part of our goofy little family, and home isn’t going to feel quite right without you.  

This was about as bold as you got. Although thinking of ways to steal an entire turkey is pretty brave, kittelah!

You and your goofy ass ways of sleeping always cracked me up. Especially since you'd roll around, and then I'd ask you what you were doing, and you'd stop and then kind of squeak meow at me like "What do you think I'm doing, ugh!"

You were ridiculously fluffy and pretty when mom didn't have you gooberly shaved. But even then, you were still super cute.

You were a great little friend, and possibly the best cuddle buddy on the planet. xoxoxo