How Plans Work

As mentioned in the last post, I've been pretty bad about updating this lately, and I apologize for that. I had a big master idea to get overly caffeinated tomorrow afternoon and do a proper update, but ha! Change of plans!

One of the things that is both enchanting and infuriating about this place is the way in which planning works. Meaning that it doesn't. There's no point really in nailing down specifics about anything, because there are about a dozen chaos factors working against you at any given moment. Broad ideas of how you want to spend your time are fine, as long as you're flexible give or take a day, and you're not too set on seeing something particular.

In other words, this place is an OCD's worst nightmare.

The good news is that no matter how your plan falls through, the resulting activities that rise out of its steaming pile of ashes are, much like a phoenix, about a trillion times better than what you had originally planned on.

So here I was, dicking around with a notebook, [re]watching some TV show for the umpteenth time, mulling over what I could possibly write about tomorrow when I get a text from a friend.

"Do you have class tomorrow and Friday?" He asks.
That's a weird question, Chris. Duh, yes of course I do? "Yessir. Do you not?"
"Nope not til Tuesday. I just found out."

In the middle of going to check my email to see if TLG sent something I missed, Sophia calls me, and informs me that there's been an outbreak of airborne meningitis, and throughout Georgia grades one through six are cancelled until next week. Because that's totally enough time to get the meningitis out of the schools, but whatever. The point is this coming weekend, which was already going to be a three day weekend on account of Monday being independence day, has now morphed into a glorious five day weekend. Naturally, hairbrained schemes were hatched within minutes, and we now have a nebulous idea of what we're going to do with our newly acquired free time!

Which means, dear reader, that while I would love to stay home tomorrow, and write about some weird Georgian shit, I'm going to be hitchhiking with a friend up through some mountains we've never been in to go visit another friend who lives in the upper elevations of this little place. Here's our route, so in case I go missing you can sort of know where to begin the search.

Kidding. I'm kidding. Isn't that a lovely shade of pink?!

Anyway. After the mountain stuff, and free wine festival on Saturday, and the weird Tusheti horse races in Sophia's village on Sunday, I will sit down and do a proper update, full of hilarity, pictures, and that adorable sass of mine. 

Unless plans change again.

Cause they always do.

P.s. In case you were wondering how the hell this chaos is worth it, this type of view is the answer. 

Still Alive

I'm still alive. I promise I'll write something tomorrow, if not today!

The Unsung Hero

I'm gonna take a few minutes and highlight a little devil that's been a pretty big lifesaver for the last three months - my Nook Simple Touch.

No, this isn't code for my ladybits, although I always want to write Barnes and Noble, asking them why the fuck they thought naming their e-reader something which can be easily misconstrued as a vagina was a good idea, but that's besides the point. This little e-reader is amazing.

I've resisted the whole e-reader phenomenon since it first came onto the scene. I thought it was stupid, because why would you buy one of these things when holding and smelling and feeling an actual book is so much better? And I'm still, at my core, of that belief. I think books are amazing little pieces of time made physical. Carl Sagan said it (and many other things) best:

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.

My biggest gripe with books, in their real forms, is the size. I'm a pretty speedy reader, able to plow through a thousand page novel in a couple days, and bringing a multitude of books to keep up with my velocity would have required a whole suitcase dedicated only to them. Which didn't sound like a horrible idea, except for the fact that I wanted to have like, a nice towel and some sweaters so I didn't freeze to death.  

And that's when I finally gave in and bought the Nook. The post-Christmas specials had it down to only $50 in price, and while it doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles, like a backlit screen, Internet access, or games, it's about as close to a book as I can get without actually having one. 

The screen, which isn't a color display, looks like a piece of paper. It's that off-white page color, and it's not difficult to read in the low light of a dim room or in the blinding blaze of sunlight. You can make little notes on pages, which also turn almost instantaneously - there's a fraction of a second of delay, but that's, to me, the equivalent of having to PHYSICALLY turn a page, so hell if I really care about that. 

I've heard a lot of people complain about Nooks for problems that I haven't encountered. Stuff like their battery life being terrible, or the internal filing of books being wonky, have been big sources of complaints on Internet forums. I charge up my Nook once every two weeks - and that's with reading at least an hour, if not more, on it every day. Unsure why we live in a world where that isn't adequate battery life, but there you go. As for the files, maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty anal retentive and go through and rename all my books anyway - if they're in a series the number is first followed by the title of the series, then author, then book title, and if it's a standalone book then it's just author, book title. I don't have any problem ever finding books, especially since there's that handy dandy "search" function in case I don't feel like going through 62 pages of book titles. An amazing ebook organizing program, called Calibre, is also Nook compatible, and quickly helps even the messiest libraries become manageable. 

Books are easy peasy to get, and since it reads .pdf files as well as .epub, I'm not pigeonholed into only buying books off of the Barnes and Noble e-store. Most of my collection has come from Pirate Bay, or the awesome website gutenberg.org. Since my friends here all have Kindles, which read .mobi (unsupported by the Nook), I use the aforementioned Calibre to convert them to .epubs. Womp womp my life is hard!

I guess a few days ago Barnes and Noble discontinued the Nook, which is a real big shame. If you're able to find one of these little guys (Reddit said that Target was selling their remaining Nook stock for $30), I highly suggest picking it up. It's superb for what it needs to do - let you read books - and with its simple UI, expandable memory slot, and ability to root it (overwrite the preexisting operating system and load games, access the Internet, etc etc) it is the absolute best bang for your buck!

Percy

The afternoons where I can just sit on our patio, reading and drinking coffee, are some of my favorite types of days. Now that the weather is improving, the frequency of these days are increasing. Yesterday was one such day.

I'd just finished my book, and was scrolling lazily through my other options (I wrote up a review for the Barnes and Noble Nook, an e-reader that I bought over Christmas, so I should really post that at some point), trying to figure out which story came next chronologically in the series I'm currently reading, when I heard a weird bleat.

It was definitely a goat bleat, but I was perplexed, since my family doesn't have goats, my neighbors don't have goats, and the only herds of animals I've seen in my neighborhood are some cows that used to trek up and down the dry riverbed behind the house. So I cautiously climbed down the steps to the grassy yard and there he was - a goat, with his leg tied to a post.

As soon as I saw him, my dumb brain of course gave him a name - Percy. Regret instantly hit me for naming him. "Oh you idiot," I berated myself. "Don't name the goat! You're probably going to eat him soon!" And then I thought, "Wait, we've never kept goats, and neither does anyone in the neighborhood! Maybe the family in the village is just going to come get him and take him out to the fields near Kvareli and he'll be able to lead a happy little goat life!"

I let this delusion continue, and indeed it grew once Bebo and my host mom came home and were surprised by the appearance of Percy. Neither of them seemed to be expecting it, and they didn't know why he was in our yard. My optimism for the future of this ungulate skyrocketed.

Later in the evening, Bebo informed me that we needed to take Percy to a neighbors house, because they had a shed for him. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a goat to go a specific direction, especially one that you want it to go when it doesn't want to go that way, but it's really difficult, and usually really counterproductive. The difficulty is almost exponentially more when there isn't anything around its neck that you can grab onto, and instead you're pulling it's leg, it's trying to run away, and it's screaming in pain because legs aren't supposed to bend certain ways. Bebo kept tugging at Percy, relying on the old standard of "just drag things if they won't willingly come with you," but I stopped this right quick and just picked him up. Goat screams are one of the worst sounds ever, and if Percy was ever going to go running through the grassy fields next to the Alazani River, he needed to have all of his legs.

I'd expect, in a place where people regularly carry turkeys on the roofs of Lada Nivas, and drive backwards down busy streets, and a whole plethora of other ridiculous shit, that a girl carrying a goat down the road wouldn't be that big of a scene. But it was. Bebo just followed me and Percy, laughing the whole way, and the neighbors were guffawing so much they couldn't do anything but take pictures. 

We put him in an old stable in the neighbors yard, and that was the last time I saw Percy. As Bebo and I walked home, I was pretty happy with the little life I'd constructed for him in my head.

And then I came home from school today to two fat, old, shirtless Georgian guys, chain smoking and cleaning out an animal that was hanging from a tree in the yard.

"It could be some other goat," a voice inside me said. "It doesn't have to be...oh, shit. There's his little head on the ground..."

Sorry, Percy. I wanted you to have a good little goat life, I really did. Instead, I think you're gonna be a damn tasty meal!

Hostel View

From the lofty second floor windows of the Fox Hostel, located right near Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, you can see the following:

7 pairs of shoes on the phone line
1 gay bar
3 restaurants to buy khachapuri from
1 cat on a tree stump
17 posters on the wall
5 graffiti on the wall
2 full dumpsters that were empty yesterday
3 very lost looking Europeans (Polish?)
3 parked cars - all with their front bumpers!
1 guy on a smoke break with green shoes who noticed me sitting in the window and is now staring.

Evolution

I have a notebook for school. Given my affinity for ridiculously specific notebooks and their themes, I'm sure this isn't surprising for you. I jot down little notes based on stuff we do in class, if certain kids had a hard time with something, general thoughts on the day. Pretty basic things. It started out as a highly organized, color coded informative system, and has since degraded to talking about how I want to punch some students in the face. Which isn't fair, I understand, especially cause they're in like second grade, but hey! I calls 'em like I sees 'em!

Anyway, I was taking a gander through this notebook today, and I figured I'd share a few choice entries with you.

Please note that I haven't edited these, except for changing the day of the week to English (since it's in Georgian in the notebook, but I don't feel like being pretentious to you today!).

9.23.2013 Monday
Grade 1 - book 1 welcome unit. hello, goodbye, my name is...
                vocab for a-f, writing Aa and Bb.
                *Katie has issues writing even with motor guidance
Grade 2 - book 1 pg 51
                happy, sad, pretty, clown, balloon, princess. lots of reading practice.
                sh/th --> trouble with pronouncing these combos
Grade 5 - pg 14 and 15.
                #s review #s next time cause whoa!
Grade 6 - does, do, likes, like.
                *find good way of explaining does with verbs!

10.18.2013 Friday
Grade 5 - a test! lots of confusion on directions.
                having an easier time than 6th gr. well, I lied.
                most v. rough also...lots of questions, staring off into space, etc
Grade 4 - lots of vocab - translating words and text. all read and translate today.
                think they got past tense! or at least in Georgian for translating purposes.
                I think I'm learning more Georgian than they are English...

10.29.2013 Tuesday
Grade 6 - red riding hood misc. bs questions. could and couldn't. explained "ou"
                in that word [could] was diff than cloud, sound, etc. GJ books on doing that...not.
                phonics --> u in put, bull pull.
                more past con't tense. sort of got it. nouns throwing them off.

11.6.2013 Wednesday
Grade 1 - for monday make lil test in notebooks.
                matching game with caps and smalls and then they write caps
                learned Yy and Zz (zed. fuck you British English!) alphabet, and color review, 1-10
Grade 4 - spent whole time with time (again). half past, quarter to, quarter past.
                WB and PB exercises using timetables. kids dunno this shit in Georgian, let alone English...
Grade 2 - vocab again. ages, dialogue. not much headway today...
Grade 3 - by myself...ran through possessive. pg 132 WB and pair work --> great success!
                terrible at spelling - if they could tell me the word I let them have it

12.6.2013 Friday
Grade 5 - pioneers, things we use in class pg 49-51
                kids were v. talkative today! it was awesome! even Levani and big Gio said stuff!
                still wanna punch little Gio in the face. everyone else was paying attention and trying.
Grade 4 - still playing remedial grammar. spent whole class on "to be" again, and threw possessive in.
                reminded them of -shi
                having to spend this time on grammar will hopefully expedite the rest of the lessons cause the
                kids will know what's going on!

2.4.2014 Tuesday
Grade 6 - only Gio and Tika today. Went over on, at, in again.
               Played remedial Georgian again and had to go over how to tell time (in Georgian)
               and months of the year (in Georgian). i refuse to believe they don't know months in their own
               language. i just cannot believe that. L wants to give test next week. haaaaaaaa...

2.19.2014 Wednesday
Grade 1 - primarily "what is it" game. read dialogue. learned song with "what is it"
                kids now know octopus but not chair. Hmmmm...
Grade 4 - L proposed teaching them new vocab before making them read texts.
               which is what I've been saying for a while, but whatevs. if it works that's what counts.
Grade 2 -  in class writing. lots of practice with -ing verbs. great for them to copy correctly

2.28.2014 Friday
Grade 5 - once again hardly spoke. i almost want to drop 3rd grade on Mondays to get into here more.
                reviewed alphabet with cards, then did verb game with cards --> took up most of the time
                went over homework, read their comps about swimming, and then done. super unproductive
Grade 3 - made mother's day cards today. i feel way bad, though. Dato was drawing a dragon and I
                loved it and got way excited and N and the other students laughed so he got all embarrassed
                and stopped...
Grade 4 - alphabet and verb cards - good review! had them make sentences with verbs they picked.
                rest of class not as productive. alphabet order, still get k and q confused.
                Gio stopped paying attention completely and turned into a little shit.

4.16.2014 Wednesday
Grade 1 - no test. super productive! got them talking a lot, Sopo actually did an entire WB page in class
                with some guidance. HUGE SUCCESS!!
Grade 4 - only Tatia in class. read a bit with her, did some exercises, and ended early.
                pretty big waste of a day honestly...
Grade 2 - no test. Sandro's Georgian Boy Shit is getting out of control. but he's a boy. so everyone
                giggles because he's soooo funny. ugh. little shits become little shits the same way
                everywhere...
                anyhoo. reviewed clothing from last time and talked a lot about it. read dialogue.

4.30.2014 Wednesday
Grade 1 - really good day! 10 mins of them gabbing at start.
                fox, box, fog, dog, log. worked in WB - didn't get underlining names and circling capital
                letter --> fucking rough to explain.
Grade 4 - ugh. my head. adverbs. ow.
Grade 2 - none of them (except 3) had books since it's some sort of holiday?
                reviewed clothes, and played "what are they wearing" game rest of time.

5.2.2014 Friday
Grade 5 - No Lamara today, so no class.
*Actually no classes at all, since 3rd grade got moved to fifth hour but no one told the kids so they all left....

A Story

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

Except for the Georgians.

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

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

"Vaimeeeeeeeeee!" the Georgians drunkenly cried.

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

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

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

Moral of the story, kids:

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

Countdown

I've only got 39 days of school left.

58 days total until my friend Helen comes for our insane Caucasus Hilarity Fest.

86 days before I board a plane and go back home.

I'm. Freaking. Out.

Eight months in, with only two more to go, and I don't feel like I've DONE anything. Which is silly; I've seen a lot of this country, eaten most of their national dishes, almost died at least four times per marshutka ride. I've made incredible friends and can speak a ridiculously hard language in the most basic survival modes.

So I don't really know what it is that my brain wants from me, because it's not like I've been idle while here. There are just so many more places I want to see, and I feel like I'm running out of time and money to do all of them. Which is terrifying, since I don't know when I'll be able to come back here (although, according to Ani I will be visiting for three weeks every summer. So. There's that!), and I don't want to leave without having DONE everything.

"Oh, how cool! You were in Georgia? For how long?"
"Almost a year! It was wonderful!"
"I bet! Did you see this-really-cool-awesome-famous-thing-that-if-you-didn't-see-you-basically-wasted-your-entire-time-there??"
"...No. I was probably dicking around in the mountains with my friends, hitting water with sticks..."1

Not that I regret the dicking around with my friends, because they're goofy and awesome and a lot of fun is always had no matter where we are or what we do. And I keep telling myself that the next few weeks have to be low key so that when Helen gets here in June I'll have enough cash to run around and show her all the beautiful places and see the new ones I want to. Time is just marching on, and I feel like if I blink then it'll all be over and I'll be getting onto the plane at the Tbilisi airport with no picture of me doing big arms from the back of a horse with a crazy mountainous backdrop. Which cannot happen, since that has been my number one goal of my time here since I first decided to apply to this program. The whole teaching kids English was always secondary to my selfish desires of being a free mountain spirit. Or something.

So here are two lists - one of places I still need to visit, and the other comprised of things I need to buy2. I'm making these public so that I'll have some accountability in the matter, because maybe my procrastinating ass won't keep putting them off for "next week" this way.

Ha. Good one, Jo.

Places To Go!
1. Svaneti - Mestia, Ushguli.3
2. Tusheti - more crazy pretty untouched wild mountains!
3. Vardzia - big cave city of awesome!
4. Borjomi - home of the mineral water that has somehow won me over. Also a park.
5. Chiatura - if I'm going to die, it might as well be an awesome way, like a cable car line snapping over an old magnesium mining town.
6. Gremi - a super close and beautiful monastery that I've only ever driven past.
7. Lagodekhi - waterfalls and mountains and general prettiness!

Things To Buy!
1. Panduri - 3 stringed instrument of Eastern Georgia (my home!). I've decided that 2014 is the year that I stop letting string instruments outsmart me, and what better thing to learn on than a Georgian stringed instrument and YouTube videos (of which there are many!).
2. A mini book of Shota Rustaveli's The Knight In The Panther's Skin.
3. Periodic Table of Elements in Georgian. Cause it exists and it's badass looking!
4. Star Map in Georgian. Cause it's also badass.
5. Fourteen thousand packs of my favorite shitty Icecube flavored Dirol gum that loses its taste after about 45 seconds! I think the Russians put crack in it or something, because god damn if it's not all I want every day.
6. Four packs of the most perfect graph paper notebooks I've ever written in.
7. A Chinese Goosebeery cup which is so common all over this country. (No, not Gooseberry. Goosebeery.)
8. A few of the universal wine glasses - they hold exactly 100 mg, so they're incredibly useful for baking. And drinking out of.
9. Vakhtanguri horns - essential for when you link arms with a friend and down your glass of wine. Or in this case, a horn of wine.
10. Lots of chacha. Yum.
11. Even more wine. Double yum.
12. A janky film Soviet camera from the Dry Bridge Bazaar. Or a lens. Cause how cool is that??

Sorry for a pretty pointless post. My mind apparently is everywhere today thanks to five cups of coffee, so apologies for that.

But here's a picture of the puppy I'll be coming home to in 86 days!!

Meet Amelia Pond!

1. True story. That's how I spent this past weekend. In the greenest mountains I've ever seen, crawling around lush forests, and sitting next to a stream hitting the water with a stick while making dinosaur sounds. A lot of times we ask ourselves, "Georgia, what are you doing to us?" This was one such moment.
2. I use the term "need" very loosely. 
3. They say that you haven't seen Georgia until you've seen Svaneti. So clearly this is a mustmustmust.

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.

Commie Fun Park

I had a pretty surreal afternoon on Saturday. My friend Christine and I ventured up to the Mtatsminda park, which is a theme park of sorts that sits on top of one of Tbilisi's hills. It's accessible one of two ways - a bus which takes you way round the back of the hill and steadily up, or by the funicular. What's a funicular, you ask? It's this weird railway train thing that has two cars. They are at the opposite ends of the line and, through a pulley system, counterbalance each other to take passengers either up or down. 

It's actually a pretty neat thing, even if it isn't the smoothest ride. The last time I was on it was during orientation, all those months ago. Young, naive Jo was slightly alarmed at the jerky ride, the heartstopping pauses and jolts, constantly worrying that one of the cables would snap and that we would all plummet down to our deaths hundreds of feet below us. 

However, since spending a little more time here, where absolutely nothing is in my control, I've become sort of a fatalist. Not that I'm hoping to die or anything, but what the hell is the point in being worried constantly about near death experiences since I can't do anything to prevent them? It's been an enjoyable time in marshrutkas since I gave up caring about how drivers liked to pass each other at absurd speeds around blind corners, and this trip up to Mtatsminda was a far more pleasant experience than it had been the first time, as well. 

It's a pretty steep ascent, and that little white dot way up there is only the halfway point where there is, naturally, a church. Because Tbilisi loves its churches.

The funicular station at the top doubles as a restaurant as well, offering stunning panoramas of Tbilisi from the highest point around which you can enjoy with some beer, wine, and decent food. Upon leaving the station, you're dumped in front of a wide, gently sloped set of stairs, generously broken up by little platforms with various carnival type rides. You can also go right, and follow the ridge of the mountain where there are a bunch of game stands with very scary looking stuffed animals as prizes. The signs are super helpful for letting you know where you need to go. I'm glad that, since this is Georgia, there is of course a wedding hall in an amusement park.

There are also really creepy statues, like the one below. The more horrifying part of them, though, is the sheer size. This way-too-pleased-with-itself fat baby cherub thing is easily 15 feet tall, and is on the main entrance for the park. 

Basically, if you take Disneyland, reduce the budget of it by millions of dollars, and add 1970's Soviet vibe to it, you'll have the decor of this park.

Which isn't to say that there is a lack of cool shit up there, because that's not true. There's a gigantic ferris wheel that goes around and around at a snails pace. It's also right at the very edge of the hill, and that makes me more than a little nervous, so I've only ever visited the bar at the bottom of it. Shocker, I know.

There's also a pretty decent looking roller coaster, but it wasn't running on Saturday. Underneath the coaster, in a concrete space reminiscent of a parking lot, is the Go-Kart track. Georgian Go-Karts are apparently just small four-wheelers. And there are only two of them. Don't worry, though. You get a helmet for the ride, too! Or at least I think you do. There were two of them off to the side at least, so they might have just been for decoration. Like the roller coaster above, the Go-Karts were also not operational.

My favorite part of the park, though, is the Dinosaur Experience. Just past the ferris wheel is a small fenced off area with animatronic prehistoric creatures. They're motion activated, and don't do anything too crazy - opening their mouths in roars that aren't synchronized with the soundtrack, blinking with eyelids that needed to be replaced ten years ago because they had holes in the lids, wagging their arms around in weird little robotic dances. The trail takes you around the perimeter of the area, and is doable in probably five minutes.

We of course took almost fifteen, since most of the robots were exceptionally hilarious, such as the Ornithomimus making some incredibly weird sounds. I've been trying to upload a video of it, but it's not letting me. However, if you have an iPhone, go to Settings>Sounds>Ringtone>Classic>Old Car Horn and that is exactly the sound that one of the dinosaurs was emitting. I'm no Robert T. Bakker, but I feel like there's something off about this interpretation of saurian vocalizations...

What I was really excited for, and what made the two lari admission price to the dinosaur area really worthwhile (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you have to pay a few lari for all the janky rides and attractions at the top, since admission is free), was the prospect of riding this Pachyrhinosaurus. The attendant lady unfortunately dashed that hope, so this was the best I could do. Which I guess for being a 27 year old in an exhibit obviously targeted at those twenty years younger than me isn't too bad. I just really liked his shocked and concerned little face.

We explored pretty much all of the park, and while it was fairly slow and quiet that day, I feel like it's anarchy and pure chaos in the warm summer months. There are a ton of water features reminiscent of Splash Mountain, as well as numerous fountains that are obviously designed for children to run around in. Take any carnival you've ever seen, put those rides on top of a park, and voila - you have Mtatsminda.

There's also a little roller coaster for children, and we of course had to ride that. We wanted to ride the big coaster, dammit, and since that was closed, this kiddy one (called the "Happy Train," just by the way) would have to do! Who cares if we were the oldest people on the ride with no youngsters of our own, and who cares if we were laughing like complete goobers the whole time, and putting our hands up on the hills that were only a five foot drop. We were having fun, dammit! Which is more than we can say about all the actual children on the ride, most of whom were just staring straight ahead and weren't smiling or giggling or giving any indication of fun-havingness. The only reaction on any of them was one girl at the very front of the train who was unafuckingmused by us, and spent the entire time glaring at the two idiotic Americans cackling in the back cart.

Christine was most excited to do the Bumper Cars, so as we were on our way out of the park we stopped by. And of course, given our location, it couldn't just be normal Bumper Cars. No. There had to be furries on them. We hypothesized that this is what bored carnies are apt to do when days are slow. They had their costume heads over on the side, and stayed in the cars for consecutive rides. I guess when your job is "Be A Dog That Gives Balloons To Screaming Children," riding the Bumper Cars endlessly and for free is a perk.

The whole day was just full of weird, surreal little things like that. There are some Saint Bernards that are an attraction all their own - they don't do anything, and you can't pet them, and they're in a really remote part of the park. They just sit/sleep and you can take pictures of them. The old and broken parts of rides and attractions are just kind of thrown behind thin stands of trees, and you're able to get back and poke around them. There's a Ghost Castle which isn't open right now either, but there are attendants on the upper balconies of it who wave at you and call out, "Hello! How are you!", because even from thirty feet away it's wickedly obvious you're a foreigner. There are big paper mache mice at a supra, and a few roundabouts and swings for kids to play on that are chained and bolted to the ground, forbidding both the roundabouting and the swinging. And maybe these are all just side effects of the park being in offseason, but part of me really doubts that it will get all that "normal" come July.

We ended our little afternoon up at Mtatsminda grabbing a beer and some snacky foods, all the while making our own version of Cards Against Humanity: Georgian Edition. Christine and I spent most of the day in the park laughing ridiculously hard and having an insane amount of goofy fun and, judging by the wi-fi password for the restaurant, Mtatsminda thinks we're just as good of a time!