30 August 2012

I finally got to see the school that I will be teaching in for the semester, and I am excited. It is a large cinderblock building that looks as though it was built during the soviet regime and then bombed to pieces when the Soviet Union began to crumble. They are going through a large reconstruction project, and the spackling and fresh coats of paint are already making worlds of a difference. With two weeks to go before classes begin, things are looking promising for my area to mold young Georgian minds (or at least teach them “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes). I met my principal, who seems overjoyed to have another American volunteer here to help teach, and promised a sharp improvement in my Georgian through a course I get to take for free while I am at school. I found this very exciting, seeing as how she did not speak a lick of English, and something tells me this will be status quo as I meet other teachers in my school.

After the classroom tour, I saw my first dead Georgian. I hope that sentence comes as quite a shock to most of you, because the entire experience caught me very off guard. My principal caught me by the elbow as I was leaving to go back to the house, and insisted that I go to the funeral of a man I had never met (perhaps as an ice breaker exercise, the efficiency of which I did not fully grasp). Georgian funerals are huge. It seemed as though the entire town of Chkhorotsksus was in attendance, people spilling in from every village close enough to hail a marshutka. It was a rapid tour through the prayer line, past the long line of wailing women, and then handshakes for the men (the brothers and close friends or relatives of the deceased). I was then escorted through the masses to a long picnic table for traditional Georgian funeral nibbles, including wine and tarragon soda, bread, cheese, and various vegetable dishes. The staple funeral chow is a refried beans-esque dish, a vegetable paste known as labia (labia is Georgian for vegetable. There were plenty of jokes to be made, but stop it. My parents read this blog).

My work as a teacher officially begins on Monday for a teacher conference and picnic. We have various meetings throughout the next two weeks (classroom orientations and professional development days) and then the kids come in on the 17^th. By that point I will be better than a month into m

My work as a teacher officially begins on Monday for a teacher conference and picnic. We have various meetings throughout the next two weeks (classroom orientations and professional development days) and then the kids come in on the 17^th. By that point I will be better than a month into m Georgian experience, and I imagine the days and experience will take off from there. I am itching to finally get into a classroom and start earning my paycheck, rather than merely getting paid to sit at the house and eat food, working 3 hours a week to give English lessons to my host family. I am beginning to see why people are so excited to be on welfare, although the process of sitting around relaxing all day is beginning to drive me nuts. Thank god for my host family and neighbors, who are constantly on the lookout for something to do, as long as it is not raining.

29 August 2012

It was bound to happen eventually, but today was the first lonely day I’ve had since getting to Georgia. I blame a multitude of factors, but am choosing to focus on the rain. The world that is my village shuts down when it rains, confining everyone to games of dominoes and backgammon around the patio table, watching the rain funnel down in droves and collectively (I am assuming) wishing the house was located somewhere that rain did not obliterate hopes of leaving a house which is unable to sustain electricity during such an event. It is our final day with family visitors from Tbilisi, an extremely happy group of people who are nice to be around, even if they lessen the conversation that people translate to English. I can feel some of my Georgian improving as I am able to pick up on more and more words and phrases, but nothing that can be considered key enough to have any idea what is being discussed. I am certainly not complaining, it is nice to sit back and not be the subject of the conversation for the first time since my arrival, I merely get to play observer and any interjection I am able to make is treated with an outburst of excitement and happiness, as my host family and neighbors and friends (and Georgians in general, from what I can tell) get extremely excited when they hear my try to speak Georgian, mangle it as I am sure I do.

The night comes to a rather quick close, and without warning the chilly grey that was this Wednesday dissolves into a slightly colder and darker grey, the hours of the afternoon slipping away with each new cup of coffee or glass of wine as I watch the family sitcom unfold in front of me with as much understanding of watching 70’s cable on mute, and I have enjoyed every minute. It is a slower walk up the stairs, each stair a more contemplative thought than is typically the case as I wander through my thoughts and reflections of where I am and the places and people I have temporarily left to be in this new country. It s shocking and sudden when nostalgia decides to wash over you, the dam of memories that had been cresting throughout the day finally cracking and transporting me away from the now dry landing outside my bedroom door. I look up into the sky, as was so often my habit when coming home from a long day of work, and let out an audible gasp, echoing into the shadow of a night that is coming to a close. The stars here are something that I have never seen, bountiful beyond comparison than anything the darkness of Connecticut has to offer. Lying on my back, galaxies swarm above me, almost visibly churning, and the memories of a back porch, my front yard, or an Ellington back yard fill the contours of my mind like a key turning the tumblers of a lock, as the frame of the night sky offers boundaries too small to fit every star at once, and so they endlessly push and shove to get to the front, each turn offering a new and brighter twinkle. I have travelled far enough into the mountain peaks that the stars seem nearly within reach, and as the cosmos dance across the fingertips of my outstretched hand, I take my time in deciding which star to pluck from the heavens that typically seem so out of reach, which celestial offering will serve as the ultimate souvenir for this trip. It is the first time I can remember not getting lost in the boundlessness of a night sky, of feeling small and inconsequential against infinity, but instead amplified by it, the ability to have gotten so close escalating me to a higher appreciation or understanding.

Slowly my hand comes to a rest beside me, and I shuffle myself to a standing position and off to bed. It is strange to sit amidst such wonder and miss the rock perched in the hilltops overlooking the Wilkes Barre valley. The only difference in the two is the proximity, the ability to sit on a rock in Pennsylvania and stare out above the world I had come to live in, to eventually ride back down the mountain and sleep along side everyone. Here, however, the heights I have reached seem unconquerable, the majesty of the view I just got lost in ultimately not able to be instantly traded for a bar stool at Beer Boys or table at Tulley’s. If I am to be as high up into nothing (or everything?) as Nietzche’s ubermensch, I had better come up with a really good story to tell everyone when I come back down.

28 August 2012

It is almost 1:30 in the afternoon. I have been awake for nearly 5 hours after an extensive and toast-filled celebration and bonfire last night, and am currently a bit drunk on the large bottle of homemade wine that my host father has been saving for a special occasion and which I just finished with 2 grandfather-ish figures. Apparently early afternoon qualifies as a special occasion in Georgia. My fingers smell delicious, having spent much of the morning separating bad hazelnuts from the good ones and setting a reserve pile of nuts, which counts as currency here in the country in case the winter proves to be fiscally draining in the coming cold months.

I do not believe I will ever use the expression ‘running around like a chicken with its head off’ again. I was enjoying breakfast and a cup of coffee while breaking into a new book and my host mother was out sweeping the back yard and feeding the chickens, a last meal of sunflowers and left over cannibalistic chicken parts, when she chose 2 chickens (I hope/assume at random) and decided they were to serve as lunch. I am not sure if the part that was most surreal was to watch an elegant country mother of 2 (still in heels) hack at the neck of a live chicken with a blunt ax, or to see the physical manifestation of the cliché for a person who does not know which direction he is running. To watch a chicken that was, moments earlier, cared-for livestock ram its body repeatedly into the woodpile, the shed door, my host mother’s leg, and over again, all while dragging the remnants of gizzard and neck that the cleaver failed to hack away, made me wish for a fried chicken McNugget, something I am sure is not enough real chicken to have suffered a similar fate. Once the body (aka lunch) finally came to a rest and the 4 year old girl stopped laughing, I was not sure if I should laugh, cry, vomit, or return to my book and pretend nothing happened. For all of you animal lovers who worship the work that PETA and the ASPCA do, Sara McGlaughlin did not come on in the background (ironically, Matchbox 20’s new single “She’s So Mean” did, instead. I swear Steve Jobb has managed to make iPods self aware). But now, featherless and devoid of head, two chickens sit in the dangerously suspicious hands of my host mother hung over an open flame, yellowish and rubbery to the touch, looking more like the comedic punch line to a Marx Brothers’ joke than something to be dipped in Buffalo sauce and blue cheese dressing.

More neighbors or in-laws or foreign relatives or some blend of the three have poured in, making me feel like the uncomfortably appointed king of the castle while 7 or 8 people (mainly adults) share two bedrooms and a backyard patio and I lie spread-eagle across my queen size mattress. Luckily, I have TLG’s assurance that the family already had an extra room for me, and the 100 Lari I contribute to the family income every month (roughly the equivalent of $75) is not a main or reliable source of income, but one can only shuck so many in-case-of-emergency hazelnuts before questions begin to arise.

I walk into the bathroom to wash the hazelnut off my hand, hoping that the visuals of decapitated chickens and adults in communal living wash off with the dirt, but I assume Georgian soap is hardly so strong. I catch my own reflection in the mirror, almost expecting one of those “what the hell kind of situation have you gotten yourself into” moments, but instead flash back to a conversation with
Danny and Courtney after a day of floatable coolers in the Farmington river, where we discussed the amplification of the blue-ness in our eyes after drinking. This is the first time I noticed a faint gold ring separating such exaggerated blue from the black of my pupil, and I am, admittedly, excited.

I should really stop drinking wine before lunch.

27 August 2012

It might have taken two weeks, but I finally had my first awkward experience on account of being in a different country. I realize many of you assumed I would wind up in such a situation far earlier, between such drastically different linguistic and culture ideals between the United States and Georgia, as well as the simple fact that awkward is who I am. In Goergia it is customary for men, upon arrival or departure, to shake hands and kiss each other on the cheek, something that I am not at all unnerved by, but takes a bit of social awareness to remember to include the kiss instead of just the hand shake. Getting into the car to go to a concert at the town center (a car we waved over while hitch hiking, by the way), the 14 year old boy that was leaving our company shook my hand, and only when I noticed that he was holding my hand for far too long did I realize that he had expected a kiss, and was almost insulted that I had not partaken in the ritual. Panicking, I went in for the kiss far too late, after he had rescinded his cheek in social defeat. In the end, it was basically me awkwardly kissing the cheek of a 14 year old boy on the side of the road.

It was a good enough day in the town center. There was some sort of trivia night competition between each village’s school where students answered who what where and why questions in hopes to win 500 Lari for their school (I typically do much better than I did, but typically I am at a bar with a beer in my hand and the questions in English. This led to a concert right by the town statue, some horrific depiction of a ridiculously jacked man standing on top of a two-headed serpent, his abs and spear claiming victory (over two-headed serpents, Communism, or pets who are allowed to wander off their leashes, no one seems to know for certain). The concert was a bit lackluster, GMT forcing everyone to stand around for two hours of set up for a 45 minute concert, but my host cousin performed Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” admirably, as well as her older female counterpart who decided that Daughtry was an appropriate selection. I decided not to ruin the moment by wondering aloud if either actually understood the lyrics they were singing. The night was beginning to wear on so I elected to walk home, a 45 minute jaunt through the near-pitch black, a rare opportunity to seclude myself by proximity rather than merely language comprehension.

Tonight is apparently the beginning of celebrations for St. Miriam’s day, who, as far as I can tell, is the patron saint of lighting tires on fire. I can feel my brother Bobby and his other ecologically-minded colleagues grimacing through the plumes of thick black smoke pouring into the sky. I don’t know what everyone complains about, the smoke seems thick enough to float all the way to the stratosphere and clog all of the holes our aerosol cans and microwave emissions have blasted through the O-Zone layer. I am not positive that’s how science works, but Bill Nye is dead and with him so died scientific theory, as far as I’m concerned. It feels as though I am part of a rebellious militia attempting to pollute the sky and obfuscate the vision of black hawk helicopter pilots rather than a confusingly pious outsider somberly playing his role in a foreign religious ceremony in hopes for returns of free alcohol. When in Rome…

26 August 2012

26 August 2012

The commercials for orange juice where the soccer mom reaches through the grocery shelf to a fresh Floridian orange pasture to take orange juice right from the fruit growers always seemed stupid to me; little did I know I would one day be living such an existence. The days of looking at a menu at Eddie’s diner have gone, and instead breakfast is dictated by which branch I decide to shake and how long it takes my mom let the milk curd fully harden to salty cheese. My multi-course meal began with a fresh peach, seeming my only natural appetizer as a few peaches fell from the tree right ourside my window, as though they were waiting for me to wake up so that they could also start their day. A green apple came next, the satisfying crunch justification enough for the juice that covered my new cross necklace (thanks Jesus! – that story to follow) and the knowledge that soon my throat would be awash in hives and itch. Thank god my allergies fit in my carry on luggage. The only thing that could pull together such a fresh breakfast besides home-molded cheese and soft bread is, of course, coffee. Originally I thought the coffee beans grown by my host family’s Turkish in-laws and ground to a soft grain in a hand grinder could not get any better; little did I know that the trees across the street were hazelnut trees. Granted, the hazelnuts don’t dissolve as nicely as ground coffee,  but reduced to enough of a pulp and steeped in hot water gave it enough of an aroma and taste to transport me to a back porch in forty fort. It certainly was not Dunkin Donuts, and I finally mean that in a good way.

As mentioned above, I now wear a cross necklace. Nothing very flashy (I will be making the jump to spinning rim or giant clock neckware once my family can recover from staring at my mismatched socks every morning), just a simple wooden thing hand made by the nuns of some church so far up in the mountains they seemed to think their gates were the actual gates to heaven. I realize I should capitalize ‘heaven,’ but, frankly, I didn’t see St. Peter standing out front and they didn’t even have the decency to paint their gates a pearly shade of anything. Did I hide my sarcasm and slight disdain there? Anyhow, my host family and 16 other relatives/ neighbors/ assorted vagabonds went out on a relaxing marshutka ride to a river rafting tour for a 9 year old’s birthday. It was all well and good, even though we left 2 hours later than I was told we were going to, and I was told we were going to a party at an uncle’s house. There is no helping Georgia Maybe Time (GMT). After the boat ride and the picnic, I was then informed we were going to church, which I had not prepared myself for. It was actually a lovely church, perched on top of one of the largest hills I have ever ascended (which I mean to elicit gasps of praise and wonderment, as I am way up into the peaks of the mountains to begin with), and there was an amazing 270 degree view out into the valley below us. Little did I know the Eastern Orthodox Christians are wildly traditional, and so I walked smack into an ambush that began because my calves and ankles were showing (the heathen in me was coming out, I forgot what part of the world I am living in). This would not have been a big deal to me, I did not need to walk inside of an Orthodox Church for 15 minutes just to watch some Hassidic-rabbi looking padre have his head explode when I crossed myself left shoulder then right like the Catholic I was raised to be, rather than right shoulder to left. However, it was not enough that I was wearing shorts, but after 10 minutes of this priest yelling at me for wearing shorts (or asking me for the time, inviting me to dinner, asking for my stock portfolio, what have you), he was told I was an American and had no idea what he was saying. Rather than have this deter him from conversation, he pushed on with the assumption that since I’m an American I am a Catholic, and he decided it was time for me to be properly baptized because Catholics are terrible people and something about St. Matthew’s body being buried in his attic crawl space (I believe something was lost in translation and then exaggerated for this story). Naturally, I declined, which did not win me any favors with this man and his beard. He then demanded to see the cross that I was wearing, and when I came up empty handed he informed me that anyone who does not wear a cross at all times is not a true Christian. I bit back any smart ass remarks I had (despite this being the perfect time for a litany of them, seeing as how no one would have any clue what I was saying), and my annoyed silence was taken as my defeat, and towards the rebirthing/ baptizing pool we went. Well, he went. I laughed and walked into the church, thinking I was cheeky by blessing myself like a Catholic, only to be one-upped by these electricity-free charlatans and issued one of the shawl/ drapey sort of skirts that the females are forced to wear. The only thing to top of the experience was the fact that this hyper-traditional, ultra-conservative house of the Lord their God (I assume they even liked his Facebook page) was the gift shop that fillwed the small lobby and the gawdy, tacky donation boxes that stole your eyes away from the magnificence of the 400-500 year old paintings that covered the walls. It is good to know that I can bless my left shoulder first and wear shorts everywhere ago, just knowing that right before I die I can promptly apologize and drop 40 or 50 lira into a wooden box and pop through those gates scott-free and skirt-adorned .

25 August 2012

I have been in Georgia for a week and a half, and it has proven to be far from what I expected. T’bilisi was a charm of Anti-Soviet relics, a broken down city flush with old-time flavor and an omnipresent construction effort to push the city away from the past and into a modern, western feel. I felt a metropolis being built around me as I walked down the sidewalk or rode through the street (and somehow avoided what Georgians call driving – more of an automotive cacophony of merging and blinking, the superficial courtesy of blinkers belying the complete disregard for lanes, right of way, and rearview mirrors). It is a jarring disparity in the life of a pedestrian to be first treated with such ill contempt, only to finish training and be sent into the far off mountain regions of Samegrelo Zemo and Village Khabume, Chkhorotsksus, the rural Georgian answer to what Patrick must be trying to achieve in far-flung Ohio. Here pedestrians are the norm and the typical aggression that fuels the driving is treated as a disturbance rather than a luxury, and the only thing that challenges the biped is the delinquent meandering of the animals that roam freely: cows, pigs, goats, and chicken have real control of the roads in the village, and about as much regard for blinkers and proper lane usage (no one has emblazoned their cars or carts with bumper stickers crying to ‘share the road’).

My host family and living arrangements have been the biggest surprise, both from what I was expecting before I left and the picture that was painted for me during training. Electricity runs freely in my house and at all hours of the day, and water seems to be of such bountiful supply that I am yelled at when I turn the faucet on and fill my cup right away, rather than wait until the water runs cold enough to please what Georgians perceive to be my discerning and spoiled palate. While it is strange to watch the meandering of wildlife, it is even stranger to conceptualize the ultimate fate of the livestock that has taken over as my alarm clock. The cows are kept alive until they are fat enough to sell or become dinner, and the number of chickens fluctuates depending on if it is before or after dinner. At night the three cows are milked and the pot of not quite 2% or skim milk is immediately brought to a boil and mixed with NesQuik chocolate powder, and I get my goodnight cup of unprocessed hot chocolate.

I am glad that I took the opportunity before I left to start my delve into country music, because all of those Tobey Keith and Kenny Chesney types had no idea what they were talking about when they professed their love for slow moving country living, carefree day drinking, and poor life on the farm. I realize I have only been here for a few days, but a change has already begun its effect on me, and I wonder how much of a cementing will continue over the rest of this journey. At the very least, it has given me enough to ponder and desire for a first entry, and has hopefully provided enough entertainment for what might be have felt like an obligatory trip into this journal thing I am trying to do. Perhaps you even enjoyed yourself enough to come back and look, at least when the rest of your Facebook newsfeed doesn’t offer anything more glamorous and exciting.

More to come in the future, thanks for stopping by.