Happy Thanksgiving! And gilotsav giorgobas!
There's not much sense in a long, detailed Thanksgiving post since the only reason the children of Samtredia celebrated it this year was at the behest/command of me and my sitemate in the name of cultural exchange. It so happens that St. George Day, or Giorgoba, fell on the day after Thanksgiving, so the holiday celebration was just muddled enough to be completely devoid of educational value.
To make a long story short, our half-conceived idea of a Thanksgiving dinner at the local youth development NGO was quickly hijacked. We did our best to describe the various American foods, but we were stumped by a lack of vocabulary for locally-unavailable foods like cranberry sauce or stuffing. For example, I described pumpkin pie as being a cake with pumpkin and sweetened evaporated milk, and gravy as being a sauce made of fat. Little wonder that supra favorites like khinkali and khachapuri began to appear on our preparations list to save them from our disgusting American trough food. We arrived Saturday to a table filled with Georgian food, on top of which we balanced Ian's gravy and my chocolate chip cookies.
They asked us what Americans did on Thanksgiving, and we told them that they spend time with their extended families. The manager of the NGO conveyed this to the children, and then pointed out how Georgians do that every day, so Thanksgiving wouldn't be very special here. They asked us what else Americans did on that day, and we said they watched football and a parade on TV. They asked if Americans drank alcohol on Thanksgiving; we lied and said no because we didn't want there to be wine at the party, which would have guaranteed an extra hour of toasting and protocol rigamarole. Much as we enjoy throwing it back with fifteen-year-olds.
At least we did successfully convey that Thanksgiving is a holiday about thankfulness. When we arrived at the NGO, there was a big cake in the center of the table that said "Thank You." It wasn't directed towards us, but rather toward life. I think if Americans made Thanksgiving cakes, those would say "Thank You" too. It pretty much says it all.
Of course, we were merely passing along the favor. Our selfless, tireless gravy- and cookie-making was in part inspired by the wonderful Thanksgiving dinner we were invited to at an expat's house in Kutaisi, where every unavailable food whose vocabulary we lacked was suddenly made available, and where any lies I may have propogated at the NGO about traditional Thanksgiving celebrations were disproved. Also, in the spirit of American consumerism and excesses, the volunteers are going to put together a giant Thanksgiving celebration at our upcoming conference, which will mark the third turkey I've seen this week.
All in all, it looks like 2007 is going to be a year of three happy Thanksgivings. Don't get jealous, though-- on top of all the existing sacrifices that volunteers make during our 27 months overseas, it's also important to remember that we don't even get to watch the Westminster Dog Show after the Macy's Parade. I know, I know. Don't cry for me. All care packages go to:
Jennifer McFann
Peace Corps Volunteer
PO Box 66
Tbilisi, 0194
REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
Can't even watch the dog show...
Monday, November 26, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Most of a Wedding
I caught eight hours of a Georgian wedding last weekend; alas, I didn't have the energy or the will to attend the second day of festivities. However, seeing as I have written excessively in this blog about funerals and death rites, it's really only fair to hear a little bit about weddings too.
Let's begin with a disclaimer: I didn't know the wedding would be outside in a tent and that weather would come into my wardrobe consideration. Thus, I was woefully unprepared in terms of clothing and I ended up borrowing an electrically-red blazer from my neighbor to complement my navy blue pants and black boots, all topped off with purple-tinted lipstick. It turned out okay, considering. It went well with my host cousin's bright red turtleneck, denim jacket, and mullet.
The tent was made of tarp, but the inside was ornately decorated for something so temporary. To my non-layer-wearing relief, it was quite a bit warmer inside than out. Unlike at the last wedding I attended, I actually got to sit close to the tamada, seen here standing with a microphone. His toasts were either eloquent or full of crap, depending on if you asked the women or the men. All I picked up on is that they were very long and full of words I didn't know, even the toast where he brought me to the front of the room and toasted my presence-- specifically, the opportunity for me to witness such a great example of Georgian tradition and hospitality and to take it back to the US with me... which is what I'm doing RIGHT NOW!
Of course the toast to the wedded couple called for the big guns. He's holding a kantsi, which is an animal horn. Yes, it's full of wine. Yes, you're required to drink every last drop of it all at once. No, I didn't drink it because I'm a woman and they would have been more scandalized than impressed. Well, maybe more impressed, but still scandalized. All the men in the room passed the kantsi around, toasting the bride and groom and then dumping another liter inside between toasts.
My host mother says there were about two hundred people at the wedding, which is average. There were three long tables set up with piles and piles of plates as far as the eye could see. Having assisted my host family in making a taxi-load of food for the wedding the day before, I was uneasy to notice upon our arrival that while the plates were stacks three-high, our family's food had yet to be served. Every half hour or so, a new culinary delight would pop out of the kitchen and sit untouched because everyone had been eating for the last three hours straight.
Examine this diagram of the table in front of you at a sample moment in the supra. Here's a helpful list of labels so you know what to try and what to avoid: 1) atchma (cheese and noodles and butter), 2) khachapuri (bread and cheese), 3) tolma (cabbage and ground pork), 4) pig (pork and faaaat), 5) tongue salad (no thanks), 6) mtsvadi (grilled meat), and 7) cake.
Just so you get confused, that cake in front of you was not the wedding cake. It was merely a sampling of the many non-wedding cakes people made and brought. You'll have to save room for the immaculate wedding cake, which features creamy white icing and kiwis inside. It won't come to your table until you've been eating for about five hours, so don't let it slip your mind...
You can always dance off the calories. The keyboardist and singer alternate between traditional music and modern. During the traditional songs, the dance floor becomes a battlefield, and men and women compete to stay the center of attention. It's like "Save the Last Dance," but 500 years ago. If I've uploaded the video, then here we have a woman who's dancing away with a series of men who keep getting shoved aside by increasingly smaller and smaller competitors.
The wedding dresses here are similar to western ones, and after staying pretty all day, the bride too must uphold her fair portion of dancing antics. However, check the Benjaminshvili in her hand: she gets paid to swirl around on the dance floor by random onlookers and guests.
Other than that, there were even more hours of eating, drinking and dancing. The bride threw the bouquet and I didn't catch it, but having decided recently that my ideal age for marriage is approximately 50, I wasn't too broken up about that loss. Side note-- single women at the wedding greeted each other with the phrase "And may yours be soon." Nobody said that to me.
Two last entries in the category of wedding chefs doing some showboating. They serve mtsvadi, this pictured roast meat, at many supras, but only at weddings have I ever seen it in standing skewers over a live flame. For even more effect, they cut the lights before a train of young girls trotted in bearing the firy dishes. If there's something that was lacking at every American wedding I've been to, it's fire.
Lastly, this poultry testament to everlasting love. It's a roast rooster and a roast hen, adorned in leaves and stretching toward each other for all deep-fried eternity. It's a beautiful thing, with the added bonus that there's one less rooster in the world crowing as a result. Thirty years from now, I think I'll have one of these at my wedding, too...
Let's begin with a disclaimer: I didn't know the wedding would be outside in a tent and that weather would come into my wardrobe consideration. Thus, I was woefully unprepared in terms of clothing and I ended up borrowing an electrically-red blazer from my neighbor to complement my navy blue pants and black boots, all topped off with purple-tinted lipstick. It turned out okay, considering. It went well with my host cousin's bright red turtleneck, denim jacket, and mullet.
The tent was made of tarp, but the inside was ornately decorated for something so temporary. To my non-layer-wearing relief, it was quite a bit warmer inside than out. Unlike at the last wedding I attended, I actually got to sit close to the tamada, seen here standing with a microphone. His toasts were either eloquent or full of crap, depending on if you asked the women or the men. All I picked up on is that they were very long and full of words I didn't know, even the toast where he brought me to the front of the room and toasted my presence-- specifically, the opportunity for me to witness such a great example of Georgian tradition and hospitality and to take it back to the US with me... which is what I'm doing RIGHT NOW!
Of course the toast to the wedded couple called for the big guns. He's holding a kantsi, which is an animal horn. Yes, it's full of wine. Yes, you're required to drink every last drop of it all at once. No, I didn't drink it because I'm a woman and they would have been more scandalized than impressed. Well, maybe more impressed, but still scandalized. All the men in the room passed the kantsi around, toasting the bride and groom and then dumping another liter inside between toasts.
My host mother says there were about two hundred people at the wedding, which is average. There were three long tables set up with piles and piles of plates as far as the eye could see. Having assisted my host family in making a taxi-load of food for the wedding the day before, I was uneasy to notice upon our arrival that while the plates were stacks three-high, our family's food had yet to be served. Every half hour or so, a new culinary delight would pop out of the kitchen and sit untouched because everyone had been eating for the last three hours straight.
Examine this diagram of the table in front of you at a sample moment in the supra. Here's a helpful list of labels so you know what to try and what to avoid: 1) atchma (cheese and noodles and butter), 2) khachapuri (bread and cheese), 3) tolma (cabbage and ground pork), 4) pig (pork and faaaat), 5) tongue salad (no thanks), 6) mtsvadi (grilled meat), and 7) cake.
Just so you get confused, that cake in front of you was not the wedding cake. It was merely a sampling of the many non-wedding cakes people made and brought. You'll have to save room for the immaculate wedding cake, which features creamy white icing and kiwis inside. It won't come to your table until you've been eating for about five hours, so don't let it slip your mind...
You can always dance off the calories. The keyboardist and singer alternate between traditional music and modern. During the traditional songs, the dance floor becomes a battlefield, and men and women compete to stay the center of attention. It's like "Save the Last Dance," but 500 years ago. If I've uploaded the video, then here we have a woman who's dancing away with a series of men who keep getting shoved aside by increasingly smaller and smaller competitors.
The wedding dresses here are similar to western ones, and after staying pretty all day, the bride too must uphold her fair portion of dancing antics. However, check the Benjaminshvili in her hand: she gets paid to swirl around on the dance floor by random onlookers and guests.
Other than that, there were even more hours of eating, drinking and dancing. The bride threw the bouquet and I didn't catch it, but having decided recently that my ideal age for marriage is approximately 50, I wasn't too broken up about that loss. Side note-- single women at the wedding greeted each other with the phrase "And may yours be soon." Nobody said that to me.
Two last entries in the category of wedding chefs doing some showboating. They serve mtsvadi, this pictured roast meat, at many supras, but only at weddings have I ever seen it in standing skewers over a live flame. For even more effect, they cut the lights before a train of young girls trotted in bearing the firy dishes. If there's something that was lacking at every American wedding I've been to, it's fire.
Lastly, this poultry testament to everlasting love. It's a roast rooster and a roast hen, adorned in leaves and stretching toward each other for all deep-fried eternity. It's a beautiful thing, with the added bonus that there's one less rooster in the world crowing as a result. Thirty years from now, I think I'll have one of these at my wedding, too...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Persimmon Cookies-- a Recipe in Photos
We don't have persimmons in Maryland, as far as I know. I explained this to my family as they scowled at the very idea of using persimmons for anything other than eating. I doubt that at any point in the rest of my life I will have a persimmon tree in my yard, so why not use this opportune moment to give one chance to the dubious recipe for persimmon cookies? It couldn't turn out as badly as the frozen khinkali entrails...
This is a persimmon, in case you're unfamiliar. It tastes like honey, and it shows up in the late fall. The inside is flecked with black, which makes it look rotten and dirty. The seeds are large and smooth, like roaches without legs. Mmm, mmm!
In the name of world peace, American baking soda comes together with Iranian raisins to create something more beautiful and edible than either alone. Actually, the leftover raisins were quite edible.
If this is what creamed butter and sugar is supposed to look like, then I'm on the right track. There's no telling sometimes-- as my college roommates will gladly reveal, I've burned canned corn before. So after you end up with something that does or does not look like this, throw an egg in there, too.
Chop a cup of persimmon. Ignore the strange looks from your host family.
Dump the persimmon and Iranian raisins in with the mix of crap you already made. There's something so Food Network about being able to chop food from your yard and throw it into your recipe, something so mundanely exotic, like referring to your raisins as Iranian even though they don't taste any different. They really are Iranian, though.
Sift together the dry ingredients, one of which is unfortunately ground cloves. I had whole cloves. There might be a better way to grind cloves than the one pictured, but I couldn't really think of it (besides, it called for GROUND cloves, right?! HA!).
Dump everything into the same bowl. It actually looks like cookie dough! Fancy that. Tastes like cookie dough, too. By this point in your service, you're probably immune to samonella, so eat away!
Voila! Persimmon cookies. What really makes these cookies is the raisins; you can also add walnuts, but those are expensive here and I didn't feel like going to the bazaar. I'm not really sure what makes these Georgian enough for inclusion in the blog, other than the ingredients... maybe you could wrap them in eggplant. Or put cheese on top.
Icing would be good. Don't use this icing, though: it's been open and sitting in the cabinet for 3 weeks. Maybe it would be a good time to throw it away, but you got it at the Dollar Store! Who knows when they'll have icing again?!
Want to make your very own persimmon cookies? Here's the recipe, courtesy of the Simple Satchmeli cookbook.
NOT-REALLY-GEORGIAN PERSIMMON COOKIES
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg, beaten
1 cup chopped or pureed raw persimmons
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup raisins
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350. Cream together the sugar and butter until light. Add the egg, blending well. Add the chopped persimmons, nuts, raisins; stir to blend. Sift the flour with the cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, cloves, ginger, and salt and add to the sugar mixture, blending until a thick batter is formed. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake until light brown, about 12 minutes.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Charted Territory
At Georgian supras, you can only drink when the tamada (toastmaster) makes a toast. There's little you can do to alter the order or content of the toasts, since stepping on the tamada's toes is a big no-no, and since you don't usually have the language proficiency to say anything other than "Nu-uh!" or its equivalent.
You can, however, lay a major smackdown on the toast by expressing your opinion through a calculated pattern of wine intake. Drinking a toast bolomde ("to the end") expresses your absolute support and agreement with the toast-- the drinker tips the empty glass over and tells you they affirm the toast with the empty space in the glass. A couple gulps, and you're half-heartedly in favor of the toast. A few sips, and you're not opposed to the toast, in theory. One sip means you're a woman. No sips and you're a snobby imperialist pig who spits on Georgian traditions and who uses ancient Georgian texts for kindling, or else you didn't understand and you're wondering why no one finds you cute and interesting anymore.
I like to follow this helpful chart:
toast to the dead, toast to the host, toast to Georgia, toast to God
toast to parents, toast to siblings
toast to sweet memories, toast to love, toast to peace
toast to women, toast to children
toast to certain former world leader of Georgian ethnicity
There's also the occasional quirky toast that gets thrown in by an inebriated tamada by the end of the evening; file those under picture #4. Nobody will notice or be offended if you don't bolomde the toast to traveling, or if you completely disregard the toast to good weather. By the time the toast to tradition comes around, I've usually stopped listening. Special honors go to Ryan Nickum's multipurpose toast to peace and love among dead businessmen; very creative for his age.
You can develop your own chart, of course. Maybe your 14 months as a teacher haven't left you with the inclination to designate children as a two-sip toast. Maybe you think the toast to women isn't misogynist, and you have the maturity to appreciate it within a cultural perspective as a toast of respect and appreciation. Maybe you think the legacy of a certain former world leader of Georgian ethnicity is ambiguous and that it's more important to defer to host country tradition than to make an unnecessary political statement. To each his own.
And watch out for the chacha.
You can, however, lay a major smackdown on the toast by expressing your opinion through a calculated pattern of wine intake. Drinking a toast bolomde ("to the end") expresses your absolute support and agreement with the toast-- the drinker tips the empty glass over and tells you they affirm the toast with the empty space in the glass. A couple gulps, and you're half-heartedly in favor of the toast. A few sips, and you're not opposed to the toast, in theory. One sip means you're a woman. No sips and you're a snobby imperialist pig who spits on Georgian traditions and who uses ancient Georgian texts for kindling, or else you didn't understand and you're wondering why no one finds you cute and interesting anymore.
I like to follow this helpful chart:
toast to the dead, toast to the host, toast to Georgia, toast to God
toast to parents, toast to siblings
toast to sweet memories, toast to love, toast to peace
toast to women, toast to children
toast to certain former world leader of Georgian ethnicity
There's also the occasional quirky toast that gets thrown in by an inebriated tamada by the end of the evening; file those under picture #4. Nobody will notice or be offended if you don't bolomde the toast to traveling, or if you completely disregard the toast to good weather. By the time the toast to tradition comes around, I've usually stopped listening. Special honors go to Ryan Nickum's multipurpose toast to peace and love among dead businessmen; very creative for his age.
You can develop your own chart, of course. Maybe your 14 months as a teacher haven't left you with the inclination to designate children as a two-sip toast. Maybe you think the toast to women isn't misogynist, and you have the maturity to appreciate it within a cultural perspective as a toast of respect and appreciation. Maybe you think the legacy of a certain former world leader of Georgian ethnicity is ambiguous and that it's more important to defer to host country tradition than to make an unnecessary political statement. To each his own.
And watch out for the chacha.
About that...
I can't say too much, of course. I can't really say anything. I'm still going to work like normal, teaching and running clubs and such. Attendance has diminished a bit, but it'll bounce back if conditions improve. Things are perfectly safe in sunny Samtredia, just that the usual Latin American soap operas have been replaced with different television fare of the 'live bulletin' variety.
I love and miss everybody in the US, by the way, but I'm going to be very disappointed if I return to you before August 2008.
I love and miss everybody in the US, by the way, but I'm going to be very disappointed if I return to you before August 2008.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Shrug
The title of this post is not a reference to that blot on the face of late-90s fashion. It's the only response available sometimes when someone from another culture says something that you disagree with on such a basic level that you know there is absolutely no sense in arguing. It's not even usually something offensive; it's usually something that erases all possible witticisms, commentary, facial expressions, etc from your mind. You could laugh, but then you'd have to explain yourself. You could get angry, but then you'd be angry for the rest of the day with no one to take it out on but your site mate. It's best to shrug, and then to detail it in your blog that no one reads.
- From a neighbor: "I've had chicken in Moscow. It was completely without taste. But Samtredia-- Samtredia has the best chickens IN THE WORLD! You cannot find a better chicken in any town in the world."
- From a host relative: "You've stopped eating bread? Then what will you eat?"
- From a teacher: "You can't give extra credit to students who help you after school. That's punishing the rest of the students."
- From a neighbor: "Why are you putting on your seat belt? Are you afraid? Don't worry, you're in the back seat; if we crash, you won't get hurt."
- From a host family friend: "To lose weight, don't eat anything before 12 o'clock. Then, have one kilo of matsoni with honey and coffee mixed in. Then don't eat anything until six o'clock. Then have another kilo of matsoni and a cucumber. Then don't eat anything for the rest of the night."
- From a villager: "It's terrible that the president is suggesting people get degrees abroad. Then what happens if the next president says foreign degrees are worthless?"
- From TV: "It's not safe to drink water with meals. The water turns the food to porridge in your stomach and makes it difficult to digest."
- From a medic: "It's possible that she fainted because it's cold outside and then she came inside where it's warm."
- From a host relative: "You're a slave, and I am free. I don't run around looking at my watch all the time. I do what I want, I don't work if I don't want to, I get places late, and I am free."
- From a taxi driver: "You can't wait that long to get married. Once you're 25 or 30, it becomes very difficult to conceive."
- From a parent: "Why haven't you assigned my son any long texts to memorize? He should be memorizing long texts every day."
- From a teacher: "Our country has lots of factories and manufacturing. The government should be able to pay for us to have cars and central heating like the Soviets did."
- From a teacher: "The weather forecaster said that it's going to reach 60 degrees (140 degrees Farenheit) this summer."
Then again...
- From an American: "Of course you didn't get need-based scholarships; your family's been in America for 400 years. You had your chance."
- From an American: "No, I don't eat breakfast; I'm fat enough!"
- From an American: "It's good that someone like you came to study in the city. There's no real point in me going to the country, what could I learn there?"
- From a neighbor: "I've had chicken in Moscow. It was completely without taste. But Samtredia-- Samtredia has the best chickens IN THE WORLD! You cannot find a better chicken in any town in the world."
- From a host relative: "You've stopped eating bread? Then what will you eat?"
- From a teacher: "You can't give extra credit to students who help you after school. That's punishing the rest of the students."
- From a neighbor: "Why are you putting on your seat belt? Are you afraid? Don't worry, you're in the back seat; if we crash, you won't get hurt."
- From a host family friend: "To lose weight, don't eat anything before 12 o'clock. Then, have one kilo of matsoni with honey and coffee mixed in. Then don't eat anything until six o'clock. Then have another kilo of matsoni and a cucumber. Then don't eat anything for the rest of the night."
- From a villager: "It's terrible that the president is suggesting people get degrees abroad. Then what happens if the next president says foreign degrees are worthless?"
- From TV: "It's not safe to drink water with meals. The water turns the food to porridge in your stomach and makes it difficult to digest."
- From a medic: "It's possible that she fainted because it's cold outside and then she came inside where it's warm."
- From a host relative: "You're a slave, and I am free. I don't run around looking at my watch all the time. I do what I want, I don't work if I don't want to, I get places late, and I am free."
- From a taxi driver: "You can't wait that long to get married. Once you're 25 or 30, it becomes very difficult to conceive."
- From a parent: "Why haven't you assigned my son any long texts to memorize? He should be memorizing long texts every day."
- From a teacher: "Our country has lots of factories and manufacturing. The government should be able to pay for us to have cars and central heating like the Soviets did."
- From a teacher: "The weather forecaster said that it's going to reach 60 degrees (140 degrees Farenheit) this summer."
Then again...
- From an American: "Of course you didn't get need-based scholarships; your family's been in America for 400 years. You had your chance."
- From an American: "No, I don't eat breakfast; I'm fat enough!"
- From an American: "It's good that someone like you came to study in the city. There's no real point in me going to the country, what could I learn there?"
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Gilotsav Halloween! (+ Baseball...)
Being the outgoing and active volunteer that I am, I was successfully henpecked into organizing a Halloween party for my 6th grade students. We offered the party to the 10th and 11th graders first, but surprisingly the prospect of bobbing for apples and playing musical chairs didn't pique their interest in the least. What seventeen-year-old wouldn't want to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey? It's okay; the sixth grade is one of my favorite classes, partially due to their freakish intelligence, and partly due to their indulgence of me as their first English teacher last year, when they were fifth graders learning to read and I seemed to them an expert in my field, cooler than cool because I was from America. My eleventh graders harbor no such delusions.
As any of my college friends could tell you, there's never a dull moment at a party organized by Jennifer. While one student did ask me halfway through if they could please leave-- to which I said no and commanded him to have fun-- the rest had a great time, as shown by Salome and Ani in this picture, partying it up like it's 1999.
What do you think of when you think of a Halloween party? My counterpart asked me what I usually did at Halloween parties, and all I could think of was walking in the Greenwich Village parade... probably not the answer she was looking for. Fortunately, the last volunteer Nicole had held one of these things, so the precedent of various little activities made their way into canon and tradition:
Bobbing for apples. Notice the little wallflower against the back wall. This kid knows all the answers but never says a word in class without being singled out. Here he is LAUGHING. I'd say that made it all worthwhile, but maybe if the whole party had consisted of waiting for one kid to laugh, it would have sucked.
Biting apples on a string. The kids voted this one into existence because they saw it in a movie.
Toilet paper mummies. It seemed more appropriate than a "TP the Teachers' Houses" contest.
Musical chairs. Levan the Tiger seems to have neglected the empty chair behind him. Way to blow it. You've failed Halloween.
And lastly, a costume contest. Our helpful jury of parents and the director chose as the winner: everyone. Everyone's costume was great, so everyone's the winner. Everyone was happy with this result except for me, holding my pack of glitter pens for the nonexistent first prize winner. Fine. Nobody gets glitter pens.
Lest I neglect to mention it, the children also learned the song "The 12 Houses of Halloween," though we stopped them after 10 houses because the parents were shifting in their seats ("10 shiny pennies, 9 orange gumdrops, 8 peanut clusters, 7 popcorn balls..."). If I've been to Tbilisi by the time you read this, then I've uploaded the video. If not, then not.
All in all, an exhausting success. No pumpkins caught fire, no students had wardrobe malfunctions, and only 1/4 of the water was spilled from the bobbing-for-apples bowl. Did I mention I was dressed as a baseball player? Seems like a good way to end the post-- except I must also note that as I listened to a download of NPR's news report, the reporter said something about Boston coming home with a World Series trophy. Was I more surprised that the Red Sox won, or that the World Series had started and ended without my knowledge? Thus ends my second baseball season away from home. When I get back... Nationals 2008!
As any of my college friends could tell you, there's never a dull moment at a party organized by Jennifer. While one student did ask me halfway through if they could please leave-- to which I said no and commanded him to have fun-- the rest had a great time, as shown by Salome and Ani in this picture, partying it up like it's 1999.
What do you think of when you think of a Halloween party? My counterpart asked me what I usually did at Halloween parties, and all I could think of was walking in the Greenwich Village parade... probably not the answer she was looking for. Fortunately, the last volunteer Nicole had held one of these things, so the precedent of various little activities made their way into canon and tradition:
Bobbing for apples. Notice the little wallflower against the back wall. This kid knows all the answers but never says a word in class without being singled out. Here he is LAUGHING. I'd say that made it all worthwhile, but maybe if the whole party had consisted of waiting for one kid to laugh, it would have sucked.
Biting apples on a string. The kids voted this one into existence because they saw it in a movie.
Toilet paper mummies. It seemed more appropriate than a "TP the Teachers' Houses" contest.
Musical chairs. Levan the Tiger seems to have neglected the empty chair behind him. Way to blow it. You've failed Halloween.
And lastly, a costume contest. Our helpful jury of parents and the director chose as the winner: everyone. Everyone's costume was great, so everyone's the winner. Everyone was happy with this result except for me, holding my pack of glitter pens for the nonexistent first prize winner. Fine. Nobody gets glitter pens.
Lest I neglect to mention it, the children also learned the song "The 12 Houses of Halloween," though we stopped them after 10 houses because the parents were shifting in their seats ("10 shiny pennies, 9 orange gumdrops, 8 peanut clusters, 7 popcorn balls..."). If I've been to Tbilisi by the time you read this, then I've uploaded the video. If not, then not.
All in all, an exhausting success. No pumpkins caught fire, no students had wardrobe malfunctions, and only 1/4 of the water was spilled from the bobbing-for-apples bowl. Did I mention I was dressed as a baseball player? Seems like a good way to end the post-- except I must also note that as I listened to a download of NPR's news report, the reporter said something about Boston coming home with a World Series trophy. Was I more surprised that the Red Sox won, or that the World Series had started and ended without my knowledge? Thus ends my second baseball season away from home. When I get back... Nationals 2008!
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