A Thanksgiving/Giorgoba Post

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...