Goofus and Gallant

This morning, I had an interaction with a Georgian man that could either be underanalyzed or overanalyzed, depending on your imagination. Let's take a look at both possible explanations and then choose the more accurate, less insane one.


First, the scenario: I'm at the stadium running. They don't let normal people onto the track, so I'm running along the sidewalk around the outside. I've got my headphones on, blasting some tunes from my state-of-the-art cassette player so that I don't have to interact with any of the many Georgian men, who are casually strolling around the track at the same time (perhaps a post is in order about the Soviet definition of "exercise," too). One exhausted mile later, I pull my earbuds from my ears and go to retrieve my jacket from the trunk of the tree where I've hidden it so it won't be stolen, when one of the Georgian men calls me over, and the following conversation takes place:

Man: Girl, why are you running the wrong way around the track? You're supposed to run counterclockwise.
Me: I don't know. (leaves)

Actual reason why I was running clockwise around the track-- because it minimizes my interaction with strangers to a few fleeting seconds as I pass them on the left, instead of a protracted minute or so as I catch up and then breeze by. But I couldn't tell him that, could I?

The main thing that bugged me was the question in my mind of why this guy cared which direction I was running in, considering that I was the only one running and I ran off the track to get out of the way of the walkers when I crossed in front of them. I came up with two explanations...

1) This is yet another holdover from Soviet times, the psychology that "the man" is watching and he's going to get you if you so much as sneeze without permission. This Georgian man obviously thinks that everyone who uses the track must strictly follow the rules of track & field, wherein all runners proceed counterclockwise around the track. He seems to imply that a representative of the Central Committee is going to find me and give me a citation for violating the orderliness of society with my reverse running habits, stirring up all sorts of antisocialist ideologies in the minds of those who watch. It's the same syndrome that causes my counterpart to write false dates on tests so it looks like we held them in strict accordance with the Ministry's educational guidelines.

2) The man saw that more runners were coming to the track and that I was getting in their way.

Which do you think is more accurate? Goofus blames all disagreements on the inferiority of the cultures of others. Gallant takes time to understand his opponent's point of view and acknowledges that he himself may have been at fault. Jennifer falls somewhere in the middle.

One of Us

The first fact that any traveler to Georgia will carry away with them is that Georgians love to make toasts, something that (strangely enough) came up in the toast post. The tradition of toasts is deep-seated, and even if the order of toasts varies from region to region, certain orders of business do not.

- No sipping wine between toasts

- Toast to the dead must be drunk to the bottom

- The merikipe must fill your glass before you toast, even if you only pretended to drink the last one

- Toast with your right hand only

- Never toast with beer


As you may be aware, the beautiful cultural idiosyncrasies of a nation become commonplace when you live there for a while, unfortunately, and in the case of toasting rules, somewhat oppressive. What if the wine's really tasty and I don't want to chug it like it's a PBR? What if I was in the middle of watching an episode of The Wire when I was called down to the supra and I'm just looking for an exit toast?


So you can imagine what the volunteers dream of when they think about dinner parties with Americans. I'll give you a hint-- it's the same thing the huddled masses dream of: FREEDOM. Freedom to drink with whatever hand is closest to the cup, freedom to drink something other than wine, and-- most importantly-- freedom not to toast. Freedom to sip!

The identities of Americans with drinks have been concealed for their protection.

Then, like dogs who stay in their cage even after the door is unlocked, we toast at our dinner parties. It just doesn't feel right without it. We even keep up the right-hand rule, although occasionally we toast with beer. Someone told me the Georgian tradition of toasts is not (or didn't used to be) about getting the party-goers drunk, but rather about keeping the table unified and giving each supra a progression rooted in the subconscious of the attendees, knowing how far along they were in the evening and how much further they had to go. A skilled tamada pulls those at the supra out of their side conversations periodically, reminding them of the purpose for the party and connecting each person with all the others at the table.

This is just one example of the way pieces of our minds have become Georgian. There's also volunteers who offer snacks to visitors and won't take three no's for an answer, volunteers who use phrases like "He studies well" and "When I was at university," volunteers who crave khachapuri, et cetera. And in 115 days, we'll return to America and be the very model of a model Peace Corps weirdo who's completely disconnected from their own culture. I have no problem with that.

Won't you be... my neighbor

What with my blind focus on July 17th, I'm finding it difficult to be inspired by the Muse of Georgia when writing these blog posts. Rather than write yet another entry about my job search or my broken mp3 player, I thought I'd go for a change of pace and describe an aspect of Georgian culture for once.

Randomly selected topic: neighbors. Or as they would write here, "neighbours." They would really write "mezoblebi," or if they were my English students they'd probably write "naibers" or "niebores," but you get the picture.

Here a neighbor...
Our neighbors may as well live at our house. Without fail, an army of neighbors descends upon our humble abode at exactly eight o'clock in the evening, which is exactly the time that "Mientras Haya Vida" comes on TV. Sometimes they bear snacks, usually they just bear gossip. They watch the show intermittently, in the moments where they're not discussing how much weight Mediko's daughter has lost, and then they leave an hour later to a chorus of "What's your hurry?" from my host mother.

There a neighbor...
There's no phone call of warning, either; they just stride right in. This is fairly universal here. Sometimes Georgians who I've met minutes before will ask me if I'm familiar with my neighbors in the US, to which I reply no, thus confirming in my new friend's mind the superiority of her own culture. I have no ground to stand on when arguing/discussing this point, either; I don't even know the names of any of my next-door neighbors in the US. Not one. The usual American line of defense goes that we make friends based on mutual interests and not based on proximity, but you'd think we'd run out of ways to wave hello to our neighbors without eventually walking over and making friends.

Everywhere a neighbor neighbor...
Georgians also ask if Americans have to call before they go to their neighbors' or relatives' house, to which I reply yes. Unless I throw in the caveat that you can never be sure an American will be at home, the perception is that we're sitting in our living rooms screening our calls for any annoying relatives that might want to disrupt Heroes by visiting (yes, we know what you're watching). Could I explain that when I return, I probably will screen my calls for annoying relatives? Perhaps. Would it go over well? Most likely not.

In the meantime, it's nice to have a million people in the house every evening. It triples or quadruples the number of close community contacts that I have, and it fills the awkward conversational gaps that surface when my host mother, host sister and I are left alone. Sometimes the arrival of a special, rare neighbor warrants the purchase of a kilo of apples, most of which are left for scavengers like me afterward.

And if I suddenly remember why Americans like to have their houses to themselves, I can go up to my room, the little American corner forbidden to neighbors and relatives alike. Maybe that's why the teachers at my school think I'm not "contakturi"...

A Letter to My Nation's Currency

Dear US Dollar,

Thanks so much for depreciating from 1.75 to 1.47 lari during my relatively brief time here in Georgia. On behalf of our program staff who are paid in dollars, it really makes a difference when you can watch your income dwindle even having swiped nary a credit card, and it's especially nice during a time when world food prices are rising. On behalf of my school, we really appreciate how the two-month period between when we wrote our grant (in dollars) and when we received our payment saw such a drop in the price of the dollar that we lost $78 from our budget of $1000. A special thanks from me for making it near impossible to travel back through Europe when it comes time to leave Georgia, since everything priced in Euros may as well be paved with gold.

Yours Truly,

Jennifer McFann

P.S. I would greatly appreciate it if you'd greatly appreciate.

Thank you for your application

I appreciate that the NGO I applied to had the courtesy to use that phrase in the subject line of their rejection email to me, as opposed to something more ambiguous, like "And the answer is..." and then you open it and it says "...NO!" In any case, my job search is back to square one, which is not such a step back since most job openings for August/September aren't even posted yet. But still, I kind of wanted to work there.


The beginning of my illustrious career

Most of the volunteers in my group are now in the thick of their post-Peace Corps planning. A select few are continuing their service in another country, including one volunteer who, after two years in Georgia, apparently dreams of the Kyrgyz Republic. A few have applied to grad school or law school, while another few refuse to look beyond post-Peace Corps travel when planning for the future-- which would be my category if not for the student loans I took to fund the acquisition of my useless job-repelling degree. NYU, the gift that keeps on giving.


Waitressing, my once and future profession.

The rest of us are looking for jobs. Popular sources of employment-based pipe dreams include Craig's List, the US government jobs listing, and idealist.org. Most of the jobs on these sites are either very unattainable or very unpaid. Much as I'd like to be the Director of Acquisitions for the Department of Homeland Security, they might find my resume lacking.


Plays well with others

As I said earlier, any of you loyal readers who happen to be the heads of international non-profits with job vacancies should feel free to leave a comment on this post. I'll work in any country, learn any language, brew any kind of coffee, etc. if it means coming into contact with diplomats, aid workers, foreign nationals, refugees, or any combination of the above. Does your NGO bring together foreign aid workers? Does it house refugee diplomats? I'm there.

Give it away now

The professor of a class I reluctantly took on the poetics of Greek tragedy told us that the ancient Greek audience already knew the stories that Aeschylus and Sophocles and the like were telling, so the goal of the playwright was to make the journey from known beginning to known end as interesting as possible. Many Georgians take that philosophy to heart.

What brings this up is that right now I'm either working or playing solitaire while my family watches Latin American soap operas. While Emiliano lies on the brink between life and death, my host family remains unperturbed. They're too busy guessing how Paulo is going to be killed on his wedding day.

Every week, there's a Georgian newspaper that publishes what's going to happen on that week's set of soap operas. Admittedly, these series aired years earlier in their countries of origin so it can't be that difficult to get spoilers, but I cannot bring myself to understand why you would want to completely erase all the surprises from a TV show. Sure, I used to get my spoilers from alt.tv.x-files, but after the letdown I felt in watching the 6th season episode "The Unnatural" while already knowing that Mulder would teach Scully how to play baseball at the end, I gave up spoilers for good.

It's not just TV shows, either. My host sister was flipping through the bootleg copy of "I am Legend" that I gave her on her computer, getting a peek at about every twenty minutes of the movie, even the end. I stared as long as was polite, and then a little more, and asked her what in God's name she was doing. She said that she can't get into a movie unless she knows what's going to happen. I told her that Americans would think that's very strange. She shrugged the same shrug that she gave last July when I tried to make her understand why I didn't want her to tell me whether Harry Potter dies in the seventh book, and resumed her viewing.

It made watching Lost with the neighbors last year a real treat. Desmond spaces out, having another one of his visions where Charlie dies. My neighbor Keti asks, "Is Charlie really going to die?" It sounds like the kind of rhetorical question you ask when you're wrapped up in the drama of a series; I laughed to myself and kept watching. Then I realized that Keti was still staring at me, waiting for an answer. I told her I wouldn't tell her, which is what I say when watching movies with that person who always asks questions about the plot. She scowled. I think she was really upset with me. I told her that if she were an American and I told her the plot, she would kill me. This confused Keti, which was at least better than having her sitting there thinking about what a stingy ingrate I was.

I can figure out no way to reconcile myself with this strange aspect of Georgian culture, which is probably not the type of culture gap that the ancients had in mind when they set out to new lands, but it's just as maddening. Or funny. Or both.

I dedicate this post to that chick who was three people ahead of me in line to see Titanic at the movie theater when it came out, and who said to her friend, "It's so sad that Jack dies at the end." Also to my roommate's boyfriend who came in the room while I was watching Braveheart and asked, "Has he been killed yet?" Also to Kim Zitnick who has given away the ending to almost every movie she's ever seen.

Premature Imagination

I'm wondering now if maybe the turn of spring has made me a little too excited for July 17th, and if perhaps I need to tone down my looking-forward quotient in order to make it through the remainder of the school year. Granted, what remains of the school year is not much-- especially when one takes into consideration that after I get back from COS conference in mid-May, the kids will probably have stopped attending-- but still, maybe it's time to go one week at a time.

Why do I think this? Well, this morning I was loathe to go to school. This level of loathe doesn't happen often, and I think it's because it's cloudy today, which is no excuse but is still a relevant factor. I arrived at school to find the English cabinet room locked, which was a bad sign because my counterpart has the lesson before me on Mondays. Turns out that my counterpart's mother had a medical emergency, and my counterpart couldn't come that day. Just then, my 8th form filed in, the most out-of-control class with or without the presence of my counterpart, but especially so without. Praise the Lord, the assistant director believed me this time when I said I wasn't qualified or permitted to teach alone (first time in 2 years she's listened to me! progress!), and the kids were shuffled off to the French teacher. I called my counterpart, who instructed me to ask the director to do the same for the other two upcoming lessons.

Me: So Tsira wanted me to ask you to put the classes together, the 6th and the 9th form, with their parallel classes.
Director: Then you'll teach them both?
Me: I can't teach alone. Tsira will be back tomorrow.
Director: But she won't be back today.
Me: I don't have permission to teach alone.
Director: I know that's the rule, but... you won't be teaching the lessons today?
Me: No.

Despite my concrete knowledge that I was only brought to the 3rd school to write grants-- and this is not hearsay or rumormongering, this is what I was told by the school-- I still felt a little guilty. Was I exercising my legitimate right to stick to the parameters of my Peace Corps program, or was I skipping out because I didn't feel like teaching? In either case, I doubt very much that my counterpart will be there tomorrow, so I'll probably end up teaching by myself anyway and balancing the karma. Or was the karma balanced when I taught by myself for two straight weeks in December? In any case, it reminded me that there is a lot more school left, and perhaps it would be good to focus.

*******

Note from the next day: I am psychic. I did end up teaching alone today, just in time for an encore performance from the 8th form, so I've done my penance for my laziness and/or attention to rules. I confiscated two cell phones, slapped one desk with my notebook, and dragged one child by the arm to another desk. All the while, work/slave songs were playing in my head; they really do keep you going... "He picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel, said this hammer's gonna be the death of me, lawd, lawd, this hammer's gonna be the death of me."

I also started having heart palpitations. Coincidence?

2nd Inaugural 1/2-Mile Run/Walk

When I first got to Samtredia, things got off to an excellent start when President Saakashvili popped by to open a new stadium. My sitemate Ian, my friend Heidi and I were let into the compound, despite the fact that the other residents of Samtredia were crowded around the chain-link fence, restlessly awaiting their chance to see their own elected leader. Decoy cars arrived, and even a decoy helicopter and a decoy train before he set down in all the majesty of yet another helicopter. He cut a ribbon, some kids dance and sang, he shook our hand and said hello in English, the end. Also worth mentioning that we rudely shouted "Hello Saakashvili!" to get his attention, instead of using "President Saakashvili," or even "Mr. Saakshvili," an error I replay often in my mind. It ranks up there on the list of etiquette gaffes in Georgia with the time I asked the Estonian Ambassador if he was staying at the Peace Corps hostel.


That stadium became my saving grace when spring rolled around. After two failed attempts to go running in my neighborhood without happening across groups of unoccupied Georgian boys who want nothing more from life than to eat sunflower seeds and make fun of the foreigner, I tried running at the stadium. Once I gathered up the courage to make the 1.5-mile trek there alone-- since it's somewhat deflating to one's ego to go running whilst one's sitemate is lapping one once every two minutes-- I found the only corner of heaven where I could exercise in peace. Rare were the Georgian boys, which was my primary criteria, but it also helped that there was a running track in somewhat pristine condition. Even after the stadium manager decided that only football teams would be allowed inside the field and that I would have to run around the outside of the track, I still managed to show up once or twice a week, a winter's worth of cake and khachapuri bouncing steadily around and around.


On Saturday, I initiated the 2008 running season at 9:00 AM, having tried at a later hour a couple days earlier and run into a football game. I should mention briefly that I despise running and that I only do it as a surrogate exercise when a taekwondo school is not available. The taekwondo podcasts I downloaded help ("How to Do a Spinning Hook Kick"), but it's just not enough. Utilizing the technological wonder that I described in the last post, I pressed the play button and flew free into the wild blue yonder. One lap later, I was bent double huffing and puffing, but a few minutes after that I was again hitting the pavement and making my way around again. Five minutes later, I had finished the second lap and was feeling simultaneously accomplished and pathetic. This continued for the remainder of my allotted 1/2 hours of run time, during which I might have actually made it 1 mile.


The plan is to relive this vision three times a week at the stadium, rising in the early morning hours to get there before the Georgian boys awake and decide not to go to school. Ideally, this will make me presentable when the time comes for me to return to the US, and there will be a minimum of, "Oh... So, how's the food in Georgia?" from acquaintances. Will it succeed? It did somewhat last year, so precedence says yes. And if Georgian boys do happen to start swarming the stadium in the early morning hours, then maybe I'll be able to switch back to taekwondo...

I prefer Diskoteka Ballads 5

As I mentioned, and as I will frequently repeat, my mp3 player has died. I downloaded a fixer-upper program from the company web site, and it didn't fixer-upper it because my computer doesn't even know when the stupid dead player is docked. The company web site sells new batteries, but only long-life batteries for newer players, not for my 21-month-old antique.

This put me in dire straits, not only in terms of losing 8000 songs (some of which were actually paid for), but in terms of the fact that I can't run without music. If I'm jogging along, all red-faced and huffing, and someone notices my uncovered ears, they may try and talk to me. Then I have to slow my roll, waddle over to them, wipe the sweat off my upper lip with my sleeve, and try to gasp my way through rejecting their invitation to come drink at their house. Fortunately, I came up with a solution that puts me at the forefront of modern fashion and technology...


This is my new player. I suppose I could legitimately call it a Walkman and not sound like those geriatric teachers who call CDs "records" and who refer to anything handheld, from PDAs to cell phones, as "Walkman." It's a Congli CL-205, featuring built-in speakers and a sweet headphone jack. It runs on blazing-fast AA batteries and has rewind and fast-forward capabilities. As if that weren't enough, it has translucent blue plastic casing on both ends so you can witness the miracle of music stored on magnetic strips. How do they do it?!

Total cost: 8 lari (~$5)

Since the salesman was kind enough to throw in free batteries, which will die within the week, all that was left was to find some appropriate jamz. And what gems of jamz did I find!


Let me introduce you to my new music collection. It may not have the diversity or quality of my former one, but since I couldn't find any classic rock compilations, these had to do. On your left, Diskoteka Ballads 6, filling out the empty piece of my heart that was longing for something by Westlife. At center, Super Hits 18, an eclectic mix of 2003-era Sean Paul- and Nelly-type hip hop. And on the right, Arash 2007. I'm sure Arash didn't release a tape called "2007" and then put all of his songs from the last 5 years on it, but someone else had the courtesy to do so.

Total cost: 7.5 lari (~$4.75)

Thus, my new player and music collection set me back by $10. My old, dead player was $200, and when you include the costs of the 600 or so songs that I paid for, let's estimate that it was worth $500 to me. Does this mean that I valued my old music 50 times more than my new music?

Yes. It does. And if it takes until my last day of service, I'm going to search the entire e-world for anything that'll make my mp3 player live again.

Thaw

As briefly alluded to at the end of the last post, Soviet spring began March 1st. While I appreciate the simplicity of dividing the seasons by months, I'm not sure why the decision was made to move the dates in the first place. If the seasons were split based on religious dates, then maybe, but they begin and end on the solstices, which are just astronomical placemarkers. I thought the Soviets were all about science. Maybe they were also all about being contrarian for its own sake. It does make it easier for my students to say, "Spring months are March, April, May," rather than delving into the intricacies of "21st" or "equinox."

On cue, it warmed up here this week; apparently the weather, unlike the proletariat, will conform itself to Marxist theory. After weeks of cold and snow, I'm delighted to be able to roll up my sleeves in my own bedroom, but after last year's rainy, cloudy hell that lasted until May, I'm suspicious that this weather change may be transient. In addition, there's a few more pros and cons...

Pro: No more long underwear

Con: Will have to start taking more than one shower per week

Pro: Can unpack suitcase full of spring clothes, most of which were purchased at the Mall of America in August

Con: Unpacking of spring suitcase will necessarily trigger snap cold front

Pro: Temperature upstairs has reached 57 degrees, which is warm enough that I can work up there now instead of downstairs in front of the Latin American soap operas

Con: Can no longer use room as a refrigerator for storage of things I don't want to share with my host family, such as American cheese and olive oil; ironic, considering that the last bottle of olive oil I stored in my room froze solid and was rendered unusable

Pro: Begin wearing year-old blue spring jacket, rather than 5-year-old fake suede formerly-black winter coat with avocado stain from Quizno's Turkey Bacon Guacamole sub in 2004

Con: Sandal season won't begin until May, since my neighbors are convinced that 70 degrees in March will give you the cold through your feet, but 70 degrees in May is safe; argument went as such last year-- "But it's 70 degrees!" "But it's March!" "But it's 70 degrees!" "But it's March!"

Pro: Sunny weather will revive my faith in teaching, and I'll be inspired to write detailed, entertaining lesson plans with innovative activities for every class

Con: Sunny weather will revive students' indefatigable love of skipping school, now with the excuse that it's too nice outside to go to school, since they can no longer say that it's too cold to come to school; may perhaps find two weeks of good attendance between cold- and warmth-based truancy

Pro: We're that much closer to July 17th

Con: We're that much closer to my unemployment

Interesting Things of the Last Weekend

Disclaimer, much like the disclaimer at the top of this blog: these things have been deemed interesting by me. It is not the opinion of my readers or of Peace Corps that the following items of interest are, in fact, of interest. Just mine.



1) I bought a copy of Hari Poteri da Pilosopiuri Qva, known to one billion other people as Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone. It was only five lari, so I thought if I could peel myself away from bootleg episodes of Lost season 4 for a few minutes, I could give it a shot. It boggles the mind to think of how many languages Harry Potter must be printed in if Pilosopiuri Kva exists, bearing in mind that Georgian is the 126th most common language in the world. I suppose a few of those more-common languages are without written form, so that reduces the translator's load somewhat.


2) My mp3 player has stopped working, much like the electronics of many volunteers. It seems that our laptops and iPods were not designed to be kept in 30-degree weather and subjected to flaky electricity. I pride myself in my non-iPod mp3 player, not only because it's smaller, cuter, and has FM radio capabilities, but because it was cheaper. Another difference from iPods-- its proprietary battery, that will probably cost me 1/4 the cost of the machine itself to replace. If I return from Georgia fat, it's the fault of my mp3 player for failing and leaving me psychologically unable to go running without music, and not the fault of all the calories I shovel down my throat.

3) There's no school Monday because it's Mother's Day here. In my sluggish winter inertia, I'm not only glad to have a break after missing 3 days of school last week, but also that I don't have to write a special Mother's Day lesson for each class. The Soviets had it right, though-- every year, Mother's Day is March 3rd. This has the dual benefits of making it easy to remember, as well as resulting in a day off work if it falls on a weekday. Anyone who's had Mother's Day sneak right up on them would appreciate a solid date, especially those like me who've had Mother's Day sneak right past them (sorry, Mom).

4) My sixth form student won 3rd place in Imereti for her creative essay in the Writing Olympics contest (see this post for tales from last year's contest, my directorial year). She wrote that she would like to be a bird so that she could see the gods, goddesses, and demigods in the sky. I'm curious to find out where she learned the word "demigod."


5) My friends Paige, Catherine and I-- with special appearances by serial blogger Ryan and serial source-of-information Seth-- had an impromptu America party in a conference room on Thursday after a visit to the Dollar Store in Tbilisi. The Tbilisi Dollar Store sells the same crappy things as an American dollar store does, but here it's like treasure. I don't mean the Georgians think it's treasure, because there's not usually many people there. I mean that we Americans think it's treasure. Our party haul included offbrand fig newtons, crunchy mini oatmeal cookies, offbrand Ritz crackers with fake cheese, and a 3-liter bottle of Dr. Stripes, a Dr. Pepper knockoff (or possibly, worse, a Dr. Thunder knockoff). When combined with doner on lavash from a nearby stand and Everlasting Gobstoppers from a care package from Ryan's brother, and when jealously hidden from the remainder of volunteers at the lounge, the result was a serene oasis of delicious American junk. And Turkish food.

For the Record

In these last few months of my Peace Corps service, you're going to see many references in this blog to my upcoming close of service, usually with the tone that I'm going to explode in a big burst of happiness the second I get on the plane home. There's two ways to interpret this: 1) That I'm excited to see my family and friends again, and to return to my home country where I know the language and the culture, and where I can have as much tuna and Swedish Fish as I want, or 2) I hate Georgia.

I'm not going to spend any more time in each post explaining that option #1 is the correct choice for understanding my state of mind, since it takes up too much space. If you choose to believe that option #2 is the way I really feel, and that I've spent 21 months living in a country whose culture and people I despise, then you're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to the opinion that you're completely wrong.

In conclusion: Yes, I like Georgia. Yes, I will miss my host family. Yes, I will miss my students and coworkers. No, I will not miss teaching. Yes, I will miss khachapuri. No, I will not miss being harassed as a foreigner. Yes, I will miss all my friends in Peace Corps. Yes, I will miss speaking another language every day. Yes, I will miss MuzTV. Yes, I will miss saperavi grape-flavored limonati. Yes, I will miss the convenience of marshutkas. No, I will not miss salty cheese. Yes, I will miss supras. Yes, I will miss Georgian dance. Yes, I will miss living without bills (or paychecks).

Yes, I am counting the days until July 17th.

What is a Market Economy?

That's the title of a paperback book the US Embassy handed me as part of their American resource donation to my school library, a donation that many other volunteers make use of-- other Embassy Greatest Hits include American Literature of the 19th Century, An Outline of American Sports, and American Teenagers. There's a few people I'd really like to give the market economy book to, but I can't name them here, since somehow they will find out. Information travels fast in Georgia, and there's no doubt in my mind that my thoughtless gripes would somehow jump out of the internet and into the memory of our cousin's neighbor's teacher or something, soon to be related to the subject herself.

But maybe if you suggest that the Georgian government should pay for central heating for every home, you deserve to be outed on the internet... perhaps not.

There is hope. My host cousin, who holds a master's degree in Business & Tourism from the Tbilisi College of Subtropical Agriculture is very market-minded. When not shouldering his Kalishnikov and protecting President Saakashvili from harm, he is planning a grand business scheme. He wants to take out a loan and send the money to me in the US, where I will buy secondhand clothes and send it to Georgia, where he will sell it thirdhand, and we will split the profits. The business will be in both of our names because he says that'll keep the mafia away.

Now, I've been hard on myself recently with the belated realization that my degree in international relations is a useless piece of paper that does nothing more than record that my lack of practical skills has been insitutionally certified, so naturally I have little faith in my ability to analyze business or law matters, but there's still something iffy about this plan that I can't put my finger on. It gets even iffier when we get to stage 2 of the plan, wherein I use the money to buy new brand name jeans which he resells in Georgia at four times the price, knowing that fashion-minded Tbilisians will gladly pay the premium, mostly because they won't be aware of it.

I studied liberal arts. I don't know if this plan is legal or not. My loyal and oft-disappointed readers, please analyze this for me. Is this my sustainable presence in Georgia, or an illegal smuggling scheme?

God Bless MacCoffee

"How could you possibly have lived in New York for four years and not been a coffee drinker?" the other volunteers ask me in disbelief/disgust. My response that I got my caffeine from a liter a day of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper only inspires more disgust.


Let me introduce you to MacCoffee, the coffee for non-coffee-drinkers. There's not much about it that resembles coffee, and in fact the first two ingredients are sugar and powdered dairy, but it's deliciously desserty. It also comes in amaretto and hazelnut varieties, as well as "strong" MacCoffee, which may boast as much as 25% coffee inside.

In a heartfelt appeal to Midwesterners, the MacCoffee packets feature a proud bald eagle and the bold red and white stripes of the American flag, sure to bring a tear to even the most left-wing of eyes as they dump the packet into a mug every morning. It's even got the olive branch and the arrows, like any self-respecting bald eagle on a coffee packet should. As if that weren't enough, a ribbon streams through the handle of the coffee mug, proclaiming "True American Taste."

This has always perplexed me, as MacCoffee is made in Turkey for local distribution. Why should a mostly-sugar faux coffee be so closely associated with the USA, whose population is known for drinking gallons upon gallons of extra-strong coffee? I'll leave you with that profound thought.