Thursday, May 01, 2008

The Doors

Sometimes I don't understand my host family at all, and this is usually for cultural reasons. One of those incidents that highlights this discrepancy occurred this week, when my host family returned from Tbilisi followed by a moving truck full of brand new furniture.


It seems to be that furniture is a part of hospitality. It's the part of your house that presents itself to your guests, and of course you want only the best for their dinner plate, cosmetics, or booty. Most of the Georgian homes I've seen have an entire well-furnished room that is never used except in the case of a massive supra. Dozens of unused china sets and chairs, kept in immaculate silence around a fancy table.


Now we have one, too! Our formerly-empty room now has chairs, a table, and two massive mirror-backed cupboards. The host family assures me that the table is Egyptian, carved from a single tree. Perhaps that explains the price tag, which you might be able to make out here, just in front of the reflection from the chandelier (that's in dollars, by the way).

Side note: G5 PCV Mike Robie observed way back in 2006 that I was probably one of the only Peace Corps volunteers in the world who had been asked by their host family, "May we borrow your flashlight? We need to install the chandeliers."


To boot, my host sister now has her own bedroom, conveniently placed right next to mine so I can be kept awake until 1AM every night. Yay! I am happy for her that she has some independence, though, despite my new afternoon nap habit.

Where the cultural differences come in is in the fact that most of the door handles in this house fall off the doors if you pull too hard. Perhaps 10% of the doors in this house even close properly, and there's only one lock in the entire house that can be open and closed without struggling.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

When my host mother asked me how much we spent on our table in America, my family's plain Ikea table popped into my head. Having never purchased a table, I guessed that it was probably a few hundred dollars. I told my host mom that all our doors were functional back in the US, however. She nodded away my disregard for guests and resumed directing the placement of my host sister's nightstand.


So there it is. My host family thinks Americans have whacked priorities for caring whether their doors close easily more than whether their guests are comfortable, and I think my host family has whacked priorities for installing chandeliers while the bathroom door handle spends most of its time on the floor. This will stay unresolved until the end of time.

1 comment:

Casey said...

Nice shiny, happy table (reflection).

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