Before you buy that Fantastic Four 2 ticket (or whatever you Americans are doing these days), take a moment to think about whether your $10 might be more appreciated by 90 Georgian girls, aged 11-13. I can think specifically of three of you who just decided you'd rather see the movie, but for the rest of you...
SELF Camp-- Self-Esteem and Leadership through Fitness
In Georgia, girls in the villages (and sometimes in general) are discouraged from doing sports or exercising, since it's something more associated with boys. Also, there's a lot of health misinformation that they're subjected to-- i.e. water makes you fat, drinking water after exercise hurts your heart, etc-- that promotes unhealthy living. To try and combat this a little, several Peace Corps volunteers (yours truly included) are working together with 12 sporty Georgian women to put on three regional camps, 3 days and 2 nights, for young Georgian girls. We'll have guest speakers, like doctors from international NGOs, come to speak with them about health issues, and in addition to learning about female athletes in Georgia and abroad, the girls will also spend a good portion of each day playing sports and learning new sports techniques-- for example, at one camp they'll learn soccer techniques and practice them as a group, but they'll also do individual exercises like Pilates and taekwondo (guess who teaches the latter?).
We gave most of the applications to girls from small villages and towns, who almost never have the opportunity to leave their homes without family members. As they are approaching times of many changes, as the euphemism goes, we think this is a very important age to begin to tackle not only issues of health and fitness, but also self-esteem and leadership roles for girls. We want to encourage them to create sports clubs in their own towns, and to take what they learned at camp back to their homes and share it with their friends. We want them to feel unashamed when they play soccer in the local stadiums, and we want them to be able to go running without being told that it's shameful.
And what is a pitch without an internet link? Our grant is online at the following link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=242-033®ion=europe and you can click on that page to donate (any amount!). All donations are tax-deductible, too. Most of the money will go toward making the camp free for the girls-- free lodging, food, and transportation-- and some will go toward purchasing supplies like soccer balls and air pumps.
Anyway, if you have any questions about SELF camp, please post them here or (if you know my email) email me. We're hoping to raise this money by August so we can hold the camp in September before school starts, so if you're interested, please click away! In fact, here it is again for your viewing convenience...
https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=242-033®ion=europe
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
A year later...
No pictures on this one...
I just read Georgia Diary by Thomas Goltz (an EXCELLENT book on Georgia in the 1990s and early 2000s, btw), and now I'm much more informed than I was about the civil wars that busted up this country in the early 1990s. It leads me to wonder...
... Is this entire blog an irreverant, disrespectful stab at a country so recently torn apart by civil war? Is it right for me to poke fun at the educational system and the antics of my host family when a little over ten years ago people like them were sitting in cold rooms without electricity waiting for the gunfire to stop long enough so they could get water from the spring? Back in 1993, I was 9 years old. In the grand scheme of things, that's pretty damn recent.
... Should I consider their recent history when dealing with Georgians on a personal level? Before I criticize someone in my mind for being late, should I remember that they lived in a violent, broken country for years of their lives that are not even fogged by memory yet? When I'm rolling my eyes as the roof gets blown off the new airport on a windy day, should I think about how Rustaveli Street in Tbilisi has been restored from piles of rubble? As I grind my teeth on days when the internet is down, should I give thanks that a country with war-torn infrastructure has come so far that internet cafes can spawn in a town as far from the capital as Samtredia?
Given these circumstances, I can't really explain why I'm going to continue to write the same kind of blog entries that I've been writing the whole time. In the first place, nothing has changed between two weeks ago and today, except for that my level of ignorance has been lowered somewhat. In the event of another civil war (KNOCK ON WOOD), my tune would change. One argument I've given myself is that part of the healing process is the ability to laugh at situations, but that's a better argument for a Georgian who starts a blog than for an American who toes the water for two years and then ships back out. One better argument I've given myself is that this blog isn't that offensive. Naturally, it walks the double-black line that the US government has set for my freedom of speech (being a representative of said government, I understand the need for that), but nobody would read it if it were a collection of breathless, awe-struck fascination by the beauty and purity of Georgian culture.
By the way, breathless, awe-struck travel writing about cultures is crap. I love Georgia, and I hope that comes through in my blog, but the way some travel writers take a culture and place it on a shiny culture-pedestal above all others only ensures that the travel writer himself will look knowledgeable and cultured, while the culture itself becomes exotified, and people who run away from their own cultures to seep in the exotic culture's harmonic utopia will be confused to find the same familiar problems in the latter. To say it as any hippie Peace corps volunteer would, exoticized travel writing accentuates and exacerbates the differences between cultures, rather than pointing out the similarities. That, and it's boring.
In conclusion, out of respect for the Georgian culture as one of real people and not one of exotic, fragile caricatures, this blog will continue in the same irreverant, mediocre-quality vein as it has followed for the past year. To all four or five people in the world who read this, I make this proclamation with a resounding echo: More sarcastic posts about my unaccomplishments await you! More descriptions of Georgia from a restrained western viewpoint! More love for my temporary home country, sans saccharine paragraphs of obsequieous adoration!
I have to believe that if this blog were that truly awful, Georgians wouldn't read it. (holla, Nico!)
I just read Georgia Diary by Thomas Goltz (an EXCELLENT book on Georgia in the 1990s and early 2000s, btw), and now I'm much more informed than I was about the civil wars that busted up this country in the early 1990s. It leads me to wonder...
... Is this entire blog an irreverant, disrespectful stab at a country so recently torn apart by civil war? Is it right for me to poke fun at the educational system and the antics of my host family when a little over ten years ago people like them were sitting in cold rooms without electricity waiting for the gunfire to stop long enough so they could get water from the spring? Back in 1993, I was 9 years old. In the grand scheme of things, that's pretty damn recent.
... Should I consider their recent history when dealing with Georgians on a personal level? Before I criticize someone in my mind for being late, should I remember that they lived in a violent, broken country for years of their lives that are not even fogged by memory yet? When I'm rolling my eyes as the roof gets blown off the new airport on a windy day, should I think about how Rustaveli Street in Tbilisi has been restored from piles of rubble? As I grind my teeth on days when the internet is down, should I give thanks that a country with war-torn infrastructure has come so far that internet cafes can spawn in a town as far from the capital as Samtredia?
Given these circumstances, I can't really explain why I'm going to continue to write the same kind of blog entries that I've been writing the whole time. In the first place, nothing has changed between two weeks ago and today, except for that my level of ignorance has been lowered somewhat. In the event of another civil war (KNOCK ON WOOD), my tune would change. One argument I've given myself is that part of the healing process is the ability to laugh at situations, but that's a better argument for a Georgian who starts a blog than for an American who toes the water for two years and then ships back out. One better argument I've given myself is that this blog isn't that offensive. Naturally, it walks the double-black line that the US government has set for my freedom of speech (being a representative of said government, I understand the need for that), but nobody would read it if it were a collection of breathless, awe-struck fascination by the beauty and purity of Georgian culture.
By the way, breathless, awe-struck travel writing about cultures is crap. I love Georgia, and I hope that comes through in my blog, but the way some travel writers take a culture and place it on a shiny culture-pedestal above all others only ensures that the travel writer himself will look knowledgeable and cultured, while the culture itself becomes exotified, and people who run away from their own cultures to seep in the exotic culture's harmonic utopia will be confused to find the same familiar problems in the latter. To say it as any hippie Peace corps volunteer would, exoticized travel writing accentuates and exacerbates the differences between cultures, rather than pointing out the similarities. That, and it's boring.
In conclusion, out of respect for the Georgian culture as one of real people and not one of exotic, fragile caricatures, this blog will continue in the same irreverant, mediocre-quality vein as it has followed for the past year. To all four or five people in the world who read this, I make this proclamation with a resounding echo: More sarcastic posts about my unaccomplishments await you! More descriptions of Georgia from a restrained western viewpoint! More love for my temporary home country, sans saccharine paragraphs of obsequieous adoration!
I have to believe that if this blog were that truly awful, Georgians wouldn't read it. (holla, Nico!)
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Bolo Zari
Welcome to a tale of the Georgian graduation. Interesting fact of the day: It's a good thing I was invited to this Bolo Zari ("last bell") because the Ministry of Education added an extra year of school on, starting next year, so there won't be any graduating class of 2008. They'll have to wait until-- gasp!-- the 12th grade. Now I have my own views on whether it's a good idea to institute another year of mandatory schooling when the students already stop coming to class in late 10th grade... and that's about as much as I can write about that; if you can't infer what my views are from that sentence, then I guess we have nothing to say to each other.
And before I continue, I should point out that, like in the cartoons, there was a good fairy and an evil demon on either of my shoulders, whispering judgments to affect my opinion. Or perhaps I've merely lost my mind and am treading ever-steadily towards a whack-evac. Either way, here's what the voices in my head had to say about the graduation ceremony:
Evil demon: Great, they graduated. Now all the boys can go hang out in the street for the rest of their lives.
Good fairy: Knock it off! The government's practically run by men, which means at least two or three of these boys are going to get out there and do something. You don't even know them.
Evil demon: I don't know them because they haven't been to school in three months.
Good fairy: And some of them are probably going to the university after this.
Evil demon: Where they'll graduate without attending classes.
Good fairy: What a cynic. How about your counterpart's former students who work in Tbilisi, and one who works in the gamgebeli's (mayor's) office in Samtredia? And how about the one who ended up as a U Penn-educated economist?
Evil demon: ...
Good fairy: That's right.
Evil demon: Their uniforms look funny.
Barring that, it was a sane experience. Some things were different... most things, in fact, were different... but I think the main point in all of this is that I feel old now.
It starts right after school, with a concert put on by the graduating class. After they make their grand entrance from the hallway-- wearing their traditional school uniforms, which they have made especially for the occasion since no one over the age of 10 wears their uniform to school... and by the way, the girls' uniforms look like French maid costumes-- they do a little dance, make a little song, and recite poetry. If I've managed to upload the videos from the Bolo Zadi to YouTube, then I've also managed to embed them in this blog post. If not, then I've sorely disappointed all of you, and I apologize for bringing it up. Anyway, we all sit around and watch them do Georgian dances (and, inexplicably, a cheerleading dance to Spanish music) and sing for about 45 minutes.
Then, the ceremony is considered closed, and they run around signing each other's newly-purchased French maid costumes. One of the last things I saw before leaving was the director signing girls' dresses right across the chest. The evil demon reminded me that American school principals would be fired for such a thing, but let's remember-- these are still children here. They're addressed as "children" ("bavshvebo"), and despite anatomical evidence to the contrary, there's nothing inappropriate about writing across the apron on the chest of a 17-year-old girl. Seriously. Which is not to say that I did it.
After that, we come to the part that's invitation-only. This implies excellent community integration on my part, that I was invited, but actually my counterpart was invited and brought me along. I suppose I crashed their graduation party.
We went to a restaurant called Kalakis Guli ("Heart of the City"), which I'd passed a million times but never really thought to enter-- side note, when my site mate and I 'try new restaurants,' it just means we want to test the quality of the 10 items on their menu, which are the same 10 items all the other restaurants have. There were two long supra tables set up, one for teachers and one for students. As per usual, the supra table was covered in all the Top 40 Georgian Food Hits-- khachapuri, chicken in walnut sauce ("bazhe"), tomato & cucumber salad (to which I've become addicted... Georgian tomatoes kick American tomatoes' collective tomato-butt), grilled meat ("mtzvadi"), eggplant with pomegranate ("badrijani brotseulit"), et cetera. Also as per usual, there was a big plate of cakes, but let's make a distinction: these are "namtskhvari," which is like an appetizer for the main cake, "torti." Add to this the fact that big dishes of vanilla ice cream came out afterward, and you have the reason why I've gained 15 pounds in Georgia.
Evil demon: Fatty!
Good fairy: She'll work it off when she gets back to the US and she's free to exercise without being stared at.
Evil demon: Is this before or after she reacquaints herself with cheeseburgers and milkshakes?
Good fairy: You know she prefers tuna melts and Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.
Evil demon: Tuna gives you mercury poisoning.
ANYWAY, the supra continues like most supras... a synthesizer band plays keyboard demos of traditional Georgian songs, busy waitresses refill plates, people periodically get up to start dancing, and the toastmaster ("tamada"), who is one of the 11th-grade boys, and raises a glass every once in a while. We did the usual toasts (children, parents, life, love) and added a couple special ones (to their director, to their 1st grade teacher, to finishing school). Here's one of Jennifer's Moments of Cultural Contrast: the students' parents paid for this supra, at which we're toasting with very strong wine, as led by a 11th-grade toastmaster. In the US, my graduating class was carted off in buses to a rec hall on the Naval base, where we were entertained/imprisoned to keep us from slipping away into the night for a little celebration drinkie.
Another side note-- every single country I've been in has convinced me that the US minimum drinking age of 21 only makes kids more irresponsible with alcohol, and leads to more problems with drunkenness and not knowing their limits. Georgians start drinking when they're whatever age (I've seen as low as 8, but I don't really recommend that either), and when they're 16 they can drink a little without tittering like birds and chasing their wine with a gallon of Pabst Blue Ribbon. And a disclaimer: I didn't drink anything at all till I was 20, but that was a personal decision and shouldn't have been tainted by the notion of arbitrary legality.
So that's about it for their graduation celebration. I was interested to see the dance instructor Levan start dancing, since he's the only adult Georgian I've ever seen throw himself around like that (the male parts of traditional Georgian dances are usually very physically taxing), and despite my continued reluctance to show off my inadequacies, I somehow ended up dancing, too, being forcibly spun in circles and dipped by students and dance instructor Levan alike. The Georgian teachers on the other end of the table got tipsy and started singing, though there's a marked difference between American tispy singing and Georgian tipsy singing, in that Georgian tipsy singing involves vibrato and four-part harmony. About at that point, my counterpart and the other English teacher got up to leave, which induced me to follow suit as to avoid showing off another of my inadequacies, the Georgian language. We congratulated a few of the students on the way out, including the very first Georgian girl I've met who's taller than me. She plays basketball, they tell me.
Good fairy: That was a very nice journal entry. Your readers will be satisfied.
Evil demon: You pluralized "readers," that was very optimistic of you.
Good fairy: There's at least three readers, which consitutes a plural. I just wanted to point out that I thought this was one of her better entries lately.
Evil demon: That's because she figured out how to embed pictures in her posts, and she's been relying on them to the extent that her writing suffers for it. Bland, bland, bland.
Good fairy: Well I agree with that.
And before I continue, I should point out that, like in the cartoons, there was a good fairy and an evil demon on either of my shoulders, whispering judgments to affect my opinion. Or perhaps I've merely lost my mind and am treading ever-steadily towards a whack-evac. Either way, here's what the voices in my head had to say about the graduation ceremony:
Evil demon: Great, they graduated. Now all the boys can go hang out in the street for the rest of their lives.
Good fairy: Knock it off! The government's practically run by men, which means at least two or three of these boys are going to get out there and do something. You don't even know them.
Evil demon: I don't know them because they haven't been to school in three months.
Good fairy: And some of them are probably going to the university after this.
Evil demon: Where they'll graduate without attending classes.
Good fairy: What a cynic. How about your counterpart's former students who work in Tbilisi, and one who works in the gamgebeli's (mayor's) office in Samtredia? And how about the one who ended up as a U Penn-educated economist?
Evil demon: ...
Good fairy: That's right.
Evil demon: Their uniforms look funny.
Barring that, it was a sane experience. Some things were different... most things, in fact, were different... but I think the main point in all of this is that I feel old now.
It starts right after school, with a concert put on by the graduating class. After they make their grand entrance from the hallway-- wearing their traditional school uniforms, which they have made especially for the occasion since no one over the age of 10 wears their uniform to school... and by the way, the girls' uniforms look like French maid costumes-- they do a little dance, make a little song, and recite poetry. If I've managed to upload the videos from the Bolo Zadi to YouTube, then I've also managed to embed them in this blog post. If not, then I've sorely disappointed all of you, and I apologize for bringing it up. Anyway, we all sit around and watch them do Georgian dances (and, inexplicably, a cheerleading dance to Spanish music) and sing for about 45 minutes.
Then, the ceremony is considered closed, and they run around signing each other's newly-purchased French maid costumes. One of the last things I saw before leaving was the director signing girls' dresses right across the chest. The evil demon reminded me that American school principals would be fired for such a thing, but let's remember-- these are still children here. They're addressed as "children" ("bavshvebo"), and despite anatomical evidence to the contrary, there's nothing inappropriate about writing across the apron on the chest of a 17-year-old girl. Seriously. Which is not to say that I did it.
After that, we come to the part that's invitation-only. This implies excellent community integration on my part, that I was invited, but actually my counterpart was invited and brought me along. I suppose I crashed their graduation party.
We went to a restaurant called Kalakis Guli ("Heart of the City"), which I'd passed a million times but never really thought to enter-- side note, when my site mate and I 'try new restaurants,' it just means we want to test the quality of the 10 items on their menu, which are the same 10 items all the other restaurants have. There were two long supra tables set up, one for teachers and one for students. As per usual, the supra table was covered in all the Top 40 Georgian Food Hits-- khachapuri, chicken in walnut sauce ("bazhe"), tomato & cucumber salad (to which I've become addicted... Georgian tomatoes kick American tomatoes' collective tomato-butt), grilled meat ("mtzvadi"), eggplant with pomegranate ("badrijani brotseulit"), et cetera. Also as per usual, there was a big plate of cakes, but let's make a distinction: these are "namtskhvari," which is like an appetizer for the main cake, "torti." Add to this the fact that big dishes of vanilla ice cream came out afterward, and you have the reason why I've gained 15 pounds in Georgia.
Evil demon: Fatty!
Good fairy: She'll work it off when she gets back to the US and she's free to exercise without being stared at.
Evil demon: Is this before or after she reacquaints herself with cheeseburgers and milkshakes?
Good fairy: You know she prefers tuna melts and Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.
Evil demon: Tuna gives you mercury poisoning.
ANYWAY, the supra continues like most supras... a synthesizer band plays keyboard demos of traditional Georgian songs, busy waitresses refill plates, people periodically get up to start dancing, and the toastmaster ("tamada"), who is one of the 11th-grade boys, and raises a glass every once in a while. We did the usual toasts (children, parents, life, love) and added a couple special ones (to their director, to their 1st grade teacher, to finishing school). Here's one of Jennifer's Moments of Cultural Contrast: the students' parents paid for this supra, at which we're toasting with very strong wine, as led by a 11th-grade toastmaster. In the US, my graduating class was carted off in buses to a rec hall on the Naval base, where we were entertained/imprisoned to keep us from slipping away into the night for a little celebration drinkie.
Another side note-- every single country I've been in has convinced me that the US minimum drinking age of 21 only makes kids more irresponsible with alcohol, and leads to more problems with drunkenness and not knowing their limits. Georgians start drinking when they're whatever age (I've seen as low as 8, but I don't really recommend that either), and when they're 16 they can drink a little without tittering like birds and chasing their wine with a gallon of Pabst Blue Ribbon. And a disclaimer: I didn't drink anything at all till I was 20, but that was a personal decision and shouldn't have been tainted by the notion of arbitrary legality.
So that's about it for their graduation celebration. I was interested to see the dance instructor Levan start dancing, since he's the only adult Georgian I've ever seen throw himself around like that (the male parts of traditional Georgian dances are usually very physically taxing), and despite my continued reluctance to show off my inadequacies, I somehow ended up dancing, too, being forcibly spun in circles and dipped by students and dance instructor Levan alike. The Georgian teachers on the other end of the table got tipsy and started singing, though there's a marked difference between American tispy singing and Georgian tipsy singing, in that Georgian tipsy singing involves vibrato and four-part harmony. About at that point, my counterpart and the other English teacher got up to leave, which induced me to follow suit as to avoid showing off another of my inadequacies, the Georgian language. We congratulated a few of the students on the way out, including the very first Georgian girl I've met who's taller than me. She plays basketball, they tell me.
Good fairy: That was a very nice journal entry. Your readers will be satisfied.
Evil demon: You pluralized "readers," that was very optimistic of you.
Good fairy: There's at least three readers, which consitutes a plural. I just wanted to point out that I thought this was one of her better entries lately.
Evil demon: That's because she figured out how to embed pictures in her posts, and she's been relying on them to the extent that her writing suffers for it. Bland, bland, bland.
Good fairy: Well I agree with that.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Skola Days
Let's go to school...
I teach 5th - 10th graders (5th - 10th form, as they say here, and as my students' US penpals pointed out in multiple letters... of course, one also pointed out that Georgians celebrate Hannukkah, and I'm not quite sure where he got that one), which eats up about 16 hours of my week. No, it isn't much, but after almost a whole year of working at school here, I'm more convinced than ever that: a) American teachers are underpaid, and b) I must have been the bane of at least three of my teachers' existences during high school. So to answer your unspoken question, I spend the rest of that time lesson planning, working on other projects (next blog entry: Writing Olympics!), and reading (41 books so far, more than I read for fun during high school and college combined).
We have our own English classroom, which is more than many schools can say (and probably due to the fact that there have been two previous volunteers at this school), with lovely green walls, and many little posters and maps gathered over the years-- or made by me. I personally think this rendition of the four seasons will go down in the annals of history with those of Vivaldi. There's also a lovely little food pyramid, as well as a family tree full of lies-- it was for a fifth form class, who probably couldn't handle the vocabulary of my real family tree. More steps than a tax manual. P.S. I love you guys!
The variety between the classes is hard to keep up with. Pictured here are some of the girls from my tenth form class, who probably speak English better than I do. I'm under the impression that, having been taught by the two previous volunteers, they're over the whole "volunteer" thing, and are quite underwhelmed by my presence. In addition-- I'll admit-- I feel a lack of authority when I'm telling them to stop goofing off, knowing that I was in their exact position 7 years ago. 7 years! It'd be easier for me to get annoyed by the fifth graders, but they're too adorable. I've included a video of them asking questions about a text to each other (not bad for 9 months of English study). It's as my counterpart told me, "I always have to yell at him... but he is so cute!"
Oh, and speaking of my counterpart... this is Tsira. She's been teaching for over 30 years, and she's been the counterpart for all three volunteers at my site. She's also my Georgian teacher, and she lives about ten minutes away, just past the bazaar (you know the place). In addition to teaching me the nuances of Georgian language and translating the Georgian newscasters for me, she also indoctrinates me with a love of the bygone Soviet era, a time when she could fly to Moscow on the cheap, and when her family had two cars and central heating. So now she has zero cars, but she does have two daughters who are both doctors, and one grandchild with another one on the way. She was very surprised when I told her my sister and I weren't going to move back in with my mother when I get back to the US. Another fun fact: she learned enough English in 5 months to pass the university entrance exam back in the day.
Side note, though-- the book she used then is the book we still use to teach the 5th and 6th graders. I'll reserve my opinion on those, only to say that this summer, some of us are getting together to write new elementary-level textbooks, which we hope to pilot this coming school year. And then my vendetta against the 6th-form book will be complete-- uh... I mean... at least we have books.
Much as I tend to whine when I'm on the phone with people, that's just because we generally don't get the urge to call America and tell them how great things are going when they are. So, to counteract that, we're going to cram all of my grievances into one sentence and then spend the rest of the entry on pluses.
I can't stand the amount of cheating that goes on in my class, since cheating is overlooked in most classes and it makes it really hard for me to enforce anti-cheating rules since the children don't understand why it's wrong to help each other; furthermore, it doesn't make much of a difference if I lower their grade as a punishment, since only the university entrance exam scores decide university enrollment.
Plus #1: The 7th form class. They were my least favorite at first, since-- a la TV-- they spent my first day of class beating each other with notebooks and throwing paper all over the classroom. However, they've mellowed out a little, and I've come to appreciate the fact that their... er... enthusiasm translates into excellent participation. They're still a little out of control, but I prefer that immensely to the classes I have where the students stare at me and wait for my counterpart to translate what I've said. Take a look at the picture. See the coats? This is the frigid winter (albeit not as frigid as most parts of the country), and they're still reading dialogues. Nice work, Nino.
Plus #2: The 5th form class. They're a bunch of little geniuses who are now ahead of the 6th form class, I'm pretty sure. As one of the other volunteers here said, the younger students love any activity with little pieces of paper, hence this picture where Papuna asks questions in English about the little picture taped to his forehead. They absorb words like little lexi-sponges, and they try hard to make me understand them when I miss what they say in Georgian, which is no small feat for someone with a 200-word vocabulary.
Plus #3: Extracurriculars. Although I only had one club this year, a Fitness Club with an average attendance of 3, the students have been very participatory in things like applying for summer clubs that Peace Corps puts on. For example, five of the students from our school were accepted to attend the GLOW club (Girls Leading Our World) this summer, which is quite a few for us-- nobody's ever gone before-- and I was so proud! The girl pictured, turned in the most elaborate application I've seen in my life, where she listed that Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze was her hero because of "her refined manner of speaking, with which she can convince anyone." This is translated from Georgian, but still. Way to go.
Plus #4: Lesson-planning freedom. Since my counterpart doesn't lesson plan (don't tell Peace Corps), I get a lot of freedom in the kind of activities I bring into the class. For most of the year, this was somewhat stifled by an all-consuming need on the part of the teaching staff to complete every activity on every page of the book-- minus things that required "conversation"-- but now that we're starting to finish the books, I get more leeway. This chalkboard represents an atypical lesson even for me, but it was in our quarterly TEFL newsletter Mas! Mas! Mas! so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'd like to point out that "crap" was not originally on the list, but it's such an integral part of my vocabulary that I added it, along with its subsidiary, "piece of crap."
Plus #5: Seeing students outside class. As I was wondering out loud to someone who may or may not have been listening yesterday, it's hard for me as a non-native teacher to picture the students who goof off in my English class doing well in any other subject. However, it wakes me up and fills my heart with sheepish delight when I find out about the accomplishments of the students who don't share the same affinity for English as some of their classmates do. For example, the kid in the picture is Vakho. Vakho sometimes knows the answers in class, sometimes not. He sometimes has his homework, usually not. But he turned in an application for BLOC camp (Boys' Leadership Organizing Committee) and wrote that he's a good singer. This piqued my curiosity, and at the 11th form's last day of class (also a future entry, already written but awaiting video upload) Vakho strode out with a microphone and belted out a Georgian tune. My faith in the world thus restored, I now hold out hope for that other kid who takes out notebook paper during tests and writes fake answers on it just so he can hide it on his friends and get them in trouble.
So that's what's going on at my school. As mentioned in the title, this is my primary project-- to instruct the students in English, and to make the new methods sustainable by imparting them to the teachers I work with. Stay tuned for the next entry, where we enter the realm of secondary projects, and namely my favorite one, Writing Olympics, because I can use my title as director to take credit for the work of at least thirty volunteers and ten members of the Embassy staff. Yay!
I teach 5th - 10th graders (5th - 10th form, as they say here, and as my students' US penpals pointed out in multiple letters... of course, one also pointed out that Georgians celebrate Hannukkah, and I'm not quite sure where he got that one), which eats up about 16 hours of my week. No, it isn't much, but after almost a whole year of working at school here, I'm more convinced than ever that: a) American teachers are underpaid, and b) I must have been the bane of at least three of my teachers' existences during high school. So to answer your unspoken question, I spend the rest of that time lesson planning, working on other projects (next blog entry: Writing Olympics!), and reading (41 books so far, more than I read for fun during high school and college combined).
We have our own English classroom, which is more than many schools can say (and probably due to the fact that there have been two previous volunteers at this school), with lovely green walls, and many little posters and maps gathered over the years-- or made by me. I personally think this rendition of the four seasons will go down in the annals of history with those of Vivaldi. There's also a lovely little food pyramid, as well as a family tree full of lies-- it was for a fifth form class, who probably couldn't handle the vocabulary of my real family tree. More steps than a tax manual. P.S. I love you guys!
The variety between the classes is hard to keep up with. Pictured here are some of the girls from my tenth form class, who probably speak English better than I do. I'm under the impression that, having been taught by the two previous volunteers, they're over the whole "volunteer" thing, and are quite underwhelmed by my presence. In addition-- I'll admit-- I feel a lack of authority when I'm telling them to stop goofing off, knowing that I was in their exact position 7 years ago. 7 years! It'd be easier for me to get annoyed by the fifth graders, but they're too adorable. I've included a video of them asking questions about a text to each other (not bad for 9 months of English study). It's as my counterpart told me, "I always have to yell at him... but he is so cute!"
Oh, and speaking of my counterpart... this is Tsira. She's been teaching for over 30 years, and she's been the counterpart for all three volunteers at my site. She's also my Georgian teacher, and she lives about ten minutes away, just past the bazaar (you know the place). In addition to teaching me the nuances of Georgian language and translating the Georgian newscasters for me, she also indoctrinates me with a love of the bygone Soviet era, a time when she could fly to Moscow on the cheap, and when her family had two cars and central heating. So now she has zero cars, but she does have two daughters who are both doctors, and one grandchild with another one on the way. She was very surprised when I told her my sister and I weren't going to move back in with my mother when I get back to the US. Another fun fact: she learned enough English in 5 months to pass the university entrance exam back in the day.
Side note, though-- the book she used then is the book we still use to teach the 5th and 6th graders. I'll reserve my opinion on those, only to say that this summer, some of us are getting together to write new elementary-level textbooks, which we hope to pilot this coming school year. And then my vendetta against the 6th-form book will be complete-- uh... I mean... at least we have books.
Much as I tend to whine when I'm on the phone with people, that's just because we generally don't get the urge to call America and tell them how great things are going when they are. So, to counteract that, we're going to cram all of my grievances into one sentence and then spend the rest of the entry on pluses.
I can't stand the amount of cheating that goes on in my class, since cheating is overlooked in most classes and it makes it really hard for me to enforce anti-cheating rules since the children don't understand why it's wrong to help each other; furthermore, it doesn't make much of a difference if I lower their grade as a punishment, since only the university entrance exam scores decide university enrollment.
Plus #1: The 7th form class. They were my least favorite at first, since-- a la TV-- they spent my first day of class beating each other with notebooks and throwing paper all over the classroom. However, they've mellowed out a little, and I've come to appreciate the fact that their... er... enthusiasm translates into excellent participation. They're still a little out of control, but I prefer that immensely to the classes I have where the students stare at me and wait for my counterpart to translate what I've said. Take a look at the picture. See the coats? This is the frigid winter (albeit not as frigid as most parts of the country), and they're still reading dialogues. Nice work, Nino.
Plus #2: The 5th form class. They're a bunch of little geniuses who are now ahead of the 6th form class, I'm pretty sure. As one of the other volunteers here said, the younger students love any activity with little pieces of paper, hence this picture where Papuna asks questions in English about the little picture taped to his forehead. They absorb words like little lexi-sponges, and they try hard to make me understand them when I miss what they say in Georgian, which is no small feat for someone with a 200-word vocabulary.
Plus #3: Extracurriculars. Although I only had one club this year, a Fitness Club with an average attendance of 3, the students have been very participatory in things like applying for summer clubs that Peace Corps puts on. For example, five of the students from our school were accepted to attend the GLOW club (Girls Leading Our World) this summer, which is quite a few for us-- nobody's ever gone before-- and I was so proud! The girl pictured, turned in the most elaborate application I've seen in my life, where she listed that Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze was her hero because of "her refined manner of speaking, with which she can convince anyone." This is translated from Georgian, but still. Way to go.
Plus #4: Lesson-planning freedom. Since my counterpart doesn't lesson plan (don't tell Peace Corps), I get a lot of freedom in the kind of activities I bring into the class. For most of the year, this was somewhat stifled by an all-consuming need on the part of the teaching staff to complete every activity on every page of the book-- minus things that required "conversation"-- but now that we're starting to finish the books, I get more leeway. This chalkboard represents an atypical lesson even for me, but it was in our quarterly TEFL newsletter Mas! Mas! Mas! so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'd like to point out that "crap" was not originally on the list, but it's such an integral part of my vocabulary that I added it, along with its subsidiary, "piece of crap."
Plus #5: Seeing students outside class. As I was wondering out loud to someone who may or may not have been listening yesterday, it's hard for me as a non-native teacher to picture the students who goof off in my English class doing well in any other subject. However, it wakes me up and fills my heart with sheepish delight when I find out about the accomplishments of the students who don't share the same affinity for English as some of their classmates do. For example, the kid in the picture is Vakho. Vakho sometimes knows the answers in class, sometimes not. He sometimes has his homework, usually not. But he turned in an application for BLOC camp (Boys' Leadership Organizing Committee) and wrote that he's a good singer. This piqued my curiosity, and at the 11th form's last day of class (also a future entry, already written but awaiting video upload) Vakho strode out with a microphone and belted out a Georgian tune. My faith in the world thus restored, I now hold out hope for that other kid who takes out notebook paper during tests and writes fake answers on it just so he can hide it on his friends and get them in trouble.
So that's what's going on at my school. As mentioned in the title, this is my primary project-- to instruct the students in English, and to make the new methods sustainable by imparting them to the teachers I work with. Stay tuned for the next entry, where we enter the realm of secondary projects, and namely my favorite one, Writing Olympics, because I can use my title as director to take credit for the work of at least thirty volunteers and ten members of the Embassy staff. Yay!
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Meet the Parents
Imagine that you went to New York University for four years, living in a university housing apartment with your friends, paying your own bills, making your own food, and generally living a semi-independent existence supplemented by pity bank-deposits from your parents when they find out you've been eating canned corn for dinner. Imagine that you are then placed with a host family in not-Tbilisi Georgia, where girls are not considered women until they're married, where married couples tend to live with their parents, and where even younger boys are free to boss around their sisters and mothers. Sounds like hell? Well, it's not. While I've found that all of the above are true statements, I've also found that there are ways to live a peaceful co-existence with my host family. It helps that my host-family is a little unorthodox...
To be sure, they demonstrate the stereotypical Georgian characteristics, like yelling a lot and being quick-tempered, though they take pride in these, as it gives them a feeling of kindred brotherhood with the Italians. Or so they tell me.
For those of you who knew me in the US, you know I wasn't prone to talking much around people I didn't know well. My host sister, Irina, is perfectly content to practice her English during that vacuum of silence, or just to sit awkwardly and wait for me to say something. I appreciate that infinitely. She also takes my side during cultural battles, such as when I say I don't want anymore eggplant, and her mother-- being a good Georgian hostess-- tells me to eat more eggplant again, and Irina yells something like, "Aren't you listening?! She doesn't want anymore eggplant, woman!!" Irina loves Bruce Willis, Will Smith, Monica Bellucci, and Jennifer Lopez, and she's understandably the best English student in her class.
Irakli lives in his own apartment in Tbilisi, but he sometimes/rarely comes to visit. In this picture, he's mowing the lawn like a good man-of-the-house. Lucky boy, he's leaving in two months to go study English in London for a year, so he can add to his existing array of scattered English, such as "because," "boy," "not at all," and an assortment of anatomically-based swear words. I'm under the impression that certain of his habits-- ordering his female family members around, driving like a lunatic, smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day-- will either cease in London or force him to return. I'm hoping for the former. Irakli likes Russian music, driving, and Tbilisi night life.
My host mother Rusico (on the left) takes care of these two old children, with the occasional assistance and visitation from her sister and neighbor, Darejan (on the right). Rusico spends much of the day taking care of the house, shopping in the bazaar, and chatting with her friends over coffee. She also has an insatiable love for "serialis," the Latin American soap operas which I believe I described in the last blog entry. Serialis run from about 6 PM to 11 PM, and then they rerun the next morning so you can see them with fewer commercials. Her favorite seriali is "Meore Sitsotskle," or "El Cuerpo del Deseo" in Spanish.
My host father Alexander lives and works in Russia as a businessman. He's made the occasional cameo, namely once in July when I was first visiting Samtredia, and once in February. He's a typical Georgian "mamakatsi" (man's man), and he loves to bring back presents for his kids. He's also tried to teach Irina how to swim and how to drive, though the latter resulted in a 400-lari ticket, as we happen to live down the street from a police station, which was probably not the best place to put a 15-year-old behind the wheel. I don't know what Alexander likes, but Russian music is probably a safe bet, as is vodka. That's not a jab at Russians (or is it?)-- I recall excessive vodka presence in the house during the month of February.
So how do I fit in here? Well, first I had to establish a niche for myself as a strange member of the family who eats their food but isn't subject to their rules (hey, they get reimbursed for it). This is not to say that I flounce around the house in booty shorts and get home every night at 3 AM, just that I don't ask permission before I go places... though I do inform them, which is something I won't miss when I get home. Furthermore, I also transformed myself into the most docile person on the planet. For example, I like to be in the same room as everybody-- that's the family, and also the 10,000 neighbors who come over every day-- but I don't like seriali, so I read while they watch them. This led to my host sister labeling me with her new vocabulary word "bookworm," and to her mother saying that she'd let her daughter be as free as I am if she knew her daughter was going to read all the time like I do. I smiled at the mental picture of myself in New York reading from 8-10PM and then heading off to bed, but I didn't protest.
That's another thing to get used to. You know on a conscious level that there's different common opinions and practices in Georgia than in the US, but there's still a visceral reaction to things that seem unjust to you. For example, when we're watching Lost and the character Michael is identified by a word that vaguely translates into "negro." Instinctively, I want to write everyone in the room off as bigots. Logically, I know that they're not saying it out of hate, but rather that in a mostly-homogenous culture like Georgia's (or one that purports itself to be), identifying people by their differences is to be expected. It's not a mark of backwardness, either, since Korea does it too. And I know the reason they identify the characters Sun and Jin as Chinese rather than Korean is because there's an influx of Chinese people and stores here, and they're more familiar with what Chinese people look like than Korean-- though if her cousins ask about the Chinese person on Lost, Irina starts smacking them and pointing at me, hissing "KOREAN!" My defender.
That's about it for my family for now. As a last note, I've included this picture of my host cousin Gia, who asked me to put his picture on the internet because he's looking for an American wife. So, ladies... this is Gia. He has a master's degree in economics, and A JOB in Kutaisi (don't underestimate the value of that; there's 80% unemployment here). He's 26 years old, and he's said repeatedly that he's willing to do 50% of the housework, since that's what I told him it would take. Gia has a good sense of humor, and he can somewhat play the piano. He's looking for a lovely American wife to take on moonlit walks along the Black Sea. Leave a comment if interested!
To be sure, they demonstrate the stereotypical Georgian characteristics, like yelling a lot and being quick-tempered, though they take pride in these, as it gives them a feeling of kindred brotherhood with the Italians. Or so they tell me.
For those of you who knew me in the US, you know I wasn't prone to talking much around people I didn't know well. My host sister, Irina, is perfectly content to practice her English during that vacuum of silence, or just to sit awkwardly and wait for me to say something. I appreciate that infinitely. She also takes my side during cultural battles, such as when I say I don't want anymore eggplant, and her mother-- being a good Georgian hostess-- tells me to eat more eggplant again, and Irina yells something like, "Aren't you listening?! She doesn't want anymore eggplant, woman!!" Irina loves Bruce Willis, Will Smith, Monica Bellucci, and Jennifer Lopez, and she's understandably the best English student in her class.
Irakli lives in his own apartment in Tbilisi, but he sometimes/rarely comes to visit. In this picture, he's mowing the lawn like a good man-of-the-house. Lucky boy, he's leaving in two months to go study English in London for a year, so he can add to his existing array of scattered English, such as "because," "boy," "not at all," and an assortment of anatomically-based swear words. I'm under the impression that certain of his habits-- ordering his female family members around, driving like a lunatic, smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day-- will either cease in London or force him to return. I'm hoping for the former. Irakli likes Russian music, driving, and Tbilisi night life.
My host mother Rusico (on the left) takes care of these two old children, with the occasional assistance and visitation from her sister and neighbor, Darejan (on the right). Rusico spends much of the day taking care of the house, shopping in the bazaar, and chatting with her friends over coffee. She also has an insatiable love for "serialis," the Latin American soap operas which I believe I described in the last blog entry. Serialis run from about 6 PM to 11 PM, and then they rerun the next morning so you can see them with fewer commercials. Her favorite seriali is "Meore Sitsotskle," or "El Cuerpo del Deseo" in Spanish.
My host father Alexander lives and works in Russia as a businessman. He's made the occasional cameo, namely once in July when I was first visiting Samtredia, and once in February. He's a typical Georgian "mamakatsi" (man's man), and he loves to bring back presents for his kids. He's also tried to teach Irina how to swim and how to drive, though the latter resulted in a 400-lari ticket, as we happen to live down the street from a police station, which was probably not the best place to put a 15-year-old behind the wheel. I don't know what Alexander likes, but Russian music is probably a safe bet, as is vodka. That's not a jab at Russians (or is it?)-- I recall excessive vodka presence in the house during the month of February.
So how do I fit in here? Well, first I had to establish a niche for myself as a strange member of the family who eats their food but isn't subject to their rules (hey, they get reimbursed for it). This is not to say that I flounce around the house in booty shorts and get home every night at 3 AM, just that I don't ask permission before I go places... though I do inform them, which is something I won't miss when I get home. Furthermore, I also transformed myself into the most docile person on the planet. For example, I like to be in the same room as everybody-- that's the family, and also the 10,000 neighbors who come over every day-- but I don't like seriali, so I read while they watch them. This led to my host sister labeling me with her new vocabulary word "bookworm," and to her mother saying that she'd let her daughter be as free as I am if she knew her daughter was going to read all the time like I do. I smiled at the mental picture of myself in New York reading from 8-10PM and then heading off to bed, but I didn't protest.
That's another thing to get used to. You know on a conscious level that there's different common opinions and practices in Georgia than in the US, but there's still a visceral reaction to things that seem unjust to you. For example, when we're watching Lost and the character Michael is identified by a word that vaguely translates into "negro." Instinctively, I want to write everyone in the room off as bigots. Logically, I know that they're not saying it out of hate, but rather that in a mostly-homogenous culture like Georgia's (or one that purports itself to be), identifying people by their differences is to be expected. It's not a mark of backwardness, either, since Korea does it too. And I know the reason they identify the characters Sun and Jin as Chinese rather than Korean is because there's an influx of Chinese people and stores here, and they're more familiar with what Chinese people look like than Korean-- though if her cousins ask about the Chinese person on Lost, Irina starts smacking them and pointing at me, hissing "KOREAN!" My defender.
That's about it for my family for now. As a last note, I've included this picture of my host cousin Gia, who asked me to put his picture on the internet because he's looking for an American wife. So, ladies... this is Gia. He has a master's degree in economics, and A JOB in Kutaisi (don't underestimate the value of that; there's 80% unemployment here). He's 26 years old, and he's said repeatedly that he's willing to do 50% of the housework, since that's what I told him it would take. Gia has a good sense of humor, and he can somewhat play the piano. He's looking for a lovely American wife to take on moonlit walks along the Black Sea. Leave a comment if interested!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
It's Samtredia!
Wondering where I live? That's only natural. Since everyone has already spilled the beans on their own blogs, I may as well tell you: I live in Samtredia.
That's right, THE Samtredia. Its name, as you know, means "three pigeons."
Samtredia is the transportation hub of the west; all main roads and railways converge at her paved feet, and passengers and drivers alike duly pause to admire/ignore our town before they continue their commute east to Tbilisi or west to Batumi. Despite what the tourist pamphlet that I have says-- and, by the way, the tourist pamphlet is complete with a map, which would be handy if the roads were labeled-- there's not a whole lot of reasons for a visiting foreigner to stop in Samtredia, which makes it a greater mystery that I've seen German tourists with backpacks being led into our town bazaar. Why would you come from Germany to Samtredia? If in Samtredia, why would you visit the bazaar?
The one problem I had with Samtredia when I got here was the organized...ness. The organizedness. Check out this picture to the left, and you might see something that you won't see in other people's Georgia blogs: gridded streets. That's right, after starting out as a mere speck next to two intersecting rail lines, Samtredia was planned into existence, something few of Samtredia's neighboring cities can claim (as the others average in age around 1500 years, so perhaps we can give them a break). Some houses actually have numbers, like my sitemate's. Some houses, like mine, have "numbers" which are unknown to all except those who live there, since they're not written anywhere on the house or on the gate, of course.
In addition to the grid, Samtredia also features other marvels of city planning (okay, Soviets, you did this one right, but that makes the score like 1-45278938), such as rectangular parks and a definable city center. There's Momavlis Parki ("Future Park") and another park that my sitemate and I creatively call "Screen Park," which boasts a large projection screen on which Russian music videos are broadcast during summer nights from the back of a Lada (watch for a future post on Ladas, the car of the proletariat). There's a 4-story city hall, a library, quite a few internet cafes, some restaurants, 1394 pharmacies, and a hundred zillion little grocery stores. The guy on the right, who was ignorant of my presence until the flash went off, is a local store owner, diligently packing a roll of Russian toilet paper (by some PCV accounts, made of gravel).
This qualifies as the ugliest hotel in existence, I think. Did you just look at it and agree, laughing to yourself about the squalor that some people call sufficient for overnight stays? WELL, shame on you! It's technically a hotel (it says "sastumro" across the top, a.k.a. "a place for guests") but its tenants are mostly permanent ones, and since there's not actually a shortage of quality housing here, most of those tenants are refugees from Abkhazia. I apologize for setting you up to laugh at refugees; I take back the shame on you and place it on myself.
To get back to the point, though, my initial impressions of Samtredia were skewed, as many initial impressions tend to be. Although it felt when I got here like I Wasn't really in the Peace Corps, rather that I was living in an American suburb but without the precious Wal-Mart, there's some aspects of Georgian culture that have risen to take the place of the cultural immersion I experienced during training, when I lived in the village (and I requested to be placed in a village, for the record). For example, I still get to dry my clothes outside, and there's still a rooster in my yard, though this one has half the IQ and one-eighth the time perception of the roosters in the village.
Rooster: 3 AM! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rooster: 7:59 AM! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rooster: 4:30 PM! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The sense of neighborly camraderie among Georgians is alive and well here, too. Despite having lived in California, MD for 15 years of my life (put away your maps, random internet stalkers, we moved away right after I left for Peace Corps), I couldn't tell you the first name of the residents of 4 of the 5 houses within the immediate vicinity of my house. Here in Georgia, the neighbors come over every single day to watch Latin American soap operas-- the big one right now is El Cuerpo del Deseo since Montecristo just ended, though La Viuda de Blanco might be an up-and-coming hit-- and in fact, one of the neighbors is my host aunt. There was a wedding down the street (note: Georgian weddings last 2 days, and if I ever get to go to one, you bet there'll be a blog post rife with semi-witty commentary) and whereas I had never met said neighbor, we still went to their place to assist with the creation of enough food to feed an army with and then with which to bury the army up to their necks. This picture is of some of my host relatives and neighbors, caught red-handed (ha) butchering chickens. And then my host sister decided it might be nice to hold a turkey up to her face.
So that's your official introduction to Samtredia, almost 11 months after I got here. No, I didn't write anything about school, thanks for pointing that out... perhaps another entry is due. And then perhaps a show-offy entry about the successful completion of the Writing Olympics project, if it ever gets successfully completed. Maybe then a trite entry about the life-changing miracle of Peace Corps developmental work, or a 10-paragraph discussion of local weather patterns. The future is wide open!
That's right, THE Samtredia. Its name, as you know, means "three pigeons."
Samtredia is the transportation hub of the west; all main roads and railways converge at her paved feet, and passengers and drivers alike duly pause to admire/ignore our town before they continue their commute east to Tbilisi or west to Batumi. Despite what the tourist pamphlet that I have says-- and, by the way, the tourist pamphlet is complete with a map, which would be handy if the roads were labeled-- there's not a whole lot of reasons for a visiting foreigner to stop in Samtredia, which makes it a greater mystery that I've seen German tourists with backpacks being led into our town bazaar. Why would you come from Germany to Samtredia? If in Samtredia, why would you visit the bazaar?
The one problem I had with Samtredia when I got here was the organized...ness. The organizedness. Check out this picture to the left, and you might see something that you won't see in other people's Georgia blogs: gridded streets. That's right, after starting out as a mere speck next to two intersecting rail lines, Samtredia was planned into existence, something few of Samtredia's neighboring cities can claim (as the others average in age around 1500 years, so perhaps we can give them a break). Some houses actually have numbers, like my sitemate's. Some houses, like mine, have "numbers" which are unknown to all except those who live there, since they're not written anywhere on the house or on the gate, of course.
In addition to the grid, Samtredia also features other marvels of city planning (okay, Soviets, you did this one right, but that makes the score like 1-45278938), such as rectangular parks and a definable city center. There's Momavlis Parki ("Future Park") and another park that my sitemate and I creatively call "Screen Park," which boasts a large projection screen on which Russian music videos are broadcast during summer nights from the back of a Lada (watch for a future post on Ladas, the car of the proletariat). There's a 4-story city hall, a library, quite a few internet cafes, some restaurants, 1394 pharmacies, and a hundred zillion little grocery stores. The guy on the right, who was ignorant of my presence until the flash went off, is a local store owner, diligently packing a roll of Russian toilet paper (by some PCV accounts, made of gravel).
This qualifies as the ugliest hotel in existence, I think. Did you just look at it and agree, laughing to yourself about the squalor that some people call sufficient for overnight stays? WELL, shame on you! It's technically a hotel (it says "sastumro" across the top, a.k.a. "a place for guests") but its tenants are mostly permanent ones, and since there's not actually a shortage of quality housing here, most of those tenants are refugees from Abkhazia. I apologize for setting you up to laugh at refugees; I take back the shame on you and place it on myself.
To get back to the point, though, my initial impressions of Samtredia were skewed, as many initial impressions tend to be. Although it felt when I got here like I Wasn't really in the Peace Corps, rather that I was living in an American suburb but without the precious Wal-Mart, there's some aspects of Georgian culture that have risen to take the place of the cultural immersion I experienced during training, when I lived in the village (and I requested to be placed in a village, for the record). For example, I still get to dry my clothes outside, and there's still a rooster in my yard, though this one has half the IQ and one-eighth the time perception of the roosters in the village.
Rooster: 3 AM! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rooster: 7:59 AM! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rooster: 4:30 PM! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The sense of neighborly camraderie among Georgians is alive and well here, too. Despite having lived in California, MD for 15 years of my life (put away your maps, random internet stalkers, we moved away right after I left for Peace Corps), I couldn't tell you the first name of the residents of 4 of the 5 houses within the immediate vicinity of my house. Here in Georgia, the neighbors come over every single day to watch Latin American soap operas-- the big one right now is El Cuerpo del Deseo since Montecristo just ended, though La Viuda de Blanco might be an up-and-coming hit-- and in fact, one of the neighbors is my host aunt. There was a wedding down the street (note: Georgian weddings last 2 days, and if I ever get to go to one, you bet there'll be a blog post rife with semi-witty commentary) and whereas I had never met said neighbor, we still went to their place to assist with the creation of enough food to feed an army with and then with which to bury the army up to their necks. This picture is of some of my host relatives and neighbors, caught red-handed (ha) butchering chickens. And then my host sister decided it might be nice to hold a turkey up to her face.
So that's your official introduction to Samtredia, almost 11 months after I got here. No, I didn't write anything about school, thanks for pointing that out... perhaps another entry is due. And then perhaps a show-offy entry about the successful completion of the Writing Olympics project, if it ever gets successfully completed. Maybe then a trite entry about the life-changing miracle of Peace Corps developmental work, or a 10-paragraph discussion of local weather patterns. The future is wide open!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Duchess, 1994-2007
To any current or future PCVs reading this, feel free to skip this entry as it has nothing to do with Peace Corps or Georgia. For lighter fare, check out the essay from earlier this week, a tour through the Pioneer Palace.
Still reading?
This entry is dedicated to the memory of Ms. Duchess McFann, a.k.a. "Miss Fluffy," "Geefren," "Badeena," "Lardbutt," "Duchess Roo," "Snaggletooth," "Porkchop," etc. She was a lousy guard dog, snarling at friends who'd given her treats the last 50000 times they'd seen her, while allowing strange men into the house unpestered if none of her masters were home to protect. She wasn't very obedient; she never learned any tricks beyond "sit," and even this was a display she would only deign to perform if there were treats involved. Every time she was left alone in the house, she would knock over the garbage can, communicating in her own irritating way that she missed her family.
But she was adorable.
Duchess and her brother Duke lived together with a family who pampered them until the age of 5, at which point they were given up for adoption. In 1999, a woman and her two daughters came to Duchess's foster home, where her appearance elicited many squeals of delight and adoration, and she was adopted immediately. Initially, Duchess was shy; she never barked, nor did she wag her tail. She didn't know how to play (and in fact, never really learned very well) and spent most of her time laying around (that didn't really change).
As the weeks passed, however, she grew to become a full-fledged member of the family. She discovered that this role, while it led to many treats and too much petting, also demanded of her that she engage in the following tasks, which she did with a minimum of protest:
- dress as a farmer for Halloween, and in fact wear whatever ridiculous bows or handkerchiefs her family happened upon
- ride a jetski at full speed
- ride on the bow of a kayak and be tipped into the water
- go sledding down a hill on an air tube
- accompany family members on errands around town
- have hundreds of pictures taken of her
Et cetera. Duchess faced a crisis in her life in 2006, when-- after one member of her family left for the Peace Corps and another left for college-- the third family member also had to leave for grad school and could no longer house Duchess. Duchess was heart-breakingly and reluctantly returned to the sheltie foster system from which she'd been adopted. But all was not lost: a month later, the grad student's landlady's cat died, and Duchess was offered a place in her home. Aside from the uninformed chidings of a third party who'd intended to adopt Duchess and who accused her family of neglect, the process went through swiftly, and Duchess took a plane ride to Minnesota, where she lived the remainder of her life with her one family member.
Duchess was 13 years old on Monday, when she suffered a stroke and was put down. While her owner in the Peace Corps wishes nothing more than that she could have seen Duchess one more time, she's secure in the knowledge that Duchess had a full, unique life, and that very few shelties can claim to have gone jetskiing. And despite what the Bible Club faculty sponsor told me in 9th grade, I think Duchess knows that I miss her and that I didn't abandon her when I came to Georgia.
*pours wine onto a piece of bread*
Duchess kargi dzaghli iko, da dzalian momenatreba is. Ksona ikos.
Still reading?
This entry is dedicated to the memory of Ms. Duchess McFann, a.k.a. "Miss Fluffy," "Geefren," "Badeena," "Lardbutt," "Duchess Roo," "Snaggletooth," "Porkchop," etc. She was a lousy guard dog, snarling at friends who'd given her treats the last 50000 times they'd seen her, while allowing strange men into the house unpestered if none of her masters were home to protect. She wasn't very obedient; she never learned any tricks beyond "sit," and even this was a display she would only deign to perform if there were treats involved. Every time she was left alone in the house, she would knock over the garbage can, communicating in her own irritating way that she missed her family.
But she was adorable.
Duchess and her brother Duke lived together with a family who pampered them until the age of 5, at which point they were given up for adoption. In 1999, a woman and her two daughters came to Duchess's foster home, where her appearance elicited many squeals of delight and adoration, and she was adopted immediately. Initially, Duchess was shy; she never barked, nor did she wag her tail. She didn't know how to play (and in fact, never really learned very well) and spent most of her time laying around (that didn't really change).
As the weeks passed, however, she grew to become a full-fledged member of the family. She discovered that this role, while it led to many treats and too much petting, also demanded of her that she engage in the following tasks, which she did with a minimum of protest:
- dress as a farmer for Halloween, and in fact wear whatever ridiculous bows or handkerchiefs her family happened upon
- ride a jetski at full speed
- ride on the bow of a kayak and be tipped into the water
- go sledding down a hill on an air tube
- accompany family members on errands around town
- have hundreds of pictures taken of her
Et cetera. Duchess faced a crisis in her life in 2006, when-- after one member of her family left for the Peace Corps and another left for college-- the third family member also had to leave for grad school and could no longer house Duchess. Duchess was heart-breakingly and reluctantly returned to the sheltie foster system from which she'd been adopted. But all was not lost: a month later, the grad student's landlady's cat died, and Duchess was offered a place in her home. Aside from the uninformed chidings of a third party who'd intended to adopt Duchess and who accused her family of neglect, the process went through swiftly, and Duchess took a plane ride to Minnesota, where she lived the remainder of her life with her one family member.
Duchess was 13 years old on Monday, when she suffered a stroke and was put down. While her owner in the Peace Corps wishes nothing more than that she could have seen Duchess one more time, she's secure in the knowledge that Duchess had a full, unique life, and that very few shelties can claim to have gone jetskiing. And despite what the Bible Club faculty sponsor told me in 9th grade, I think Duchess knows that I miss her and that I didn't abandon her when I came to Georgia.
*pours wine onto a piece of bread*
Duchess kargi dzaghli iko, da dzalian momenatreba is. Ksona ikos.
Monday, April 16, 2007
O Young Pioneer!
Let's take a quick trip to the Pioneer's Palace in Chiatura (and maybe after five or ten entries about Chiatura, I'll introduce you to where I live).
First, you get into the cable cars and ride up to the side of a mountain. The cables in the picture are actually from another set of cable cars that are in place for the convenience of the manganese miners and offer an infinitely more harrowing experience-- though Heidi assures us they've never fallen. I will take that at face value because any evidence to the contrary would induce me to foreswear the most quirky public transportation system in Georgia. That, and the miners' cable cars are free.
At the top of a hill, from which you can see the former majesty of all the proletariat attractions I described in the last Chiatura entry, there stands mud. The mud has kept me from gaining entry to the Pioneer's Palace the previous two times I'd tried, but not yesterday. Yesterday we discovered that a kind soul had placed crude stepping stones so that one could tiptoe onto former Soviet grounds with a minimum of mud engulfing one's shoes.
Oh, time out-- do we all know what the Pioneers are? For those of you in America who haven't had the notion to look it up, the Pioneers were like Soviet boy scouts, except for both genders participated, of course-- equality for the workers! There's a former Pioneer meeting house in many towns, including the one where I live, and they offered the usual stuff... cultural education, clubs, excursions, patriotism, indoctrination, etc (just like Boy Scouts, right?).
Now we come to the purpose of the Pioneer Palace, which was like a giant meeting place for good little pioneers on good little pioneer excursions. You can sort of picture it in its days of glory, a vast marble structure with columns and arches and stairs, overlooking the socialist perfection of Chiatura. You can almost hear the little Russian voices ("Yes, Russian, stop clinging to your former Georgian identity; you're Soviet now!") lifting the tune of L'Internationale and heaving it over the cliffside where it would warm the cockles of party members everywhere, even reaching as far as the all-marble KBG building. A portrait of Lenin crowns the landscape, framed by trees against a background of Chiaturan socialist harmony.
Let's take it forward about twenty years, to yesterday when Stalin cried in his grave as four Americans stomped their way across Pioneer Palace grounds, taking pictures to send to their bourgeois families. No one from Chiatura really visits the palace, for understandable reasons of bad memories most likely, but we still think that even in its current condition, it'd make an excellent tourist attraction, as would the entire town. Soviet Disney! To boot, the aforementioned KGB building was blown up in 1989 by Georgians encouraged (communists prefer "confused") by democracy protests in Tbilisi, who then used the marble rubble to rebuild a monastery the Soviets had torn down.
So as you can see from this picture, the condition of the building is somewhat... unkempt. Even as the three Americans look bravely toward the future-- with rocks in hand to throw at the hostile feral dogs which call the palace home-- the palace behind falls apart, wishing for the past. No more little internationalist hymns singing down from the music rooms, no more excited groups of Soviet children trickling in and out of the doors.
Could we have in fact trickled into the door (it's locked), we most likely would have fallen through the floor. The walls are all sorts of lovely, tacky colors, which have only become tackier as the layers of paint peels away and one can see what lovely, tacky colors were plastered on before. Like history through layers of sandstone or tree rings, except with more lead.
The majestic cliffside view is still as majestic, if you're not bothered by things like rows upon rows of empty apartment buildings and half-finished hotels, but Ilya Ilyich's bald head no longer guards the palace. Its absence is marked by five holes on the monument that held the picture, though without the picture there, it's more apparent that this monument is weird. What shape is that? And what color, for that matter? As in the case of many Chiaturan post-Soviet modifications, we think it would have been cool if they left it the way it was; of course, our country wasn't left helpless in 1991 with an unduly complicated and shoddy infrastructure and an unsustainable economy, so perhaps our dreams of kitsch are somewhat outweighed in importance.
I hereby promise not to devote any more posts to Chiatura until I write one about my site-- which, you may have noticed, I haven't once mentioned by name in this blog. I was under the impression that to do so would be frowned upon by safety & security staff, but all the cool kids are doing it, so stay tuned for that.
First, you get into the cable cars and ride up to the side of a mountain. The cables in the picture are actually from another set of cable cars that are in place for the convenience of the manganese miners and offer an infinitely more harrowing experience-- though Heidi assures us they've never fallen. I will take that at face value because any evidence to the contrary would induce me to foreswear the most quirky public transportation system in Georgia. That, and the miners' cable cars are free.
At the top of a hill, from which you can see the former majesty of all the proletariat attractions I described in the last Chiatura entry, there stands mud. The mud has kept me from gaining entry to the Pioneer's Palace the previous two times I'd tried, but not yesterday. Yesterday we discovered that a kind soul had placed crude stepping stones so that one could tiptoe onto former Soviet grounds with a minimum of mud engulfing one's shoes.
Oh, time out-- do we all know what the Pioneers are? For those of you in America who haven't had the notion to look it up, the Pioneers were like Soviet boy scouts, except for both genders participated, of course-- equality for the workers! There's a former Pioneer meeting house in many towns, including the one where I live, and they offered the usual stuff... cultural education, clubs, excursions, patriotism, indoctrination, etc (just like Boy Scouts, right?).
Now we come to the purpose of the Pioneer Palace, which was like a giant meeting place for good little pioneers on good little pioneer excursions. You can sort of picture it in its days of glory, a vast marble structure with columns and arches and stairs, overlooking the socialist perfection of Chiatura. You can almost hear the little Russian voices ("Yes, Russian, stop clinging to your former Georgian identity; you're Soviet now!") lifting the tune of L'Internationale and heaving it over the cliffside where it would warm the cockles of party members everywhere, even reaching as far as the all-marble KBG building. A portrait of Lenin crowns the landscape, framed by trees against a background of Chiaturan socialist harmony.
Let's take it forward about twenty years, to yesterday when Stalin cried in his grave as four Americans stomped their way across Pioneer Palace grounds, taking pictures to send to their bourgeois families. No one from Chiatura really visits the palace, for understandable reasons of bad memories most likely, but we still think that even in its current condition, it'd make an excellent tourist attraction, as would the entire town. Soviet Disney! To boot, the aforementioned KGB building was blown up in 1989 by Georgians encouraged (communists prefer "confused") by democracy protests in Tbilisi, who then used the marble rubble to rebuild a monastery the Soviets had torn down.
So as you can see from this picture, the condition of the building is somewhat... unkempt. Even as the three Americans look bravely toward the future-- with rocks in hand to throw at the hostile feral dogs which call the palace home-- the palace behind falls apart, wishing for the past. No more little internationalist hymns singing down from the music rooms, no more excited groups of Soviet children trickling in and out of the doors.
Could we have in fact trickled into the door (it's locked), we most likely would have fallen through the floor. The walls are all sorts of lovely, tacky colors, which have only become tackier as the layers of paint peels away and one can see what lovely, tacky colors were plastered on before. Like history through layers of sandstone or tree rings, except with more lead.
The majestic cliffside view is still as majestic, if you're not bothered by things like rows upon rows of empty apartment buildings and half-finished hotels, but Ilya Ilyich's bald head no longer guards the palace. Its absence is marked by five holes on the monument that held the picture, though without the picture there, it's more apparent that this monument is weird. What shape is that? And what color, for that matter? As in the case of many Chiaturan post-Soviet modifications, we think it would have been cool if they left it the way it was; of course, our country wasn't left helpless in 1991 with an unduly complicated and shoddy infrastructure and an unsustainable economy, so perhaps our dreams of kitsch are somewhat outweighed in importance.
I hereby promise not to devote any more posts to Chiatura until I write one about my site-- which, you may have noticed, I haven't once mentioned by name in this blog. I was under the impression that to do so would be frowned upon by safety & security staff, but all the cool kids are doing it, so stay tuned for that.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Jesus is Risen, gately
Welcome to a wrap-up of this year's Georgian Easter ("Aghdgoma," or "the rising"). I've never tried to post pictures to this blog before, but we're gonna give it a shot.
In the first place, you have an Easter supra in the morning. This is just like Easter brunch in America, except for it's in a graveyard with your dead relatives. I realized belatedly that there are tables all over the place in Georgian cemetaries for this purpose (and also for Tslis Tavis, if you remember from a previous post). My host family and I took a marshrutka to the town of Vani-- also famous for being the home of the Golden Fleece, yes THE Golden Fleece-- where my host mother's parents and cousins and grandparents et cetera are buried. There we ate some khachapuri and boiled chicken, made some toasts with 2.50-lari (~$1.47) bottles of wine, and poured some wine on the graves so they could imbibe too.
The dead are the life of the Easter party. In addition to getting their own day, which is the day after Easter, they also get special treatment on Easter. You'll note in this picture that there's little cakes near the headstones. These are called "paska," and they're special Easter cakes. Every dead person gets a paska and some candles-- no candles at this grave, unfortunately, but I think that's because the whole family died (check out the dates... that guy died when he was 29). Well, that's depressing. But don't you think the graves are a lot more personal with the portraits etched on them? Maybe that's why it's easier for Georgians to frequent their cemetaries than it is for Americans; all we see is names and dates.
Georgians dye hard-boiled eggs red a couple days before Easter-- only red, since that's the holy color here. Every dead person gets an egg on their grave as part of their party favors, and then children eat the rest. There's a game that goes along with eating an egg: two people each hold an egg in their hand, and then they hit them together. Whosever egg breaks is the loser (see picture for example of losing egg, i.e. mine). This happens approximately ten million times and never loses its appeal. My host sister from the village told me that some little cheaters make wooden eggs and paint them red so they win every time. Now at first blush, this seems like a lot of effort to win a game that is, to say the least, simple... but then you think about our exciting Easter game in America: FIND THE EGGS! Not much better on the excitement scale, but still suitable for children with low attention spans.
One more thing: there's a traditional Easter greeting, which when translated goes as "Christ is risen," with the response, "Indeed." In Georgian-- "Kriste azdga," "Cheshmaritad." That latter word-- cheshmaritad-- is the more important for volunteers to learn, since usually we end up responding to greetings from strangers rather than initiating them. The big problem for me was that "cheshmaritad" sounds like other, more familiar words that I already knew, like "ishviatad" ("rarely").
Georgian person: Christ is risen.
Me: Rarely.
I also kept coming up with "chishkari" (gate) and then turning it into an adverb. "Chishkaritad."
Georgian person: Christ is risen.
Me: Gate-ly.
Hopefully that didn't happen too often. To conclude, I'll point out that not only is the day after Easter a holiday for the dead in its own right, but this day also happens to fall on April 9th this year, which is a holiday to commemorate the people who were killed by the Soviet army in a democracy demonstration in Georgia in 1989. When I came downstairs at 9:30 this morning, there was a glass of wine waiting for me so we could do all the necessary toasts for both holidays. Other than that, though, the rest of today looks to be normal, minus the fact that everything's closed so I can't get any work done.
And of course, you didn't forget that today's my birthday, right?
In the first place, you have an Easter supra in the morning. This is just like Easter brunch in America, except for it's in a graveyard with your dead relatives. I realized belatedly that there are tables all over the place in Georgian cemetaries for this purpose (and also for Tslis Tavis, if you remember from a previous post). My host family and I took a marshrutka to the town of Vani-- also famous for being the home of the Golden Fleece, yes THE Golden Fleece-- where my host mother's parents and cousins and grandparents et cetera are buried. There we ate some khachapuri and boiled chicken, made some toasts with 2.50-lari (~$1.47) bottles of wine, and poured some wine on the graves so they could imbibe too.
The dead are the life of the Easter party. In addition to getting their own day, which is the day after Easter, they also get special treatment on Easter. You'll note in this picture that there's little cakes near the headstones. These are called "paska," and they're special Easter cakes. Every dead person gets a paska and some candles-- no candles at this grave, unfortunately, but I think that's because the whole family died (check out the dates... that guy died when he was 29). Well, that's depressing. But don't you think the graves are a lot more personal with the portraits etched on them? Maybe that's why it's easier for Georgians to frequent their cemetaries than it is for Americans; all we see is names and dates.
Georgians dye hard-boiled eggs red a couple days before Easter-- only red, since that's the holy color here. Every dead person gets an egg on their grave as part of their party favors, and then children eat the rest. There's a game that goes along with eating an egg: two people each hold an egg in their hand, and then they hit them together. Whosever egg breaks is the loser (see picture for example of losing egg, i.e. mine). This happens approximately ten million times and never loses its appeal. My host sister from the village told me that some little cheaters make wooden eggs and paint them red so they win every time. Now at first blush, this seems like a lot of effort to win a game that is, to say the least, simple... but then you think about our exciting Easter game in America: FIND THE EGGS! Not much better on the excitement scale, but still suitable for children with low attention spans.
One more thing: there's a traditional Easter greeting, which when translated goes as "Christ is risen," with the response, "Indeed." In Georgian-- "Kriste azdga," "Cheshmaritad." That latter word-- cheshmaritad-- is the more important for volunteers to learn, since usually we end up responding to greetings from strangers rather than initiating them. The big problem for me was that "cheshmaritad" sounds like other, more familiar words that I already knew, like "ishviatad" ("rarely").
Georgian person: Christ is risen.
Me: Rarely.
I also kept coming up with "chishkari" (gate) and then turning it into an adverb. "Chishkaritad."
Georgian person: Christ is risen.
Me: Gate-ly.
Hopefully that didn't happen too often. To conclude, I'll point out that not only is the day after Easter a holiday for the dead in its own right, but this day also happens to fall on April 9th this year, which is a holiday to commemorate the people who were killed by the Soviet army in a democracy demonstration in Georgia in 1989. When I came downstairs at 9:30 this morning, there was a glass of wine waiting for me so we could do all the necessary toasts for both holidays. Other than that, though, the rest of today looks to be normal, minus the fact that everything's closed so I can't get any work done.
And of course, you didn't forget that today's my birthday, right?
Friday, March 30, 2007
A Lesson in Georgian
And you thought it took hours and weeks and months of studying to understand even the easiest phrases. Now, in just ten minutes, learn the key words that will unlock the gates of Sakartvelo and behind which happiness and cultural awareness reign supreme!
Meti khachapuri aghar minda.
I don’t want any more cheesebread.
Tarebas sad istzavle?
Where did you learn to drive?
Sheni shvili martla kargi bitchia, maints gatkhoveba ar minda akhla.
Your son really is a lovely boy, but I don’t want to get married now.
Es romeli sadghregrdzeloa?
Which toast is this?
Ara, seriozulad, bevr khachapurs ukve vchame.
No, seriously, I already ate a lot of cheesebread.
Bolo nishnebs chven unda davtzerot mat sakontrolo tzeris nishnebis datzeris shemdeg.
We need to wait until after we’ve graded their tests to write their final grades.
Ar makvs khelpasi. Martla.
I don’t have a salary. Really.
Ar vitsi rusuli. Ktovt, dabrundi shens samshoblo enas.
I don’t know Russian. Please return to your native language.
Meti khachapuri rom shevcham, momklavs.
If I eat any more cheesebread, it will kill me.
Dabana ar mtchirdeba; ukve davibane gasul kviras.
I don’t need to bathe; I just took a bath last week.
Tavi damanebet—saelchoshi vmushaob.
Leave me alone—I work at the embassy.
Vitsi rom politikaze ver vlaparakob, magram ase mgonia, rom saakashvili gasukda.
I know I can’t talk about politics, but I agree, President Saakashvili has gotten fat.
Ati lari taksit, khumrob?! Aseti puli arts unda tvitmprinavit tzasvla!
Ten lari by taxi, are you kidding?! It doesn’t take that much to go by plane!
Tzukhel “dakargulebis” ukurebdi?
Did you watch “Lost” last night?
Kargi ra, mashin kidev mometsi erti tsali khachapuri.
Enough already, just give me another piece of cheesebread.
Rotsa davalebas aghar dagtchirdeba, mere imisit isargeble tvaletis kaghaldad.
When you don’t need your homework anymore, use it as toilet paper.
Congratulations! Assuming that your quick readthrough of the above sentences led to permanent memorization, you are now certified to spend at least one week in Georgia! Stay tuned later in 2007 for further installments, and someday you too could have the vocabulary training to spend 26 months in the Republic of Georgia!
Meti khachapuri aghar minda.
I don’t want any more cheesebread.
Tarebas sad istzavle?
Where did you learn to drive?
Sheni shvili martla kargi bitchia, maints gatkhoveba ar minda akhla.
Your son really is a lovely boy, but I don’t want to get married now.
Es romeli sadghregrdzeloa?
Which toast is this?
Ara, seriozulad, bevr khachapurs ukve vchame.
No, seriously, I already ate a lot of cheesebread.
Bolo nishnebs chven unda davtzerot mat sakontrolo tzeris nishnebis datzeris shemdeg.
We need to wait until after we’ve graded their tests to write their final grades.
Ar makvs khelpasi. Martla.
I don’t have a salary. Really.
Ar vitsi rusuli. Ktovt, dabrundi shens samshoblo enas.
I don’t know Russian. Please return to your native language.
Meti khachapuri rom shevcham, momklavs.
If I eat any more cheesebread, it will kill me.
Dabana ar mtchirdeba; ukve davibane gasul kviras.
I don’t need to bathe; I just took a bath last week.
Tavi damanebet—saelchoshi vmushaob.
Leave me alone—I work at the embassy.
Vitsi rom politikaze ver vlaparakob, magram ase mgonia, rom saakashvili gasukda.
I know I can’t talk about politics, but I agree, President Saakashvili has gotten fat.
Ati lari taksit, khumrob?! Aseti puli arts unda tvitmprinavit tzasvla!
Ten lari by taxi, are you kidding?! It doesn’t take that much to go by plane!
Tzukhel “dakargulebis” ukurebdi?
Did you watch “Lost” last night?
Kargi ra, mashin kidev mometsi erti tsali khachapuri.
Enough already, just give me another piece of cheesebread.
Rotsa davalebas aghar dagtchirdeba, mere imisit isargeble tvaletis kaghaldad.
When you don’t need your homework anymore, use it as toilet paper.
Congratulations! Assuming that your quick readthrough of the above sentences led to permanent memorization, you are now certified to spend at least one week in Georgia! Stay tuned later in 2007 for further installments, and someday you too could have the vocabulary training to spend 26 months in the Republic of Georgia!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Chiatura Is My Pride
This week, I teach alone for the first time. It’s not some step in the natural order of things—I’m not supposed to teach alone ever—but rather my counterpart has the flu (not bird flu). Things went fine on Monday, despite my certainty that the school day would end in disaster, and barring any problems with my inability to communicate with the 5th graders tomorrow, I foresee a middling performance on my part, which I shall label success.
All of the following facts that couldn’t be ascertained from first-hand looks are courtesy of Senora Heidi, a sonorous laugher, Texan, and proponent of Stalinesque classroom discipline.
I spent the weekend in Chiatura, a former Soviet model city of 50,000 which now boasts 10,000 occupants and about 30 artistic renditions of Stalin. It would have been 31 if his likeness hadn’t been removed from the Hollywood-esque “Chiatura—My Pride” sign on the side of the gorge, where the only remnant is empty scaffolding. Unfortunately for all, the mood Lenin head that glowed red, blue, and green according to the time of day has also been disposed of, as has the oversized clock that told good proletariat citizens when it was time to start working.
That’s pretty much the essence of Chiatura… it’s surreal in that you feel like this was the alternate universe that angels would have shown Trotsky in It’s a Wonderful Life when he was about to jump into the river (“This is the USSR without you!”). Many of the Soviet signs and buildings are still up, but one and all are decrepit. The Georgians are rebuilding in the center of town, and it’s turning out pretty well, but the town itself has a lot of falling apart to do before it can reidentify itself as Georgian. Being in Chiatura is the closest I’ve ever come (and probably will ever come) to existing behind the Iron Curtain during Soviet times. You find yourself imagining this gorge town filled with people who all believed that they were living in an ideal future society, and with the giant clocks and the Lenin head in place, I can see how it would be difficult to see otherwise.
What other gems are there? Well, being a gorge, Chiatura has developed a lovely little system of cable cars—sabagiroebi—that will cart you up and down the hillsides for a fee of twenty tetri ($.12). If you’re too manly to take the quality-implied sabagiroebi, you can roll on over to the mining cable cars. Since Chiatura is famous for its manganese deposits, mining is a big industry. In fact, it’s the only remaining big industry—just ask the manganese-filled black river! Delicious! Anyway, those mining cars will take you up up up at a cool 80 degree angle, and just when you’ve reached the top despite all odds that you’d crash into the cliff, you look at the slope of the rope your car will have to ride down and you wonder if there’s a walking path instead, or perhaps you decide that returning is overrated.
I love Chiatura for all the above reasons. It’s one of the most fascinating places I’ve been to here, and when Heidi gets her own apartment (4 rooms for $45 a month… that’s what happens when 10000 people live in a city formerly housing 50000) I will make it my second home, regardless of her consent. I won’t hold it against the city that the nuns kicked me out of the cool cave monastery for wearing a headscarf tucked into my pants in lieu of a skirt. And if you don’t mind (but you will), I’d like to reappropriate the slogan of a quaint little town I know in America.
Chiatura is Gorges.
All of the following facts that couldn’t be ascertained from first-hand looks are courtesy of Senora Heidi, a sonorous laugher, Texan, and proponent of Stalinesque classroom discipline.
I spent the weekend in Chiatura, a former Soviet model city of 50,000 which now boasts 10,000 occupants and about 30 artistic renditions of Stalin. It would have been 31 if his likeness hadn’t been removed from the Hollywood-esque “Chiatura—My Pride” sign on the side of the gorge, where the only remnant is empty scaffolding. Unfortunately for all, the mood Lenin head that glowed red, blue, and green according to the time of day has also been disposed of, as has the oversized clock that told good proletariat citizens when it was time to start working.
That’s pretty much the essence of Chiatura… it’s surreal in that you feel like this was the alternate universe that angels would have shown Trotsky in It’s a Wonderful Life when he was about to jump into the river (“This is the USSR without you!”). Many of the Soviet signs and buildings are still up, but one and all are decrepit. The Georgians are rebuilding in the center of town, and it’s turning out pretty well, but the town itself has a lot of falling apart to do before it can reidentify itself as Georgian. Being in Chiatura is the closest I’ve ever come (and probably will ever come) to existing behind the Iron Curtain during Soviet times. You find yourself imagining this gorge town filled with people who all believed that they were living in an ideal future society, and with the giant clocks and the Lenin head in place, I can see how it would be difficult to see otherwise.
What other gems are there? Well, being a gorge, Chiatura has developed a lovely little system of cable cars—sabagiroebi—that will cart you up and down the hillsides for a fee of twenty tetri ($.12). If you’re too manly to take the quality-implied sabagiroebi, you can roll on over to the mining cable cars. Since Chiatura is famous for its manganese deposits, mining is a big industry. In fact, it’s the only remaining big industry—just ask the manganese-filled black river! Delicious! Anyway, those mining cars will take you up up up at a cool 80 degree angle, and just when you’ve reached the top despite all odds that you’d crash into the cliff, you look at the slope of the rope your car will have to ride down and you wonder if there’s a walking path instead, or perhaps you decide that returning is overrated.
I love Chiatura for all the above reasons. It’s one of the most fascinating places I’ve been to here, and when Heidi gets her own apartment (4 rooms for $45 a month… that’s what happens when 10000 people live in a city formerly housing 50000) I will make it my second home, regardless of her consent. I won’t hold it against the city that the nuns kicked me out of the cool cave monastery for wearing a headscarf tucked into my pants in lieu of a skirt. And if you don’t mind (but you will), I’d like to reappropriate the slogan of a quaint little town I know in America.
Chiatura is Gorges.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Grave-Robbing
I can't decide if this is a good idea or not: I want to take the metal detector (which has mysteriously been sitting on top of my wardrobe since I got here) to the outskirts of my site where all the buildings are crumbled piles of bricks with perhaps a stray cement foundation pillar or two still standing, and I want to search for old Soviet crap and perhaps metal detritus from the war with Abkhazia. Pro: old Soviet stuff and metal detritus from the war with Abkhazia would be incredibly interesting to find, and they have it out the wazoo here. Con: The war with Abkhazia was just under 15 years ago, and I wonder if that's too short an elapsed time for me to go poking around a former war zone. I'm not actually sure that the buildings crumbled as a result of the war... buildings usually crumble here because of their high-quality Soviet contruction. Maybe that's it, though I have the same feeling in my stomach now that I had when I realized my friend was really offended that I'd told him he smelled like a marshrutka (turns out it was onions in the kitchen), so perhaps it's a horrid idea and I should be ashamed at contemplating such grave robbery.
Mom wants me to skedaddle back to America for her graduation in August. While I am obviously in favor of this-- especially since the fake itinerary I've drawn up puts me in Maryland for Dad's annual pig roast-- I am also obviously broke. And why shouldn't I be? I'm the one who chose to volunteer for almost 2 1/2 years when I could have been making minimum-wage CA$H in the US. To my precious friends and family: do any of you have any frequent flier miles that are about to expire? Do frequent flier miles even work that way? In any case, I'm checking out whatever options I can along that front and am open to ideas that don't involve embezzlement of development grant money.
Speaking of grant money, Writing Olympics got funded! Huzzah! Sitemate Ian and I set the contest dates for our town, so now all that's left is to pester the rest of the volunteers until the March 30th deadline (if you're a volunteer reading this, are YOU doing Writing Olympics? Why or why not?). There's some pretty sweet prizes involved for the winners... framed certificates, English books, pens, notebooks, a backpack for the Best of the Caucuses winner. And we're gonna have the winners' essays compiled into a little book again, though there's one wrench in that gear: the tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Last year, they had to make two versions of the book since the host country nationals didn't want the children's essays from Azerbaijan to touch the Armenian essays and vice versa. Maybe we'll just make the one version this year, where the essays are separated by country rather than by grade (the latter being the sensible format).
Another thing I can't decide: whether I'm being culturally insensitive by finding the publication problems maddening. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IT'S A BOOK OF ESSAYS WRITTEN BY CHILDREN!!! Then again, it's easy for me as an American-- citizen of a heterogenous state with no historical nationality-- to see conflicts of ethnic nationalism as petty. Can I picture myself as a citizen of a smaller country, fighting violently against a neighboring country that'd just as soon wipe my country from existence, and then some ignorant, arrogant chick from the world's hegemon waltzes over and rolls her eyes at hundreds of years of history? Sorry, despite trying my best to write that second POV from the perspective of an Armenian or Azeri, it's still not convincing. Even to me.
Maybe this distaste for the mechanisms behind ethnic conflict is what leads me to disagree so vehemently with crackpot writer Gary Kah. Check out his theories on how Satan is using New Agers and Freemasons in a global conspiracy to create a One-World Government at http://www.garykah.org (he knows! he was in Who's Who in the Midwest!).
Mom wants me to skedaddle back to America for her graduation in August. While I am obviously in favor of this-- especially since the fake itinerary I've drawn up puts me in Maryland for Dad's annual pig roast-- I am also obviously broke. And why shouldn't I be? I'm the one who chose to volunteer for almost 2 1/2 years when I could have been making minimum-wage CA$H in the US. To my precious friends and family: do any of you have any frequent flier miles that are about to expire? Do frequent flier miles even work that way? In any case, I'm checking out whatever options I can along that front and am open to ideas that don't involve embezzlement of development grant money.
Speaking of grant money, Writing Olympics got funded! Huzzah! Sitemate Ian and I set the contest dates for our town, so now all that's left is to pester the rest of the volunteers until the March 30th deadline (if you're a volunteer reading this, are YOU doing Writing Olympics? Why or why not?). There's some pretty sweet prizes involved for the winners... framed certificates, English books, pens, notebooks, a backpack for the Best of the Caucuses winner. And we're gonna have the winners' essays compiled into a little book again, though there's one wrench in that gear: the tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Last year, they had to make two versions of the book since the host country nationals didn't want the children's essays from Azerbaijan to touch the Armenian essays and vice versa. Maybe we'll just make the one version this year, where the essays are separated by country rather than by grade (the latter being the sensible format).
Another thing I can't decide: whether I'm being culturally insensitive by finding the publication problems maddening. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IT'S A BOOK OF ESSAYS WRITTEN BY CHILDREN!!! Then again, it's easy for me as an American-- citizen of a heterogenous state with no historical nationality-- to see conflicts of ethnic nationalism as petty. Can I picture myself as a citizen of a smaller country, fighting violently against a neighboring country that'd just as soon wipe my country from existence, and then some ignorant, arrogant chick from the world's hegemon waltzes over and rolls her eyes at hundreds of years of history? Sorry, despite trying my best to write that second POV from the perspective of an Armenian or Azeri, it's still not convincing. Even to me.
Maybe this distaste for the mechanisms behind ethnic conflict is what leads me to disagree so vehemently with crackpot writer Gary Kah. Check out his theories on how Satan is using New Agers and Freemasons in a global conspiracy to create a One-World Government at http://www.garykah.org (he knows! he was in Who's Who in the Midwest!).
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Welcome to the Neighborhood
I’ve found the definition of masochism: a Peace Corps volunteer who’s had a carrot for breakfast, sitting down between classes to reformat an Applebee’s menu she downloaded from the internet. Naturally, it’s for class usage and thus serves some purpose, but never have I ever in my entire life wished that there were more Applebee’s in the world. Until today.
Warning: the next section should not be read by other volunteers.
Since I’ve got the menu right here, how about a sampling of the prime offenders? Mmm… sampler…
Nachos Nuevos Crispy red, blue & yellow corn chips topped with spicy ground beef, black beans & melted cheese. Topped with sour cream, fresh tomato & jalapeсo 11.49
Fried Chicken Salad Bite size chicken fingers atop mixed greens with cheddar, diced tomatoes & eggs. Served with honey mustard dressing & toasted garlic bread 11.29
Honey Grilled Salmon Flame grilled Atlantic salmon glazed with Applebee's honey pepper sauce & served with almond rice pilaf, seasonal vegetables & garlic toast. Served grilled as well - without the honey sauce 17.49
Bacon Cheese Chicken Grill Sandwich An 8 oz. boneless marinated chicken breast grilled with bacon & cheddar cheese. Served on a toasted sesame seed bun 11.49
So that’s my hell for today. The funny thing is that I considered Applebee’s to be quite the mediocre establishment before I left. Maybe it’s because they were everywhere, or because despite their claims to be part of the neighborhood, they all looked the same inside, save for different local school colors. Is that really what I miss about America? Consumerism? Assembly-line production? Pandering, middle-of-the-road options disguised as innovation?
YES.
Warning: the next section should not be read by other volunteers.
Since I’ve got the menu right here, how about a sampling of the prime offenders? Mmm… sampler…
Nachos Nuevos Crispy red, blue & yellow corn chips topped with spicy ground beef, black beans & melted cheese. Topped with sour cream, fresh tomato & jalapeсo 11.49
Fried Chicken Salad Bite size chicken fingers atop mixed greens with cheddar, diced tomatoes & eggs. Served with honey mustard dressing & toasted garlic bread 11.29
Honey Grilled Salmon Flame grilled Atlantic salmon glazed with Applebee's honey pepper sauce & served with almond rice pilaf, seasonal vegetables & garlic toast. Served grilled as well - without the honey sauce 17.49
Bacon Cheese Chicken Grill Sandwich An 8 oz. boneless marinated chicken breast grilled with bacon & cheddar cheese. Served on a toasted sesame seed bun 11.49
So that’s my hell for today. The funny thing is that I considered Applebee’s to be quite the mediocre establishment before I left. Maybe it’s because they were everywhere, or because despite their claims to be part of the neighborhood, they all looked the same inside, save for different local school colors. Is that really what I miss about America? Consumerism? Assembly-line production? Pandering, middle-of-the-road options disguised as innovation?
YES.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Borat vs. Georgia
First, this was going to be a comparative essay on Borat versus the reality of living in central Asia. In the process of writing that, the introduction became a rant against a certain humorless, ill-tempered placement officer who made my early Peace Corps experience a nightmare and who should be fired or at least have his/her house egged. Neither of those would likely garner the favor of my dear employer, the US government, so nix and nix. Actually, though, I can write a little bit about Borat anyway since I’m such a rebel.
Borat vs. Georgia
Being a –stan country:
Kazakhstan, obviously one of the –stans that many people have trouble placing on the map. I’ll admit, although they’re just a quick hop across the Caspian Sea, I probably still couldn’t tell you where most of them are. BUT did you know that the word for Georgia in Turkish is Gürjistan? So there you go, welcome to a –stan.
Technologique:
Borat seems rather pleased with his VCR and his radio alarm clock. You may notice in Georgia, however, that while there are many households with black-and-white televisions and tape players, the cell phones outstrip what most people have in the US. Why? I don’t know. Nor am I in favor of my 10th-form students’ possession of phones that can play the latest in Russian pop before, during, and after class. Just don’t be surprised if your host sister hands you her phone and asks you to type “Bruce Willis” into the Google search window she’s browsing.
Driving you crazy:
As another volunteer pointed out, some of Borat’s driving antics in the movie go unnoticed by PC Georgia viewers. He’s straddling two lanes? Oh, I didn’t notice. The speed limit has no bearing on how fast/slow he’s going? Well, why would it? There’s an 8-year-old chauffeur at the beginning of the movie? How else can he learn to drive without practice? I’ve seen two or three sources from travelers more experienced than I (read: everybody) who cite Georgian drivers as the worst in the world. I’ll readily believe that. When you spend most of the drive in the passing lane on a two-way road, diving back between correct-lane cars to hide from oncoming traffic, creating a third middle lane with the oodles of space left between the cars going in opposite directions, hitting the gas when idiot pedestrians think the road is for walking on… let’s move on.
Smoochy smoo, kissy-wissy:
Borat’s traditional Kazakh greeting elicits a stream of four-letter words from his fellow New York City straphangers, while most Americans engage in a battle between cultural sensitivity and instinct, slightly leaning away from him as he places a kiss on each cheek (and sometimes on the mouth). Good news for those of you with strict personal bubbles: Georgians only kiss one cheek! They don’t save it just for the same sex, either—host nationals will kiss everyone they meet. It’s a part of being tbili khalkhi (warm people). Some Georgians will—for the novelty of it—offer you a handshake, wearing the same smile of delight in cultural awareness as you will the first time you give a supra toast that’s more than two words long. Remember: while it’s not your fault that the Soviets told everyone in their sphere that Americans are cold people, you can go a long way to debunk that stereotype by getting used to the nice-to-see-you smooch.
Chicken tonight:
When the chicken got loose from Borat’s bag and started fluttering all over the subway, were you thinking of bird flu? Because I was. First off, yes, people carry chickens in bags… but how else can you get a chicken from the bazaar to your house? It might be a bit disconcerting to see some legs sticking out of a plastic bag and then to hear the bag clucking, but it does save you the sight of chickens getting slaughtered in the shops, rather than at home. Back to bird flu, though—there hasn’t actually been any bird flu here this year (and I don’t know if there was last year), but it is sitting there in the back of people’s minds, especially those people whose livelihoods depend on chickens. Glad to have sucked the humor out of that scene.
“I Do” optional:
You may have seen it coming from the time Borat described his cloth creation as a “marriage sack,” foreshadowing the part where he stuffs the sack over Pamela Anderson’s head and throws her over his shoulder to be his wife. Here comes another humor-killer: while it’s relatively rare compared to earlier times, bridenapping is still a problem in some parts of rural Georgia. Foreigners (and volunteers therein) aren’t really targeted, since a successful bridenapping depends on the eventual consent of the bride, who either tires of being holed up in a mountain shack or concludes that her family will not accept her back since they assume she’s being doing… things… with her bridenapper while sequestered. Terribly unfair? Of course. But there are some bright signs—firstly, the Georgian government prosecutes bridenappers as harshly as regular kidnappers these days. Secondly, there’s the changing attitude of young Georgians like my training host sister: “I would never say yes if I were bridenapped. I would break a window and run away.” Good for you, Lela. Good for you.
Ambiguity:
Borat’s mixed signals to the men he met in Washington led to some incidents he couldn’t quite explain to Alan Keyes. Let’s start it off this way: Georgian men are not a bunch of Borats, wearing short-shorts and walking around in the nude while so staunchly heterosexual that they’re shocked that other options exist. I will say this, though: it’s not abnormal here for men to hug and hold hands and walk with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. In fact, it’s pretty normal.
Other countries have inferior potassium:
That was probably the best national anthem I’ve ever heard. For the Georgian equivalent of a proud mineral export, check out manganese (Mn), that neglected square on the periodic table that’s usually confused with magnesium (Mg). Proud little Chiatura in northern Georgia, formerly a Soviet model town, boasts a large concentration of manganese mines, as well as a manganese-filled black river, though when the Soviets fled, many of the mines and processing factories closed down. And they took down the glowing Lenin head from the cliff.
Your war of terror:
Borat supports our “war of terror,” he says, while wearing an American flag cowboy shirt. You know who else does? Georgia. This may be a completely inaccurate statistic, but I’ve been told that per capita, Georgia has the largest amount of troops in Iraq as part of the Iraqi Enduring Freedom Democracy Liberty Forever mission. American troops are stationed in parts of Georgia, too, to train the Georgian soldiers and to give them cool US uniforms to wear, and also to misbehave at expat bars.
Running of the Jew:
“Kazakhstan has some problems—economic, social, and Jew.” Oh Borat, you anti-Semite. You won’t find such a celebration of Jew-hating in Georgia (probably not either, I’d wager, in Kazakhstan). Did you know that before Israel existed, a large Jewish population used to live in Georgia, waiting around in the Caucasus for a space to open up in the Holy Land? You can still hear a synthesizer version of “Hava Nagela” played at many a Georgian supra. The last time I was at a supra where “Hava Nagela” was played, everyone formed a conga line, grabbing the shoulders of the person in front of them and jumping as a chain throughout the small apartment screaming “Hava Nagela” at the top of their lungs. It was one of those surreal moments that I keep meaning to write a blog post about.
Too much booty in the pants:
Remember when Borat is leaving for America and he starts dancing with his fellow villagers? That’s about the same. Minus the Running Man. Actually, Georgian dance is pretty cool-looking, and most of the culturally-educated Georgians know how to do it and will beg to teach you and/or laugh at your failed attempts. Side note: While Borat throws dice for fun, Georgian men tend toward backgammon. Hours and hours of backgammon.
Onward Christian soldiers:
Borat explains that their town has dropped the Running of the Jew due to its cruelty. “We’re Christians now,” he explains, walking by a group of villagers poking at a man on a cross with a pitchfork (best joke of the movie, IMO). But are they a bunch of Saint Johnny-come-latelies? Georgia was only the second nation to name Christianity as its official religion. They’re mostly Georgian Orthodox here, which leads to many holidays that you may not be familiar with. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why we make bean pastries on St. Barbara’s day, or why we celebrate Old New Year two weeks after Regular New Year, but I’m not sure my host family knows either, so give me a break.
So that’s it, your guide to the differences and similarities between the world of Borat and the Republic of Georgia. I hope I’ve made it culturally sensitive and positive enough that it can stay online long enough for all 10 people who read my blog to see, and all ya’ll best be good and enlightened now after all that typing.
P.S. Borat looks more like an East European than a Central Asian, FYI.
Borat vs. Georgia
Being a –stan country:
Kazakhstan, obviously one of the –stans that many people have trouble placing on the map. I’ll admit, although they’re just a quick hop across the Caspian Sea, I probably still couldn’t tell you where most of them are. BUT did you know that the word for Georgia in Turkish is Gürjistan? So there you go, welcome to a –stan.
Technologique:
Borat seems rather pleased with his VCR and his radio alarm clock. You may notice in Georgia, however, that while there are many households with black-and-white televisions and tape players, the cell phones outstrip what most people have in the US. Why? I don’t know. Nor am I in favor of my 10th-form students’ possession of phones that can play the latest in Russian pop before, during, and after class. Just don’t be surprised if your host sister hands you her phone and asks you to type “Bruce Willis” into the Google search window she’s browsing.
Driving you crazy:
As another volunteer pointed out, some of Borat’s driving antics in the movie go unnoticed by PC Georgia viewers. He’s straddling two lanes? Oh, I didn’t notice. The speed limit has no bearing on how fast/slow he’s going? Well, why would it? There’s an 8-year-old chauffeur at the beginning of the movie? How else can he learn to drive without practice? I’ve seen two or three sources from travelers more experienced than I (read: everybody) who cite Georgian drivers as the worst in the world. I’ll readily believe that. When you spend most of the drive in the passing lane on a two-way road, diving back between correct-lane cars to hide from oncoming traffic, creating a third middle lane with the oodles of space left between the cars going in opposite directions, hitting the gas when idiot pedestrians think the road is for walking on… let’s move on.
Smoochy smoo, kissy-wissy:
Borat’s traditional Kazakh greeting elicits a stream of four-letter words from his fellow New York City straphangers, while most Americans engage in a battle between cultural sensitivity and instinct, slightly leaning away from him as he places a kiss on each cheek (and sometimes on the mouth). Good news for those of you with strict personal bubbles: Georgians only kiss one cheek! They don’t save it just for the same sex, either—host nationals will kiss everyone they meet. It’s a part of being tbili khalkhi (warm people). Some Georgians will—for the novelty of it—offer you a handshake, wearing the same smile of delight in cultural awareness as you will the first time you give a supra toast that’s more than two words long. Remember: while it’s not your fault that the Soviets told everyone in their sphere that Americans are cold people, you can go a long way to debunk that stereotype by getting used to the nice-to-see-you smooch.
Chicken tonight:
When the chicken got loose from Borat’s bag and started fluttering all over the subway, were you thinking of bird flu? Because I was. First off, yes, people carry chickens in bags… but how else can you get a chicken from the bazaar to your house? It might be a bit disconcerting to see some legs sticking out of a plastic bag and then to hear the bag clucking, but it does save you the sight of chickens getting slaughtered in the shops, rather than at home. Back to bird flu, though—there hasn’t actually been any bird flu here this year (and I don’t know if there was last year), but it is sitting there in the back of people’s minds, especially those people whose livelihoods depend on chickens. Glad to have sucked the humor out of that scene.
“I Do” optional:
You may have seen it coming from the time Borat described his cloth creation as a “marriage sack,” foreshadowing the part where he stuffs the sack over Pamela Anderson’s head and throws her over his shoulder to be his wife. Here comes another humor-killer: while it’s relatively rare compared to earlier times, bridenapping is still a problem in some parts of rural Georgia. Foreigners (and volunteers therein) aren’t really targeted, since a successful bridenapping depends on the eventual consent of the bride, who either tires of being holed up in a mountain shack or concludes that her family will not accept her back since they assume she’s being doing… things… with her bridenapper while sequestered. Terribly unfair? Of course. But there are some bright signs—firstly, the Georgian government prosecutes bridenappers as harshly as regular kidnappers these days. Secondly, there’s the changing attitude of young Georgians like my training host sister: “I would never say yes if I were bridenapped. I would break a window and run away.” Good for you, Lela. Good for you.
Ambiguity:
Borat’s mixed signals to the men he met in Washington led to some incidents he couldn’t quite explain to Alan Keyes. Let’s start it off this way: Georgian men are not a bunch of Borats, wearing short-shorts and walking around in the nude while so staunchly heterosexual that they’re shocked that other options exist. I will say this, though: it’s not abnormal here for men to hug and hold hands and walk with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. In fact, it’s pretty normal.
Other countries have inferior potassium:
That was probably the best national anthem I’ve ever heard. For the Georgian equivalent of a proud mineral export, check out manganese (Mn), that neglected square on the periodic table that’s usually confused with magnesium (Mg). Proud little Chiatura in northern Georgia, formerly a Soviet model town, boasts a large concentration of manganese mines, as well as a manganese-filled black river, though when the Soviets fled, many of the mines and processing factories closed down. And they took down the glowing Lenin head from the cliff.
Your war of terror:
Borat supports our “war of terror,” he says, while wearing an American flag cowboy shirt. You know who else does? Georgia. This may be a completely inaccurate statistic, but I’ve been told that per capita, Georgia has the largest amount of troops in Iraq as part of the Iraqi Enduring Freedom Democracy Liberty Forever mission. American troops are stationed in parts of Georgia, too, to train the Georgian soldiers and to give them cool US uniforms to wear, and also to misbehave at expat bars.
Running of the Jew:
“Kazakhstan has some problems—economic, social, and Jew.” Oh Borat, you anti-Semite. You won’t find such a celebration of Jew-hating in Georgia (probably not either, I’d wager, in Kazakhstan). Did you know that before Israel existed, a large Jewish population used to live in Georgia, waiting around in the Caucasus for a space to open up in the Holy Land? You can still hear a synthesizer version of “Hava Nagela” played at many a Georgian supra. The last time I was at a supra where “Hava Nagela” was played, everyone formed a conga line, grabbing the shoulders of the person in front of them and jumping as a chain throughout the small apartment screaming “Hava Nagela” at the top of their lungs. It was one of those surreal moments that I keep meaning to write a blog post about.
Too much booty in the pants:
Remember when Borat is leaving for America and he starts dancing with his fellow villagers? That’s about the same. Minus the Running Man. Actually, Georgian dance is pretty cool-looking, and most of the culturally-educated Georgians know how to do it and will beg to teach you and/or laugh at your failed attempts. Side note: While Borat throws dice for fun, Georgian men tend toward backgammon. Hours and hours of backgammon.
Onward Christian soldiers:
Borat explains that their town has dropped the Running of the Jew due to its cruelty. “We’re Christians now,” he explains, walking by a group of villagers poking at a man on a cross with a pitchfork (best joke of the movie, IMO). But are they a bunch of Saint Johnny-come-latelies? Georgia was only the second nation to name Christianity as its official religion. They’re mostly Georgian Orthodox here, which leads to many holidays that you may not be familiar with. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why we make bean pastries on St. Barbara’s day, or why we celebrate Old New Year two weeks after Regular New Year, but I’m not sure my host family knows either, so give me a break.
So that’s it, your guide to the differences and similarities between the world of Borat and the Republic of Georgia. I hope I’ve made it culturally sensitive and positive enough that it can stay online long enough for all 10 people who read my blog to see, and all ya’ll best be good and enlightened now after all that typing.
P.S. Borat looks more like an East European than a Central Asian, FYI.
Monday, February 05, 2007
A Tbilisi State of Mind
How come every time you come around, my London London bridge wanna go down like London, London, London...
I have an inkling that those lyrics mean something inappropriate, but just because Fergie wants to go around making up dirty idioms doesn't mean I'm going to treat them like official Webster's phrases. Why the lyrics? Heidi and I stayed at an expat's house last weekend for 3 nights and there was a computer with Limewire in the bedroom. This led to the following display that my taste in music has not only worsened but has died:
"Buttons" Pussycat Dolls
"Lithium" Evanescence
"Irreplaceable" Beyonce
"Wind It Up" Gwen Stefani
"Maneater" Nelly Furtado
As a side note though, I bet ya'll in America can't make anything of some of the other new additions to my music list. I'm just as in love with these songs. And some of them are just as bad (Russian pop... vai meh).
"Chori, Chori" Aneela & Arash
"Rette Mich" Tokio Hotel
"Tsvietok i Nozh" Via Gra (yes, really)
You know what's exciting? The next group of Georgia volunteers are getting their invitations over the next few months. I can see now how naive it was to gaze intently at the G5s as they made their "expert" presentations last year during training... if there's one word I'm not going to use to describe myself, it's "expert." Especially not about Georgia, but perhaps about Weird Al. I feel like this means I should be putting some more specific Georgia information in here (also knowing that most family/friends reading this blog didn't choose to do so for the purpose of getting foreign language music suggestions). Here's some, then:
1) We met Giorgi Targamadze this weekend! Of course you know already that he's the most famous journalist in Georgia, but did you also know that he shops in the Euromart on Rustaveli in Tbilisi? He gave us (me) his phone number and email address, so perhaps a story related to Peace Corps is in the works. Nicholas plans to tell him about BLOC, the boys' leadership camp, which is actually more newsworthy than any of the projects I was thinking of. Maybe I could preempt him by pointing Giorgi in the direction of GLOW*, the girls' leadership camp. Maybe the story could be on both. Maybe the story could be on me and how I have long hair.
2) This past week was also supposed to be our language and counterpart conference. However, on the first day of our language conference-- and just when we were getting to pester our instructor for that special genre of words she refused to teach us during training (gaajvi is one, ha ha ha!)-- we were evacuated from the hotel because apparently some gun-wielding relative of the hotel owners was on the run from the police and had been pursued into the basement of our hotel. Tsavidet (let's go)! All the volunteers were fine and nobody got hurt, thanks to the valiant efforts of Peace Corps staff (special shoutout to Teo, the language and homestar coordinator who got knocked over by a cop). That night, I stayed in an infinitely better hotel; the next night, a step down; the next 3 nights, back to the traditional Peace Corps hostel, the Nika. Oh well.
More noteworthy was the fact that when I brokenly imparted this story to my host family, they looked bored. My host sister looked up long enough to say "Gasagebia" ("It's clear") and then returned to watching Montecristo, the most popular Latin American soap opera this season. My host mom continued to chew her fingernails, and the neighbor kid continued to kick the armchair with his heels.
3) Good to know: giving someone your phone number is giving them carte blanche to text and call you to their heart's content, regardless of reciprocation or usage of new word genres. Better to know: this is apparently how many Georgian men meet their wives-- by texting and calling and calling and calling and texting until they cave. You might be weak like me and unable to think of another way to get someone to go away other than by giving them your phone number (especially since they'll call you while they're still standing there so you can have their phone number too, a prize you've coveted since time eternal). You might expect that there's no danger in harassment if the person asking for your phone number is a police officer. Well just tell that to Talier (Taliet? Jalier?), the cop who has called me three times a day since Friday. I think he tried to switch phones and call me, so I've begun indiscriminately hanging up on everybody and labeling their numbers in my phone as "Suspicious Number". If there's one thing I can impart to G7, that's it. Also-- bring a freaking backpack to Georgia. Wheelie bags + Georgian roads = disaster. And of course, you'll want to fit in with all the other backpacking hippies, too.
I could go on about how being at the expat's houses this weekend and witnessing their dinner parties and taste in wine has cemented my desire to become an expat myself someday, working for the embassy and living in an embassy house in a developing nation, hosting lowly Peace Corps volunteers and wowing them with food they haven't seen in their entire life, much less in the last 7 months (Friday: Italian pasta and veal soup with shredded parmesan, followed with blueberries flambe over vanilla ice cream with chocolate pound cake. Sunday: salmon rolls to start, then pot roast with carrots and potatoes, broccoli salad THERE'S NO BROCCOLI HERE I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW GREAT THAT WAS and then strawberry NONE OF THOSE EITHER shortcake. Add ever-flowing, handpicked wine-- as overheard between expats: "Try this wine. No? Well dump that in the sink, and come on down to the cellar. I've got a nice Saperavi around here somewhere." In my training village, we had wine that had an aftertaste of fish.) And apparently I did just go on about that. But come on! Broccoli!! Strawberries!!
*GLOW, Girls Leading Our World, is the project I'm most impressed by. It was started by Peace Corps volunteers as a national camp a couple years ago, and this year they've turned it into an NGO. There's also GLOW clubs now. Girls from all over the country go to camps to hear powerful female speakers and to learn leadership skills and self esteem, healthy eating, all that. It's done in Georgian so that it can involve more girls, and it's free of cost to them. They stay for like a week in a hotel together and all their food is paid for. In a country like this, where women are expected to get married, have babies, and sit in the house for the rest of their lives, this project is amazing. I can't say I really would have cared too much about it in the US, other than maybe a "That's nice," but when you get here and your host father tells you to call your male sitemate to escort you to the grocery store, or comes and gets you from the internet cafe just because he doesn't want his daughter to be outside the house... well, let's hope GLOW can make a difference. It's slowly being transfered into Georgian hands, and hopefully that'll keep it going long after we're COSed.
Which is in 18 months, by the way. But who's counting?
I have an inkling that those lyrics mean something inappropriate, but just because Fergie wants to go around making up dirty idioms doesn't mean I'm going to treat them like official Webster's phrases. Why the lyrics? Heidi and I stayed at an expat's house last weekend for 3 nights and there was a computer with Limewire in the bedroom. This led to the following display that my taste in music has not only worsened but has died:
"Buttons" Pussycat Dolls
"Lithium" Evanescence
"Irreplaceable" Beyonce
"Wind It Up" Gwen Stefani
"Maneater" Nelly Furtado
As a side note though, I bet ya'll in America can't make anything of some of the other new additions to my music list. I'm just as in love with these songs. And some of them are just as bad (Russian pop... vai meh).
"Chori, Chori" Aneela & Arash
"Rette Mich" Tokio Hotel
"Tsvietok i Nozh" Via Gra (yes, really)
You know what's exciting? The next group of Georgia volunteers are getting their invitations over the next few months. I can see now how naive it was to gaze intently at the G5s as they made their "expert" presentations last year during training... if there's one word I'm not going to use to describe myself, it's "expert." Especially not about Georgia, but perhaps about Weird Al. I feel like this means I should be putting some more specific Georgia information in here (also knowing that most family/friends reading this blog didn't choose to do so for the purpose of getting foreign language music suggestions). Here's some, then:
1) We met Giorgi Targamadze this weekend! Of course you know already that he's the most famous journalist in Georgia, but did you also know that he shops in the Euromart on Rustaveli in Tbilisi? He gave us (me) his phone number and email address, so perhaps a story related to Peace Corps is in the works. Nicholas plans to tell him about BLOC, the boys' leadership camp, which is actually more newsworthy than any of the projects I was thinking of. Maybe I could preempt him by pointing Giorgi in the direction of GLOW*, the girls' leadership camp. Maybe the story could be on both. Maybe the story could be on me and how I have long hair.
2) This past week was also supposed to be our language and counterpart conference. However, on the first day of our language conference-- and just when we were getting to pester our instructor for that special genre of words she refused to teach us during training (gaajvi is one, ha ha ha!)-- we were evacuated from the hotel because apparently some gun-wielding relative of the hotel owners was on the run from the police and had been pursued into the basement of our hotel. Tsavidet (let's go)! All the volunteers were fine and nobody got hurt, thanks to the valiant efforts of Peace Corps staff (special shoutout to Teo, the language and homestar coordinator who got knocked over by a cop). That night, I stayed in an infinitely better hotel; the next night, a step down; the next 3 nights, back to the traditional Peace Corps hostel, the Nika. Oh well.
More noteworthy was the fact that when I brokenly imparted this story to my host family, they looked bored. My host sister looked up long enough to say "Gasagebia" ("It's clear") and then returned to watching Montecristo, the most popular Latin American soap opera this season. My host mom continued to chew her fingernails, and the neighbor kid continued to kick the armchair with his heels.
3) Good to know: giving someone your phone number is giving them carte blanche to text and call you to their heart's content, regardless of reciprocation or usage of new word genres. Better to know: this is apparently how many Georgian men meet their wives-- by texting and calling and calling and calling and texting until they cave. You might be weak like me and unable to think of another way to get someone to go away other than by giving them your phone number (especially since they'll call you while they're still standing there so you can have their phone number too, a prize you've coveted since time eternal). You might expect that there's no danger in harassment if the person asking for your phone number is a police officer. Well just tell that to Talier (Taliet? Jalier?), the cop who has called me three times a day since Friday. I think he tried to switch phones and call me, so I've begun indiscriminately hanging up on everybody and labeling their numbers in my phone as "Suspicious Number". If there's one thing I can impart to G7, that's it. Also-- bring a freaking backpack to Georgia. Wheelie bags + Georgian roads = disaster. And of course, you'll want to fit in with all the other backpacking hippies, too.
I could go on about how being at the expat's houses this weekend and witnessing their dinner parties and taste in wine has cemented my desire to become an expat myself someday, working for the embassy and living in an embassy house in a developing nation, hosting lowly Peace Corps volunteers and wowing them with food they haven't seen in their entire life, much less in the last 7 months (Friday: Italian pasta and veal soup with shredded parmesan, followed with blueberries flambe over vanilla ice cream with chocolate pound cake. Sunday: salmon rolls to start, then pot roast with carrots and potatoes, broccoli salad THERE'S NO BROCCOLI HERE I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW GREAT THAT WAS and then strawberry NONE OF THOSE EITHER shortcake. Add ever-flowing, handpicked wine-- as overheard between expats: "Try this wine. No? Well dump that in the sink, and come on down to the cellar. I've got a nice Saperavi around here somewhere." In my training village, we had wine that had an aftertaste of fish.) And apparently I did just go on about that. But come on! Broccoli!! Strawberries!!
*GLOW, Girls Leading Our World, is the project I'm most impressed by. It was started by Peace Corps volunteers as a national camp a couple years ago, and this year they've turned it into an NGO. There's also GLOW clubs now. Girls from all over the country go to camps to hear powerful female speakers and to learn leadership skills and self esteem, healthy eating, all that. It's done in Georgian so that it can involve more girls, and it's free of cost to them. They stay for like a week in a hotel together and all their food is paid for. In a country like this, where women are expected to get married, have babies, and sit in the house for the rest of their lives, this project is amazing. I can't say I really would have cared too much about it in the US, other than maybe a "That's nice," but when you get here and your host father tells you to call your male sitemate to escort you to the grocery store, or comes and gets you from the internet cafe just because he doesn't want his daughter to be outside the house... well, let's hope GLOW can make a difference. It's slowly being transfered into Georgian hands, and hopefully that'll keep it going long after we're COSed.
Which is in 18 months, by the way. But who's counting?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
