Milk Soup

Come teach English in Georgia, the birthplace of wine, and sample delicious homemade cheeses, jams, and bread baked daily in a wood-burning stove.

When I first read about Georgian cuisine, I was sitting in the living room of my Denver apartment finishing a bowl of leftover Kraft macaroni and cheese that had been sitting around so long I could no longer remember exactly when I made it. I was seduced by the descriptions of fresh fruit ripening in hilly orchards, stews bubbling merrily away in quaint country kitchens, and families, neighbors, and friends gathering together for large meals prepared straight from their gardens. I doubt that I was the only TLG volunteer who was attracted to the program because, besides free flights, we were also provided with a host family who would feed us at least twice a day. The reality of the food situation in Georgia, however, is somewhat different from the picture I was painted as I picked bits of hardened cheese product out of my lunch that day on the sofa.

I want you to try to imagine everything that you have eaten in the last week. My guess is that you came up with somewhere between seven and fifteen items depending on how often you eat out, how often you eat leftovers, and how much you just enjoy eating the same thing day to day. In the last seven days, I have eaten four things: bread, beans, borscht, and different beans.

When I arrived in Georgia I had the distinct fear that I was going to leave much heavier and with much tighter clothing. My first week, at orientation in Tbilisi, I spent visiting Georgian restaurants and indulging on the rich and exotic flavors of a variety of what I was assured was traditional Georgian cuisine.  Those meals were a blur of spicy meat dumplings, succulent hen salad, sharp cheese, and lots of khachapuri (cheese bread), as the other volunteers and I passed dishes from hand to hand, crowded around one long table in a close sub level restaurant. What I didn’t realize then was the incredible disparity between the traditional foods that Georgians talk about and the ones they eat. After settling into my host family, gone were the rich and exotic flavors, replaced with a few staple meals that I would see again and again and again.  

Lobio is the Georgian word for beans (in the dialect of Samegrelo it’s labia, no joke). It is a dish made by boiling red beans with ajika (ground peppers and salt), onions, garlic, and cilantro. It is about the consistency of a watery bean soup and is eaten with bread or ghomi (corn paste/grits).

Borscht is one of my favorite things to eat here. Though at the sound of the word borscht most of you immediately thought “beats!” this soup consists mostly of boiled cabbage. My host grandmother always makes enough to fill a pot the size of a monster truck tire, and the family will ladle portions out day after day, until the remaining mush (most of the vegetables have dissolved by now) begins to smell like vomit. At this point, the soup is brought to a boil before being fed to the cow.

Green beans are one of the vegetables that almost every Georgian family grows in their garden. They are especially valuable because they are easily preserved for the winter. As far as I can tell, the beans are boiled in large quantities and then placed in jars along with the water that they were cooked in. When they are eaten, most of the water is drained away and they are pureed with salt and ground nuts, or fried with eggs and lots of oil. These are also always eaten with bread.

The other thing that we eat on a regular basis, I hesitate to refer to this particular item as food, is souis (pronounced “sah-oose”), which is just the Russian word for sauce. And that is a pretty accurate description of this dish: a thick, gritty sauce, sometimes containing bits of potato or beef bone, cooked in largish quantities like a stew but eaten from a plate by being soaked into bread.

And then there’s the cheese. It’s true what I read in all the brochures, Georgians make a lot of cheese, and many of the families make their own cheese using milk from their cow. This cheese is sort of like a very fatty, salty mozzarella. Some families even smoke the cheese, a practice I find very agreeable. However, what the brochures don’t talk about is the Georgian’s habit of allowing food to sit out for days on end. Not every house has a refrigerator, but even where there is available refrigeration, it is not always utilized. The result being that the cheese is allowed to ripen for as long as it takes the family to work their way through the batch, which can land you with some pretty rank dairy product. When the cheese is fresh, and not too salty, it’s a treat, and I will gladly help myself to one of the deck of card sized slices that my host mother lays out with each meal. Unfortunately, more often than not I can smell the cheese I am about to be served before I can see it.

Finally we come to bread. I like bread. I like carbohydrates in almost every form: pasta, rice, sugar. It’s all good. In fact, I like these starchy carbs so much that one of my favorite things to eat growing up was a spaghetti sandwich. Just like it sounds: a big helping of spaghetti (light sauce) between two pieces of Wonder Bread. However, the Georgians completely put me to shame in the bread consumption department.

Every meal we eat is served with bread. This might not sound so strange. Most American meals involve some kind of bread or starch, and we would be disappointed if we went out to a nice restaurant and they didn’t give us bread. This is different. When I say that every meal is served with bread, what I really mean is that every meal is served alongside bread. Most meals consisted of a small serving of beans, soup, or souis, that is sponged off of the plate using enormous chunks of home made white bread. On one occasion my host grandmother offered me some bread that had just come out of the oven. When I accepted (who turns down fresh baked bread), she laid down what must have must have been a third of a loaf next to my plate. It is the primary source of calories for most Georgians, and the primary utensil used at most meals. Though we always have forks and spoons available, almost every dish is consumed using bread to get the rest of food from the table to the mouth. To serve a meal without bread is like serving a meal without plates, you simply don’t do it.

I don’t want to complain, necessarily, about the food that my host family serves me. The women who cook this food work hard to keep the family fed and I appreciate their efforts greatly. However, after the sixth week of bread and beans and borscht it starts to feel a little like I’m following the meal plan of a Russian prison.

In order to mix it up, Elie and I decide to make something of our own. I’m not really sure how we decided on corn chowder (this was Elie’s idea), but that’s what was bubbling away on the stove the first weekend we decide to cook for ourselves. Elie found the recipe online, during the fifteen minutes of internet time he fought his host brothers for, and we collect the ingredients on a Friday afternoon, loading them into our backpacks and hauling them the four miles back to my house. We use fresh milk from my family’s cow, and Austrian bacon that we find at Elie’s host families market.

Elie and I chop and simmer and worry away in the kitchen for several hours while my host grandmother’s brother tries to get Elie drunk on wine, and Tiko and Tedo giggle from behind their schoolbooks at the spectacle of me frantically whisking flower and butter in one of the families enormous metal pots so that the rue won’t burn over the open flame of the wood-burning stove. In the end, the corn chowder is rich and delicious: sweet from the corn, salty from the bacon, and just the right consistency. My host family raves over it saying, “Hannah, you must make the milk soup again.”

After one success, we are eager, the next Saturday, to try our luck with homemade pizza. There are pizzas available in Georgia, at restaurants and very occasionally at home, but they are much more mayonnaise centered and, while delicious, tend to sit in the stomach the way I imagine it would feel if I ate an equal measure of cement. Our pizza is loaded with peppers, tomatoes, garlic, olive, and sausage and smells like heaven as we pull the golden discs out of the oven.

The next weekend it’s tacos, then calzones, and after that egg salad. Our food projects give us something to work toward during the week, something to look to forward to, and something to accomplish. It’s a strange sense of purpose, but it’s there, and it makes the weeks move by that much quicker.

One weekend, a group of our friends decides to head to Tbilisi. They all plan to get tattoos in Georgian from an artist who is   in town for the weekend, and to spend some time enjoying the nightlife that the city offers. Elie and I discuss whether or not we want to go and abandon the plans we had made to cook that weekend.

“The thing is,” Elie says, “I’d be really disappointed if we didn’t get to hangout and make tacos.”

I couldn’t agree more. 

Sexy and I Know It

When I come through the small metal door that leads into Elie’s host family’s living room, I always have to stop a moment, allowing my eyes adjust to the dim lighting of the cave-like room. It has a low ceiling, small windows, and walls paneled in dark wood. Elie is sitting at the computer just inside the door, but I’m on a mission and head straight for the bathroom at the back of the house (Elie’s host family’s house has two bathrooms. If you will recall, my first host family didn’t even have one).

When I come back, Elie is sitting with one side of his host family’s overlarge headphones pulled behind his ear as he watches a video on the computer. On the screen, a young man in a sleeveless t-shirt is lifting a cement block over his head and placing it back on the ground over and over again.

“I’m gonna start working out with cinder blocks,” He says with an excited smile, “it’s happening.”

Georgians do not put a lot of stock into being physically fit. Or perhaps it’s that Americans are over fixated with their fitness and physical abilities; I couldn’t say. All I know is that, in this country, they eat a lot of cheese bread and they don’t get a lot of exercise. There aren’t even really any sports you can play. The schools don’t offer any and, though I have heard of a few local teams, I have only once seen any actual evidence that they exist, when I walked by the Zugdidi football (soccer) stadium during a game (said stadium has since been torn down).

When I first began running down the one road through my village, in the fall, I was besieged with open mouth stares and shouts of “Ra saketeb, Hannah!” (“What are you doing!”).

To which I always wanted to reply, “What the hell does it look I’m doing?”

The point being, almost all of the food I eat here is drenched in oil, filled with cheese, or dripping with butter. Combine a fatty, salty diet with the lethargy of the locals and you have a dangerous recipe for muffin-top (and the waist lines of every Georgian man over 30 stand as testament to this). The situation is further exacerbated by their embarrassing fascination with me when I do work out. “I don’t want any Khachupuri while I’m doing crunches, and unless you are a lot faster than you look, I can’t have a conversation with you while I’m running.” I want to tell them.

So, how then, one may wonder, have I managed to go from a 29’ to 27’ waist since I arrived in January? Well, I work out, and I have achieved the promise of every weight loss infomercial in a country were the two primary food groups are milk fat and refined starch.

The most crucial step was finding a reliable exercise routine. This step was actually completed for me by Elie. When, walking back from town one afternoon he said, “Hey if I broke one of the cinder blocks in half, would you want to work out with me?” I was surprised but intrigued. A few days later I have my hands tucked under my armpits and the hood of my sweatshirt pulled low to keep the wind and rain blowing under the awning of the long porch in the back of the house out of my face. Elie has two cinder blocks stacked on top of one another and is jumping from foot to foot on top of them; we call these Step-Ups.

The work out is made up of 15 exercises that we do for a minute or a minute and a half. I’m a big fan of Brick Swings, where we lift the bricks over our heads and then bring them back down in front of our bodies. We both dread Mountain Climbers - where we stretch into a plank position with our hands propped on a pair of cinder blocks and bring our knees up to our chests repeatedly - and the Brick Walk, which requires us to walk from one end of the porch to the other with a block in each hand. The goal of almost every exercise is to complete as many reps as possible in the allotted time.

We call it “Blocking Out.” Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after my 2pm Georgian lunch I walk the one and half miles to Elie’s house in rain, sun, or snow (mostly rain and snow) to build muscle and burn calories using some of the rawest methods I can imagine. Need to get in shape? Haul some cement around for forty minutes a day.

After the first two sessions we start recording the number of repetitions we complete of each exercise and are excited, and somewhat surprised, to watch how quickly the numbers jump. Eventually, we add an additional routine on Thursdays, which we dub “Abstravaganza:” an intense round of crunches, leg lifts, sit-ups, and squat-lunges.

My second secrete to success is…well actually it’s Elie again. That is, I would not have been nearly as diligent or perseverant without my workout buddy. Doing push-ups on wet cement in the snow is a lot less miserable when you’re not doing it alone. Furthermore, the stares and accusative remarks of the Georgians do not cut nearly as deep when you’ve got back up. In fact, the look on Elie’s host grandmother’s, Baba Zina’s, face when she catches us in the act has become one of my favorite things about the workout. However, the icing on the cake is my workout buddy’s habit of dancing around his room to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” as he gets ready.

Finally, I have to attribute some of my new heightened level of fitness to the amount of walking I do. Between school, visiting friends, and occasionally making my way into town, I walk an average of over 30 miles a week. Though it may sound a little third world, I enjoy my walks a great deal. When I’m not teaching, working out, or reading there isn’t a lot to do, and walking is a relatively peaceful way to spend the day. 

While I’m a little concerned about how I’m going to dress myself if things keep going the way they are, it is incredibly exciting to watch the changes that my workouts are effecting on my body. I look and feel stronger. Actually I feel great. It’s been nice to be able to do something for myself while I’m here. I also think that the number of workouts we have come up with using old cement bricks, a stick, and a piece of rope is pretty impressive, especially considering the amount of money spent on the weight-loss and fitness industry in the states. No gym memberships, nutritional specialists, or thigh-blasters here. We’ve got cement, wood, and a much more intimate, albeit strange, appreciation for making the best out of what we are given.

 The Goergian gym.

 The all-important workout buddy.

BLTs and a Big City Birthday

A tour of Zugdidi would be a poor way to spend the afternoon. This is mostly because the entire city, one of the five largest in Georgia, can be walked end to end in about forty-five minutes. The city center runs along two blocks of Gamsakhurdia Street: capped on one end by a museum and large public garden and on the other by a terrifying roundabout looping a large iron fountain. A boulevard separates the two sides of the road. Tall pines, brick lined walks, decaying park benches, and a small, sticky café line the boulevard. Small markets, pharmacies, and hair salons are built into the first floor of the apartment buildings on the other side of the road.

The garden and museum were once apart of the estates of a royal family called the Dadianis. I tried to ask my host family when the Dadianis ruled in Samegrelo and the answer I got was the 1300’s. This does not at align with the age of the artifacts housed in the Dadiani museum, nor the connection that the locals brag of between the Dadiani family and Napoleon. I’m not sure if it is our ability to communicate, or their knowledge of their own history (which goes back many thousands of years, or so they tell me) that is failing is this case.

The palace is short and blocky, like many of the houses here, and is made of white stone. It looks out over manicured lawns and another fountain. The gardens, once equally manicured, have gone wild, and now stand as a kind of small wildlife preserve. The trees are incredibly tall: mostly dark pines that crowd around the decaying remains of what was once the royal fishpond.

The city center is bisected by Rustaveli Avenue, running from across the city from East to West and continuing to Anaklia, on the coast. As I make my way home from Adam’s apartment on the boulevard, I follow Rustaveli past the bazaar: the large red building looming over the sea of tarps and umbrellas that vendors have put up to protect their wares from the rain. I pass a bright orange market owned by my new host mother, Shorena’s, brother and wave to his wife who sees me through the window. A little further on I cross the street and make my way through the train station, following the tracks to the road that leads the Elie’s host family’s house and my school. I when I reach the school, I begin to make my way south following dirt and stone roads pock marked with potholes large enough to swallow a small child through several rural neighborhoods and the remains of an old paper factory. It’s about three miles from the city to my host family’s house.

The house is not so different from my other host family’s home. The front door opens onto the living room, rarely used now that it’s winter, except by my host father, Dato, and brother, Tedo, who huddle around the computer located in the back corner of the room every evening for hours on end. The kitchen is off to one side of this living room and also opens onto a small bedroom at the front of the house where Tiko, my host sister, Lela, my host grandmother, and Tedo sleep. There are three more bedrooms and another formal living room upstairs, accessed by a treacherous spiral staircase tucked into a corner of the hall behind the kitchen. My two favorite things about this house are that both this staircase and the toilet are located indoors. Score!

My school is located about two and half kilometers from my house (that’s about a mile and half for those of  us who don’t speak metric). It’s a four story building with a small two-story add-on separated from the main building by a small cement courtyard. There are heaters in the classrooms, a novelty here. They are built into alcoves under the windows. However, to get any significant heat off of them you have to be within about four inches of them. When I read in the staff room between classes, I sit with one of my hands constantly pressed against the warm metal so that my fingers stay warm enough to hold the book.

My classes are large, the smallest has twenty-two students and most of them have over thirty. Making my schedule is a trial since all of the first through sixth grade classes are scheduled at the same time and all of the teachers want me to teach with them. Even when I do finally set a schedule, I am often accosted in the halls by one teacher or the other trying to convince me to come to their next class. 

Since I only have a first period class once a week and I never need to stay as late as Tico and Tedo, who are both in the sixth grade, or Shorena, who is a German teacher at the school, I usually walk. So, on the days I don’t do anything other than walk to school and back, I’m traversing about three miles on foot. When I go into town after classes, either to visit friends or run an errand, I walk about six miles, and on Wednesdays, when I play Volleyball in the evening with people from the EUMM, I tuck a solid nine miles under my belt. The third week in my new placement I walk thirty-seven miles (which is a good thing, because between all the birthdays and weddings in that first month, there is a lot of cake floating around).

My new host family is much more interactive than the family I stayed with in the village. My first week with them, we play at least thirty games of Nardi (that’s Georgian for Backgammon). Elie and I teach them how to play Rummy and afterwards I’m averaging three games a day. I especially enjoy playing with Lela, who runs a commentary on every move that is made in the game in murmured Georgian.

When Lela and I see someone making BLTs on a Georgian talk show, I tell her how much I like them. A few days later I come home to find that she has bought all the ingredients and wants me to make them for the family. I am more than happy to oblige. Though the bacon is not sliced, and comes out a little thick, they are delicious. They taste like America and home (like “freedom” as Elie says), and my family really seems to enjoy them. It’s nice to be able to share a little of my culture, humble a piece as it may be, and have it appreciated.

A few weeks after arriving back, I celebrate my birthday by taking a trip to Tbilisi with some of my American (and English) friends. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the trip, we eat a lot of Shwarma, and drink beer at Chaplin’s. My mom suprises me with a phone call I receive in the marshutka on our way back to Zugdidi. Though I arrive home again at almost 9:30pm, my host family has the table set the table with the good tablecloth. My host mother has prepared a huge cake layered with caramel icing, raisins, walnuts, and covered in chocolate sauce, as well as what I refer to as Party Khachapuri (actually called Achma). It is a version of the cheese bread that I only see at supras. Imagine lasagna made with only cheese, butter, and lots of salt and you would be in the ballpark of this dish. I have several (I won’t say how many) pieces of cake before hauling myself up to bed.

Homecoming

On my last day of school, my host teacher, Nino, brings three litres of wine: one for me to take back to America, and two for toasting before I leave. So, when I make my way home from school that day, I’m at least a little tipsy, and I really need the bathroom.

The power is out, but only at our house, a lovely going away present from the Georgian utility provider. I’m washing my hair under an icy tap, still blushing from the wine, when my host grandmother bursts through the bathroom door (you have to burst through this door because it sticks so badly) and says, “Sachmeli ar ginda!? Modi, tchame, tchame.” (Don’t you want food? Come. Eat, eat.)

She has been following me from room to room as I finish packing, repeating this same command, and since – between the wine, the frantic walk home, and the painfully cold water – I’m feeling a little dizzy, I follow her into the kitchen.

I hoover down my borsch, though it’s one of my favorite meals, because I’m taking the two o’clock marshutka to Zugdidi, where Elie and I will catch the night train to Tbilisi. Aly and Adam are already there, and the plan is to spend a few days in the deda kalaki (capitol city) before flying out.

In Zugdidi, Elie meets me at the Educational Resource Center where I stop to sign my contract for the spring semester. Our train doesn’t leave for around six hours and we have planned to spend the evening with his host family, since they can then drive us to the train station.

“OK,” Elie says as we make our way to his host families market, “How do you feel about going to a supra?”

Apparently it’s Elie’s host father’s sister’s birthday. Their house sits at the end of long neighborhood road just outside the city. The kitchen, where we eat, is painted sky blue and there is a dark red cloth covering the large oval table. Shorena, the birthday girl, is an energetic hostess, and seats me between her two children Tiko and Tedo. Tiko, the girl, has long dark hair piled messily on top of her head, and hardly stops smiling the entire time we are there. She and her brother help us navigate the excited conversation Elie’s host father is trying to carry on with us, which ranges in topic from the order of America’s presidents to the quality of Dato’s (Shorena’s husband) shotgun. The evening reaches it’s high point when Dato produces said firearm and assembles it at the dinner table.

Supras follow a familiar pattern: we eat and drink too much. It’s twenty minutes after our train was meant to depart and I’m beginning to worry despite the reassurance of our hosts that we are going to a nearby station which is further down the line, and that we have plenty of time. Elie seems less concerned, though he has also had slightly more to drink than me, and I have to drag him away from the game of nardi he has begun with his host mother.

The night train from Zugdidi to Tbilisi is a dark narrow hallway lined on one side with dirty, opaque windows and on the other with a row of sliding doors. The doors open onto cramped sleeping compartments. Two beds, stacked one on the other, hang from either side of the compartment with a narrow isle and a tall window between them. Niether Elie or I is perfectly comfortable with the fact that we are sharing the compartment with two strangers and I fall asleep sitting next to him on one of the bottom bunks surrounded by our luggage.

When I wake I find myself using my purse as a pillow with my feet propped on Elie’s backpack. The compartment is dark now, and I’m a little afraid until Elie waves down at me from the bunk that is lofted across from mine.  The train sways back and forth with a rickety, lumbering kind of forward motion, and rather than putting me to sleep, the rocking drives away the warmth remaining from the supra and the wine. I watch out the window as the bleak winter countryside rolls by: the skeleton trees dancing naked in the moonlight and the wind.

We arrive in Tbilisi a little after six in the morning and catch a cab from the train station to the hostel, but the driver has no idea where he is going. We stop for directions three times and spend at least half an hour wandering around the neighborhood he has been directed to. It is hilly and muddy and the car skids and slides down the narrow streets. “No numbers,” the driver continues to tell us, explaining why the address we have given him is of no help. Actually many of the buildings in this neighborhood are marked with addresses, and admittedly rare occurrence in Georgia, but he is too near sighted or just plain stupid to see them. We finally get out and find the hostel on foot. The driver holds our luggage hostage as he bargains for a fee that we find incredibly exorbitant considering he is the one who got us lost.

At the hostel we find not only Aly and Adam, but also our friends Jack and Sofia, who live in Zugdidi, and a Polish Australian named Kat, who was part of our orientation group. Though it is early, especially by Georgian standards, the hostel is busy. All of the beds are booked for the weekend, and there is a constant stream of TLG volunteers circulating through on their way out of the country.

We spend the weekend walking the city bargaining for Christmas presents and drinking at Chaplin’s. We also discover the best Shwarma (kind of like a Turkish burrito with only meat) we have had yet. They even sell several sizes, the largest of which is called the Gargantuan. It costs eight lari and is about a foot and a half long. I don’t have it in me to brave this particular gastrointestinal adventure, but it is the only thing Elie eats the day he and Adam depart.

I couldn’t say whether or not the Tbilisi airport even has a departure bored. Aly and I simply listen attentively to the PA announcements echoing through the small terminal, “The Lufthansa flight from Tbilisi to Munich is now boarding at gate 1A. All passengers please proceed to security checkpoint.”

“That’s my flight,” I say.

Aly gets up and steps over the broken duffle bag she has just paid three lari to have wrapped in plastic to give me a hug. Watching her awkwardly navigate the small mine field of luggage our things form strewn across the airport floor I realize that I won’t see her for over a month. It suddenly becomes real, I’m going back.

I fly first from Tbilisi to Munich and get the only forty-five minutes of sleep I will have for my entire twenty-four hour journey; my head drooping over the remains of my waffle with cheery sauce. From Munich it’s a quick hop to Frankfurt, where I have just enough time to pass through passport control twice, before boarding my flight. I can’t help but notice the group of tall, well built young men gathered outside the gate. On the plane, they fill in the seats around me. One, seated on the opposite end of my center row, turns to the others sitting behind him and says, “OK, guys. If I can’t sleep, I’m getting drunk.”

Americans! Thank god.

In Denver I may or may not tell several bald faced lies to the customs agent:

            No, I have not been in contact with any livestock.

            No, I have not spent any time on a farm.

            No, I am not carrying any food items or alcohol.

The next month is all cookie baking, present wrapping, and champagne drinking. I can’t get enough hot showers, uncooked vegetables, or kisses on the cheeks of my baby siblings (who are all enormous, when I was a kid I did not grow that fast). Our nanny gets a huge kick out of the morning I remember that our refrigerator has an icemaker. “Look at all this ice!” I can’t stop saying.

It’s called “reverse culture shock.” For me, it mostly manifests in a nagging panic every time I get behind the wheel of my car and hanging out on the back porch in a tank top and shorts in December. I can’t handle all the central heating. But there is also a sense of restlessness that is difficult to shake. Most of my friends are busy with their families, with the lives that they lead everyday, and I have little to do, and nowhere to go. It is like becoming a guest in my own life. Everything is pretty much how I remember it, but I don’t quite fit anymore.

I try not to let this slow me down, however. I spend Christmas at home and the mountains of debris from my twin siblings first Christmas is truly alarming. I follow this up with New Years in Fort Collins with my good friend Sarah, and then it’s off to St. Louis for more family time. When I return I have only a little more than a week at home. Though the time seemed to fly by, it was pretty easy to settle into old routines, and even make some new friends.

“I could still stay. I could not get on the plane,” I say to my mom standing in line at the airport.

“But I already bought you all those vitamins,” She says. My early birthday present was a 500 count Costco bottle of multi vitamins meant to counteract the general lack of nutrition my Georgian diet provides.

A few days after Christmas, I receive an email from TLG. The title reads “Host Family Placement.”  I open the following email.

Hello Hannah,

As you request we have found you a new host family located in Zugdidi. It is already approved and on your way back you can move to new host family in Zugdidi…

Sending you details of your new host family. In the family there are five members: Grandmother, mother and father and they have 2 children… Girl 12 years old and Boy 11 years old… The host mother is working in Zugdidi School N 5 and her children also study in this school, you will also work in this school.. Every day they go by car to school and if you wish they will take you as well…

The name of the host mother is Shorena Gugushvili, at her brother’s house lives our volunteer Elliot.

The host family is very nice…  

If you will have any question, please free to contact me any time…

How this happened, I can’t really say. I did inquire about the possibility of switching host families toward the beginning of October. I had been in the village about a month at the time and had not quite developed coping mechanisms for the isolation and the rustic toilet. However, I had completely written it off when I didn’t receive any kind of definitive response. The fact that I serendipitously spent my last night in Samegrelo at the very house TLG was now looking to place me in takes the cake for ridiculous coincidences.

Though I have come to enjoy village life, my host family, and the neighbors and co-workers I have befriended, I decide to take the placement. Shorena, Dato, and their family were incredibly welcoming, and definitely seemed like a group I could integrate into. Also, I do not at all mind the idea of having a city within walking distance, and an indoor toilet.

So after a ten hour flight from Denver to Frankfurt, a nine hour layover in Munich, and a frigid eight hour train ride from Tbilisi to Zugdidi, I can’t help the huge smile of relief that spreads across my face when Shorena and the kids meet me at the train station.

“Tsavedit (let’s go),” says Shorena, “Salkshi (home).”

Kautaisi

I struggle to extricate myself from the miniscule gap between the driver’s seat and the first row of the Senaki/Kutaisi marshutka. It doesn’t help that on top of my regular weekend baggage I am juggling a three-kilo bag of Mandarins my host mother put in my hands as I was walking out the front gate.

“Sheni megobrebi,” She said.

When I emerge, Natalie and I are standing in front of a McDonalds and an enormous Christmas tree. The entrance, sidewalk, and street are busy with Marshutkas and their passengers, everyone sloshing through the swampy mud left behind by the melting snow.

In side the McDs it is warm and crowded. Families are gathered around plastic tables heaped with the remains of happy meal boxes, the kind you rarely see anymore in the states, with golden arch handles and puzzles on the sides. We quickly pick out several other TLGers. They are easy to identify, sitting with their laptops, headphones, and in one case a hard drive, taking advantage of the free wifi. Between the central heating and the familiar décor, it feels like the glass doors of the building have opened onto a little piece of America. The families, music, and smells all lending themselves to a busy December afternoon in any mid-America mall.

Natalie and I order some fries and settle in to wait for the rest of the group to convene. We, our entire circle of friends from orientation (The Barefoot Club), are gathering for the weekend before we begin to disperse for the winter holiday, some of us returning home for good.

Natalie and I are soon joined by Eric, who we haven’t seen since orientation, and later by our friend Gus. So when Adam, Aly, and Elie arrive on the Zugdidi Marshutka, there is a messy smattering of greetings as we trip over each other’s bags and bump into other customers while moving to embrace one another.

From the Mcdonalds we pile on a bus heading to the other side of town where Nikole, Eteri, Eamon, Mushood, and Nick are waiting for us at a restaurant. Since there are few street names, and even fewer addresses in this country, our directions are to exit the bus once we have crossed the second bridge. When we arrive they have set us a long table on the top floor of the restaurant. The food is good. We sing Christmas songs, whistle the tune from The Andy Griffith Show, and generally catch up catch up with our collective experiences throughout the country.

At the end of the meal it’s back to the home-stay (but first we stop to buy…can you guess…Snickers and beer) where we play Rummy and Nardi in a lounge set up like the sitting room of someone’s home, complete with armchairs, couch and dinning table.

On Saturday we all set out to explore the city, no particular destination. We stop for fried pastries and khachapuri at a road stand before making our way toward one of the historical sites in the city, an old church which is being restored after a fire and bombing, though I couldn’t say for sure the order they happened in. Kutaisi is a sprawling city with windings roads and dark walkways built under the overhanging buildings. It’s  grown around a wide river and we cross several bridges that look out over clear rushing water and pale river rock bordered by houses and businesses precariously perched over the deep river bed.

As we walk we scrape together mushy, grey snowballs from the side of the road, and chase each other through streets line with cobblestones and river rocks. When we stop at a small church we notice sitting that the top of a set of cement steps, the priest poses for pictures with us, and presents us with two liters of home made wine.

When we aren’t walking the city, or crowded around some Khachapuri at a local restaurant, we gather in a back room of the home-stay where there is a small table and wood-burning stove. Some people drink, others play nardi, and the rest of us indulge in some much needed English conversation. We are all excited for the up coming break: some of us traveling during our time off, others returning home to enjoy hot showers and central heating.

After goodbyes Sunday morning, Natalie and I are riding alone back to the village. It was a bit of a late night for some of the group, and I am holding onto one of Natalie’s jacket sleeves to keep her from leaning to far into her neighbor’s lap as she sleeps. The remaining snow on the houses and hills that roll by makes everything seem familiar, like home, but a home that is distinctly different and separate from the security and warmth of the group of friends we have just left. I know then, that this home, the one I have constructed from my new group of friends, is one that I won’t be able to return to, not really. We will never be the same group navigating our way through a new, strange, and sometimes overwhelming country.

We were fast friends, clinging to one another for comfort, support, and an outlet for English conversation. The familiarity and intimacy that grew between us so quickly is difficult to explain to those outside the new world we had been thrown into. The relationships we formed with each other developed into a kind of bubble, a thin film separating us from the foreign paradigm that surrounded us.

Looking out the window of the marshutka I sense, for the first time, the absence of the protective barrier my friends formed. It feels raw, like a kind of nakedness, and I am especially relieved when I arrive back at my host family’s house. Another half home, and yet, I am always comforted by the toothless grin my host mother gives me when I return from a weekend away. It is warm enough today that I open the windows to let in some sun and plop down on the bed next to Irma to hear about her weekend in the village. 

Before I Sleep

It's wednesday morning. I'm laying in bed listening to the wheezing of my electric heater, waiting for it to take the night chill out of my boots, when I hear my host mother bang open the door to her room at the other end of the balcony, and exclaim loudly in Georgian. I'm not sure precisely what she says, but I do manage to make out the word "tovs," derived from "tovli," or "snow." I pull back the curtain of my window with a clatter, the rusty curtain rings clacking against the metal rod, and I am met with a wall of white drifting over the lawn and the road. The flakes are so large, and the fall so thick, I can barely see across the street into Natia's hazelnut field.

We watch out the school windows as the branches of the tall pines along the road bend under the wet flakes that pile quickly into heavy drifts. Every break between classes is twice as long. The children rush from their classrooms into the school yard, barely out the door before they are flinging snow at one another. When I join the fray, it becomes a rather violent game of "Pelt the Foreigner," but I hold my ground reasonably well. When my host sister and her friends attempt to pin me down to give the other students a chance for free shots, I decide I have had enough snow playtime. 

At home I shovel the walk to the front gate and the one to the toilet using a rusty shovel with a large tree branch for a handle and in the evening I visit Natia, who has prepared ghomi with garlic and onions as well as fish satsiva. After dinner, Shotiko, Giorgi, and I head outside into the quickly fading evening light to build a snowman, Tovlis Babua (literally "snow grandfather," which is also what they call santa). The boys begin rolling the snow into huge boulders to form the snowman's body. However, this quickly becomes a competition of whose-snowball-is-bigger, and I finally have to sit on the snow to make them stop before the mounds become to heavy for us to lift. 

It is not the best looking snowman I have ever made, but I certainly felt accomplished finishing it with Gio constantly kicking snow off the base and punching holes in the middle layer. When we finally drag him inside, he cries as his numb hands come back to life by the fire. 

Since it is wet and cold I, of corse, have to walk to the tiny shack housing our hole-in-the-ground toilet several times during the night. I begrudge having to abandon the pocket of relative warmth in my bed, though my toes are still numb from the cold leaking in through the broken window over my head. I follow my flashlight around the house, but it is of little use when I reach the open yard in the back. The moonlight glitters everywhere. The karaleoke trees, barn, and chicken coop sparkle like the stars blazing in the clear-black sky, and it seems as if the world has been dipped in silver and the night hung with black velvet. 

It's strange sometimes, the places that we find beauty. As much as I hate to admit it, when I met the world dressed in ebony and diamonds, I was on my way to the outhouse dressed in leggings, hiking boots, and a hoody. Standing alone on the rough laid cement path leading to what is quite literally a shit-hole, I can't help but feel a little like the snow and the moonlight are here just for me. My host sister often jokes with me, when the moon is particularly bright, saying, "Hannah, it's my moon," and I think that it comes from the feeling that all this brilliance has to be here for some reason. So why not some one, and why not me?

I had been feeling a little worn down about living in Georgia and being away from home, but the snow made everything seem new. It reminded me that good things often come in unexpected packages, and, as such, it never hurts to keep your eyes open. When the biting cold gets me moving again I can't help but succumb to a couple lines from Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

but I have promises to keep,

and miles to go before I sleep, 

and miles to go before I sleep. 

It seems like miles of walking through the cold back to my now frigid bed, miles to my friends scattered around the country, and miles to my home, across what I imagine in the snow to be a very cold ocean. But think, just think, of all these sweet snowy nights waiting here for me. 

 This was the yard just as I as getting out of bed...

 and this was taking a little later in the day.

Sunrise the next morning.

I Refuse to Let This Country Make Me Bitter and/or Crazy

I hate telling people that I have a blog. Unfortunately, blogs have been given a bad reputation by angst ridden teenagers who use them as a way to legitimize their desperate, hormone-induced ravings about how not being allowed to pierce their tongue is absolutely the most cruel injustice known to mankind. As such, I swore that I would never use my blog for petty complaints or to legitimize my personal opinions. However, I had an experience this evening that toes the line between meaningful moment in my experience abroad and crazy emotional ranting.

This story actually starts with a brief discussion on gender relations here in Georgia. I'm going to come right out and say it, in this country women definitely get the short end of the stick. In general, women are expected to marry relatively young, begin having children, and keep house for their husband and his family. Every married couple I have met in Georgia so far lives in the husband's childhood home. It is also usually expected that an accomplished wife will have a job, and to the credit of the women here, most of the doctors, dentists, and pharmacist I have met in Georgia are women.

Now this doesn't sound radically different from many women's lives in the states, I realize, but don't forget that many homes in this country lack modern conveniences that save American housewives a great deal of  time. For example, an American housewife in need of cheese or milk will simply pop down to the nearby grocery store and purchase these items. In contrast, most Georgian women spend a hearty chunk of their day tending and milking the family cow, and then processing the milk into cheese, sour cream, or yogurt. Additionally  from what I have experienced, American husbands are much more involved in home life than Georgian men, who are often content to simply sit around and get drunk while their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters, feed them and clean for them.

Furthermore, there is an incredible social stigma against women doing certain things, notably smoking and drinking. If I attend a supra with my host family, the men at the table would probably make a toast to me and then ignore me for the rest of the night. In fact, if there were more men than available places at the table, I would be expected to leave the table and join the other women, probably in the kitchen. However, if one of my male friends attends a supra with his host family, he is immediately made the center of the party. This practice occasionally works out in my favor. I'm never pressured into getting completely drunk on a Wednesday afternoon, as is a common occurrence in the lives of many male TLG volunteers, but these stigmas can build up over time in to a sense of rejection and isolation.

Finally, as a woman, and an obvious foreigner, I have, on more than one occasion, received unpleasant, unwanted, and uninvited attentions from Georgian men. These unfortunate experiences are probably due in part to the irritating expectation that American women will take their clothes off for you as soon as look at you, and some of it is probably a result of the strict expectation that Georgian women be virgins when they marry. In fact, a Georgian bridegroom who discovers that his bride is not a virgin can legally cancel the marriage and kick her out of the house, no questions asked. However, that in no way excuses the fact that when I said "No," these boys just kept coming. What alarmed me the most was the matter of fact way that they came after me, as if I should expect nothing more or less.

Now, I want to make something clear. There are a lot of wonderful, hard working, polite men here that I have come to care for a great deal and who have been nothing but kind and welcoming to me. My host father, while he does occasionally invite over his drunk friends and eat all of the food in the house, is a good natured man who makes taking care of his family his first priority. I am in no way suggesting that all Georgian men would make untoward advances to a young woman, that they are all the same, or that they all fit the description I have given of them here, because I don't believe that. Nor do I believe that all Georgian women work as hard as I have described, or have as many hardships. However, these are observations I have made through my interactions with Georgians in my village, and descriptions I have received from my friends placed around the country.

OK. Here's where the story gets good.

As I am taking my evening stroll through the black hole of productivity that is the Facebook news feed, I noticed a friend of mine had posted this quote as his status, "Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them," (Bill Maher). Immediately my stomach tightens and I rapidly begin composing a novel length response informing my friend just what a up-tight, woman hating, ass hole he is, and how he has no right telling any woman what they should or should not do. Then I stop to read the comments that have already been posted to this status. They read as follows:

• Hilary  i actually agree with this. lol but same goes for guys.
  

  November 16 at 4:18am · 
• 
  

  
  

  Evan  HAHA!!! But, "No woman will ever be satisfied because no man will ever have a chocolate penis that shoots out money." ;)
  

  November 16 at 4:22am ·  ·  5
• 
  

  
  

  Michael haha thats awesome!
  

  November 16 at 4:23am ·  ·  1
• 
  

  
  

  Hannah Today in Anthro, I was told to choose a guy based on whether or not he's got a library card in his wallet, and based on the posters in his room.
  

  November 16 at 4:25am ·  ·  3
• 
  

  
  

  Evan Not such a bad idea...lol. How are men supposed to choose a woman?
  

  November 16 at 4:27am · 
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  Hannah Based on.... library card and sense of humor? A really good conversation? I can't divulge any girl secrets!
  

  November 16 at 4:30am ·  ·  2
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  Hilary  ew evan.... lol
  

  November 16 at 4:31am · 
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  Evan Haha I thought anthropology had finally answered the world's oldest and most sought after question... guess not... :) lol
  

  November 16 at 4:55am ·  ·  1
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  Hannah They have! I'm just under oath not to tell you.
  

  November 16 at 5:10am · 
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  Mark as Spam

  Evan Looks like I'm changing majors...
  

  November 16 at 5:12am ·  ·  1
• 
  

  
  

  Bruce A. I'm a fly on a wall and smiling very muchly

After reading this incredibly silly string, I take a deep breath and remind myself that it's a joke. It's not a political platform or a religious sentiment, it's not even something my friend actually said, probably just something he happened upon online. Also, my friend is not an ass hole, (though he can occasionally be a pain in the ass).

As I'm shaking off the crazy, I realize that while I would never have found this quotation particularly tasteful, I would not have reacted as violently to it as I did if I had not been living in Georgia for the past few months. Certainly I did not expect to leave this country unchanged, but turning into the kind of person that gets offended at the drop of a hat and vomits social guilt on someone's Facebook page is not really the kind of change I was hoping for. Which is why I have made the resolution that I will not let this country make me bitter and/or crazy.

What I mean by this is that there are some parts of my experience here that are difficult to deal with, and I expected that, but I don't want to come away from those situations angry, or jaded. I want the time that I spend here to add up to something good. Yes, the gender situation makes me uncomfortable, to say the least, and yes, I wish it were different. However, what I will not do, as a result of this, is feel sorry for myself for being a girl, shut myself off from interactions with the male members of Georgian society, or post misguided rants on my friends Facebook pages, all of which I have been tempted to do at one time.

What I will do is appreciate all of the amazing women that I have met here: women who love their families and their country and who work tirelessly and laugh readily. These women are smart, funny, and spirited and I am grateful everyday to be welcomed into their homes, to eat from their table, play with their children, and laugh at their jokes. I hope one day to get as much satisfaction serving a friend as Natia does when she and I are making cake, to have the glow in my cheeks that Nino does when she talks about her husband, or to be able to wrestle with my children the way my host mother does after a day of bone tiring work. To me these women are the heart of Georgia, pounding life into this tiny country with love, laughter, and some really awesome food.