Welcome to Georgia!

Its hard to believe I've been here in Georgia for a month already. The experience has been rewarding, challenging, and at times quite overwhelming. I'm going to do the best I can to explain what its been like, but living here is so very different from the US that its hard to really capture everything. But here goes...

I'm living with a pair of grandparents who's two children have both moved out, which is unusual here in Georgia since most people tend to live in multi-generational houses from grandparents down to their grandchildren. My host fathers name is Zauri. He's an overweight, toothless old man who is what I like to call “terse”, since he usually has a bit of a scowl and rarely smiles. Maybe its the lack of teeth... I don't know. Liana is my host mother, who is also a rather large woman, but is very kind and caring although she doesn't say much. Not that it would matter if she did, since they don't speak any English and I can't understand anything they say as it is. But Liana is a phenomenal cook and, as my Georgian co teacher told me, a “great housewife.”

Speaking of food, the food here is pretty great. The most famous dish is called “khatchapuri” and is basically a round flat piece of bread that is baked with cheese in the middle. Its quite delicious and its easy to buy it in any city for only about 2 Lari. Another well known dish is “khinkali” which is basically big meat dumpling kind of thing. Georgians have a bit of an inflated sense of pride about their food. Not to say it isn't delicious, just that almost nobody outside of Georgia has ever tried it. My co-teacher once wrote me a short little essay about Georgian culture and in part of it she claimed that “Georgian cuisine is famous throughout the world.” I didn't have the heart to tell her that most people couldn't even point Georgia out on a map, let alone tell me how delicious their food is. I decided to skip the story of my friend who, after I had already corrected him that I was going to the country of Georgia rather than the state, sent me an email saying how exciting it was that I was going to Africa.

While the food here is amazing, its a bit ridiculous how much they try to make me eat here. My host father is an overweight diabetic on a diet with a few other health problems that prevent him from eating everything he wants, so I think he tries to live vicariously through me by telling me to eat. As they would say “Chame, chame chame, chame.” Chame means eat. I've eaten so much that I think I might have actually gained weight, which I don't think has ever happened to me and my fast metabolism. I can't count how many times I've been planning to go for a run, but ended up eating so much that it makes a run impossible, so I can't even work off all the food I've eaten. I think the most ridiculous day of this was on new years eve. I literally ate five full meals that day. Usually we eat three big meals, which is already a little overwhelming for someone who survived college by eating day old pastries and the wonderful free lunch policy at work, but five... I was shocked. After eating the third meal, I thought to myself “ok, I'm stuffed, but not painfully full, so thats ok.” When they brought out the fourth meal I managed to have 2 slices of khatchapuri and some noodles before leaving the table with with disappointed looks from my host father and a growing pain in my stomach. Then when midnight and the new year was about to come around, they sent me to get some champagne from the main house, and I came back, shocked and dismayed to see a full new years feast laid out on the table. So add another meal and a bottle of champagne and my stomach hurt and I felt no hunger for the next 2 days. Luckily the next morning I was able to fake a hangover and skip breakfast, but after eating lunch with them, I had to escape to Kutaisi to visit my friends where I was able to NOT eat to my hearts content. I never thought that I would be excited to not eat, but it turns out Georgia is full of new experiences.

On to one of the biggest changes for me here in Georgia: the alcohol. After 24 years of rest and relaxation, my liver was quickly awoken to the taste of delicious Georgian wine. And that is the truth, the wine here is very good, especially the red wine. But it certainly has been a sudden transition for me, going from not drinking at all through college, to having my host father tell me to drink wine almost as much as he tells me to eat. Even if I didn't like it, I would at least drink some of it, because as with nearly all Georgian men, my host father makes his own wine and is of course convinced that its the best wine in the world. And as it turns out, its actually quite delicious. Its very strange living in a place where drinking isn't such a taboo as it is in the United States. Everyone here drinks. Everyone here is also orthodox christian. The two are not in any way contradictory as they so often seem to be in the United States, where we put so much effort into stopping all those crazy college kids from drinking on the weekends. To give you a sense of Georgian drinking culture, here are some of my drinking experiences here. I've been given cognac and wine for breakfast, and one time my host father snuck me some Chacha(georgian moonshine which is basically pure alcohol). I've been a bit drunk by 2 in the afternoon because of an afternoon Supra(a supra is a sort of feast and gathering where there is a “tamada”, or toastmaster. and everyone eats and drinks to peoples' toasts). I've had my co teachers get me to drink a cognac and chacha mix at school. Whats even stranger is that none of these things are that weird in Georgia. Drinking is just a part of their life. The only weird thing is that I'm such a lightweight and get tipsy really fast compared to all the Georgians. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that Georgians don't drink their wine like most people. They treat a glass of wine like its a shot and down it in one go.

I know all my conservative relatives will probably cringe when I say this, but I think I actually have more problems with the American viewpoint on drinking than Georgians. Sure maybe they drink a bit too much, and I'm definitely not a fan of having wine for breakfast, but the way Americans so often treat alcohol as some terrible thing is also way off the mark. Coming straight out of a college town with an overzealous police force, there are a lot of problems with punishing alcohol so strictly that college kids end up drinking in much less safe environments than they would here in Georgia. In Georgia, it is quite literally a family thing and if you end up getting too drunk, there will always be someone there to take care of you. I've seen so many cases in the US of people who are way too drunk being abandoned or taken advantage of because they are corralled into unsafe drinking environments. While sure, you could just say “don't drink” like we always do, it won't actually stop people and they just end up in much worse environments. Oh, and please don't get the idea that I'm now just some crazy drunk who's going to be wasted at work every day of the week. I've just had a few interesting drinking experiences, which is impossible to avoid when living in Georgia. And the wine is tasty.

I suppose it wouldn't be a bad idea to let you know where I'm living. I'm living in a small village called Simoneti, which is about twenty minutes from Kutaisi, the western capital of Georgia and second largest city in the country at a whopping 200,000 people. I have no idea how many people live in my village, but it absolutely is a village in every sense, not a town. There is no sort of center to Simoneti, unless you count the school and the tiny store across the street. There are always cows and pigs roaming the streets. Most people seem to get their meat from their own animals. In fact one morning, my host father woke me up really early and I stumbled out of bed at around 5 in the morning to find a skinned cow hanging from hooks being butchered on the back porch, just behind my bedroom. It was a lot to take in at 5 in the morning. My host mother does all the cooking on a wood stove, which is also the only source of heating. We have no hot water at the house, but luckily my host father runs a bathhouse so I am able to take showers there frequently. We have chickens, turkeys, cows, goats and a pig. Apparently my host father owns 5 hectares of land, although I must say that there is a big difference between owning land here and in the United States. You can own a lot of property and still be dirt poor, because property here in Georgia doesn't have the high value that it has in the United States. One of the Gym teachers at my school has a flat in both Tbilisi and Kutaisi, yet he is a teacher who makes something around 250 lari a month. Thats something like 140 dollars. I imagine that his property in those cities comes from old family inheritances, but it still speaks to the difference in property values between here and the US. 

Ok, thats all I have time for right now.  There's tons more to talk about, but I'll save that for another time...

Oh, and I love to get emails from people, so if you have any questions or just want to say hi and let me know what you're doing back home, its always great to hear from friends and family.  Cheers.