Saw an old man pour an entire bottle of vodka into a beer mug and start sipping it.
Got a cab driver a parking ticket because he had to go look for change for my too-big 20lari bill.
Drank massive amounts of vodka at an Australian man's apartment.
Ate two separate huge dinners within one hour.
Hung out with a 12 year old.
Hung out with a 13 year old.
Went into a bathroom with a random Georgian lesbian and held her beer bottle while she peed.
Saw a man walking a baby bear on a leash.
Got creepily winked at by one of my sixth grade students whenever I made eye contact with him.
Was told I look Georgian multiple times.
Ate delicious ice cream!!!!!!!!
On Saturday evening, TLG called all of us teachers in Tbilisi and in villages/towns in the west saying that we were invited by the president to attend a performance of "Qeto and Kote" in Batumi the next day. Lydia and I said yes immediately; how could we deny a free trip to Batumi? So, on Sunday morning we woke up early and headed down to the Radisson on Rustaveli where everyone was meeting. In typical Georgian fashion, we didn't leave until about an hour after we were told we would be leaving.
The bus ride was kind of like torture. Lydia and I played "would you rather" for so long, which is something we do all the time. It usually ends up with things like "would you rather have 10000 spoons or 10000 knives?" and "would you rather only listen to Justin Bieber's 'Baby' or Miley Cyrus' 'Party in the USA' forever?" Then we had duets of both of those songs, among others. We stopped in Kutaisi and there was a massive feast set up for us. We went back on the bus and it took about three more hours to get to Batumi.
Our schedule said we would have about an hour and a half to check into the hotel and get ready to go to the opera house, but we were running late and so was the hotel which resulted in us having to get ready in a rush in a hotel spa locker room. No one looked nearly as good as they were hoping to, I'm sure. And actually, a lot of us didn't even have anything particularly nice to wear anyway. 12hrs notice to go to an opera is pretty short! Especially since we're living out of on suitcase's worth of clothing!
We all got ready super fast, but ended up having to stand there waiting to leave for about 45 more minutes.
The opera house is new and pretty nice but also not quite finished on upper floors. The third level had a balcony and a glass floor which was cool, I guess, but also seemed awkward for people wearing dresses because the guests below could probably see up them.
We waited in our seats for a while before the play started. I assume this was because we were all waiting on the president. It's pretty cool that we got to watch a play with Saakashvili in attendance, but what I think is cooler is that the Prince of Monaco was also there. They sat a few rows back on the floor level and everyone was standing and clapping as they walked in.
The play itself was one of the weirdest things I've seen. It was all in Georgian but they attempted to help out by putting subtitles in English projected above the screen. This was helpful sometimes but when the lights on stage got bright we couldn't see the words and sometimes whoever was in charge of the powerpoint would forget to click next and it would get really behind. Plus, who wants to read while trying to watch a play? I just mostly wanted to watch the dancing, which was pretty cool! The story of the play was described to us as a "Georgian version of Romeo and Juliet but with a happy ending :)" I guess this was somewhat true. It was about a high class rich girl, Qeto, who was matched up to marry a man named Prince Levani who I think was running out of money. Qeto had already fallen in love with another prince, Keto, somehow (I think they saw each other in a theater?) and was pissed off that she had to marry Levan. The story itself is pretty generic, but the performance was so...... I don't even know. Weird. I don't even know if it was supposed to be as hilarious as I found it to be. The costumes were crazy. It looked like Lady Gaga threw up her closet everywhere.
There were random dancing bits intersperced between the story line.
There were two characters which were I think supposed to be Qeto's assistants or something and seemed to be gay. There was a scene where Qeto flew in on a helicopter (this "scene" was a video with really bad graphics, including a helicopter with a huge Louis Vuitton logo painted on the side, and the room somehow seemed to vibrate like a helicopter was really coming in) then the "helicopter" landed and out walks Qeto with a bunch of assistants carrying fake Louis Vuitton suitcases and the song "Vogue"
by Madonna playing. As if that wasn't odd enough, Qeto is wearing a crazy outfit that made her look like a sexy Smurf or something.
Anyway. The entire thing was just strange beyond explanation. But I guess dear ol' Misha (the president) liked it, because he's seen it before and wanted all of us TLGers to see it too. And it wasn't really bad, just really weird. The singers all had nice voices and the dancing was really cool. Just strange.
In case you are curious, here is a news story that has some clips of the play in it, so you can sort of see what it was like and also can see what the Batumi opera house looks like.
After the play we went back to the hotel. I guess I didn't mention how ridiculously nice the hotel was. It was the Radisson Blu, which just opened a couple of months ago. I have never stayed anywhere so good before, and it was completely free for us! I think the sad part, though, was the realization that staying there for one night costs almost as much as my apartment with Lydia costs for an entire month. Sort of makes you wonder what exactly the Georgian government is doing with their money... but I'm not complaining. I had the best shower I've had in a long time AND the bathroom floors were heated! Badass! Also, all the actors in the play were staying there too. So we were just lounging around in the lobby and got to see all the actors drinking and stuff. Most memorable (besides crazy looking Levan) was when the Qeto got out of a car while a group of us were standing outside, and she started singing loudly in English, like a true diva most likely just so we would all look at her and notice that she's "famous" and get "excited." But we just thought it seemed like a weird thing to do. Maybe that's because we are just jaded westerners. I mean... I've met Hanson in person, how does Qeto from the weirdest play ever compare????? ha ha. I'm kidding. It was cool to see the actors milling about, but her behavior was a little over the top!
We didn't get dinner until about midnight. We heard a rumor that it took so long because Misha decided to take the prince to eat at the restaurant our group (of nearly 200 people) had a reservation at, so we were no longer allowed to go there. Most of us were getting pretty grumpy at this point because we were so hungry and hadn't eaten in almost 11 hours, and also, we only had one night in Batumi and we were hoping to make the most of it... meaning, going out all night and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. This also lead to the speculation that maybe TLG actually had planned to make dinner so late so we would all be to dead and tired and hungry to want to go out after finally getting food. If that was a plan, it worked for a lot of people. We ended up not wanting to do anything afterwards because we were so tired. We got a bit of beer and drank back in N and A's room, which by some stroke of luck (or as they claim, Saakashvili is in love with them) they got a business class room that had a living room in it. We hung out watching Russian music videos and Fashion TV and then went back to our own rooms. Got a couple hours of sleep, and then went down for breakfast (which was amaaaaazing) in the hotel lobby.
Then another 8hr bus ride back. Complete with "would you rather" games.
Today was my first "day" of school. Meaning I was there for less than an hour, while they made my schedule. Tomorrow I should be starting for reals. I only teach grades 1-5 this semester, which is a bit of a disappointment because I like older kids (high school) better, but I will adapt. My co-teachers seem nice and the school is huge. About 1000 students, which makes Vardi seem so tiny. Not to mention the overall condition of the school is a VAST improvement to the village. It's going to be so interesting to see how the students compare.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Today I learned how to say the word "60" in Georgian. (samotsi)
I found my school, which is "Tbilisi Public School No. 126" and was way harder to find than it should be. It's also massive. My first day is going to be awkward--wandering in and trying to ask random students where the director's office is. I'm sure the first month will be a lot of getting lost in the huge building and being in general awkward, as usual. I hope the rooms are numbered, because in Vardi they definitely were not. It took forever for me to start knowing which room was which based on distance from the main hallway and stains on the walls/brokenness of the doors.
Lydia and I went to the store today for groceries and I gave the girl a 50lari bill. There was confusion with the coins and blah blah blah. An hour or so after getting home I realized I didn't get approximately 30lari of my change back! I almost panicked because I'm so broke right now and have at least another week until I get paid. We went back to the store and I had someone from TLG explain to the cashier what happened. After they looked through the surveillance videos for about 15 minutes, they realized that I wasn't lying and gave me my change. The girl was so nice and I think felt really bad about it. Now we will always go to this grocery store, because even though they made a mistake, they cleared it up and were very apologetic.
In other news-- I've eaten khatchapuri EVERY DAY since getting here. Yesterday I had at twice (that's what a couple beers will do to you). Today I told myself "NO KHATCHAPURI TODAY!" but... we had quite a trek looking for my school (the streets here are beyond confusing), and then we couldn't figure out where on earth the bus stop was and when we finally found it, it was too late. All we had eaten all day was one egg each (pretty low on food in the apartment) and it was about 3 o'clock, sooooooo we had to get khatchapuri. Luckily we've been walking SO much lately I probably won't gain a ton of weight this time around. Although, I have kind of established that 60% of my diet is khatchapuri and 40% is beer. Somethin's gotta change!
Tomorrow we are going to Batumi to see some "Georgian version of Romeo and Juliet but with a happier ending" called "Keto and Kote." A ton of other TLGers are going and we get free transportation, food, and a night at a hotel! And the president is going to be there and supposedly make an announcement afterwards about how great, lovely, and awesome all of us volunteers are. So... that's something!
In Georgia this time around things are already completely different. I can't emphasize enough how different it is (already) living in Tbilisi than it was in a Kakhetian village. Not only is it because we aren't living in a host family, but also because there are just so many more options on what we can do on a day-to-day basis.
We moved into our apartment two days ago, after a few days of complete torture not knowing if we were ever going to find a place to live or if we may have to resort to living with a host family again. We had TLG call SO many places for us and we had one place lined up but the owners backed out and decided not to rent it out last minute. At that point we really thought we were screwed. But then my friend D from the hostel said we should get a newspaper, so we did and he called a few places for us. After less than an hour we were at an apartment talking with a landlord (with D translating) and the next day we were moving in. Our landlord is the coolest landlord ever. We've already had to knock on her door (she lives next door) to ask stupid things like how the hell do we turn on the hot water? and the stove? And she's so happy to see us and even know she knows barely any English she tries to hard to talk to us and we do a lot of weird pantomiming but everything works out. Today when we went over to get help with our stove, she invited us in and gave us coffee and cake and tried to tell us all about Tibetan medicine (I guess that's her job), and it made some sense but not much. She also has two sons, the younger of which is really good looking and seems pretty sweet but he doesn't know any English.
Today we dyed my hair with Russian box hair dye again. It's not dry yet but it seems better than last time and luckily the water did not turn off before I could rinse it out like it did last time. But the water pressure in the shower is really low so it took forever to rinse it out. I was pretty scared actually after last time, but my roots were looking so terrible I felt like I had to take the risk, for vanity's sake.
We've made a few new friends since we've been back. We met a Canadian guy who is just traveling for a couple weeks, but we went for a night to Borjomi with him. In typical Georgia fashion, we met some nice people are the marshrutka who brought us to their friend's guesthouse. Then the man decided to be our Borjomi tour guide and took us all around and made us drink Borjomi water which I still find to be absolutely disgusting. Back in Tbilisi we've been hanging out with Nick who is from New Zealand who we met once last time we were in Georgia because he lived in Rustavi where Anita lived. We went to a beer garden with him and a girl named Callie, also in TLG, a few nights ago and again last night.
School officially starts today but we were not allowed to go to the first day because we haven't met with co-teachers and directors yet. Tomorrow we have a meeting with them and then I guess will start going to classes on Monday. I'm looking forward to it and kind of dreading it at the same time. But at least we will have something to do and be less bored/spending money all the time. Especially since we haven't been paid yet and I'm so broke after having to pay first/last months rent at our apartment.
It's sad, I guess, because it's my cat's 7th birthday and if I think about everything (everything) that has come to be since my cat was given to me I can't even explain anything at all. But I love him and I'm far away and I think somehow my cat is exactly who I am as a human even though maybe a lot of people wouldn't understand or even agree.
I am 22 and when I got my cat it was my 16th birthday. I could try to describe every moment of that day because I remember most of it EXACTLY, but I've drank a bit and who even cares anyway? The guy I liked ditched me at a dance, the guy I cared about most is married now and my friends are scattered everywhere. But Desi (my cat) remains and I think about him and smile because he's the first thing I've loved more than myself in so long I don't even know.
As for Georgia, I think we found somewhere to live. And we've made some new friends. And we've eaten so much acharuli khatchapuri I think I will gain 15pounds again in like 2 weeks. It's hard to say what's different and what is the same. I miss my friends I made last time so much I feel like I might explode. I miss my friends form before that so much I might explode. I miss people who I've known forever and who live in Chico again so much I might explode. I don't mind living in the hostel except for how much money I'm losing. I like being here where new people arrive constantly and every now and then people I know walk through. Or even the owners who I'm friends with walk through. If it weren't for them, we'd still be homeless. Because after less than 1hr, our friends here helped us find somewhere to live and drove us to the apartment and translated what the woman was saying to us. All we had to do to repay them was buy them a little bit of food.
And just now, a Israeli man in the hostel brought us some dates and almonds because they like them in Israel. Which is funny because it reminds him of his home, and it reminds me of my home because of the almonds. And that is what travelling is like. And I love it so much.
I left town at four in the morning. Four in the morning
isn’t really even morning. I guess especially to a person who sees four am more
than she used to--but usually through the lens of alcohol and late night
shenanigans. Four in the morning when
waking up after having gone to bed is more like weird surrealist torture where
everything is more confusing and time doesn’t seem to pass at all and suddenly
you are in an airport terminal and it’s light outside and you can barely even
remember checking in. I remember saying
goodbye to my mom and watching her disappear when I went up the escalator.
The plane was the smallest thing I’ve ever seen. I tried not to panic and
instead went to sleep. I woke up when the flight attendant brought me water. I
didn’t wake up when she came by and took away my garbage. We landed. I was
confused. My dad picked me up. I went to a couple jobs with him and I fell
asleep as we drove from Hollywood to Redondo Beach, with my mouth wide open and
my tongue drying out. We got to my grandma’s and in her usual manner, she made
way too much food and kept offering to make more. She seemed especially happy
to have made so many vegetarian options for me.
I fell asleep on the couch. I acquired over $100 from cards given to me
by my aunts and uncles and my grandmother. I feel a bit more relieved knowing I
have that extra cash in my pocket. Maybe I won’t wilt away from starvation
while homeless in Tbilisi. My grandma blabbered a bit about how I wasn’t
allowed to leave the airport in Istanbul, and I definitely wasn’t allowed to
start dating a Muslim and began on a tangent which was basically racist and
ridiculous. I zoned out and thought about how amazing it would be to get a
Muslim boyfriend and tell my grandma about it.
I’m waiting at the gate for my Turkish Airlines flight. When I called my mother
to say goodbye she was really excited to hear about the different types of
people who may be on a flight to Istanbul. I hadn’t even thought about it. So
far, most people look Turkish. The children are adorable. Especially the little girl wearing Minnie Mouse ears and a pink dress with a long black braid going
down her entire back. She pushes her little sister’s stroller back and forth in
front of me and says “hi” and smiles at me every time. Her baby sister stares
at me with giant brown bug eyes as glittery as her earrings. Their mother is covered from head to toe in
rose pink silk with only her eyes showing.
A few other women are wearing colorful scarves over their hair. There
are typical middle-aged tourists with their passport holders hanging around
their neck. And a few young guys with their iPads, headphones and tapping feet.
There is an orthodox Jew with an impressive beard. I heard some people checking
in at the desk who are connecting to Israel.
There is a young guy who looks just like a guy I knew in college, and I
keep making awkward eye-contact with him. The man who printed my boarding
passes pronounced Tbilisi how it’s meant to be, and I suddenly felt excited to
go back when this whole time I wasn’t sure if I was. But, მე ვარ ბედნიერე.
It’s kind of like going back home.
It's like crying spells mixed followed by excitement followed by anxiety and stress.
I'm broke and I don't even have anywhere to live yet.
I have to wake up in four-and-a-half hours to drive to Sacramento to get on my 7am flight.
And it's been weird being home. And I've been so bipolar about it. Some days it's been awful and I feel annoyed at everyone and everything, and some days I feel like everything is going great and I've met some great people and everything looks so lovely.
I guess maybe it's the lack of sleep and the fact that I probably drank more than I should of last night. But I'm scared. Scared like I used to be when I was 15 years old and felt terrible doom knowing I was going to have to go on an airplane. And I have haven't had good dreams and everything on the news is about 9/11.
And I hate saying goodbye to everyone. I'm just not good at it. And I feel so emotional about it but pretend like I'm not.
And all day I felt like crying whenever I looked at my dog, because he somehow KNOWS and so does my cat and they look at me with their big sad eyes and I feel awful.
It's moments like these that make me feel like I shouldn't leave at all. But maybe that's also my anxiety. Maybe I've lost my mind.
I'll start by saying this: you don't choose where you were born.
So what is the point in saying the country you were squeezed out into is better than any other country that someone else got ejected out into? Nearly everyone has some sort of reverence to the place they grew up. That's where their memories, families, friends, and/or education were. Every country is screwed up. Everyone gets sick of their hometown. Everyone gets annoyed when the political party they oppose is in power.
It's one thing to be angry about a governmental policy. It's perfectly understandable to disagree with the people who are in control. It's great if you want to go out and struggle for change and make a positive difference in the world.
But it's stupid to say "I'm the best!" because you were born in a country where things are going right at the moment (I say this because, chances are it won't always be that way). And it's even worse to say you hate a whole other culture because the leaders of that place are doing things you don't agree with. It's an easy way out and I'm sick of it.
Being someone who has been travelling a decent amount in the last few years, I encounter this frequently. I guess being American I should expect this, but I try not to, because I like to think the best of people. But it's true, Americans travelling do not get treated very well in a lot of places by a lot of people. And it's aggravating. I have had people tell me to my face that they hate all Americans (knowing I was one), before they even ask me how I feel about certain topics or policies that my country has put into place (most of which before I was even old enough to vote!). Because all Americans are the same, right? And all blondes are stupid and all Asian people are Chinese?
Are you really that ignorant? Can you really write off an entire group of people because you can't stand that their country isn't as "perfect" as yours?
I'm an American, and maybe some of these people have encountered (or seen on TV) a lot of stereotypical obese gun-wielding redneck Americans who don't know how to spell potato but are willing to say women can't have abortions and global warming is a lie, but god-damn are you really going to judge a whole country of 300,000,000+ on that? I don't go around saying that all Muslims are evil because of 9/11. I don't hate Germans because of WWII 70 years ago. I just don't get it. I don't get when people who come from liberal democracies can go around saying they are better than me (even though yeah, I'm jealous of your health-care and gay marriage), because of the place they were born.
I didn't get to choose, and neither did you!
Now come up with a good argument about why you dislike American governmental policies and choices, and I'll listen to you. But do not start a conversation about how the country you come from is so much better than the country I come from, and in fact, you can't stand anyone from my country at all....
