Batumi night

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.