Cuttino's Georgian Life

Moving On...

2011-04-25T15:14:00.003-04:00

The war was a sad and shocking end to my Peace Corps service, as these final posts reflect. The good news, however, is that the ultimate nightmare scenarios did not come to be. Things were tragically set back, but the resilient Georgians picked up the pieces and moved on with the rebuilding and reforming of their nation.

And I've moved on, too. Georgia has a way of drawing you back, though, and so I return for another year with another job. Please visit my new blog:

Epistles from the Caucasus

Helping Out

2008-08-31T15:16:00.002-04:00

I'm writing this from Cairo on my way through a pretty large chunk of the Muslim world, Central Asia and China. Unfortunately, due to the current problems in Georgia I'm going to have to delay my return to the country (I was supposed to go for a short visit in September). I have heard from a number of my coworkers, who have been allowed to return to Gori. Society Biliki is back up and running with minimal damage. Since they are in the thick of the relief efforts, they have their work cut out for them.

Since I'll be traveling, I'm planning to organize a project to help out with this work after the holidays. Hopefully by the winter we will have a better picture of the long term needs arising from this crisis. In the meantime, a group of former Peace Corps Volunteers have started an initiative to help out with the current basic needs of displaced people. You can visit their website here.

Gori's Tragedy

2008-08-13T10:26:00.006-04:00

This has been a very difficult few days. After a few days of intense fighting in South Ossetia, Russia invaded sovereign Georgian territory, including my former site, Gori. Apparently the mandate of Russian "peacekeepers" included bombing civilian targets outside of the conflict zone. I know for a fact that one of Biliki's children was killed in Sunday's bombardment. Today, despite a "ceasefire" Russian troops have surrounded Gori and have allowed Ossetian militants to loot and burn the city. I know a few people who remained to protect their property and homes, but I don't know how they are doing.

Peace Corps has completely pulled out of the country. All of the new trainees were sent home almost immediately and the remaining volunteers are safe in Armenia. I finished Peace Corps a week before the war began. The most frightening aspect of all this is how quickly the situation spiraled out of control. When I left the country two days before hostilities there was no indication that this would happen.

A few people have asked about my opinion of this situation, and I can give it now that I am a private citizen. As I see it, no side is innocent in this conflict. The Georgians were reckless to initiate the conflict in South Ossetia. The siege of Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital) was brutal and probably unnecessary. If the Russian statistics are true, the death toll of the battle will be around 2,000. Of course, the Russian response has been totally disproportionate and totally out of line with any international norms. The Russian regime has proven itself to be a brutal, oppressive 19th century-style power. The West owes it to Georgia and all emerging democracies to stand up to Putin and Medvedev.

In the meantime, the innocent civilians of Ossetia and Georgia are caught up in the crossfire. These people have been my friends and family for two years and it is heartbreaking to see what is happening to them. Fifteen years of progress is in jeopardy. I can only hope that there is something left of Gori when the dust settles.

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More information:
BBC - Violence Flares in Georgian Town
New Republic - How the West Botched Georgia
NY Times - Georgia Says Accord Broken as Russia Occupies City
EurasiaNet - Russian "Imperialist Boots" Stomp on Georgia
EurasiaNet - Georgia: Scene of the Outbreak of Cold War II?

"Heavy Fighting" in South Ossetia

2008-08-07T19:05:00.000-04:00

I know its been a long time since I have updated this blog. I finished out my service last week and left Georgia two days ago. Work got very busy and things fell by the wayside and I apologize for that. In the near future I will post some blog entries reflecting on the positive times during my last days in Georgia.

For those of you who have seen the news in the last few hours, the South Ossetian conflict, which has been boiling for years now, has become very violent. The threat of a new war is growing. I have every confidence that Peace Corps will take care of its volunteers; for me, I am safe in Turkey. We can only hope and pray that this violence does not spread further and threaten the progress for which my friends in Georgia have worked so hard.

In the meantime, for those of you looking for updated news, as always, I recommend www.civil.ge and www.alertnet.org.

So Much for Winter

2008-04-04T05:51:00.004-04:00

It was generally agreed that this winter was the worst in a decade. In December and January, the temperatures were well below freezing. I heard rumors of Siberia-like weather in certain areas of the country, but this goes unverified. What I do know is winter here can be no fun. My wet clothes froze almost immediately when I put them on the line. I could literally fend off attacks with my solid underwear.

Making life even more difficult was the fact that my water pipes froze in early January and did not thaw until February. Apparently insulating pipes were a little too bourgeois for Soviet planners. A single faucet in the courtyard of my building remained, thanks to the fact that it was kept running all day and night. Once a day, the residents of my block would trudge down, buckets in tow and fill up.

But, life hasn't been all bad. Before I moved into the apartment last year, my landlord installed a modern gas heater. This heater can make an entire room toasty...so warm, in fact, that I could loose my long underwear (much to the envy of my other Volunteer friends). In March, as if the gods were feeling sympathy for us, the weather warmed suddenly. The snow and ice disappeared. I stopped using the heater. Life suddenly became more bearable.

Central heating is indeed a blessing, but an early spring...that is a miracle.

Stalin's Big Day

2008-02-07T05:19:00.000-05:00

Nothing starts off the holidays here in Gori quite like Stalin's birthday. Every year on the 21st of December, nostalgic pensioners gather in front of the Stalin birthplace to hold speeches, wave flags and banners, and reminisce about the "good ol' days" of the U.S.S.R. My friends and I went to see the festivities. Despite the snow, some 50 people (a few were members of the Communist Party of Georgia--yes, it still exists) were milling around in front of the museum. It was quite possible that we Volunteers were the only ones there under the age of 60. Despite the fact that for most of these people's lives our two countries were enemies, the response to our presence ranged from curiosity to benign indifference.

I'm sure it seems strange to an American that Stalin would still be held in such regard, and I realize that so far I have written very little about the "Stalin cult" here in Gori and, to a lesser degree, in all of Georgia.

We all know what Stalin did while in power. Many Georgians here in Gori recognize that, though some either deny it or play it down ("He really didn't kill that many people...the capitalists are making it up...."). Its also important to realize what was accomplished during Stalin's time--the U.S.S.R. was taken from an underdeveloped cluster of nations to an industrial power rivalling that of the United States. They beat Hitler and got the bomb. So, for a lot of people, Stalin has come to represent what was once great about Georgia.

Here in Gori, of course, Stalin is alive and well. We have Stalin Street, Stalin Park, five statues of Stalin, the Stalin Museum and Birthplace... Gori's floundering tourism industry is just starting to understand the kitchy goldmine they're sitting on. Already, the Stalin Museum's admissions price has been raised to an outrageous 15 lari (about 8 dollars) and the giftshop sells Stalin busts and mugs. I'm holding out for Stalin tshirts.

Of course, Stalin continues to come up in everyday conversation here. At the supra table, we inevitably drink to his memory. How do I deal with it? Whenever it comes up, I always invoke the Big Three--a toast to Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. Its always a winning toast and one that always gets an approving nod from the nostalgic pensioners.

I am cold, but not dead...

2008-02-07T05:13:00.000-05:00

Well, I've let this blog sit and languish over the winter for far too long. What's happened over the time away? Georgia has been in the grip of the coldest winter in a decade--leaving me without water for weeks (seriously, can insulation really be that hard?). Saakashvili was reelected, but the opposition remains unimpressed. We celebrated Stalin's birthday, American Christmas, New Years, Georgian Christmas, Georgian New Years, and Epiphany. And, finally, my fiancee Jessica came to visit.

I'll post more on all this meore...

Campaign Fever

2007-12-18T06:37:00.000-05:00

The Iowa primaries may be 16 days away, but the Georgia presidential election--two days later--promises to be way more entertaining (or is it nerve wracking?). For those of you who haven't been keeping up, a snap presidential election was called following the events of November 7. There are currently seven candidates bidding for the presidency, including Saakashvili, who was required by the constitution to step down to run.

These elections seem to be an even wilder variation of the primary season. However, the only person who seems to be embracing the glitzy American-style of campaigning is Saakashvili, who has enlisted the help of pop stars, athletes and other celebrities. Last week, he came to Gori on a campaign stop. Judging from the preparations, the event was to be quite a show. A large tractor trailer truck, covered in Georgian flag decals and "5s" (the ballot number of his party), rolled into Stalin Square early in the morning. Later, it opened up to become a stage. More buses, plastered with the flags, the number, and giant pictures of Misha, later followed.

One of the "Misha Mobiles"
(thanks to my Georgian friend, Dato, for the pictures)

I did not attend the rally, but it really didn't matter. The music that blasted from the stage was so loud, you could hear it from several blocks away...enough patriotic pop songs to make Lee Greenwood proud. The theme song of the campaign, "Misha Magaria!" (Misha is Cool!), was recorded by a regional governor who was formerly in a boy band. The schools in town had let out for the event and it seemed that a large number of the people carrying Saakashvili placards afterward were decidedly too young to vote this year.

The crowd awaits Saakashvili

Since I don't own a TV, I can't follow the twists and turns of the campaign (Internet media has yet to catch on), but for there are a number of helpful websites for all you Georgian politics junkies:

As always, Civil Georgia is the best place for up-to-the-minute reports.
EurasiaNet.org has set up an excellent site, complete with news, candidate photos and platforms.
Finally, check out this blog if you're interested in reading an English translation of "Misha is Cool!"

St. George's Day, Year 2

2007-11-29T05:22:00.000-05:00

Life has returned to normal...we'll see how long that lasts. In the meantime, I've posted a lot of pictures from our St. George's Day celebrations--the be all and end all of Georgian holidays. As usual, the residents of Gori went up to Gori Jvari and sacrificed their lambs...and later had a supra with lamb stew. Below are some of my favorite shots...the rest are on Flickr. A warning though, some of them may not be for the weak-at-heart.

The sheep market

This old woman sang on the mountainside for hours.

Children at the church, waiting to get the chickens blessed.

My apologies to PETA.

Small Improvements

2007-11-16T04:20:00.001-05:00

Little has changed in our situation since I last posted. There is still a state of emergency, the Peace Corps Volunteers are still of standfast, the opposition and authorities are negotiating back and forth. However, there are signs of improvement. It was announced that the emergency rules will be lifted at 7 p.m. today. Things are quiet here in Gori, but no doubt things will be interesting once the campaign gets into full swing.

Enough time has passed now that the Western media has begun to write analysis pieces on the recent events. While some of them are fairly accurate, its frustrating to see how much of the coverage lacks context and understanding of the country. It seems that some journalists, having last looked at Georgia in 2003, are now struggling to come up with a tidy new paradigm to explain what's been happening. If you're looking for coverage, the New York Times has been particularly detailed and, as far as I can tell, is the only American newspaper to be filing its own reports from Tbilisi.

Some links:
(of course, my previous disclaimers still apply)

NY Times - Challenger Named in Georgian Election
NY Times - Georgia to Lift Emergency, IMF Says Turmoil Damaging
NY Times - Georgia's Future Looks Like More of the Past
NY Times - Amid Turmoil, All Eyes Turn to Georgia's Patriarch . . .
BBC - Georgian tycoon "to contest poll"
BBC - Saakashvili defuses Georgia's crisis

That's all for now. I will write an entry very soon to discuss what I've been doing this whole time...

A sigh of relief?

2007-11-09T03:36:00.000-05:00

Well, its been a roller coaster of a day. This time yesterday, it seemed that there would be no happy end to the crisis here. Peace Corps Volunteers were packing their emergency bags and updating their resumes. It may be too soon to say we're totally out of the woods, but there is a palpable sense of relief in Gori today.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm restricted from sharing my political opinions on the matter...doing so would compromise Peace Corps' status as a non-political organization. If you're looking for opinionated commentary, there are plenty of private blogs reporting on the events from a variety to different perspectives. That said, I'll try my best to report my personal experiences as the events unfold.

The situation changed rather quickly yesterday. As I was leaving from work, I received word that President Saakashvili would be making a major address to the nation at 7 p.m. He announced that snap presidential elections will be called for early January 2008. Additionally, the question of when to hold parliamentary elections will be decided by a referendum. As of this morning, it seems that all parties are happy--if reelected, Saakashvili would be able to claim a mandate, while the opposition has now been given the chance to challenge him.

Currently, the emergency rules restricting the media and some political activity are still in place. However, like I said yesterday, outside of the capital, everything seems normal. Contrary to what it may seem like in the Western media accounts, all of Georgia is not under martial law. I had heard some stories of demonstrations in Kutaisi and Batumi, but Gori's Stalin Square was empty, aside from two workmen installing a tacky new clock tower.

It was very interesting yesterday to see how quickly rumor and hearsay can spread, especially with the major media outlets shut down. Information was passed across the country through emails and text messages. I heard countless stories of what exactly happened on Rustaveli Avenue, some may be true and some may be urban legends. One of the neighbors came in panicking that the government was enforcing a 6 p.m. curfew (not true). Over the course of the day, there was wide speculation as to the fate of one of the opposition leaders. People kept coming into the office with various stories--"he's in Gori hospital;" "no, he's dead;" "he's been kidnapped;" "he's okay;" "no, he's still in the hospital..." For the record, the opposition leader in question made an appearance in Tbilisi later in the day.

Georgian news websites were off line, so we turned to English-language sources. A good portion of my day was spent constantly reloading the front page of Civil Georgia. I got calls from Peace Corps Volunteers in isolated villages asking for updates. On two occasions, I was requested to check another Volunteer's email to ensure that no one from home had sent anything hysterical. What was life like before the internet?

More information:
Here are some links to other media sources that have covered the events of the past two days.

BBC - Georgia to hold early elections
BBC - In Pictures: Emergency in Georgia
NY Times - Georgia Leader Calls Early Elections to Decide His Fate
NY Times - Georgian Leader Imposes a State of Emergency
The Economist - Georgia's Protests
Washington Post - Georgia's President Moves Up Election Date

For up-to-the-minute updates go to: Civil.ge

NOTE: I post these links for your information, dear reader. Any commentary contained in them do not reflect my opinions or those of Peace Corps.

Troubled Times

2007-11-08T02:27:00.000-05:00

I've received a couple emails of concern about the recent developments here in Georgia. Yesterday, violence broke out in central Tbilisi after six days of opposition protests. Police in riot gear cleared the crowds with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. During the night, authorities shut down pro-opposition television and radio stations. A state of emergency has been declared in the capital and non-government news sources are not functioning.

I can tell you that the situation outside of the capital is calm, almost business as usual. My NGO opened for business today, the power is on, the internet is running. Some of the schools let out early, but in general, it feels like a normal day. We have been instructed by Peace Corps to remain at our sites, stay up on the news, and be ready in the event of an emergency. This is similar to the alert volunteers were place on for over a month during the Rose Revolution of 2003. Time will tell how things will turn out, but for the time being, don't worry--despite the headlines, things are calm and we're safe.

When Misha Came to Signagi

2007-10-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

While traveling through the wine country of Kakheti, I stopped by the town of Signagi (pop. 2,146). I have to admit, I've never seen anything quite like it. As I mentioned before, the Georgian wine industry is attempting to put itself on the map. Naturally, wine attracts tourist, and these tourist have discriminating taste, so to speak. Up until now, there has been a lack of a destination--a place where these picky travelers can sit in posh hotels and admire the scenic views over some wine and cheese.

So, while most of the towns in the wine region gradually paint over their former-Soviet dullness, Signagi has opted for an extreme makeover in an effort to meet this future demand. In a throwback to the old days of Five Year Plans and centralized planning, the government is conducting a massive renovation of the entire town. Every storefront has been repainted, every street has been repaved (in quaint cobblestone); there are fancy new European lampposts and a fountain with a giant bronze stag. In a few more years, this will be quite a sight, but at the moment it feels like I should have been issued a hardhat at the city limits.

Signagi overlooking the Alazani Valley.

Signagi is certainly an inspired choice for a shiny new tourist town. It is situated on the side of a hill and overlooks the Alazani Valley far below. On a clear day, there is a spectacular view of the Caucasus. All of the houses along the narrow streets have wooden porches with intricate latticework. Oh yes, and it has one of the only Mexican restaurants in all of Georgia. It is only open by reservation made a few days in advance in order to give the manager enough time to go to Telavi to buy ingredients.

On the day that I visited Signagi, I arrived to find the town covered in Georgian and NATO flags. The town was celebrating the arrival of Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO Secretary General. Seizing on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (what little boy doesn't grow up wanting to see the NATO Secretary General?), we met up with some other Peace Corps Volunteers and stood in the receiving line.

Misha working the crowd.

You have to hand it to Saakashvili--he knows how to make a dashing entrance. Within a few minutes, we saw Saakashvili and his entourage triumphantly descending the hill with the only finished street in town. Once they reached the square, he began working the crowd--smiling, waving, saying gamarjoba. Oddly, few people were trying to shake his hand. When he got to us, my friend Nick daringly offered his hand. Saakashvili paused for a brief second, looking at us as if he were thinking these people don't look Georgian. He took Nick's hand, gave it a firm squeeze and moved on. That was it--our fleeting encounter with power. Satisfied, we worked our way back out over the construction pit, found a shady area, and had a drink.

The Birthplace of Wine

2007-10-08T07:31:00.000-04:00

October is grape harvest time and as luck would have it, last week I was in the wine region of Kakheti at the height of the season. I took the opportunity to visit the main wine factory of Badagoni, a fairly new wine company based outside of Telavi. Badagoni is a joint venture between Georgians and Italians. The result of this partnership is a strange combination of East meets West, Telavi meets Milan. The finest Italian wine making technology is plopped down in the middle of rural Georgia. Their marketing campaign (you can view television ads on Badagoni's website) juxtaposes a quaint Georgian bebia with some chic Italian models.

This is Georgia??

For all the rich tradition behind Georgian wine, its surprising that its not all that well known in the West. For a long time, Georgians were exporting strictly to customers within the Soviet Union. The Soviets' emphasis on high yield forced Georgian wine makers to sacrifice quality for quantity. Old Georgian vineyards were destroyed and various additives were used to make the grapes go farther. By the 1990s, Georgian wine was all but unmarketable to the West (this article from the NY Times gives a pretty interesting background on the situation).

As I witnessed in the Badagoni factory, all this is beginning to change. With Russia's embargo on Georgian wine, producers are looking to other markets. As a result, Georgia's wine is tasting a lot better. We were lead through the factory with lots of nice, shiny Italian machinery. At the end of the tour, we were given a tasting of three Georgian specialties--Saperavi (dry red), Mtsvane and Tsinandali (dry white).

The company Badagoni has poured a lot of money into the project, and it will be interesting to see where things go from here. In a few years, Kakheti may be the next Napa. Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself... Word on the street is that the bottles will begin appearing in the US very soon, and at $5 a bottle, that's quite a deal. If you find one at your local grocery store, say a toast for me.

Announcing the Peace Corps Georgia Podcast

2007-10-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

I've been working with a group of volunteers to create Sakartvelo: Stories of Peace Corps Life in Georgia. We hope that this will be a monthly podcast about Georgia and our work here. Check out our website at www.sakartvelopodcast.org, or you can find us on iTunes.

Please, feedback is very welcome!

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part 2

2007-10-01T08:29:00.000-04:00

Right before fall set in, a group of friends and I decided to spend some time at a cabin in Borjomi National Park. The park is one of the largest in Europe and is impressively run. It regulates the visitors, has a full-time ranger staff, and keeps everything in good condition. So, its great to see such a nice destination that remains relatively untouched.

Unfortunately, the hike to the camp turned into a 15 kilometer trek up the side of the mountain. Nothing too extreme, but I found myself woefully out of shape and exhausted most of the way (the supra the night before certainly didn't help matters either). By the time we reached the top of the mountain ridge, it was getting dark and we were getting nervous about finding the cabin. As we continued along the trail, we found ourselves in the middle of a sheep herd. Two shepherds approached us and invited us in. They were kind enough to help us find the cabin, built a fire, and shared some vodka.

We had brought some marshmallows and graham crackers ("smuggled" from America by some new volunteers) and we showed the shepherds how to make s'mores. They were good sports about it, but had the usual look that Georgians have when we Americans push our cuisine on them. Our British friend, Clare, had also never seen a s'more and seemed more open to the experience. The next morning, the shepherds found us again and invited us over for breakfast--raspberry tea and bread.

The shepherd, on the left, serving us tea for breakfast.

In the end, they seemed reluctant to let us leave. They spend weeks at a time on top of the mountain during the summer, so life seems rather slow and monotonous. If you ever go hiking in Borjomi, bring some marshmallows--you never know if you'll need to entertain some bored Georgians.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part 1

2007-09-24T07:04:00.000-04:00

Admittedly, I’ve done a pretty bad job of keeping everyone updated this summer. I promise that from now on, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me. Anyway, here in Georgia, the leaves are changing, it’s a lot windier, and we’re planning the Gori Halloween party. Fall must be upon us. But before we get into that, I’ll share some things that happened over the summer…

In mid-August, I traveled to Kobuleti, a Georgian beach town, with my NGO for a staff retreat of sorts. Kobuleti is the Myrtle Beach or Coney Island of Georgian beaches—a real blue collar resort town. It lacks the faux nineteenth century architecture of Batumi or (so I’m told) the natural beauty of Sokhumi. However, it makes up for this with a sparkling new amusement park and a loud, raucous café/discoteka every fifty feet. Kazakh investors are pouring money into the town and there are about five large hotel complexes under construction. The feeling one gets walking down the street is that Kobuleti is a very rough work in progress. Cows graze along the boardwalk. Abandoned Soviet hotels sit crumbling and overgrown between spiffy modern buildings.

Kobuleti's beach

I spent most of the days sitting on the beach and reading. Georgians at the beach act much like Americans at the beach…sitting in the sun, reading, yelling at their kids for going too far out in the water. Unfortunately, Kobuleti has a stone beach, so sand castles are out of the question. Men in boats offered parasailing and tubing. Every ten minutes, a vendor would come by hawking inflatable toys, sea shell necklaces, soda, chips, beer and….corn on the cob?? Yes, corn is synonymous with summer here in Georgia.

A beach toy vendor making the rounds.

One other food worth mentioning is Adjaran khachapuri—the cheese bread that is specific to the coastal Adjara region. Its bread shaped like a football, filled with cheese and an egg cracked open in the center. Once I got over my squeamishness to half-raw eggs, I found that this was one of the more delicious things I’ve had in Georgia. Interestingly, its really only sold at the beach; my Georgian coworkers bought a bunch to take home to Gori.

Delicious Acharuli Khachapuri

Next entry: A hike in Borjomi National Park

My Day in Blood Court

2007-08-10T06:31:00.000-04:00

After a month-long hiatus I'm back in the swing of things in Georgia. I returned to the US to find that it is still there, just as I left it. It was kind of strange to be in a country with all those shiny new cars, air conditioning, traffic laws, and fast food. Coming back to Georgia, I found the daily temperatures approaching 100 degrees and almost no rain for a month. Home sweet home.

Last week, I received a summons from the Gori Regional Court to come and testify in the case of the theft back in January. My host cousin was facing his court hearing date and I had to come and...say something. I was instructed by Peace Corps to simply say, "I have no more claims against this person, please don't call me again." We initially tried to do this in writing, but the judge insisted that I come to the hearing.

We arrived about 30 minutes late to find that the hearing (of course) had not started. So the waiting began. I spent most of the time in a van with one of the Peace Corps staff members, refining my "statement" and discussing the criminal justice system in Georgia. One interesting thing I learned: criminal court literally translates to "blood court." Also, Georgia is just now trying to implement trial by jury, but seem to be running into problems. What do you do in a country of less than 4 million where everyone is connected to everyone? An impartial group of peers is most definitely hard to find.

In the end, I never got to make my statement. The police never escorted my former host cousin from the prison to the court. We'll have to wait another day. In the meantime, we've submitted another petition to the court, basically saying "I have nothing else to say, don't call me again."

Up in Kazbegi

2007-06-30T14:19:00.000-04:00

Its been far too long since an update, but life has been busy despite the heat and the slow pace of summer. The new group of volunteers-in-training arrived last week and Gori is the base of operations. This means that I get to play host, answer a lot of questions, and show everyone the ropes. Its actually a lot of fun and its nice to have everyone coming to me for a change.

Last weekend, I travelled with three of my friends to Kazbegi, a mountain region in north Georgia. Its the last major stop along the Georgian Military Highways, the main road that cuts north and south between Tbilisi and Russia. I think its the most beautiful area of Georgia, and the pictures don't really do it justice. But, until you can come see it for yourself, you can check it out on my Flickr page.

Mount Kazbegi is actually a dormant volcano with an elevation of about 16,500 feet. The church in the foreground is Gergeti Sameba--or Holy Trinity Church. As a point of reference, it stands at just under 7,900 feet. My friends and I got up early wheezed our way up the mountain, out of shape from a year of no exercise and out of breath from the elevation. We made it to the church, which had some spectacular views of the mountains. As a tour group from Germany approached, we continued up along the ridge, starting and stopping, until we reached a point to view the Kazbegi glacier.

As a follow-up to my last post: The European Commission and other sources estimate that pig fever is in 52 of 65 districts in Georgia. Restaurants here are substituting beef for pork. Meanwhile, in other Georgia news... There was a recent spat over road construction near the South Ossetian conflict zone, just a few kilometers away from Gori. Nothing as bad as last year's helicopter fiasco, but you know its summer when things start heating up in the Gori suburbs.

Finally, its now officially been a year. Appropriately enough, we marked the occasion in Tbilisi at a Thai restaurant. That same day, Joe Cocker came to town. To mark the occassion, Coca-Cola plastered his face on every Coke bottle in Tbilisi. Tickets were so expensive that the booking company offered a payment plan...and the whole place sold out. The iron curtain slowed pop culture down a bit.

Pig fever? Yes, pig fever...

2007-06-08T06:55:00.000-04:00

Recently we received a bulletin from our medical staff about a rapidly-spreading case of African swine fever. We're always vigilant for bird flu, had a small bout with rabbit fever, but the case of pig fever has seemed to take everyone--including the Georgian authorities--by complete surprise. The virus doesn't affect humans, but it has the potential to completely obliterate the pig population in this country and make it impossible to restore it.

Public Enemy No. 1

In case you were wondering, pigs are a big deal here. First of all, they're physically huge...I've seen pigs that are as big as cows. Most of them wander around freely, much like the cows, and aren't confined to one pen. This is going to cause some problems when there are sick, free-roaming pigs in the country. But most importantly, pork is a staple here. Mtsvadi (pork kebabs) are a national dish; most New Years supras feature a large pig head as its centerpiece. We're in danger of losing a lot of good food!

The concern here is that if the virus is not stopped, it could spread south into Armenia and north into Russia. Already, 20 thousand of Georgia's half-million pigs have been slaughtered, but the virus continues to move east. It's going to make for a very interesting summer if this continues...

Summer Arrives

2007-05-21T09:35:00.000-04:00

The weather has turned hot and dry, so in order to enjoy "the nature" before everything turns brown, my sitemate and I went on a hike. We went up along the mountain ridge above Gori to the site of a ruined fort. Here's a picture:

Also, Georgian wine has been in the American press a lot recently. Read this article from the Washington Post about one man's personal mission to raise awareness of kartuli ghvino among American consumers.

Azerbaijan, Part 4--Baku

2007-05-21T05:50:00.000-04:00

After the fun in Lankaran, I headed up the coastline to Baku, that boom town on the Caspian. The city is flush with cash--oil and gas revenues--and so it feels way more cosmopolitan than anywhere else I've been in the Caucasus. It has a much larger foreign population than Tbilisi, many of whom work for BP and other oil companies. There's a definite sense that the city is going places. Its one of the fastest growing in the world, if all those construction cranes are any indication.

Baku panorama. The gothic-looking building is a Soviet-era government building.

In Baku, I stayed with a young expat couple who are working for BP. It was a bit strange to move from Peace Corps Volunteers to young professionals; I sometimes felt as if they had picked up some scraggly homeless man of the street. Needless to say that their living standards are much higher than mine--no bucket baths for them. But I was very grateful for their hospitality and showing me a good time. Incidentally, one of my hosts was one of the engineer sfor the Shah Deniz gas field, the main source of natural gas for Georgia. I now know who to complain to the next time we have a gas shortage.

Baku has a beautiful historic section filled with old mosques, carpet shops and hamams. The centerpiece of Old Town is the Maiden Tower, a bizarre looking building from the 12th century. Aside from the center, there is little else for a tourist to do. Fortunately, there's some good shopping, including a huge selection of cheap 3-dollar DVDs. No doubt these come from the most reputable of sources.

Historic Baku

My return to Georgia was more or less uneventful, aside from a wheezy old Azeri man who kept calling me "puppy" in Russian. Its also possible he was using some diminutive name from the word "son" (like "sonny boy"), but it sounded more like the former. We got into an argument over my origins; he insisted that I was British, even though I showed him my American passport again and again. But he made up for the minor annoyance by sharing some dinner and vodka.

I returned to Georgia early in the morning to find the miserable April weather gone. The leaves were green and the weather was warm...not a bad homecoming, not bad at all...

Azerbaijan, Part 3--"America Day" in Lankaran

2007-05-18T05:52:00.000-04:00

After Sheki, I traveled with some other Peace Corps Volunteers to a town called Lankaran, a town on the Caspian Sea just north of the Iranian border. Its quaint by Azeri standards, with a nice black beach and a lighthouse. One of the tourist "sites" is a large, cylindrical prison that once held Stalin. Legend has it that Gori's favorite son escaped to the Caspian through an underground tunnel. Nowadays, the site is abandoned and crumbling.

Lankaran's main square.

The first night in Lankaran, it was pouring rain and the power was out all over town. I had gathered with a group of PCVs in one of their homes, trying to keep dry. For dinner we had lavangi, a dish most famous in Lankaran. It is basically a whole roasted chicken stuffed with walnuts which you are supposed to eat it with your fingers. So here we were: sitting in the dark, soaking wet, hunched over whole chickens and tearing the meat with our hands. Is this what Peace Corps does to a man?

The PCVs in Lankaran were holding an "America Day" the next day and fortunately the weather had improved by the morning. America Day is an ongoing project in PC Azerbaijan in which a large group of PCVs descend on a town and treat 50-75 Azeri students to a day of activities and games about American culture. Since it was May, the theme was Memorial Day and the 4th of July. The students were first invited to see some skits and presentations about the holiday and then were taken out to the sports field to learn how to play softball.

Explaining the symbolism of the American flag.

An interesting thing happened during the presentation on the 4th of July. In order to explain the significance of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution, we put together a brief skit...150 years of history in 10 minutes--from Jamestown to Philadelphia. During the section on the Boston Tea Party, we had decided to use to use some tea boxes and throw them to the ground as a visual illustration. When the first box hit the ground, there was a collective gasp among the students. Getting a little carried away, one of the PCVs stomped on one of the boxes. A few people groaned, some turned away. This is how I learned that in Azerbaijan, tea is sacred. I can only imagine what would happen here in Georgia if I desecrated a bottle of wine, but I never realized that people could get so upset over tea! Fortunately, a few slapstick moves released the tension, we decided that the second time we would be more careful ("This was a protest. It was symbolic. It really upset the British. Understand? Understand??"). I'm not sure if I can look at a box of Earl Grey the same way again.

Final update: Baku

Azerbaijan, Part 2--Pit Stop on the Silk Road

2007-05-17T05:24:00.000-04:00

I'm posting these entries on Georgian time, so when I say "tomorrow," I actually mean "whenever I get around to it." Anyway, continuing with my travel story...

I left for Azerbaijan early in the morning with only a vague idea of where I was going. Tbilisi is close enough to the border that you can take a cab to the checkpoint for about $30. I crossed over with no problems. It is a bit disconcerting that the minute you leave Georgia, the Georgian language (which I slaved over for weeks) becomes utterly useless. Instead, I had to rely on Russian, which I found was being gradually displaced by Georgian. For the first day in Azerbaijan I found that Georgian words continued to come out of my mouth ("ara" instead of "nyet," "kho" instead of "da"), much to the confusion of the Azeris.

The first stop on my trip was Sheki, a town in the northwest corner of the country at the base of the Caucasus. Sheki is probably the second biggest tourist town in Azerbaijan, and for good reason. It is a gorgeous town with some amazing views of the mountains. The town was a stopping point on the historic Silk Road. Traders would often stop here en route from Europe to Asia. In the 18th and 19th century, the Sheiks built the caravansari (Caravan Palace), which was basically a hotel for traders. The place still functions as a hotel today.

The caravansarai.

In Sheki, I met up with a few Peace Corps Volunteers who had come to visit me in Gori last Christmas. Sheki is an ideal placement--lots of nature, clean streets, a 4-star hotel. They even worked out a deal with the hotel restaurant to get a weekly meal (actual cheeseburgers!) in exchange for free English lessons. Oh, the things we do for free food...

I spent a day and a half in Sheki and traveled with the local PCVs Charlie and Magda to a gathering on the other side of the country. We were planning on taking the night train to Baku and moving on from there. However, when Charlie called to order the tickets, the operator curtly stated that there were none and hung up. Now, I've traveled enough in former-Soviet countries to understand the train system (they're the same no matter where you go). Both he and I knew that this guy was lying...you could show up five minutes before and get a ticket. However, in Azerbaijan there seems to be a strong system of patronage. Charlie called up a friend and asked him to be "a sacrifice" for him--"be a good guy, do this for me, talk to your friend, pull some strings." The guy talked to a guy who talked to a guy... A few minutes later, Charlie got a call from an unidentified man at the train station, who begrudgingly told us to come and get the tickets.

Living in the Caucasus sometimes feels like being in an episode of The Sopranos. You talk to a guy, he gets things done, one of these days he's going to call on you for a favor...

Tomorrow: America Day just above of Iran...

Azerbaijan, Part 1--Getting In

2007-05-12T10:28:00.000-04:00

Last Tuesday I returned from a 6-day jaunt through Azerbaijan. First impressions: Everyone in Azerbaijan wears a suit and a mustache. There are few street dogs but lots of street cats. The streets are cleaner. There are no pigs (its Muslim country, after all). There is so much oil here that they're actually bathing in it, and yet there's still a gas shortage. I'll post the stories over the next three days...

My adventure began by attempting to get a visa. Recently, the Azeri government hiked the visa prices up to $100. I imagine it was out of reciprocity (since its absurdly expensive for their citizens to get a US visa), but the move will probably undermine all the recent attempts to build tourism. But, being a sucker and with the promise of free lodging, I trudged over to the Azerbaijan embassy, fought the crowds of Turkish laborers and Chinese merchants and started the process.

Outside the embassy, there is no line; the Georgian police guard would periodically come out of the security booth and yell at people if they were getting too pushy. A nervous looking Azeri man would come out and scan the crowd pushing against the gate. He would arbitrarily pick a few people to enter the building and lock the gate on the rest of us. This continued for about two hours until I finally managed to catch his eye. Realizing that I was a Westerner and that I was about to drop $100 (other countries pay less that fourty), I was rushed inside. A man looked over my papers and told me to return in three days. Lovely.

Following orders, I came back in three days. As I approached the embassy, it started to pour down rain, followed by wind, followed by snow (yes, snow in April). I had arrived about an hour before the gates opened to be sure that I was at the front of the line. I spent the next hour staring spitefully at the embassy, thinking "This better be the best freaking trip of my life." Of course, the whole process wasn't over...I dropped off my passport, was then sent across town to the Bank of Azerbaijan to pay for the visa, and returned at 4:00 to get finally get the visa. I wish I could say the visa was cool and colorful, but after all that effort, all I got was a boring blue stamp. A PC Volunteer who had spent six years in Russia once said that the Azeri embassy was one of the biggest bureaucratic messes he's ever seen; I'm inclined to believe him now.

Fortunately, the rest of the trip was more interesting, but more on that tomorrow...

PS--For photos of my trip to the Land of Fire, see my Flickr site.

Georgian Oom-pah-pah

2007-04-27T14:05:00.000-04:00

One of our favorite hangouts in Tbilisi is a South Ossetian restaurant in Old Town. Not only is the food good and cheap, but the beer is some of the best of the Georgian variety. While Georgian wine is the pride of the people, alas, Georgian beer is an afterthought. Of course, the Ossetian khachapuri is worth the cost of a round trip bus ticket to the capital. So, last weekend, when one of my Volunteer friends had to unexpectedly terminate his service, we decided to have an impromptu sending-off party Ossetian-style (minus the sedition).

On a weekend, the restaurant is crowded and smoky, and the large oak tables and stuffed animals on the walls give it the feel of a beer hall. Most of the table were taken up with men having supras. As the night wore on, some young men decided to sing some folk songs, which is typical during a long supra. They must have been a choir, because they were excellent and most of the tenants in the restaurant applauded at the end of the song. This continued for a while until another table decided to join in the act. So, the competition began. After a few more songs back and forth, we Americans decided to get in on the fun.

The only Georgian song that we all knew (or could at least fake our way through) was the Georgian national anthem, "Tavisupleba (Freedom)." So, we stood up and started singing. Suddenly, everyone got quiet and stared at us. There was a moment of hesitation in the restaurant while the Georgians tried to figure out what was going on. The table of young men next to us stood up and joined, and by the end of the song most of the restaurant was on their feet, raising their glasses, and singing along. All in the name of cultural understanding.

If you're curious about what the Georgian national anthem sounds like, here is a link to a YouTube video. This is a pretty fascinating clip and airs every night on Georgian television just before the station goes off the air, if I'm not mistaken. I'm a bigger fan of the anthem of the Georgian national football team, "Chven erti gundi vart (We Are One Team)." In the video, they're chanting "Sakartvelo! Sakartvelo!" or "Georgia! Georgia!" I need to find some white and red face paint so I can be this guy for Halloween next year...

PS--Thanks to Mike for his help in translating the word gundi. Even though he ET-ed, he's not that bad of a guy. Gone but not forgotten...at least until the new people show up...

The Rules of the Supra

2007-04-11T06:20:00.000-04:00

In previous posts, I've talked about about the traditional Georgian supra, but I don't think that I've detailed most of the rules and customs that are involved in the ritual. I attended an Easter supra last night with Biliki's staff. I'll use this occasion to explain what exactly goes on at the supra table.

The supra table is set.

The first thing you have to realize is that there are various levels of formality in a supra. The most formal supras usually mark weddings, baptisms or funerals. Usually these are men-only, the women serve and cook and may have their own supra in another room.* The level of formality also depends on the location (usually a village supra tends to be more formal) and the age of the participants (older = more formal). The Easter supra I attended was semi-formal; men and women were at the table together and there was a wide range in ages.

The guests take their places.

When the guests arrive, most of the food is already set out. Supra food varies by region, but almost always include chicken and ham, rice dishes, and assorted greens such as parsley or watercress. As the supra goes on, more food is brought out--lamb stew, khachapuri (cheese bread), and khinkali. At the end of the meal, the host brings out sweets for desert. The food keeps coming, but the plates are not removed; so, by the end of the meal, the plates of food are literally stack on top of each other.

The wine is as important as the food. Georgians claim that they invented toasting (as well as wine itself), so it is taken very, very seriously. At the beginning of the supra, the tamada (toastmaster; stress is on the first "a") is named. Usually, this is the most respected, most eloquent person at the table. The tamada is part ringmaster, part comedian, part storyteller, and part referee. He is expected to give beautiful toasts and keep the supra-goers entertained at all times. Most importantly, the tamada must always drink the most at the table but can never act drunk.

The tamada makes a toast.

There is a specific order toasting; again, this varies by region. However, all supras have at least one toast to the family, to women, to God, and to the dead. On the really important toasts (such as the ones to the dead), all men are expected to stand and balumde--drink "to the end." On the really, really important toasts or when the party gets really raucous, the tamada will bring out the horns. When supra-goers lock arms, drink from the horn, and kiss three times on the cheek, this is called vakhtanguri (the Peace Corps Volunteers have nicknamed it "VTG").

There are other important roles for the supra. The tamada can name a "vice-tamada." When there are women at the table, there is usually a female tamada who reinterates the toasts. The vice-tamada is responsible for keeping order at the table and making sure that everyone is paying attention during the toast. A tamada may call on an alaverdi, or someone designated to extend the toast. He or she must continue along the same lines of the toast before calling an end or passing it to another alaverdi. I suppose its a supra-equivalent of a filabuster. Finally, several people are named the merekipe, and are responsible for keeping the glasses filled with wine. Under no circumstances can you make a toast with a half-empty glass.

The aftermath...stacks of food and plates.

Supras usually last for hours and often dancing follows the food. In our case, we left after about three hours. I managed to make it through this supra without making too many mistakes. The supra table is one place in Georgia where the rules actually apply, but Georgian hospitality trumps tradition and they're forgiving when the foreign guest looks a little clueless.
__________
* It seems that one exception to the men-only rule is at a wedding supra, which is usually held at the family's house. The bride and groom sit at the main table with the wedding party beside them. Again, this varies depending on the family, but since weddings are less solemn occasions, the rules appear to be a little more flexible.

A Worker's Paradise

2007-03-28T06:04:00.000-04:00

Dear Comrades! I have returned from Chiatura, a true relic from Georgia's Soviet past. The city is a mining town; at one point it was the world's leading supplier of manganese. During Soviet times, it was a model city--and enjoyed some of the highest living standards of any town in the USSR. Of course, Chiatura didn't fare well in the transition and today it is one of the most depressed areas of Georgia. In 1989, the city had a population of 30 thousand, today its barely half that.

I went to visit two PC volunteers who are placed there. Life for them is quite different than it is in Gori; power outages are more frequent, there's no internet, and their water runs black from the manganese polution. On the other hand, housing prices are rock-bottom (thanks to the huge number of empty homes left after 1991). For about $25 a month, you can rent a four-room flat.

My hosts, high above their fair city.

Chiatura was built in the middle of a narrow gorge. The manganese mines are up at the top with the homes at the bottom. So, to make it easier for the townspeople to travel to and from work and get from one end of the gorge to the other, the Soviets rigged up a bunch of cable cars. The cars criss-cross the town from a central "station" downtown. The whole thing seems slightly dangerous; you never know if one of those rusty cables is going to snap and the car will come crashing down.

Chiatura's aging fleet of cable cars.

The town is full of reminders of its past. Aside from the occasional hammer and sickle and the obligatory Stalin memorial, the entire town has a distinct Soviet flavor. The downtown is built in the high Stalinist-style, complete with its own Gothic clock tower. As you approach Chiatura, you pass through an abandoned industrial wasteland. During the civil war in the '90s, the factories were looted and destroyed. In most cases, all that is left are crumbling concrete skeletons. But, surprisingly, some of the mines still function and a few of the factories are chugging along, despite the fact that all the windows are blown out and the roofs are collapsing.

Chiatora is not going to be in the next edition of Lonely Planet, but if you like your vacations...umm....Brezhnevian.....then book your flight now before the town crumbles away!
__________
PS--I've posted a bunch of pictures from the weekend on Flickr.

The Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner of Championebi

2007-03-12T05:34:00.000-04:00

Now that I am free cook for myself, I've found out what a pain it is to have to actually do it. In America, if I didn't have the energy to make a meal, I could just go down to Wendy's a get a sandwich. Unfortunately, thats not really an option here. You cook or you go hungry. So, Science be praised for pelmeni! These little dumplings are stuffed with meat and come frozen in every store in town. Boil the water, drop in the pelmini, and in five minutes you have a meal. Pelmeni is best served with a spoonful of sour cream and pepper.

Of course, pelmeni is a Russian dish. For those interested in a more authentic Georgian taste, there is khinkali. This dumpling is about the size of your fist and packed with meat, potatoes, or mushrooms. These are boiled and served with pepper. The meat filling is juicy, so the trick is to eat the khinkali without getting juice on your hands. It's much harder than it sounds. It's the ultimate drinking food here in Georgia; when the weather is warm, you'll find us out on the patio of the local restaurant having beers and a big plate of khinkali.

Khinkali and beer--it doesn't get any more Georgian.

When I first arrived in Georgia, I realized that khinkali bore a striking resemblance to buuz, a dumpling that I ate in Mongolia and Siberia. My theory is that when the Mongols invaded back in the 1200s, they brought buuz with them, and eventually buuz became khinkali. When I shared this with my language instructor, she quickly corrected me. It is the other way, around according to her; the Mongols came, brought Georgian women back with them, and the kidnapped brides introduced the food in East Asia. It seems that Georgian nationalism extends even into the kitchen. Mongols or Georgians--whoever invented it did a very tasty thing for the rest of us.

PCV Cribs

2007-03-03T06:13:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned before, I've moved into my own place. Its the moment every volunteer here looks forward to...the ability to control your life! Now that I've gotten settled in, I decided to post a few pictures so that you can see what my apartment looks like.

We'll start with the living room:

The metal box on the right is the gas heater--the Karma--perhaps the greatest invention known to man. This is what my living room looked like on the morning after my housewarming party:

A view from the living room window:

There's not much to my bedroom...the only furniture I have is bed and a wardrobe. The Georgian beds leave much to be desired--there are springs and not much else. I felt like I was sleeping on a chainlink fence until I discovered a second feather mattress in storage. This is me recovering from my housewarming party:

Here's my bathroom:

The plumbing and appliances are all from the Khruschev era. The water pump in the basement of the building is electric and is only activated when I flip a switch. Of course, the downside to this design is that whenever the pump is frozen or the electricity is off, I can't get water. So, to counter this, I must keep the bathtub full at all times. Its a brilliant system, really.

The house came with a spinner, which is used for laundry. Its about the size of a trash can and spins the clothes clean. I still have to wring out the clothes and dry them on a line, but the machine makes things a little easier. In case you were wondering: For that magic brightness, I wash my clothes with Barf...

Here's my kitchen. I lucked out when the previous tenants left a lot of their old utensils and appliances behind. It really gives the place a retro-Soviet feel.

Of course, no Cribs tour would be complete without a peak inside the fridge:

So that is my place, and all for only $70 a month. Housewarming gifts accepted, guest are welcome too!

Spreading the Football Gospel

2007-03-01T04:01:00.000-05:00

I have to hand it to my fellow G6 Tom--he managed to accomplish something I never thought possible: Explaining the rules of American football in a manner that a middle school girl could understand. American football is completely foreign to Georgians; most have never seen a game. Tom came from Kutaisi to give a presentation on the game at Gori's American Corner. In the middle of the presentation, he unrolled a hand-drawn football field and shuffled around M&M's on the "field" to illustrate plays and positions.

That seemed to do the trick. He ended the presentation with TV highlights from an NFL game and everyone understood enough to cheer at the touchdown. Of course, a tackle is universally understood. I only wish Tom had brought a ball to start a game up in the street. While he was at it, maybe he could have taught me how to throw a football.

On a side note, I have to say that the American Corner is probably the most effective means of diplomacy here in Georgia. The program is sponsored by the US State Department and it maintains a number of English libriaries in the major cities. It's a great opportunity for Georgians to come in and practice their language skills. The American Corner is also a great place for the Peace Corps volunteers to do special projects. At the Gori branch, we hold an English Club for middle-schoolers, test prep, a course on TOEFL and the GRE, and give presentations on random topics. So, as you're doing your taxes this month, think about how useful it is here in Gori!

Crazy January, Part III

2007-02-09T03:27:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay, folks. Yes, I'm still recapping January...

Life in Ajara
So, after a week away from Georgia, I reluctantly returned the same way I came. I stayed the night with my fellow PCV Tim, who lives in the seaside town of Gonio. The winters in Ajara (the region that borders the Black Sea and contains Gonio and Batumi) are normally very wet and chilly, but the area had been experiencing an unseasonably warm week. I spent the evening picking mandarins in short sleeves and looking out over the Black Sea. Like I said before, folks in Ajara have a hard life.

While I was away, I had missed two major stories: an outbreak of "rabbit fever"--yes, rabbit fever--and a minor international incident involving some weapons-grade uranium. But of course, the big news was the Georgian figure skater's performance at the European Championships (breaking news with live coverage!) and the demolition of a decrepit Soviet-era hotel in Batumi. Apparently I was so exhausted from my trip that I slept through the implosion. For Tim's take on all this, see this entry on his blog.

The next morning, I woke up to more typical Ajara weather. The Georgians call it booksi--a pleasant mixture of rain, sleet and high wind. All G6 volunteers were scheduled to attend a language conference on Monday morning, so Tim and I braved the elements to catch the night train to Tbilisi.

Conference Interrupted
The purpose of our language conference was to give us all a refresher in Georgian. Some people have been doing very well with their language since training ended; others (like myself) would prefer to forget that we ever attempted Georgian. However, the training was fairly helpful. I took a class on supra vocabulary and cleared up six months of confusion in 90 minutes. Finally, some good toasts--"To sweet memories, dear friends!"

On the final session of the first day, we heard running and screaming in the halls of the hotel. About fifteen minutes later, the Peace Corps staff entered our training room and told us that there was an "incident" and that we needed to leave the hotel immediately. We were given ten minutes to gather our things. We were herded down the stairs, through the lobby (filled with loitering police officers), and onto the street. Outside, our training director, Tengo, was screaming orders at the driver and us. At this point, no one was sure what was going on we just knew that Peace Corps wanted us out of the hotel in a hurry. We were piled into one of the Peace Corps' SUVs and took off into the rush hour traffic. It was apparent that our driver had been waiting for a long time to do some "emergency driving."

What caused the desperate evacuation of the hotel? Apparently the hotel owner's son--armed and dangerous--had ducked into the building while running from the police. The cops busted into the hotel lobby with guns drawn. At this point everyone was in training sessions, so we were oblivious to the chaos downstairs. The police trapped the criminal in the basement and gave us enough time to escape.

So ends my second encounter with the Georgian police. The rest of the conference was relocated to Peace Corps headquarters and you can rest assured that we will never be staying in the Hotel Kolkhi again.

Georgian Folk Dancing

2007-02-06T07:08:00.002-05:00

Today I finally broke down and joined YouTube, even though my internet connection is too slow to actually watch the videos. Anyway, here's a video of Georgian folk dancing, which I've been raving about since I got here. This video is obviously professionally done, but it gives you a good look at all the costumes, dance moves and music. It does get a little crazy at the end (think: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), but you get the picture. I think after watching this you will all agree that Georgian folk dancing is pretty bad ass, regardless of what they say in Bulgaria.

Note: This video was distributed freely by the Georgian Chamber of Commerce and Industry without any copyright notices.

Crazy January, Part II

2007-02-06T05:05:00.000-05:00

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

How long do you have to be in Georgia before Turkey feels like the heart of Western civilization? My guess is only seven months. I travelled to Istanbul in the most complicated manner possible. I left for Istanbul on a Saturday, having just gotten my stolen belongings back from the police and crashing on my sitemate Lee's floor for two nights. Unfortunately, the plane tickets from Tbilisi to Istanbul are well out of my budget; in an effort to cut costs, I decided to take part of the trip over land.

On Saturday night, I left Tbilisi on a train bound for Batumi, a major Georgian port city on the Black Sea that is a few kilometers from the Turkish border. I was surprised to arrive at 6:15 a.m. in a tropical city with palm trees and mandarin trees. Those Batumi folks have it hard. I took a minibus to the border town of Sarpi and by 7:00 (or 5:00 Turkish time), I was standing in Turkey. I split a cab to the next town with three Georgian women. As usual, they were impressed by my limited Georgian and they took me under their wing the rest of the way. Gotta love those maternal Georgians! From there, I took a 3-hour bus ride to Trabzon, a Turkish port city notorious for its high number of "Natashas" (Russian women of ill repute). The only part of the town I saw was the airport--Natasha-free, of course. After sitting there for hours, I finally got a flight to Istanbul. I arrived at my hotel by 11 p.m., after 24 hours of straight travelling.

So, the whole reason for me travelling to Istanbul was to meet Jessica. She arrived from Jordan the next morning and we spent most of the day touring the city. Oh yeah, something else happened too, but you should check out her blog for the details. Long story short, we're now engaged. We spent the week in the city, ate a lot of good food and relaxed. How nice it is to be in a city where its clean and people stand in lines and follow traffic laws! Istanbul is a beautiful, beautiful city and it was so nice to be there with Jessica. If you want a nice romantic getaway, go to Istanbul...its better than Paris or even Myrtle Beach. Here's a photo of Jessica and me in Istanbul at the spot where I proposed; I posted more pictures on Flickr:

Next update: The trip home and more robbers...

Crazy January, Part I

2007-02-03T02:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone! Its been a while since I've posted, but a lot has happened in the past three weeks...a lot. So I figured that I'd break things up and post the stories separately--mainly because I'm lazy. Anyway, here's what happened first...

CSI: Georgia
About three weeks ago, just days before I was leaving for Turkey, I returned to my host family to find that all my electronics had been stolen from out of my room. My laptop, my sitemate's laptop (which I was holding for safekeeping), my digital camera and my computer--all gone. My door had been locked but the exterior window had been opened from the inside. After a bit of panicking, I called up my host family, who then panicked themselves. I pulled myself together and called the Peace Corps safety and security officer. When we first arrived in Gori, we were given the personal phone number of the police chief. Fortunately, I still had it written down and I had my host brother call him.

Within fifteen minutes of my call, there were eight police officers standing in our house. A team began dusting for fingerprints another questioned me and the host family. When I initially called the police, I wasn't expecting anything to come out of it, so I was shocked when my room turned into a full-on crime scene. After about an hour and as more and more police officers arrived at my house, I was told that I would have to go down to the station to file an official report. So, I crammed into a Lada with seven other officers and went downtown.

I arrived at the police station at about 10 p.m. After sitting and waiting for some time, a detective came in to interview me. Legally, they needed a translator present, so they had brought in an old retired English teacher. The poor woman had been woken up by the police, dragged into the station and forced to translate even though her English was barely good enough to exchange pleasantries with me. The detective would ask her a question, she would look sheepishly at me, and would mumble something out in broken Geo-glish. Finally, we both got frustrated and spoke to each other in Russian.

I returned home at 1 a.m., with everything in an uproar and my host father and brother still at the police station. I couldn't sleep for most of the night, counting up the losses in my head again and again. The next morning, the Safety & Security officer called me to tell me that the police had found my stuff. The culprit was my host cousin, Giorgi, who came to the house about once a week. He was planning on selling my laptop on the black market. Thanks, man. The police had put 20 officers on the case that night and they had managed to find my things by 4 a.m. Giorgi had entered my room through an interior window, taken my things, and left through the outside. He also left his fingerprints all over the room for the police to find. He's facing 5-8 years for this--Georgian law is very strict. Unfortunately for him, the Ministry of Internal Affairs knew about the case; the deputy minister was on the phone regularly with the Gori chief. Theives beware: The Georgian government is looking after the Peace Corps volunteers.

So, even though the police found my things and they knew it was mine, I had to wait two days to reclaim it. I took the opportunity to teach my counterpart the phrase "Jumping through hoops." There's always some teachable moment here in Georgia. The good news is that I have my stuff back and I was given permission to move into my own apartment!

That's all for now. Monday's update: My trip to Istanbul...

It's Christmas time again, and again, and...

2007-01-11T05:36:00.000-05:00

Call me Scrooge, but I'm about ready for the holiday season to be over. Yes, its still going on, long after you all in American have taken out the Christmas tree and put the decorations back in the attic. Because the Orthodox Church continues to use the Julian calendar, many of the religious holidays are about two weeks after their Western equivalents. As I found out last Sunday, Georgian Christmas is much more religious than our American holiday. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the Orthodox Georgians hold an Advent fast--no meat, eggs or dairy. At midnight on Christmas Eve, the fast is lifted and (of course) the supras begin. My family and I had a huge supra; Dato (my Gori host father) brought out the best wine. Rather than fight the crowds at the midnight mass in Gori's cathedral, we settled instead to watch the coverage from Tbilisi. Aside from the obligatory chanting and prayers, the service involved a huge procession of Georgian flags through the streets of Tbilisi. The next day, I saw a similar one in Gori.

On Christmas Day, Dato and I went to his home village of Ateni for what I thought would be a Christmas celebration. In reality, it was a half Christmas-half funeral supra. It was held in the home of the deceased; all the furniture had been moved and the family brought in long tables. As is the case with most of the formal supras I've been to, the feast was men-only and all the women of the town did the cooking and the serving. Large, formal supras are difficult for foreigners and funeral supras are especially bad. This is because they last for hours and you have no viable excuse not to participate in the toasting. You can't really say: "No, I will not drink the the memory of your beloved aunt." Instead, you have to master the delicate art of faking your way through toasts--sipping and dumping when nobody is looking, discretely trading full glasses for empty glasses. And on this particular day, I failed the test miserably. Perhaps I got carried away by the yuletide spirit or misjudged the potency of the wine, but I don't remember much after about 4 o'clock that afternoon. Fortunately, Dato was ready to leave by the time I started wandering through the chicken coop. Next year, I'll be more careful.

The holidays aren't over yet! You can't have a second Christmas without a second New Years (January 13), and Epiphany (January 19) is right around the corner! Maybe, maybe, the Christmas trees will be taken down by February.

Georgian New Years

2007-01-03T04:19:00.000-05:00

I have survived Georgian New Years, after four supras and more wine toast than I really care to think about. Is it possible to die from eating too much? I think I came close to finding out this week. All things considered, the holiday was an interesting experience, and next Sunday we can do it all again for Orthodox Christmas!

The Azeris come to Gori
Since it’s the holidays, almost everyone has left the country for a vacation. Here in the Caucasus, this seems to mean you move the next country west. So, the majority of the Georgian volunteers went westward to Turkey, and a large contingent of volunteers from Azerbaijan came over to Georgia. I don’t know what the Armenian volunteers did—come to think of it, I haven’t met any volunteers from Armenia…are you guys out there?

I played host to four of these volunteers and tried to show them a good time in Gori. They got to enjoy the fine amenities of the Intourist Hotel—unfortunately that did not include heat. They were lucky enough to get an English-speaking tour guide in the Stalin Museum. We had a mini-supra at Orbis, our favorite restaurant in town. It’s not uncommon at Orbis to have Georgians from neighboring tables buy us drinks. That night was no exception as one Georgian brought a pitcher of wine and sat with us. He attempted to communicate with his limited English and seemed a bit confused when the other volunteers spoke some Azeri during the toasts. Our friend didn’t want to leave after the wine was finished and became a bit sloppy, so I discretely told the waitress to deal with him. When the man’s friends came to carry him off, he shook his thumb at me for telling on him (that’s the Georgian equivalent of the middle finger). Very un-Georgian…I wasn’t too concerned since his friends seemed very apologetic. I think he also realized his gaffe because he returned about ten minutes later with another pitcher of wine and hugged me. The Azerbaijani volunteers seemed unfazed—apparently stuff like that happens all the time in Azerbaijan.

The next day, we went to a cave city outside of Gori. Uplistseke is an ancient city that was built into the sandstone cliffs. A large portion of it was rediscovered in 1920 when a large earthquake sheered off a hillside. There are large underground rooms and the remains of ornate arches and pillars. Walking through Uplistseke, I was reminded at the age and resilience of Georgian culture. Some things continue through to today—in Uplistseke archeologists uncovered a wine press and cellar. Of course, some things do change as an Orthodox church now stands on the site of a pagan temple. Here is a picture from Uplistseke:

The Main Event
After the Azerbaijani volunteers returned to Tbilisi, I went to Khashuri to celebrate with my training host family. On the morning of the 31^st, we visited my host father Zura’s cousin to mark the anniversary of Zura’s uncle’s death. Supra #1 followed…

By the time I recovered from the first supra, it was 8:00 pm and time to start the New Years festivities. It is traditional at a New Years supra to slaughter and roast a large pig. The pig’s head serves as the centerpiece. Thankfully, my host family skipped that tradition (the thought of being served pig snout didn't really appeal to me). Instead we had mtsvadi, or pork kebabs, and a table full of sweets. By 10 pm, much to his wife's dismay, Zura brought out the hanchi (the horn) and passed it around the table for a toast to the new year. Its a Georgian tradition to shoot off fireworks at midnight, and everyone in town had bought some. As the clock struck twelve, we ran out and shot off about ten Roman candles. It was quite beautiful as all of Khashuri erupted with fireworks and rockets.

Another important Georgian tradition is the mekvle (pronounced: mek-vlay)--or the first guest of the new year. At about 12:15, after the fireworks ended, the host family and I walked across the street to be the mekvle to our neighbors. Supra #3 began and didn't end until 2:30. Surprisingly, I managed to wake up and make it back to Gori by noon the next day. Unbeknown to me, I was the first guest for my Gori family...so, being their mekvle, I was treated to supra #4. Nothing quite like starting off your morning with five wine toasts.

Gilotsavt all...I wish you the best this new year!

Biliki's Holiday Productions

2006-12-28T05:59:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and is ready for the new year! I returned from a Christmas vacation in a skiing village and will work until New Year's Eve. The holiday decorations are just coming out here. Gori has been decorated in lights and a 30-foot fake Christmas--err...New Year's--tree is in Stalin Square. At Biliki, the children participated in a New Years pageant. Santa (or Tovis Papa) showed up and gave all the children gift bags. I've posted a bunch of pictures from the celebration on Flickr.

On a different note, Biliki presented a play to Gori youth about life on the streets. It was written and performed by a theater company from Tbilisi and was sponsored by UNICEF, the British Council and BP. I was surprised at the frank portrayal of poverty, prostitution, drug use, and AIDS. Georgians tend to view these topics as taboo, especially for teenagers. The second half of the play was the most interesting, when the audience participated by making decisions on behalf of the characters in hopes of avoiding a tragic ending. Here are some pictures from our production:

The basic premise of the play involved three teenagers living on the streets who were being exploited by some sort of gangster (the guy who looks like Tyler Durden) and his girlfriend. There was a subplot with a crazy TV reporter (the woman locked in the cage); I didn't really understand that one, but it did provide some comic relief. The first half ended like a Greek tragedy--one of our heroes found out he had AIDS and went crazy, the second died of an overdose, and the heroine sells herself off. Fortunately, with the audience participation, things turned out a little better the second time around.

Tomorrow will be the last day of work before the New Year's holiday. I'll be heading off to have an authentic Georgian celebration with my old host family in Khashuri. Should be a good time...Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday, Uncle Joe!

2006-12-23T05:44:00.000-05:00

December 20 brought an unexpected treat--Stalin's birthday! Die-hard communists and nostalgic pensioners gathered in Gori to mark the occasion of the birth of the vozhd'. I was unaware of the holiday until noon. I was walking through the center of town and noticed a large gathering around the Stalin statue. Red flags, portraits of Stalin, and old Soviet music--what a day to not have my camera! I ran and got my sitemate Mark (fortunately he had his camera); we went back out to the square and snapped a few pictures. After the rally at the statue, the crowd marched down Stalin Avenue to the museum and birthplace. Next year I'll be more prepared, but here are a few pictures:

The rally at the Stalin statue. Notice the portrait of Stalin being held above the crowd.

The march down Stalin Avenue.

My Six Month-iversary

2006-12-20T05:18:00.001-05:00

It's been six months since I arrived in Georgia. That means in a few weeks, I will already be done with the first quarter of my Peace Corps service. So...what have I accomplished thus far? Well, for starters, I know enough Georgian to order a meal, ask directions, and stop a minibus to throw up. I've also managed to stop bathing more than once a week and wear the same outfit for two. I no longer get annoyed by daily power outages and I'm not terrified by Georgian drivers. I've learned how to avoid street dogs, drunk vagrants, and rampaging bebias. I've spent countless hours drinking wine and toasting "to friendship between America and Georgia." Perhaps most importantly, I've learned how to cook some delicious food.

Whats most interesting, however, is how Georgia has changed over these past six months. Since this summer, schools have been renovated, streetlights repaired, and streets paved. The pedestrian tunnels in Gori have reopened and no longer smell like a toilet. In the center of town, there is a beautiful new bank, just across from Stalin's statue. Things are improving, and I'm glad that I'm here to witness it. Now if they can do something about the gas shortages...

Merry Christmas! = Shobas Gilotsavt!
The holidays are fast approaching and its amazing how little it feels like Christmas. Aside from the warm front which has pushed the temperature back up into the 50s, there are almost no holiday decorations anywhere. No Christmas music, no Christmas trees, wreaths, bells, etc, etc. Of course, one of the reasons for this may be that Christmas is not December 25, but January 7, according to the Orthodox calendar. Here in Georgia at least, there's still 18 shopping days left until X-mas!! Another reason is that New Years Day is a much bigger holiday than Christmas. Thank the Soviets for this--since the USSR was officially atheist, New Years replaced the religious holiday. So, Georgians have "New Years trees" and give "New Years presents." Don't worry, Santa (or "Father Frost") still comes for New Years. Back in the day, everyone tuned their radios to listen to the chimes in the Kremlin strike midnight; nowadays, all of Gori will gather under the Stalin statue to ring in the New Year. Warms the heart, doesn't it?

As for me, I celebrated Christmas with members of Gori's "English Club" by presenting a very animated reading of The Night Before Christmas. I have a feeling they understood very little (does anyone know what a sugar plum is?), but they laughed when I explained what "shook like a bowl full of jelly." I plan on going skiing for Western Christmas, spending New Years with my old host family in Khashuri, and going to church for Eastern Christmas. Why settle for only one Christmas?! I scoured the Internet to post a good, Georgian New Years e-card, but I had to settle for this kitchy little thing. Needless to say, you don't see many of these anymore:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, dear comrades!

My Friend, The Petchi

2006-12-05T07:28:00.000-05:00

I blink and it's already December. It feels like training ended yesterday. The temperature holds in the low 40s-upper 30s during the day and dips below freezing at night. Not quite a Siberian winter but it's getting there. One of the problems I'm encountering is the lack of central heating. Most Georgian homes don't have gas heating, and even if they did, the gas is so expensive at the moment that nobody could actually afford it. Insulation is nonexistent (I wonder, what did the Soviets have against that?) So, our homes are heated by the petchi--a wood stove. My host family has one petchi, placed in the living room, that is stoked all day. These things are surprisingly efficient; when it really gets going, it's almost uncomfortably hot. Life in the house now revolves around the petchi--we sit around it, cook food on it, use it to dry our clothes. Unfortunately, while the living room stays piping hot, my bedroom hovers around freezing. The Peace Corps has issued all volunteers a heavy-duty sleeping bag, which keeps me warm at night, but its never a good feeling to wake up in the morning and see your breath. One day I'll break down and buy a kerosene heater, or maybe my own petchi. I have an abundance of things to burn--stacks of old Newsweek magazines, training handouts, old letters. And, if I'm really in a bind, there's always the Peace Corps' Volunteer Handbook.

Peace Corps in the 21st Century- The most recent edition of the worldwide Peace Corps newsletter was devoted to the communication revolution and its effects on the volunteer experience. Gone are the days when it takes weeks to communicate with the folks back home. Even the volunteers deep in the jungle have cell phones. However, according to a survey, only 9% of volunteers have daily Internet access at their sites; 67% have no access at all. So I guess I'm in a lucky (albeit spoiled) group of volunteers. But before all you old guard former volunteers howl that Peace Corps has gone soft, there's still a huge technology gap--as I type this, I'm dressed in five layers and huddled beside my antique wood stove.

Best....week......ever...........

2006-11-24T02:03:00.000-05:00

Gilotsavt everyone, happy Thanksgiving! I’ve just wrapped up a really busy week here and I think it’s probably been the best seven days since I arrived in Georgia. Much to talk about, I’ll break up my anecdotes to keep things in a logical order. Also, check out my Flickr site; I’ve uploaded more pictures than you can shake a jokhi at (I've uploaded about 30 pics).

Tbilisi: "Paris of the Caucasus”
Things started off last Wednesday when I traveled to the capital for the All-Volunteer Conference. The main purpose of this once-a-year gathering is for the Peace Corps to talk to us about safety and security issues. Basically, it’s a two day event to imagine all the various scenarios that would result in our evacuation. Last year, apparently it was bird flu; this year, its war with South Ossetia.

The conference was a lot of fun, despite all the gloom and doom in the sessions (and all the flip-chart drawings). I got a chance to catch up with all the volunteers that I haven’t seen since August. But most importantly, we got a chance to indulge in some foreign food. We discovered restaurants with Chinese food, Thai food, and a place called “The Hangar,” which is an Irish pub and sports bar. I realize that this may sound insignificant, but you have to remember that the two McDonalds in Tbilisi are the only American restaurants in the entire country. There are rumors of a new Mexican restaurant, I’ll have to investigate.

I also got to enjoy Tbilisi at night—this was the first time that I spent the night, and our hotel was on the main street. The city is surprisingly beautiful at dark; the powers-that-be have spent a lot of time and money strategically placing spotlights throughout town. There’s also a TV tower on a hilltop that you can see throughout the city. It’s been decked out with pulsating lights, like the Eiffel Tower. I think that it may cause seizures in children who stare at it too long.

On Saturday night, we all gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner at the hotel. Our director had ordered seven turkeys from America and each volunteer was assigned a dish to prepare (mine was corn). It was a full holiday spread—complete with stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. It amazed me how well things turned out, considering the lack of ingredients. I also took great pleasure in seeing the Georgian PC staff sample American food for a change. The approached the cranberry sauce with the same skepticism that we did with the cows’ tongue.

Back to High School
After the Peace Corps conference, I traveled up into the mountains to Bakuriani to help my organization with a high school leadership conference. For those of you who remember, I went to Bakuriani last summer during a break in the Pre-Service Training. This time, I stayed at a much nicer hotel and there was eight inches of snow on the ground. Two months ago, my NGO had announced a competition for the best students in Gori to join the “Leaders’ Network.” The idea was that Biliki would select one person from each school (they were all 14-15 years old), train them in leadership skills and help them form clubs and conduct service projects in their schools. In America, this kind of stuff is everywhere, and I remember how much of this was offered to me under the auspices of making my resume impressive to college admissions boards. However, here in Georgia, its fairly new and cutting-edge stuff.

My main responsibility at the conference was to present a lecture on volunteerism. During this, I realized that my presence was leading to a misconception among the students. When we were discussing the question of why someone would want to volunteer, all of their answers were basically: “So that they can travel and see the world!” Hmmm…I never realized that the life of a volunteer could be so glamorous. Fortunately, the training director caught on to this and guided the discussion into more realistic territory. Then I dropped the bomb: “You know, you can volunteer in your hometown—in Gori.” It was amazing what a revelation this was to them; it shows how new the concept of volunteering is in Georgia.

Team building games are universal...here we are playing "helium stick."

Watching the group come together was great fun. Every night we had a parti, where the students lead skits, contests and dancing. As the sole American, I had a place of honor in everything and all the girls wanted to dance with me. Lela, one of my coworkers, was determined to teach me Georgian folk dancing. Thank goodness I left my humility in America! Georgian dancing involves a lot of kicking, jumping, and mock sword fighting. Fortunately, we left the swords at home, but I spent a great deal of time running in circles and spinning in one place. The dance steps move so fast that I could never get the hang of it. Nevertheless, on the last night of the conference I made my big premiere as a Georgian dancer. It’s best not to talk about it…

On Wednesday, I reluctantly left my heated hotel room (with hot water and a shower!) and returned to Gori.

St. George’s Day
There was more excitement awaiting me in Gori…one of the most important days of the year—November 23, St. George’s Day. It should come as no surprise that George is the patron saint of Georgia (and for those keeping track—England, the city of Moscow, the US Armed Forces, and maybe some island in the Caribbean). By a fortunate coincidence, this year, the feast day fell on the same day as Thanksgiving. So, I and the entire city of Gori, walked up the side of a nearby mountain to an ancient church and shrine to pray and give thanks.

The church, Gori Jvari, is perched high on a cliff and can be seen from anywhere in the city. Thanks to the ankle deep mud, I took about an hour to reach the top. I went with my friend Dima, who is the head of another youth organization in Gori. Dima is twenty-five years old and had he been born in America, he probably would be the president of the most popular fraternity on campus. He had to greet everyone on his way up and drank wine at every picnic supra that we passed.

Approaching Gori Jvari. That's the Caucasus in the background.

The crowd grew as we neared the top. Many people were there to sacrifice their animals for a feast; tradition dictates that they take their livestock, walk them around the church three times, and slaughter them just outside the church grounds. As we walked up towards the church, we were joined by men pulling their sheep on leashes and women carrying chickens upside-down by their legs. I followed Dima as he walked around the church three times, kissing each corner. As we left, we passed the area where the sheep were being killed. It was not a scene for the weak of heart—sheep were led from the church, their throats were cut, they were hung on a rack, skinned and butchered. The butcher was working overtime, piling up heads and skins (no doubt someone was going to have a nice sweater from all the wool). I could keep my eyes of the spectacle. It made me realize how disconnected we Americans are from our food source. Come on guys, think about where that shrink-wrapped meat really comes from!

Dima and his following continued up the side of the mountain. We made a picnic at the top underneath a giant steel cross…if there’s one thing that Georgians love more than building churches on the sides of dramatic cliffs, it’s building huge crosses on the tops of mountains. What a great way to spend Thanksgiving—high on the top of a mountain with a breathtaking view of the Caucasus, drinking wine and teaching the Georgians American slang. I hope to do it again next year!

Some Random Anecdotes

This week also marked the first time that I’ve had a shower more than twice a week. My record is one week without a bath, although some legendary Peace Corps volunteer went for six whole weeks…don’t worry, I won’t be trying to break that record.
November 23 was also the third anniversary of the Rose Revolution. In 2003, Mikhail Saakashvili and his supporters stormed the parliament and deposed President Edward Shevardnadze (who had also been the Foreign Minister of the USSR). Shevardnadze fled after the revolutionaries broke open the door to his chambers. Carrying a rose, Saakashvili took his place; no one resisted as he finished drinking Shevardnadze’s tea.
To mark this anniversary, President Saakashvili and President Yushenko of Ukraine (you may remember him of Orange Revolution fame) unveiled a giant golden statue of—you guessed it—Saint George in Tbilisi. Yushenko also attended the baptism of Saakashvili’s child and was the godfather. It was quite a symbolic event, drawing Ukraine and Georgia even closer together. I can’t help but feel bad for Vladimir Putin though; I doubt he even got an invitation to the party.
Yesterday, after handing me a kartopili (fried potato cake), the woman at the bakery where I frequent tried to set me up with the cashier. She was quite sly about it too—“Do you want anything else? Meat pie? Cheese bread? A wife?” Those Georgian women are tricky and they’re determined matchmakers.

Me and Ilia

2006-11-11T03:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I went to see His Holiness and Beatitude, Archbishop of Mtskheta-Tbilisi and Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Ilia II. In other words, I saw the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ilia II is the leader of the Church, kind of like Georgia's pope. As 80% of all Georgians are Orthodox, its a very big deal whenever the Patriarch comes into town.

It was a commemoration day for a local saint and my supervisor and I travelled to a cathedral outside of Gori for the celebration. When we arrived, the ceremony was already underway. The Patriarch was seated on a throne in the center of the cathedral. He was surrounded by bishops and all of them were wearing golden crowns and gold-embroidered robes. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera--I felt it was a little rude for a foreigner to come into a religious ceremony and start snapping pictures--but I found a photo of Ilia II on the internet, wearing a similar robe and crown.

There were hundreds of people packed into the church and since we had arrived late, we were at the edge of the crowd. I stood on my tiptoes and even then, I could only see the top of the bishops' crowns. After about twenty minutes of this, the people around me realized that I was American. Suddenly, a woman grabbed my hand and began pulling me into the crowd. "Make way for the American!" she yelled. We worked our way into the middle; as we pushed people out of the way, nobody seemed to be mad. It was the code of Georgian hospitality: the guest always gets the best seat in the house. So, before I knew it, someone put a candle in my hand, and I found myself standing in front of the Patriarch.

The ceremony continued for about three hours; there are no pews in Georgian churches, and so everyone stands the entire time. The crush of people was so tight that if I had fainted or fallen asleep, I would have never hit the ground. It was all but impossible for me to follow the service, the liturgy is a lot different from Western churches. The Patriarch would put on a robe, turn and bless the crowd, turn to the altar, put on a different robe, turn and bless the crowd, etc., etc. The church's ceremonies have been preserved for centuries, so with the exception of the occasional cell phone ring, it was almost like being in the middle ages. The music and chanting was all a cappella (there are no organs in Orthodox churches). After a while, I got used to the rhythm of the chanting and the blessings, the incence and the praying. As the Patriarch left the building, the crowd pushed and shoved to touch him. I stood back and watched...in Georgia, religion is a very serious matter.

Motivation

2006-11-06T07:08:00.000-05:00

Here's something that my sitemate Mark made to remind us of the greatest virtue of a Peace Corps Volunteer:

Halloween: Part II

2006-10-31T07:03:00.000-05:00

To celebrate Halloween here at Biliki, we carved pumpkins and talked about "trick-or-treating." The kids were really excited (and a quite a handful). Many of them have never carved a pumpkin before. Alas, here in Georgia, October 31 is just another day. Apparently safety rules in Georgia are a little more relaxed and the teachers didn't seem to mind the kids were playing around with sharp knives. Fortunately nobody cut off anything and we now have two jack-o-lanterns. Some pictures:

Cleaning out the pumpkin. I've never seen a green pumpkin before.

One down!

Finished product--named "Bombora" and "Casandara."

Halloween and other bizarre happenings...

2006-10-30T03:24:00.000-05:00

It was Halloween weekend here in Georgia and while Georgians don't celebrate the holiday, we Americans have made it an excuse to throw a large party. It has become a tradition to have the party here in Gori. So it's a nice break for the party to come to me for a change.

Things started off Friday night as volunteers began to work their way to Gori. I met up with a few for dinner at our favorite restaurant. On Friday nights, it seems that Orbi's Restaurant is filled with military men having supras. While under normal circumstances, this would be a sketchy prospect, in Georgia its a good deal...if there's one thing that drunk Georgian men love doing more than talking to Americans, its buying Americans drinks. So, by the end of the night we ended up with three pitchers of wine and three large servings of mitsvadi (grilled kebabs) compliments of some Georgian soldiers. The only catch was that the female volunteers at the table had to endure their flirting. Thanks for taking one for the team, ladies.

The main event of the weekend was the big costume party at the Intourist Hotel. The hotel the perfect setting for such an event--big and creepy, its former nineteenth-century grandeur is crumbling away one giant chunk at a time. The hotel is across the street from the Stalin's birthplace and his museum; I'm sure it hosted many a Politburo during the Stalinist glory days. We took over the entire hotel and since our group outnumbered the beds, the ladies who worked there were kind enough to line up a bunch of mattresses in the third floor foyer. The whole place looked a bit like a disaster shelter.

The costumes were all surprisingly good, considering there's not exactly a one-stop shop for costumes here in Georgia. A few people raided their local theater and the English teachers with a lot of time on their hands managed to sew whole costumes... A few volunteers took some inspiration from our current country--we had a marshutka driver, a Sakartvelo football fan, a walking Mono telephone card, and, of course, Joe Stalin. We had a group come as characters from "Pasión de gavilanes," the Spanish soap opera that is all the rage here (we've nicknamed the show "Sexy Cowboy Ranch"). The Intourist staff seemed quite amused with the parade of Americans dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sgt. Pepper, the cast of "Arrested Development," a gypsy, Kim Jong Il, pirates and rednecks. My own costume, I'm sorry to say, was a letdown. I gave up on my original idea when I couldn't find face paint. In a last-minute effort, I threw on a plaid jacket and a red hat and called myself a lumberjack.

Here's a picture, I will post the rest on Flickr:

I'm going to continue educating Georgians about the joy of Halloween tomorrow when I carve pumpkins with the kids at Biliki. Should be a good time. Take care and happy Halloween!

Water and Wine

2006-10-17T08:07:00.001-04:00

I believe that the rainy season has hit. Yesterday marked four straight days of rain. There's an overall lack of drains here in Gori, so I was seriously contemplating building a raft. Fortunately the weather has cleared, although the temperature has dropped considerably. One of the problems with rainy days is that the power has a tendency to go out. The Georgian power grid really deserves an entry unto itself; for now I'll say that I spent most of yesterday sitting at my desk, staring at the light bulb, and trying to get the electricity back through mind control ("The power will come on...NOW......The power will come on............NOW"). I asked the office manager why the power always goes out when it rains, but she insisted that the rain wasn't to blame. "Oh no," she said. "It's not the rain. It's the Russians." I still think there's an undeniable link between rain and no power, but I saved that argument for another day. Maybe she's right. After all, she's lived here longer that I have. Maybe there really are nefarious ex-KGB operatives snipping power lines in the middle of rain storms.

Fall not only brings rain but also the grape harvest. All of Georgia is awash in wine. I returned to my training family last weekend and was treated to a large dinner. Aside from the actual grapes on the table, I was given grape juice, grape wine, a grape desert made from the juice, and some type of half-fermented wine. So many grapes...it would have shocked Bacchus. For those of you who are interested, this is a really good article from the New York Times about the Georgian wine harvest and Georgia's efforts to bust into the Western wine market. Look out, you may soon see a bottle of Alazani Valley's finest at Harris Teeter. Perhaps it will come with a ram's horn.

Next update: The 2006 Trans-Caucasian Halloween Party

Strange Foods

2006-09-29T07:21:00.000-04:00

Last night at dinner, I found a chicken head in my soup. This particular soup--or really more of a stew--had large pieces of meat with bone. You take the meat out, put it on your plate, and eat it like you would normally eat a piece of chicken. Now, this was the second day of this soup, we were eating leftovers, and to be honest, it wasn't bad. I stuck my fork into a large piece of meat and I was pulling it out of the broth when I realized that it was staring back at me. It was the whole tavi; complete with eyes, beak, and that floppy thing on the top of the head.

I sat contemplating this head for a while, considering whether or not this was normal. I decided that this was decidedly not normal, so I turned to my host sister, pointed to the soup and said, "Nino, this is a head." She looked up and said, "No, it's probably just the neck." "No," I told her, "come and see--here's the beak, here are the eyes..." She casually got up, walked into the kitchen and brought out a chicken leg. "Here, eat this. This is tasty." Since I was hungry and realized that it was too late to get anything else, I ate the drumstick obediently, trying to ignore the head floating in the soup.

In more appetising news, it's the grape harvest. My host father is hard at work picking and preparing for the wine. Here's a picture of the process:

Birthdays and Marshutkas

2006-09-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

Salam, everyone...

This weekend I traveled to Kutaisi (pronounced Koo-tai-see), Georgia's second-largest city and home to a number of Peace Corps Volunteers. We gathered to celebrate the September birthdays, four in all. On Friday after work, my boss took me to the highway, where we stood on the side of the road in the pouring rain waiting to flag down a bus that would take me. Fortunately since Gori is on the main highway between Tbilisi and Kutaisi, the buses pass about every fifteen minutes. Still, it was long enough to get completely soaked.

As I arrived in Kutaisi, the clouds magically cleared and the rain stopped. Eighteen other volunteers had travelled to Kutaisi and we were joined by the five living in town. After gathering near the bus station, we hiked up to a guesthouse on a hill high above the city. Not far from where we were staying are the ruins of the 11th century Bagrati Cathedral. Here's a picture I took:

Bagrati is still a functioning church, there were several icons and an altar inside. The girls had to cover their heads with scarves (a common practice in Orthodox churches) and the gate keeper followed us around suspiciously. We arrived just in time for a beautiful sunset:

After our visit to the cathedral, we returned to the guesthouse for a birtday supra. Giorgi, our host brought out the wine and the food; according to Georgian custom, each birthday guest gets a toast and they drink from "the horn"--a hollowed out ram's horn filled with wine. To drink from the horn, one must lock arms with another, "balumde" (drink to the end), and kiss three times on the cheeks. This can be a dangerous prospect at Georgian supras because the more you drink from the horn, the more affectionate the kisses become. Dancing followed the toasting and everything was going quite well until Giorgi brought in the largest rabbit I've ever seen. No one is really sure why this happened, but I thought that we were all about to witness the sacrificial slaughter of this rabbit.

The rabbit was spared (for now at least) and the dancing continued well into the night. It was raining the next day, but we ventured out into town. The prospects of sightseeing were not exactly great and after being soaked and harrassed by gypsies, most of us headed back to the guesthouse. That evening, we threw another supra at a restaurant to avoid a visit from one of Giorgi's rabbits.

On Sunday, I travelled home to Gori. I took a "marshutka," or a minibus. Marshutkas are the main way to get around in Georgia. They seat about fifteen people but usually carry around twenty. For marshutka drivers, speed limits and traffic laws are more of a suggestion rather than a rule. Seated in a packed marshutka beside a chain-smoker and an old bebia, travelling at the speed of sound through the mountains, I suddenly felt car sick.

I've heard that under great stress, people are capable of the impossible and I now belive that to be true...I was suddenly able to scream fluent Georgian: "Stop this car now or I will throw up!" The marshutka came to a screaching halt and I ran off into the ditch. When I returned, I suddenly found everyone in the marshutka waiting to help me. I turned to everyone and said, "Bad food" (unfortunately my Georgian had returned to its original intermediate-low level). They all nodded in agreement. The women in the marshutka kept checking on me all the way to Gori. Sometimes living in a communal society isn't a bad thing.

That's all the news here, I've posted more pictures from Kutaisi and the supra on Flickr. Take care!

Does my insurance cover flea collars?

2006-09-13T09:05:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone! Fall has officially arrived in Georgia. Last week, the temperatures suddenly dropped--from a high of 100 degrees to something around 65 or 70. Its been a shock to the system, but not all that unwelcome. It's nice to be able to sleep without sweating everywhere. I wonder, though, how some of the Georgians manage to survive winters. Yesterday, as the temperature dipped to around 50, I walked into the living room to find my host sister dressed wrapped in a blanket and shivering. They've been complaining all week about the cold.

In other news, I get to add one more parasite to my list: fleas. While undressing the other day, I noticed a flea crawling up my undershirt. I found two more and realized that the line of bites along my left arm where not mosquito bites, as I had thought. How I got fleas is beyond me, but I suspect it may have something to do with the hundreds of stray animals all over the city. Not to worry, fleas are relatively harmless, the worst thing they ever did was spread the Black Plague. I'm just glad I don't have lice (yet).

Life at work is going well, we are deep in the middle of strategic planning for the year. I've been joking with the director that getting the group to write the plan is a bit like getting someone to eat their brussels sprouts...I've been pushing it for a week now! But, fortunately, they made a lot of progress yesterday while I was away (go figure). I chaperoned a trip yesterday to Tbilisi and Mtskheti, the ancient capital of Georgia. Along the way we stopped at a radio station and a TV studio. Our group was made up of the older students at Biliki as well as some students from various schools in Gori. The goal of this group is to get the Biliki kids better integrated with their peers through trips and discussion groups. Most of the kids are in the eighth or ninth grades. The trip was....well, like an eighth grade field trip. Only this time, I got to sit in the front and tell everyone to be quiet. The weather was very cold and rainy yesterday, not fun in Tbilisi, but it created an appropriately gloomy atmosphere in Mtskheti. Here's a picture:

Speaking of field trips, school is starting up throughout Georgia. Some of the Peace Corps English teachers (or TEFL--Teaching English as a Foreign Language) have already started, others will wait until October. We NGO volunteers have it good compared to the teachers. School is a completely different world over here. Mark, another PCV here in Gori, explained the differences pretty well on his blog:

"School is not mandatory for a child to go to. It is very common for the kids to break some of the windows in the classroom. . . Just the other day a TEFL volunteer was telling me that at her summer camp she had two fights break out resulting in her host sister getting black eye. One chair thrown out the window on the 3rd floor of her school. To make matters worse her counterpart and supervisor. . . sent her 36 kids to handle for 3 hours. When she told me this it was only day 3 of a 6 day camp.

Another thing that is very common from what I have been told is that in the winter it gets so cold that the kids will start to chop up the desk and chairs for firewood since they are all heated by wooden stove and there isn’t enough wood in the class. Insulation does not exist here. It is simply a room with 4 concrete walls.

From the TEFL volunteers that I know of they say school might start in october for them. School is supposed to start in September but several are being remodeled right now and because things move slow they do not know when it will start. The TEFL volunteer living in Gori with me was told that her school should start in October from her supervisor but everyone else said that it could be later than that, maybe in November or December. I give mad props to the TEFL Volunteers because they have to deal with so much more than I have to. I will have a gas heater in the winter at my office. We have a generator for when the power goes out and high speed internet almost everyday."

These school renovations are going on throughout Georgia. Hopefully they will improve the situation. Until then, there will probably be more stories from the English teachers of students chopping firewood out of the desks and chairs. So, keep that in mind all you prospective Peace Corps Volunteers--be an NGO volunteer...or at least pack an ax.

Bad news and good photos

2006-09-06T07:28:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone,

First off, I don't know how much coverage its getting in the US, but the Georgian government claimed that South Ossetian rebels fired a rocket at a helicopter carrying President Saakashvili and a contingent of US Senators including John McCain and Richard Burr. The FBI and the US Embassy has determined that the rocket was fired at a different helicopter, but in the same weekend a helicopter carrying the Georgian Defense Minister was fired at over the conflict zone and was forced to make an emergency landing here in Gori. The Peace Corps has determined that there's nothing to worry about at this time, so life goes on as normal. Never a dull moment in Georgia! Click here for an article about the Senators' visit; here and here for articles about the helicopter incidents.

I feel like I always start off these posts with disturbing news from Georgia! Our in our day-to-day lives we never notice the problems in the disputed territories...and, of course, they are off limits for us to visit.

So, on to more interesting things. I wanted to share pictures from work. Today I visited the kids in their classroom and also went to Biliki's second location in the marketplace. Here are a couple of pictures, the rest are posted here on Flickr:

Rati, Shalva, and Jemali at Biliki Center playing a board game.

Giga, Aleka, and Giorgi at the "Shalva" Day Center at the Gori market place.

Some plaster figures that the children at "Shalva" made.

Life at work

2006-09-01T06:50:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone, things are going pretty well here. Today marks the second week at site and the first day of the academic year for my center. So I figure I'd devote this post to explaining what exactly I'm doing here.

I'm working for a youth center called "Biliki" ("Path" in Georgian). We run two sites, one large building in the center of town where our offices and classrooms are located and another smaller satellite in the large marketplace that specifically helps street children. Biliki serves children ages 6 to 16. For the past few weeks, I've spent some time with the social workers visiting the kids at their homes and checking up on their conditions. It's my opinion that "street child" is a bit of a misnomer here in Georgia (or at least in Gori). I think the term suggests homelessness. Most of these kids do have homes and a guardian, but the conditions of the homes are very bad; their parents or guardians are often suffering from alcoholism, illness, or disabilities. As a result of this, many of these kids spend most of their time on the street begging for money.

Biliki's aim is to create constructive and educational outlets for their free time. School attendance is not strictly enforced here, so some kids need a lot of structure. At the moment, we offer classes in reading, mathematics, and language; creative studios; a woodworking shop; and a music classroom. They also have psychologists, social workers and a doctor on staff. My job within the organization is to serve as a consultant and focus on capacity building. The goal is that with my experience, English skills, and Western contacts I can help make the organization more efficient and effective. I'll also be working directly with the youth, one of my first assignments is to develop field day activities for a sports week and I'll also be helping to plan a 5-day leadership camp.

One exciting thing has happened since I arrived here: Last Saturday, we received 8 Dell computers as a donation from Simmons College in Boston. A Georgian student there convinced the college to donate its old computers from their student union. It was a media event when she arrived. We set up the computers in the conference room and invited the local press. The city's TV station showed up and interviewed Marika, Biliki's director, and Keti, the student who brought the computers. Here are some pictures from the day (the young woman in the photos is Keti):

Also, Biliki's English website is just about complete, I'm working hard to revise the language. When its finished, I'll be sure to post the address again. Take care everyone!

Meet the (Host) Parents

2006-08-25T06:47:00.000-04:00

Gamarjoba everyone!

I hope you all are doing well. Life here in Gori is becoming more and more normal. I've managed to not be sick for an entire week now! Gori is a nice town with lots of winding streets and back ways; every house is covered in grapevines. A giant fortress stands on top of a hill in the center of town. Hopefully I'll get to climb up there soon.

The family that I will probably be living with for two years is quite nice. Dato, my host father, does a lot of odd jobs and I usually don't see him at the house during the day. My host mother, Irma, works in a grocery store. Nino, my host sister, is an English-language student in Tbilisi. Vaneko, my host brother, is 17 years old. He doesn't talk much, but from what I can gather, he likes soccer and sleeping. I have a bebia (grandmother), she spends most of the time doing the house work and often walks around the house grumbling at my host family. Our house is average, not as big as the training family's house in Khashuri (I had to say goodbye to my ten- foot ceiling). Also, we have a squatter toilet, something which is taking me a while to get used to!

Yesterday, my host family and I travelled to Ateni, a village outside of Gori. It was very beautiful and surprisingly village-like, considering it was only 10 kilometers outside of Gori proper. Dato's family is from there, and together we travelled to a church high in the mountains before returning for some food with chacha (homemade moonshine) and wine. All in all, a good evening out. Here's a picture of the church, dating from the 7th century:

Click here to see more photos of the host family and our trip to Ateni. Have a great weekend!

Picture update...

2006-08-24T04:36:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone, things are going very well here. I've updated my pictures and transfered them to Flickr. Click here to see them; this is a complete update through all of PST, enjoy! From now on, you can see my updates on the sidebar of this website as well. I'll post again soon.

Also, check out this interesting article from the NY Times on Abkhazia and other trouble spots.

It's Official!

2006-08-22T08:56:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone!

On Friday, August 18, we were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. We're official and now disbursed throughout Georgia. The ceremony was a lot of fun, even though there was no air conditioning in the place. We had it at this beautiful theater in Tbilisi, the old European kind with five levels and gold leaf everywhere. The second-in-command at the US Embassy was there to swear us in. He gave a talk before the ceremony about US-Georgian relations and our strategic interest here and how we as PCVs fit into it. We are important after all! There were some opening speeches and we got up and took the oath ("...to defend the Consitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."). After that, there was some folk dancing and singing and then it was all over.

It was a major media event! We had every Georgian news station there filming it. I was pulled by the embassy press guy to do some of the interviews for the Russian language stations. I ended up doing two interviews in Russian, one with the station that the Georgian government broadcasts into South Ossettia. Somewhere, some Russian family is entertained with my attempts to sound intelligent. After the ceremony everybody scattered and went to our respective corners of Georgia. My host sister, Nino, and her cousin escorted me back to Gori on a very, very slow bus. After we arrived in Gori and were walking to the house, it hit me that I was in this for the long haul. It was a very strange feeling. I texted a few people that day and they said the same thing happened to them. Call it post-training depression.

So, that brings me to the point in the story where I move in with my new host family, have dinner, and then throw up from their balcony. Yes, food poisoning again. I'll spare the public of the details, but let's just say it was a very long night of bonding with the new host family. I think they wondered why they were sent the sick American.

The good news is I'm better now and I'm at my new office in Gori. I'll post more in a few days discussing my site and placement (and get to those stories I promised earlier). Now that I have my own computer, I'll be able to keep this site better updated.

Until then, take care and stay away from strange foods!

Cuttino

Winding down training

2006-08-15T13:29:00.000-04:00

A short post for now as I have to get back to studying Georgian language so I can pass the language exam. If I score "intermediate low" they'll stop hounding me for the rest of my service. Basically I have to be able to answer simple questions, speak in complete sentences and be able to discuss things like the weather and what I'm wearing.

Only two days of training left! As of Friday morning, I will be an official Peace Corps Volunteer. More updates soon...I've got three weeks before I start my job, so I'll have plenty of time to update this thing.

In the meantime, I posted a few more pictures on Webshots a few days ago.

Droebit!

Placement time

2006-08-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

Hello all!

First off, check out what the New York Times had to say about Georgian drivers and Georgian food.

Secondly, for those of you following the news really, really closely, there’s been an interesting situation in Georgia unfolding over the past few days. On Wednesday, the Georgian military entered a region in the disputed territory of Abkhazia (the separatist region in the northwest corner of the country). Their mission was to disarm a militia that had declared its own autonomy and threatened to attack. Right now, it looks like the government has control of the region. Things seem to be stabilizing, but tensions have been high for most of this month. The move has also annoyed Russia, which has peacekeeping troops in the region. Don’t worry! The Peace Corps is following this situation closely and will keep us all safe. Our training is a long way from this region and it is a restricted zone so no Volunteers were anywhere near the area. If you’re interested, this article gives a great explanation of the situation and how its affecting relations between Georgia, Abkhazia, and Russia.

Finally, the good news! My site placement is….Gori. That’s right, the same place I’ve been training and the hometown of Joe Stalin. On Friday, all the trainees gathered in the courtyard of our training school. They had painted a giant map of Georgia and one by one, distributed envelopes with our locations and assignments. We then found our site on the map and stood as the others found out. It was a fun exercise, and I was lucky to find myself almost exactly in the middle of the country. Best of all, I’m just an hour away from the capital.

I will be placed in a non-profit called “Biliki” (Georgian for “path”). It runs a shelter for street children, refugees and disabled kids. I got to spend the past three days at their office and was very impressed. They have a newly-renovated building with all the perks of a Western office. There are 23 employees, including two psychologists, a social worker, a nurse, teachers, and an IT technician. Biliki is currently serving about 150 children in the Gori area. My job will be to help them improve their organization and expand their services. Check out the Biliki website. Keep in mind that the English site is a work in progress—one of my tasks will be to fix that—but at least the picture gallery is nice.

Got to run for now, but I’m going to post again soon with stories about a five-hour supra, a nuclear physicist turned-priest, and a very, very large hole my host father is digging in the backyard. Take care everyone and I promise to stay out of the Kodori Gorge.

Fun with Parasites

2006-07-20T08:57:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone, I experienced a great Peace Corps right of passage yesterday when the doctor told me that I had a stomach parasite. These are the times that you know that you're really, really far away from home. Don't worry, Mom, the lifespan of the little guy was quite short...I didn't even get a chance to name him. Doctor Marina sent my host mother out to the drug store for some Cipro (for the record, the same stuff they stockpile in case of an anthrax attack). No prescription neccessary--any drug, no matter how powerful, is available over-the-counter. Georgia is a country of self-medicators. So, about 24 hours later and after many jokes at my expense, I'm feeling better.

In other news, tomorrow decides my fate--we will recieve our permanent site assignments. Here's hoping for a nice seaside placement in Batumi! I'll post with the results as soon as I can.

Take care, and stay away from scary Georgian sausages,

Cuttino

PS--Patrick and Devin: Thanks for checking in, sounds like you guys have a step up from Greene Street...I listened to "Life on Mars" in honor of you all.

Up the Mountain

2006-07-18T15:07:00.000-04:00

Gamarjoba friends!

I’ve finally found a way to get dial-up internet in my house, so finally I don’t feel so isolated. Yes, I now have a cell phone, a laptop and internet…this ain’t your grandfather’s Peace Corps. My host family is fascinated by my typing skills--as I write this, my host father and host brothers are staring at my fingers. I guess the typing training in elementary school is good for something.

Well, there’s much to tell you all about, I’ll try to remember everything. The biggest event of training in the past two weeks has been our cultural trips. This was a chance to finally travel anywhere in Georgia we wanted (except for the forbidden zones and the capital). I went with a group to Bakuriani, a ski village up in the mountains about an hour away from my town. We loaded up in a minibus (they use the Russian word “marshutka”) and headed up the mountain, going much faster than I thought was possible while dodging cows, goats and potholes.

Once we got to Bakuriani, the group headed out for lunch and then took a hike up the mountains. We made it about two hundred feet up one of the slopes before it started pouring. We found an abandoned shelter—more or less a concrete bunker—and took cover to wait out the storm. When it became apparent that we were going to be there for a while, we popped open the wine we had bought and had a proper Georgian party. That night, we were able to cook our own meal; although, our hostess was horrified when she saw that I was cooking the macaroni and pelmini in the same pot.

Here’s a picture of our group in Bakuriani, looking very candid:

On the way back down the mountain, we stopped in Borjomi for lunch. Borjomi is a beautiful town surrounded by mountains. Its claim to fame is its mineral water—a salty carbonated beverage. Let’s say that the water is an acquired taste. Personally, I’m a fan…it’s available in the US at international groceries. Go and try it for yourself, or just add a tablespoon of salt to soda water. A side note—Borjomi is bidding for the 2018 Winter Olympics. In fact, they are building an Olympic-standard ski slope in Bakuriani. It’s going to be a long shot, but it’s possible you’ll hear more about Borjomi in the future.

Anyway, we spent some time with some current Peace Corps Volunteers in Borjomi before heading back to our respective towns. We all hitched a ride in a 1960s Soviet minibus…the driver squirted some gasoline in the carburetor and we were off. Fortunately, the bus held together long enough to make it back, but it nearly ran off the road when we dodged a bunch of pigs.

One final story, on Thursday I decided that I was tired of my hair and buzzed it off. My family thought that it was hilarious. Coming back from school on Friday, I found that my 12-year old host brother had cut off all his hair too. Apparently my host brothers think I’m the coolest guy ever. Here we are, minus our hair:

More stories to come, talk to everyone later!

Bodishi!

2006-07-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone,

Someone pointed out that I have the medieval Georgian alphabet posted as a picture in my blog. Yes, "Anynomous," you are correct. Thanks for pointing it out. In my defense, most of the letters are the same...just a few extra at the end. But for the sake of accuracy, you can find the modern Georgian alphabet here. For other readers out there, if the format of the blog looks strange to you, please let me know. For some reason it looks like the side links are dropping to the bottom of the page.

In other news, the World Cup final was last night, and my host brother lost 5 lari on a bet. I'm kind of glad its over because for the past week, it seems to be all they talked about. This weekend some of the other Peace Corps Trainees came to visit us in Khashuri. We showed them a good time...cafe, supra, and a visit to Surami Castle. I'll post pictures soon.

Take care everyone,

Cuttino

Pictures!

2006-07-08T05:41:00.000-04:00

I finally got some pictures up on Webshots. There are plenty more to come, so keep checking back. Here's the address:

http://community.webshots.com/user/cuttinoalexander

A view from the balcony. . .

2006-07-05T10:21:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone, here's a view from my house. Very "kargad." More pics to come, once I find a better connection...

The Joy of Cooking

2006-07-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

6/28/06

Hello American friends! I’m posting two of these at once, since this is the first time that I’ve had a chance to use (somewhat) high speed internet. The first entry I posted was written last week, so just pretend that it’s been up for a while. From now on, I should be able to update my blog once a week. We’ll see if I actually accomplish this.

I feel like I’m back at school—we have about four hours of language instruction Monday through Saturday. On Monday and Wednesday, we have afternoon class so that they can teach us how to work in an NGO. Sunday is our only day off. Last Sunday, I spent most of the day lazing around the house. We seem to do a lot of that here. Zura, my host father is unemployed (like many other men in Georgia), so he ends up spending a lot of time sitting by the road and talking to the neighbors that pass by. I’m to the point now where I recognize the neighbors and know a bit about their lives. This is mostly based from what Zura tells me, so I know who’s the alcoholic, who’s husband is in jail, and which of the neighbor’s daughters I should take home to America. There’s an endless amount of gossip in this town.

Besides the workload, I’m really enjoying my time here. One of the highlights is the food. Each day, we have lunch at a different house. I’ve found Georgian food to be hit or miss; but when it’s good, it’s amazing. My favorite dish so far is khachapuri, or cheese bread. It’s a bit like a calzone with stuffed with salty cheese. I’ve had surprisingly little meat and I’ve forgotten what a green vegetable looks like. The Georgian diet is based on bread, potatoes, beans, and cheese. Like the Russians, they smear everything with sour cream (the beloved “smetana”). My host grandmother has a tendency to force-feed me every meal. I plead with her that I’m full, but in Georgia “no more” translates to “I’d love one more spoonful of sour cream.”

The other day, they pulled me outside for a serious talk. As Eka, my host mother, looked on grimly, Zura asked what was wrong with the food. I assured him that everything was fine, and that in America we don’t eat as much. He explained that they were worried I wasn’t eating enough. They’d cook anything I wanted—if I just told them! This went back and forth for a little while until I finally said I wanted more fruit in the diet. The next day they presented me with a bowl full of apricots, pears and apples and my grandmother was not satisfied until I ate every last one.

That’s the news from Khashuri. Hope everything is fine over there. Don’t worry about me, I’m starting an exercise regiment to keep from gaining fifteen pounds.

Alive in Georgia!

2006-07-03T10:13:00.000-04:00

6/22/06

Gamarjoba friends! I am safe and sound in the land of Sakartvelo. We arrived just over a week ago and it has taken me this long to find an internet connection. Earlier, I wrote that I would be in Gori, home of Stalin. I’m with a group of ten Peace Corps Trainees in Khashuri, a town about an hour away. Once a week, we travel to Gori to meet with the large group and receive homework and vaccinations, among other things.

Life here in Khashuri is pretty peaceful. I’ve only been here a few days and I’ve already fallen into a routine. We have class Monday through Saturday starting at 9:00; the Peace Corps has decided to schedule 122 hours of language training—a year-long course of Georgian crammed into nine weeks. So, after three days of study, I can write the alphabet, conjugate the verb “to be” and I (sort of) understand pronouns. I have decided that Georgian or “Kartveli” in the mother tongue is the strangest language on earth. Start with the alphabet. . . We’ve come up with ways to remember the letters like “the fish on the hook” or “a 3 with a tumor.” Look at the alphabet and see for yourself. To make things more difficult, the language rarely uses vowels, so we have words like “tkqveni” (you) or “tkhra” (nine). Its sometimes difficult to tell whether you’re speaking Georgian or clearing your throat. Georgians are extremely proud of their language; and rightfully so—its one of the oldest languages in the world.

For the next nine weeks, I’ll be living with a host family in Khashuri. I live with Zura, my host father, Eka my mother, and Giga and Nika my host brothers—12 and 13 years old. Zura’s mother also lives with us; it’s not uncommon to have multiple generations living together. We also have an amazingly well-behaved black lab named Simba. Like many houses in Khashuri, my house is two stories and spacious. Each house has a yard with grapevines and rose bushes. Khashuri is a big town, but my road is not paved and I occasionally see cows or a goat herd wandering around. Most of the infrastructure in the town is in bad shape, so it’s surprising that the houses are so nice. Like in Russia, you can never judge a building from the outside.

Georgians pride themselves on their hospitality, and my host family is no exception. My host father speaks Russian, so I’ve been able to fit in a little easier. The ice broke as soon as I tried to speak Georgian. They are quite amused by my efforts; the boys find it hilarious that I read like a kindergartner. The longer I stay here the more comfortable they are with me. Today I went on a walk around town with Giga. He attempts to communicate with me using what little English and Russian he knows. Nika, on the other hand, has given up and talks to me in Georgian as if I understand every word. They took me to play video games at a neighbor’s house yesterday and they want me to go to the internet café to play “Counterstrike” with them soon. Even in Georgia, video games and a twelve year old’s favorite pastime.

Take care,

Cuttino

Midnight Plane to Georgia

2006-06-14T22:16:00.000-04:00

Okay...sorry, I couldn't resist. I promise there will be no more State of/Republic of Georgia jokes. I've been in Philadelphia for the past two days learning about the Peace Corps with very few actual details of what things are going to be like over there. What we did learn was a bunch of administrative things, including everything that you could possibly do to get kicked out--"administratively separated" (or, in PC slang, get the Pan-Am Award).

Tomorrow we'll leave from New York City to Vienna and after a 14-hour layover, we'll arrive in Georgia at 3 a.m. From there we'll spend a few days at a hotel getting acclimated and then head to Gori for our nine-week training. Gori, for those who are keeping track, is the hometown of Joseph Stalin. I'm pretty excited and a bit anxious to get started. Its great to finally get this whole experience started.

It is unlikely that I'll have internet access for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to post in two weeks or so with some pictures and first impressions. In the meantime, if you'd like, check out Gori on Wikipedia.

Bon voyage!

2006-06-13T00:04:00.000-04:00

Well, in less than five hours, I'll be heading out to RDU airport to get on a flight to Philadelphia. I'll spend the next two days in orientation training ("staging" in Peace Corp-ese). On Thursday, I'll leave for Georgia. By 3 am Friday, I'll be in Tbilisi.

My entire life has been crammed into two pieces of luggage after a long day of packing. I'd better get some sleep. . . I'll try and write an update from staging.

Happy trails,

Cuttino

Georgian Supra Night

2006-05-24T20:24:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone...less than three weeks to go! In honor of this benchmark (and since there's really nothing to do at home) I've decided to post an entry about Georgian food. This is one of the things that I'm most excited about. While I was in Russia, I ate at a number of Georgian restaurants. Georgian cuisine is delicious and will probably be responsible if I gain 20 pounds over the next two years.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I decided to have a Georgian food night. I spent most of the day preparing the meal and drove to Cary to buy some Georgian wine and mineral water from the international grocery store. It all paid off....I didn't screw up the meat or the khachapuri--Georgian cheese bread filled with 24 ounces (!) of cheese.

I'd highly recommend giving Georgian food a try, here's the recipe for khachapuri and check out russianfoods.com for some good recipes for other Georgian dishes. Here are a few pictures from the evening:

The Georgian plate (minus the meat)...the khachapuri is the big bread/cheese blob...

I've been told that Georgian supras (or banquets) last hours and hours with lots of toasts, wine and vodka. Our's took about 90 minutes and only one toast, but its a start. Of course, the benefit to having a supra in Chapel Hill is that I didn't feel obligated to clean my plate, lest I meet the wrath of an angry host mother. Good times...and a great way to end the year. I'll leave you with a traditional Georgian toast (many more found here):

"A donkey was crossing the desert. One day, two days, three, a week . . . how terrible was the heat! Suddenly he saw two large kegs. One was full of water, the other of vodka. From which keg do you think he drank? Of course, the water! So let's not be donkeys, and, drink vodka!"

Let's hope it sounds better in Georgian...

Welcome to my travel blog!

2006-05-22T10:25:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone! Thanks for checking out my travel blog. I hope that this will be a good way of keeping you all updated on my life in the Republic of Georgia.

On June 13, I'll begin my 27-month job as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Georgia. I could be more specific, but since the Peace Corps likes to keep an air of mystery, they won't tell me my final location or my actual job. All I know is that I will be working at a non-profit organization and that I will NOT be in the capital. Anyway, Georgia sounds like a pretty fun country with tons of great food, beautiful mountains, and frequent blackouts.

So to get things started, here's a map of Georgia:

And here's the flag:

A few random facts about Georgia:

The country's main exports are wine and mineral water. Unfortunately the main customer of these products, Russia, has banned their import.
Georgia has the third-largest per capita contingency of soldiers in Iraq.
There are two seperatist regions in the country, South Ossettia and Abkhazia. Don't worry, I'm not allowed to go to either.
Georgia is the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, Xenia Onatopp, and this guy.
Fortunately for me, many Georgians speak Russian. I will also be learning Georgian, which is supposedly one of the hardest (and strangest) languages in the world. This is their alphabet:

Well, that's enough for today. I'll hopefully be posting a few more times before I leave.

Everyone have a great day,
Cuttino