A General Comment (17-5-2012)

Posts will come in large bunches.  Back up to early dates to read in order.  Dates are in European format Day/Month/Year.  There aren't any pictures because it takes a year and a day to upload them.  Don't worry if I sound tired or sad, I think I generally hit the whole range of emotions every week and I am overall very, very happy.

Love,
Al

PS: The dates I put on the post titles are the date that it was actually written.  I assume that's obvious!

14-05-2012

7:26 AM

Well let me tell you—I’m not going on a run without my camera for a while!  This morning while running along the main road (the paved one that people routinely do 80 mph on) we ran into two 100-head flocks of sheep and goats, a man herding his mares and foals from horseback ( maybe 12 horses total) and a LOT of honking cars and busses surrounded by horses, goats, and sheep.  We managed to run out … but not back … also!  It’s bath day!  Huzzah!

PS: In a major win moment for me, I can now reliably unlock the front door in the morning!  This is no small thing!

8:19 AM

Spongebob in Kartuli (Georgian).

8:16 PM

There are definitely difficult days and moments here.  All of this newness and change sometimes makes me feel on the spot—which makes me feel alone.  If that makes sense.  Right now, during our intensive language and teacher training, there is very little time to take a minute to myself to collect.  Sometimes I just feel so overwhelmed.  In those moments, it’s hard not to really, really feel the fact that this is over a two year commitment.  Yesterday, I was flipping through a teacher resource book and I found Shel Silverstien poetry in the back.  It made me so suddenly, achingly homesick, I started to cry.

“Rain”

I opened my eyes

And looked up at the rain,

And it dripped in my head

And flowed in my brain,

And all that I hear as I lie in my bed

Is the slishity-slock of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,

I walk very slow,

I can’t do a handstand—

I might overflow,

So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said—

I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.

Love,

Al

PS: My host mom says it’s more Georgian to be Ala, rather than Allie, so,

Love,
Ala

013-05-2012

 9:48 AM

Letter to a Friend,

This is a bit of a long-shot but I have a friend who is going back to the states in a few days and I might actually reliably get a letter through … IF I can find a stationary store in time to get an envelope (in the city) and IF I can figure out the stamp situation.

I got your message finally a few days ago on a “hub day” in the main city when we all got together to have meetings and get our rabies boosters.  It made my whole day.  I haven’t had any contact with anyone, really, since I left orientation.  I wanted to answer you, but I didn’t have any real time and now my computer is dead.  The adapter I brought is the right shape, but the plugs in this house are very old and they are too small.  Charging it with a smaller, borrowed adapter makes me nervous because I don’t want to forfeit the surge protection.

As for the mail here … there isn’t much of a postage system—most people in the villages don’t have postal addresses.

12:00 PM

I have a whole, whole new appreciation for what is actually clean and what is dirty.  I just finished washing 2 weeks of laundry by hand.  My host mom very quickly realized that I very, very little idea how to really wash clothes by hand … and no idea at all how to do it without a sink.  She thought the whole thing was pretty funny.  She kept coming down do ask me if I was tired yet …  I said I wasn’t tired (of course!), but … I forgot to wash my towel so now she’s heating more water on the stove.  I wanted to explain that I was using it as a bath rug and that my other towel is still clean, but how?  I’m dreading the thought of handwashing even one more thing.

12:40 PM

Towel is very clean now.

… Everybody is going into Telavi (the main city) to meet up for a social. I don’t think I’m going to go.  I want to stay here and bake bread with my host mom.  I don’t really like Telavi, anyways, mostly because every time I go I have to sit through hours and hours of meetings.

There was a crazy thunderstorm last night, too!  The kind of storm everybody wakes up talking about … even for here.  We’re at the base of the Caucus mountain range and we get thunder almost every afternoon.  Tbilisi (the capitol) is flooded.  It’s terrible, but, even so, I don’t think I will ever get tired of the sound of thunder.  As a side note, I have never lived—or been—anywhere where the mountains from a distance look SO big.  Maybe it’s because we’re in a valley here and not in them?  They literally disappear into the clouds.

8:00 PM

About 8 cups flour

2 Tbs salt

1 Tbs yeast

Mixed with warm water until wet and sticky but not runny

RISE 2 hours

Punch down

RISE 1 hour

Then bake at a high temperature

Then lower

(bake time roughly 25 minutes)

After making bread, let me just say that I didn’t realize what a luxury warm bread is.  That wonderful  smell of melting butter.  Enjoy your toast for me.  Or your bagel.

Love,

Al

PS: This letter did not get to my friend.  No clue when I’ll be able to get mail out.

07-05-2012 6:00 AM

I’ve been trying to learn to be quiet here in the mornings so that I don’t wake my host mom up.  This exercise is not going well.

Al 06-05-2012 5:30 AM

I am finding very small things the most comforting because they are routines I can hold onto.  Making my bed, cleaning my room, brushing my teeth, putting my floss by my bed, waking up early at the same time.  These things are still the same.

06-05-2012 6:00 PM

I’m exhausted.  I’m not sure if my head hurts more from trying to understand so much Georgian or from the muggier weather or from the strange bed and pillow.  I went to a Supra dinner for the holiday of St. Giorgio.  I have never felt so unable to communicate.  I understand now why a girl ran out of our Spanish abroad program in tears one day.  I mean, then I knew it was because she couldn’t understand, but now I understand.

Sometimes not understanding frustrates me so much.  At the Supra everybody was talking and laughing and I was totally clueless.  Georgian better hurry up and be my third language.

Love,

Al