Tuesday, March 27th

I learned a few things this past weekend. 

Firstly, never make plans with a Georgian, because when plans change they probably won’t bother telling you until it’s too late, and even then, the only explanation you are most likely to be given is, “I don’t know how to explain it English.”  Then, chances are you’ll find out that ‘it’ is something unforeseeably random like, ‘My grandmother’s sister’s husband died a year ago today, so we are all going to the graveyard to relive that sorrowful time in our lives.  We will begin the supra there (this is why every Georgian cemetery has picnic tables all throughout).  The men will eat and drink and pour alcohol on the grave, while the women, as always, stand aside.  Then we will go back to the house and trap you in the back of the table against a wall, in the very middle of about 30 people you don’t know, force feed you until you are on the verge of bursting, and my mom will sit next to you and talk with all the other women for approximately thirty minutes about how you lie about being allergic to wheat because you don’t want to eat bread because you’re afraid of getting fat, until you get up the nerve to excuse yourself, crawl out under the table, and walk home.'  So yeah, if you want to do something in this country, just do it, don’t wait for the accompaniment of a Georgian.  

I also learned that one should not leave their favourite pair of hand knit woollen socks hanging over the stove longer than is necessary, because eventually accidents will happen and they will fall and burn.  

The following day I learned that I could do without visiting Gori, ever again.  There’s almost as little going on there as there is in Khashuri.  All they’ve really got that we haven’t is a Stalin Museum, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but don’t think that being the birth place of Stalin is much to brag about. But then I suppose he had to be born somewhere. 

It’s about a 30 minute marshrutka ride from Khashuri, provided your marshrutka doesn’t blow out two tires on the side of the highway half way there.  Then it takes about an hour and a half, give or take. And you really want to check to make sure that that the bus you took into town wasn’t the last bus of the day, because that’s important to know. You should also make sure that your phone battery isn’t dying, just in case you have to call your host brother to have him speak to a taxi driver in the otherwise empty marshrutka station parking lot, to figure out that you have to get a cab to the highway from where you will have to wave down a westward bound marshrutka to get home (all possibly while fighting off an episode of the shits because of some, surprise, super oily borsh you were silly enough to order for dinner). This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, provided there is still some daylight remaining. 

The very last thing you want to make sure you don’t do is place your mobile phone in your shallow jacket pocket while on the marshrutka without checking to see if perhaps it fell out before you get off and the driver hastily speeds away 40 minutes further down the highway to his final destination.  That cell phone is your only connection to the English speaking population of Georgia, a rather vital lifeline, and you should treat it as such.  It’s very true what they say, you never realize how precious something is, until you don’t have it anymore. Luckily my host father Giorgi, is tight with the marshrutka driving community, and my mobile was recovered the next day…long after my little defeated session of lying face down on the living room floor (in front of both Mirian and Ruiza) mumbling curses into the carpet.  A person has got to vent every once in a while.    

                                                                 ***

I came home from school this afternoon, and walked through the front gate to find Ruiza tending a homemade cha cha distiller, right there in our front yard, and I learned that cha cha tastes slightly less terrible when it’s still warm.    

March 22nd   

Spring arrived Monday and settled in overnight, so as to be in full swing come Tuesday for the official equinox…just as the Georgians said it would. The seasons are apparently very punctual in this country. The temperature rose from below freezing to a hold steady in the mid-teens in well under 24 hours, a much anticipated turn that has brought about a wonderful happy change in the people of Khashuri.

It’s like a sort of wide spread perennial convalescence.  Kids are outside playing in the streets.  Old people are outside doing work that is far too physically demanding for them.  Everyone, young and old, seems to be somewhat obsessed with shovelling away the snow.  I suppose dispersing it actually does speed up the melting process, but it still strikes me as odd when I see people shovelling the white stuff in the street, especially when it’s my 70-year-old bebia. I arrived home from school two days in a row to find her sitting on a stool outside the front gate, and thought to myself how nice, Ruiza is making the most of the nice weather, hailing the arrival of spring. What she was really doing however, was taking a break from breaking the remaining ice away from the entry.  

Owing to this strange inclination, I recently discovered that a small portion of the street in front of my house is actually paved! The rest of them however, are definitely not, and I expect they will remain in their current mess of puddles and mud for some time. The main road on the other hand is entirely bare, and dry!  I wore flats to school today to celebrate! It was risky, but glorious! It also elicited a lot of attention.

(The weather has gone moody again since I wrote this.  We reverted to winter Thursday evening. It snowed through the night and all day Friday. My grade fours have just started a unit on the weather. This meteorological schizophrenia isn’t really helping them to grasp the concept of spring. But Saturday is proving to be decent, and so rebegins the melting process.)

Along with being the first day of spring, yesterday was just a big day of firsts in general.  I fired my first rifle! AND my second rifle! I even hit a target (a plastic bottle on a post by the railroad)...with some help of course, and I was invited back to try my hand at shooting, cooking and eating a bird. I suspect I won’t really be much help with any of those, but nevertheless, it doesn’t get much more authentic than that.  

After that unexpected dose of exhilaration, I returned home to receive my fist ever manicure immediately upon walking in the door. From the utmost stereotypical manly experience to the utmost ladylike; I am a woman of extremes…who is now wearing black on white crackle nail polish. This experience also entailed another secondary first, if you will, as before I could have my nails manicured, I of course had to have them cleaned, using cha cha.  A note to PEIslanders, you are wasting your time and money when you buy nail polish remover. Shine works just fine. 

And for the last of the firsts: Food made an appearance on one of the soap operas today...street food even! I saw it with my own eyes! AND someone almost ate it! Not quite though.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but judging by the poor acting and forced facial expression I figure it was either just a really bad taco, or the character came to a sudden life altering realization in the same instant that she placed it in her mouth.  For those of you who require further explanation, there are two Spanish soap operas that Georgians, young and old, watch religiously – dubbed over in kartuli of course. It’s like family hour but all day, and minus the wholesome feel good content.  And if they aren’t actually watching it, it is almost always on in the background. It’s another one of those things encountered in foreign cultures that, although it will never be ok, you get used to over time.

*****************************************************************

 I’m not entirely positive, but I think I just ate eel for supper. They said it was fish, but it was served in long thin strips, and it was incredibly oily.  I actually had oil dripping down my forearms.  Noteworthy experience, but one I could have probably done without. 

*****************************************************************

Last weekend a group of us TLGers met up in Tbilisi to attend the Georgia versus Russia rugby match Saturday afternoon.  We made our way to the stadium hours early because A) we were unsure of how to get there, and B) we were unsure as to whether or not we would be able to get tickets, as a great many people seemed to think they would be sold out. This presumption was fair, in light of the deep seeded rivalry (perhaps something a little more than rivalry) between the two countries. Luckily however, scalping is not a problem with Georgian authorities, and so, although we had to pay double the price, getting tickets was not an issue (paying double wasn’t really an issue either considering the original price was only 5 GEL, the extra ~3 dollars wasn’t that big of a deal).  Furthermore, having arrived as early as we did, we had the opportunity to see the twenty plus busloads of riot police (enough to line the entire stadium, shoulder to shoulder, in an unbroken line) get shipped in for the event.

We got our faces painted and made our way into the stadium early enough that finding seats proved quite easy aswell.  It was the actual getting inside that was the hard part. You see, there is no such thing as a cue in this part of the world, and for someone who’s not accustomed to the push and shove approach of asserting one’s place among a group of people vying for the same thing, this was probably the most exhilarating, mind you slightly unnerving, part of the whole Georgian rugby experience.

I found myself pressed up against the metal bars of the gate by an unhappy group of Georgian men wanting in, struggling against the police on the other side who, for reasons unknown (to me at least), had stopped allowing people through just as I had (not entirely under my own will) made my way to the front of the pack. This rather uncomfortable situation lasted for about 15 minutes, at which point, I’m pretty sure the officers guarding the gate simply took pity me (I may have done some heavy begging with my eyes), and let me and my friends through ahead of the rest.

It was later explained to me that this chaotic, everyman for himself, mentality can be understood as a trapping of communist rule when people had to fight for everything they got, i.e. If you simply waited for your turn, your rations would be claimed by someone else, and you and your family would potentially starve to death.  On this particular day, it just so happened that this deeply engrained way of doing things inadvertantly gained us entry into the VIP section. Although we didn’t realize it until later, we were sitting in 40 GEL seats! 

The game itself wasn’t all that great. Russia has a rather weak team, and Georgia is pretty good.  So suffice to say, with a final score of 46-0, the play was very one sided. The atmosphere on the other hand was great! The stadium was packed, a sea of black (all Georgians wear black) dotted with red and white flags and the all too frequent plastic bags getting swept into the air by the wind (trash is a rather serious issue in this country).  The wave made its way around the stadium a great many times, and the customary section of painted bare bellies horns and drums littered the field with streamers of receipt paper. Afterwards, a happy satisfied crowd made its way into the street, and the universal sporting victory celebration soon began with car horns blowing, and young men hanging out windows, shouting and waving flags.   

*********************************************************************************

The next day I got in some long overdue wandering/sightseeing.  I also had my first encounter with the gypsies.  It went about as good as I could have hoped for.  The key is to ignore them completely, even when they latch onto your body...just drag them along, and eventually they'll fall away.  

We walked around old Tbilisi for the afternoon, visiting random art galleries, shops and places of worship, then hiked up the hill to take in the cityscape from the ruined turrets of Narikala, a 1700 year old fort (although most of the extant fortifications date from the 16^th and 17^th centuries), where we could count the spires and minarets of nearly a dozen churches, mosques, and synagogues, all within easy walking distance.  

Wandering into a church that is well over a thousand years old is commonplace in this country, and in Tbilisi in particular, an impressive number of these are currently in the process of being restored.  Many others however, still rest in various beautiful states of disrepair, with their once dark murals faded to dim shadows, and their ancient plaster crumbling, waiting patiently for their turn at some TLC.

  

Later, we crossed over the Kura River to visit Sameba, the Holy Trinity Cathedral (Sameba [სამება] is Georgian for Trinity), the main cathedral of the Georgian Orthodox church. Constructed between 1995 and 2004, Sameba is a massive and monumental feat of architecture, designed as a synthesis of traditional styles dominating the Georgian church at various stages throughout history. Built to commemorate 1500 years of autocephaly (you'll have to look that one up for yourself...I did too) of the Georgian Orthodox Church, and the 2000 years since the birth of Christ, the initial plan was to have it completed by the turn of the millenium, but the unrest of the 1990s saw its construction postponed for 6 years. 

Sameba is widely regarded as a symbol of the Georgian national and spiritual revival, and is a great source of national pride as well.  The dome of the cruciform structure is surmounted by a 7.5 metre-high cross covered with gold, and the height of the church from the ground to the top of the cross (not counting the 13 metres allotted for the underground chapels) is 84 metres.  Factor in the natural prominence upon which it sits, and it is easy to imagine how Sameba elicits a sort of reverent awe from near and far.   

It is surrounded by an impressive expanse of manicured gardens, complete with pond, ducks and swans.  A wide swath of marble stairs lead up to its front doors, and the main entrance to the grounds is marked by an imposing wall, and a free standing bell tower, with more than a dozen bells hanging at three different levels.  We were lucky enough to have these begin ringing just as we were leaving. The well-rehearsed chorus lasted for at least 20 minutes, probably longer, and was performed by five young boys in alter server garments. 

Leaving Sameba, we wandered through a narrow network of residential streets to find our way back to the river, crossed back into old town and continued exploring. The next thing we came across was the Tbilisi museum of dolls, located just next door to the puppet theatre…because hey, why not? 

Later on, doing some solo exploration, I came across the most serene little park, in slight disrepair and a little dirty - like most everything in this country - where a group of old men sat playing backgammon. The birds were chattering in the trees, and the sun was hanging low, soaking everything in its early evening amber glow (entirely for my own amusement that was), it was quite perfect.  Just beyond the park was the beginning of a cobble stone stair case, built in the 1800s. It climbed into the cliff face, past so many houses and two churches, all the way up to Mother Georgia, a statue of a woman holding a bowl above her head in one hand, and a sword across her body in the other, welcoming friends and opposing foes. Another brief view of the city from above, and it was time to head back to the hostel, grab my bag, and find the marshrutka station. 

I took the underground for the first time since arriving in Georgia, and was happily surprised at how stress free it was (probably mainly because the last time I used a subway system was in Mexico City…a bit different going from a city of over 21 million people with an anxiety provoking tangle of so many lines, to a city of just over one million, with a single, well maintained route).  The most noteworthy part of the experience was again, like the rugby match, the entrance.  

I have never seen such a long escalator, not even one that comes remotely close.  I never knew they existed at that length…never thought it was possible. I couldn’t see the bottom for what seemed like at least the first ten seconds. I’m pretty sure I experience slight vertigo for the first time in my life, and was unfortunately, in too much a state of shock and awe to think to time how long it took to reach the bottom (I expect I will have another opportunity). This machine must have been at least 7 stories worth of stairs in one go.

March 15th

So I had planned on making the four hour trip (one way) to Batumi (on the Black Sea) last weekend, expressly to get out of the snow.  Upon arriving at the half way point in Kutaisi however, I found out that it was snowing in Batumi as well.  Five years ago such an occurence in this semi-tropical part of Georgia was generally unheard of, but then again people in Khashuri aren't really used to snow storms in the middle of March either...damn you climate change. Anyhow, I met up with a friends, and having decided that the trip would be somewhat wasted on such junk weather, we opted to stay in Kutaisi, and take in some of the sites there instead.  Suffice to say, we were hugely unsuccessly, but of course, I will elaborate.

To begin, the weather, unsurprisingly, was terrible. The first thing we found out upon visiting the tourism information centre was about Kutaisi's main attraction, the super impressive Sataplia cave system with translucent stalactites, staligmites and rock curtains, and over 200 fossilized dinosaur footprints. It was closed.  Is closed until April.  But not to worry! There are other things to do around Kutaisi! The Gelati monestary, only 10 km, or a short marshrutka (mini bus) ride from the city centre, we were told was a very much worth a visit.  With not enough daylight left howeve, and with hopes of better weather on the morrow, we decided we would visit it the following day.

So after narrowly missing the 11 am marshrutka (mini bus) Saturday morning we spent the interim 3 hours til the next one huddled next to an electric heater in a cafe watching as near white out conditions dumped a fresh foot of snow outside.  We then proceeded to miss the 2 pm marshrutka, although we're still not sure how it happened, as we arrived 15 minutes early, and never actually saw it leave (maybe the driver decided it was better not to attempt the assent in such miserable conditions).  So we gave up on that idea, and headed to the Pub (it's actually called Pub hence the capitalization), where we treated ourselves to quality European beer and martinies!

When we ventured back out 3 hours later, slightly hesitant to return to our guest house for fear of what we might be fed following the previous night's cultural cuisine experience, we were greated by a beautiful, foreign, shiny object in the sky. Uplifted by the fresh boost of vitamin D and the overalll change in atmospheric pressure, we took our time getting back to Suliko and Mediko's guest house (they are very sweet and most hospitable, it's just that, again, as is often the case in this country, you can never be quite sure what they are going to feed you), watching the sunset from the roof before going inside, savouring every last drop. I have yet to see it since. 

That night, dinner consisted of beans, cheese and cornbread (cornbread made especially for me), the customary cabbage salad (shredded cabbage and a few chunks of carrot soaked in vinegar), and some small crummy looking fish that I decided was best left alone. Altogether pretty good though.  The previous night's dinner however, was probably the worst thing I have ever tasted, and by probably, I mean it was most definitely the worst thing I have ever tasted. 

The starter was soup with fat and bits of some kind of beef...I think.  Actually not at all bad, a bit oily, but my digestive system is learning to deal with that. When there was nothing but chunks of fat left in my bowl however, Mediko insisted that "that tastes really good with this sauce" (in much more broken English of course).  So fat with an exceptionally tart liquified version of a substance not unlike cranberry sauce....it really doesn't taste that goood. Having gotten off with just a small bite though before she cleared our bowls away, I was assumed I had the worst out of the way. I was wrong, very wrong.

After taking away our not quite empty bowls, she insisted she had something more for us. Something that, in lieu of a language barrier, was described by pointing to knuckles, elbows and knees...joints. Cartlidge soup is a powerful, nauseating assault on the senses.  I have smelled a lot of menure in my lifetime, but until last Saturday I had never tasted barnyard.  The brawth was at once greasy, milky and slightly thick, but thick in a way that makes you think 'that's not meant to be that consistency,' and the cartlidge, well yeah, it was cartlidge.  What more can I say? 

For the first time in my life I found myself utterly unable to consume. Actually I found myself in the bathroom for fear that I might vomit, leaving the social nicety of forcing oneself to eat and feign enjoyment of homecooked food up to my friend, who later confessed that he dumped most of his cartlidge bits into my bowl when no one was around to see. 

Spring in Georgia is much like spring on the east coast of Canada.  It plays with a person's hopes, warming up to above freezing just long enough for everything to turn into slush and mud, making you believe that better days are just around the corner, then boom, you wake up Monday morning to a fresh foot of snow.  Disgusted by the discovery, and groggy and disoriented by your head cold and the 13 hours of sleep you had starting at 5 pm the previous evening, following a long weekend of late nights, drinking, snowboarding, sledding, too many people, and oh yes, pms, you struggle to get ready for school, accidentally putting on a second pair of pants instead of a belt...it's going to be a great day.

Your voice has only partly returned from the nothing it has been for the last day and a half, and you show up to school just in time to realize you misread your schedule, an you're an hour early...it really is going to be a great day.  

You waste away the first period in the teachers' lounge, then make your way through the juvenile anarchy of the hallways to your fourth grade classroom.  You then begin the lesson only to find that a whole 3 out of 12 students actually did their homework (and there's nothing you can do about it because detention doesn't exist and your principal doesn't care),  awesome...it's time to break out the sticker reward system.  With the exception of the grade twos, a class that boasts some truly exceptional students, your day continues in much the same fashion.  The grade fives, despite having spent a solid half hour on it last Friday and having been told to remember it as homework, are still calling grey red, drawing complete blanks for purple, struggling with black and white, and just throwing together random noises (some of which don't even exist in the English language) for brown.

***************************************************************************

Close to thirty of us travelled to Bakuriani, one of Georgia's prized ski getaways in the lesser Caucassus, this past weekend.  The majority of us being first or second timers on the slopes, some of the down and up hill acrobatics were quite impressive.  I will however, out of respect and also in the interest of time, only speak for myself.

I got to the bottom of the bunny hill on my first go with little incident, only to find that I was unable to unlock my right binding.  I was stuck to my board.  I waited alone among the crowd of people and random things at the bottom of the hill til I spotted a familiar face, Sebastien and his teacher.  They tried freeing me, but to no avail. Andy had wandered up in the mean time, beer in one hand, camera in the other.  Having given up all efforts at learning how to ski after his first time down the hill,  he had  assumed the position of happy English photographer for the afternoon.  So I held onto him, and together we navigated through the crowd of people, vendors, and rows of gt snow racers for rent, back to the stand where I had rented my board. 

It took two men, a screw driver and about ten minutes to free me from the faulty binding. I was given another board, and headed back up the hill, on a slightly bigger run.  I got to the top and took a seat to strap in, only to realize that the bindings on my new board weren't properly fastened.  Excellent.  So back down the hill I went (I can now cross taking a round trip on a ski lift off my bucket list) slightly furious and feeling like an absolute fool. It seemed as though all the gesturing in the world could not communicate the blatant fault in the equipment, so I simply took another board, of my choosing this time, checked that I wasn't going to be trapped on it once I strapped in, and left.  Almost two hours after my initial start, I was finally able to get in a few consecutive runs before calling it a day.

My last attempt was, hands down, the most hillariously inglorious of the day. With a vast expanse of hill infront of me, naturally, I ended up on a four foot wide jump that some kids had obviously thrown together for their own amusement, and to the detriment of newbies like myself.  Luckily, although I am not able to direct myself at all whatsoever, I am quite good at stopping, or at least slowling down, which I managed to do, just in time to have a seat on the edge of the jump, drop gracefully over it, then slide off the side of the hill directly into the path of the ski lift. 

Thankfully, I was able to scooch backward up hill and out of the way just in time to avoid a low speed collision with an uncomming kid.  All momentum thus effectively lost, I then hopped my way to the top of the last major drop on the run, and, not feeling up to another one of those falls on your butt that you hurt in your head, I sat down and took it, like a two year old takes the stairs.

I left the hill for a late lunch with the other Andy (jam tea and vodka for breakfast Andy) who, having been away from home for over a day at this point, was entirely sober. Lunch therefore, was extended over a jug of wine, which eventually led to a walk to the kiddy park, where, having just discussed how much better life was at the age of four, we went sledding...on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle GT snow racers!!!

To all you folks back in Canada, note this is a highly effective way of nourishing your inner child, and of temporarily forgetting how much you hate our discouragingly long winters.  It was easily the funnest thing I've done in a very very long time. My falls on the snowboard paled in comparison to our high speed sleigh crashes, and we quickly realized why we were the only people starting from the very top of the hill. By the time we made it half way down, we were spending more time either in the air, or on our faces in the snow then on our sled. A significant portion of my right side is now green, brown, and red. 

A few miscelaneous things of note about Bakuriani.

-The streets, which are inches thick with ice, and have ruts a foot deep in many places, actually get sanded.  This is accomplished by two men who ride around in the back of a dump truck pitching out sand by the shovel full behind them as they go.  The result seems really quite ineffective, but the random smatterings of sandy clay every twenty feet or so along either side of the road must have at least a minor effect, otherwise I'm sure they wouldn't do it.

-You can purchase anything at the bottom of the ski hill.  Far beyond the items you might conceivably expect, such as sunglasses, beer, coffee, barbecued skewers of miscelaneous meats, hats and gloves, and equipment, horses and snow mobile rentals, there are booths selling barbie dolls, bouncy balls, action figures, and pumpkin seeds, and of course you can try your hand at a round of arcade shooting with the chance of winning a stuffed animal, becasue hey, you're in Geogia, why not? 

-Soviet era ski lifts still operating on the bunny hill.  Most people would probably call these death traps back home.  Words really are not sufficient.  I will try to track down a picture.

***************************************************************************

I just changed my bed sheets this past week for the first time since arriving in Khashuri.  Most of my peers express shock at the fact that I have to do this myself. I consider this freedom quite an accomplishment (I have also been allowed to fetch water from the well on my own as of late, since we are once again without running water as our pipes are have been frozen since last Monday). The sheet and matching duvet cover have two big red roses on them, with the words 'Hope it was Happy'...no inuendo there. My guess is that these were an item that didn't do so well about 25 years ago in either the U.K. or North America.

 

On food
I am living in a household in which the concept of boiling food, meat or vegetable, appears to be absolutely foreign.

Last Thursday I cooked for myself for the first time, rice and a stirfry, which consisted entirely of carrot, onion and garlic.  Aside from potatoes, that is all that is currently available here in the way of vegetables...things that can keep year round in a cellar. So it loooks like I'm going to have to get creative cooking with carrrots!  Anyhow, because I cooked on Thursday afternoon, I was aware of the half litre of oil that was in the cupboard. This was empty by Friday evening.  If that doesn't repulse you, I don't know what will.

There is no food in this household that is served without first being doused in an exorbitant amount of either, oil or mayonaise (and in some cases, such as the chicken innards 'salad' we had last weekend, both).  Also, when it  comes to the home made real fruit juices that they so love, sugar is king...drinking a glass is is not unlike what I imagine it would be like to drink a very tart melted popsicle, after adding a few extra tablespoons of glucose.

A couple of weeks ago, I rejoiced in the success of effectively communicating that I cannot eat wheat...the celebration was premature.  In hind site I'm pretty sure what this was really taken as was, she just doesn't like bread, so lets continue to feed her things that are thickened with wheat flour and she probably won't know the difference.  Thus I spent the entirety of last week with an crampy, bloated, gasy stomach, and a foggy, aching head.  I wasn't sleeping well, and I couldn't function properly, so by the time Sunday rolled around, with bags under my eyes, feeling quite miserable, I decided it was time to bite the bullet.

I couldn't afford to be polite about it anymore. I could not continue to eat things just because they were placed on my plate  accompanied by a hearty, and often times forceful 'chame! chame! chame!' ('Eat! Eat! Eat!') . So me and google translate had a very frank conversation with my host brother, mother and sister, and eventhough the word gluten does not translate at all whatsoever into Georgian, things have been pretty good since then.

All that having been said, Wednesday morning when I was going to heat up some cornmeal type substance, that had been boiled til thick, and left to harden the night before, for breakfast, my host mother poured what must have amounted to at least 8 table spoons of oil in the pan (which was only little, about 6 inches in diametre).  I cannot understand where this excessive tendency comes from, as no one else I talk to seems to be having the same problem, but it really appalls me and I haven't the slightest intention of conforming to it.  I poured the oil out.

--I have just melted to bottom of my right slipper. My space heater is slowly having its way with everything I own.--

On Saturday evening, Mirian and Giorgi were chopping up the better part of a pig in the chicken.  Most of the fat was served with salt for dinner. What was not cooked however, was marinated in a pot with onions and garlic overnight, and 'barbecued' on skewers the next afternoon.  The barbecue consisted of an overturned wheelbarrow as a windbreak, and a bed of coals, collected out of the woodstove in the multipurpoose room, strewn on the ground in the back yard.  Wine was used to douse the flames, adding flavour at the same time - awesome.  Now I'm not a huge fan of pork, but compared to what had been served the night before, this looked gourmet (it was a solid 70 percent actual meat).  When they reheated it on the stove for dinner that night however, it was drowned in the usual cup or two of oil...ruined.  The solid mix of fat and oil in the bottom of that pan the next morning was almost an inch thick.

Before I sign off however, there do exist a few positive things on the topic of food that I would like to report as well.  The first is corriander.  They use it in so many things, and it is so good! Soups, salads (both real and mayo salads), garnishes, meats, (not just in this household, but in the country in general).  The next is something called a churchjela, a string of nuts, (so far I have encountered almonds, walnuts, hazlenuts, and something like brazil nuts) wrapped in dried fruit.  The result is something that looks like an oversized string bean, but who's colour varies depending on the fruit, and makes for a great healthy snack.  Then there is kakali (walnuts).  I had never before seen a walnut fruit, or even thought of walnuts as coming from a fruit for that matter.  But of course they do, and we've got the tree in our back yard, along with the peach tree, the apple tree, the cherry tree and the plum tree, to prove it.  I came to this realization when I was offered to take and eat from a bowl of little black ball-like things, not overly sweet, with an outer shell that was not soft but not hard, and that was altogether unlike anything I had ever tasted - preserved walnuts.  This delicious little treat, is achieved by soaking ripe walnut fruit in a bucket of baking soda and water for a week, then rinsing them, and boiling them for about 8 hours...who would have thought.

Those so far are my favourites. Unfortunately most typical Georgian dishes are made of bread, so I haven't been able to fully partake in the country's cultural cuisine.  It's khatchapuri (cheesebread) and Khinkali (duplings stuffed with any variety of meat and cheese...and more rarely vegetables) are particularly celebrated.  In many households, khatchapuri accompanies most evening meals, and apparently it's a feat of manhood to eat 20 khinkali in one go.