Welcome to Telavi

Maka and Gucha met me at the hotel with the friend who was driving us to Telavi from Tbilisi.  None of them speaks any English.  I asked Maka in terrible, broken Georgian if she would teach me to make Georgian food.  In translation, I think I said something like, “You are teacher the chef to me eating Khatchapuri and Kinkhali” (those were the only Georgian foods I could remember at the time).  About halfway to Telavi, we stopped for Kinkhali and Khatchapuri.  I think something got lost in translation there, but the food was good!

The house in Telavi is very nice.  My bedroom has a chandelier in it because why not?  Bare cement walls and chandeliers balance out quite nicely.  

Be jealous of my chandelier

And be jealous of the view from my bedroom window!

Gucha left pretty much as soon as we got to the house, and I haven’t seen him since.  He’s at work all the time.  Goga, the nine-year-old son, has been in and out of the house a bit, but he’s making the most of his summer break playing with his friends outside.  Ani, the twelve-year-old daughter is at her grandparents’ house in the country, and I haven’t met her yet.  I spend most of my time with Maka, my host mother.  Maka doesn’t speak any English and gets very upset when I speak Russian, so I am very thankful for all those late-night Georgian study sessions during training week in Tbilisi.  With all my new free time, I’m desperately studying Georgian just so I can communicate basic things.  Among the first Georgian phrases I learned are “sit down” and “eat.”  Maka likes to feed me and worries that there is something wrong with her cooking if I don’t have third and fourth helpings of everything on the table. 

Orsha, my new best friend

I think I am getting a reputation for being a bit simple.  I walk around the house talking to myself, saying things like “Chair.  That is a chair.  Is it a bed?  No, it is a chair.  I sit on the chair.  I do not sleep on the chair.”  The family has a little puppy, Orsha, who also has to hear me practicing Georgian.  She likes to follow me around and chew on my shoelaces while I tell her the names of every piece of furniture and the colours of all the walls.  It’s cool, though.  Orsha gets me.  Orsha and me, we understand one another.

The next door neighbour, Lali, is a friend of Maka’s and a very nice lady.  She comes over for coffee almost every morning, and we eat dinner at her house almost every evening.  Her daughter, Rusa, is really sweet.  She speaks English about as well as I speak Georgian, so we get along quite well.  She’s asked me to come over and speak English with her so she can improve.  The playlist on her iPod is a very strange mix of American pop music, Russian djs, and Georgian folk songs.  I like this girl!

In training, we were warned not to drink well water or river water for the first few months, until we’d had a chance to acclimate to the new stuff in it.  The tap water in major cities like Telavi was supposed to be fine, so I had no qualms about drinking the pitcher of water Maka put in my bedroom.  Then I went to refill it and found where it was coming from.  By that point, I’d been drinking the water for several days without getting sick, so I figured I’d be fine.  Let’s hope it continues to be fine. 

This is what I've been drinking

School doesn’t start until mid-September, so my days are pretty free at this point.  In the mornings, I teach Maka English while do the laundry or the dishes or whatever cleaning she thinks needs to be done (she sweeps and mops the entire house twice daily!).  In the afternoon, I frantically study Georgian.  Occasionally, Maka takes me to pick apples or hazelnuts and lets me reach all the fruit at the top of the trees.  In the evenings, everyone sits outside on the benches outside their houses and discusses Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Occasionally, they discuss me, but I pretend I don’t understand Virginiashi and Amerikellia. 

Maka told me this morning to pack my shampoo to go to her parents’ house.  I’m sure she told me some other things, but that was all I understood.  Off to the village!