Last week was a slightly rough week for me and some of my friends might have even used the word “raging” to describe me. A friend and I were on the phone talking about our weekend plans, he was undecided and I declared that I was going to Tbilisi and I was going alone. If he happened to show up, then awesome, but I did not want to hangout with him or anyone from our group of friends because they were all morons. (I told you I might have been raging.) I then stopped and looked at a calendar to see when exactly had been my last village weekend (when you stay in your village all weekend, normally because you are poor and have no money) and to my shock it was the weekend of March 30th. I had spent 6 weekends in a row, with other people, doing what they wanted to do. They weren’t bad weekends really, one was spent traveling going to a metal concert in Tallinn and then traveling to Riga. Another was spent getting drunk with three British guys in Vilnius who told me that they were all twenty-three, but I know they were nineteen and three Tbilisi weekends. I needed a break and some Emily time.
Friday afternoon I headed into Tbilisi alone, which was a little odd because my friend who lives close to me in my region normally takes the same marshookah in with me, oh every weekend. The ride in was horrible. I had a seat by the door and it started down pouring and the door wasn’t sealed tight so massive water drops started to hit and soak me. I inched as far away as I could from the dripping water, half off the seat, muttering Georgian and English swear words. We came to a stop in a town, shortly after this and a few guys who were sitting in the back were getting out and I had to move for them to do this. The thing is, the person who sits in the seat I was sitting in normally just gets out of the marshookah, let’s the people get off and then gets back in and at this very moment it was raining. The men, being good Georgian men, tried to maneuver me so I would be able to stay inside the dry (HA!) marshookah. I took one look at the space they were trying to get me to go into and one look at my ass and thighs and jumped out of the vehicle. (I really jumped, I am not justing using that word to class up my writing.) Everyone looked a little stunned that the American, with just a dress on, no rain coat (it’s back in Maine) would stand in rain that was coming down so hard someone might as well have pointed a fire hose at me. They got out and I went back in and moved into the back row of seats, where I could dry off, but the bouncing on those dirt roads, had me almost vomiting everywhere. By the time we got to Tbilisi I started to wonder if coming this weekend had really been such a good idea.
Friday night I set off to the Tbilisi Concert Hall, which happened to be where I was going to see a Georgian dance performance. I had scored a ticket from another Teach and Learn with Georgia volunteer off of Facebook. I had never met her, or anyone else in the group of about ten who showed up, but it proved to be most enjoyable as we waited for the performance to start we talked about the basics and what everyone was doing when the semester ends in five weeks, it’s all any of us talk about now.
I am going to assume that most of you reading this have never seen Georgian dancing, but let me tell you it is amazing. I can’t describe it so I’ve included a video of one of the dances I saw them do. (You can skip to 5:00 in, if you don’t want to watch it all. It gets really good there.) I sat for most of the performance with a massive grin on my face and the two hours of it flew by. The best part was I only spent about $6.15 on the ticket, very much well worth it. After the show some of us went to Elvis Cafe to get something to eat or drink. We again talked about thing such amazing people like us talk about, like lack of water, or illness. We called it a night around 23:30 and I walked myself back to my hostel.
On Saturday I woke up and had a nice hot shower and went out to buy strawberries. Right now they are selling small ones that taste amazing, not like the genetically modified monsters you get in the States. I also may have gotten some lobiani. I went back to the hostel and consumed all of the strawberries in one go, with a cup of crap coffee that I drank half of and then threw out. (Georgia needs Starbucks.)
I got everything together and set off around 11am for a day of Emily adventures. First on my list was to find the post office. I used the maps app on my iPod to find where it was and it told me that it was only a few blocks away. I set out on foot, sweating not even have walked a block. I got to were the post office was suppose to be and there was a bank. Now I know sometimes in Georgia, not everything is as it seems, but this seemed a little silly, a bank? Really? I double checked my Apple product and the address on the website. Apple had sent me to #144, even though I had put in #44. I kept positive and turned and walked the way I had come. I found number #44 and the post office easily after that.
I went inside and handed my envelope to the clerk and said that I needed to mail my letter. She asked what was inside. I looked at her and said, “a letter. Paper with writing on it?” Would you like me to open it so you can read it? She looked at it, checking my return address. I was just waiting for her to say I didn’t write a street or a house number on it. I’m sorry I live in a village where we don’t have fancy things like proper addresses, not Tbilisi. She saw that the letter was going to Ukraine and then started to speak Russian to me. Dear god woman, I was just talking to you in my crap Georgian and my exceptional American English, why ruin a good thing? I handed her my 4.90GEL to mail it and I am just assuming my letter will get there, but if it doesn’t I’ll only have myself to blame because I didn’t get it insured.
Before the weekend started I asked myself what was missing from my life and might put me in a better mood. My answer was street photography. If there is one thing I love it is capturing people when they don’t know I am there. This was number two on my task of Emily adventures. I just strolled to a park taking photos along the way.
I was on a mission to find a skate park from a Georgian movie I had seen back in March. When I got there it was full of children on skateboards, bikes and rollerblades, not university students like I had hoped for, but they proved to be worthy subject matter.
In the park there also was a demonstration against cutting down some trees there. The workers were just sitting around waiting to use their chain saws and the people who were saving the lives of these poor defenseless trees stood around. I took my pictures, shrugged my shoulders and walked away.
I made my way to the Doll and Puppet Museum, which was Emily adventure number three for the day. I walked in the open door and the man at the ticket counter told me they were closed. I walked out and didn’t even ask for an explanation. It’s Georgia. I called my friend who had come into Tbilisi, the one who I said I didn’t care if he came or not, and told him I was done with my adventures for the day. He asked how the Puppet Museum was (he detests the idea of it, probably scared by them,) and I told him it was closed. He asked why and I said, “immatom” which mean ‘because’ in Georgian. He wanted an explanation but when you say immatom, we all know it really means ‘because it is Georgia and that is just the way things are so stop asking.’ At that point I had forgotten why I had called him in the first place, remembered that he was in fact a moron, and realized that I wanted icecream, so I hung up on him.
I felt like I should also share the song that this post title comes from.
Great photos.
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