Super Supra: My Host Father's Birthday

This past March my host dad had a birthday on the 7th. The preparations started on the Sunday (the 4th) and continued up until the last minuet. There was a small army of people who came to help. They tried to put me to work, but I ended up being one of the worst Georgian cooks ever and banished myself to my room. Animals were slaughtered, vegetables were peeled and chopped, and bread was baked. Women gossiped in hush tons as they worked and men drank and did the heavy lifting.

As the sun started to set on the day of the supra, everyone showered and changed into their party clothes. The videographer and the DJ showed up. I greeted people that I knew as they came in and took photos. People commented on the grandness of the whole thing. 

I took my seat with the teachers from my school on one side of me and my host parent’s granddaughter on the other, as I was her favorite American at the party. My host mother had given me instructions to not drink, because the director of my school was present. The people I teach with, thought I should do other wise, and I did. I was told to eat, and eat, and eat. I seat hopped all night visiting with everyone I had come to know in the past six weeks. A woman handed me what I thought was a glass of wine and I downed it like a good little Georgian, it was  liquor. I made a face and everyone laughed. Emily the entertainer had showed up.

I was told to Georgian dance multiple times and stupidly agreed. There is video of it that I still have to burn. I got asked to dance with the village’s most eligible bachelor, while his mom and most people who live here watched. I felt like I was at a middle school dance again.

The supra had started around 7pm and I finally excused myself to pass out around midnight. The next few days were spent having smaller supras to use up the left over mounds of food and cleaning up. Even having spent a couple of years catering I think this beats any $200,000 weddings I have been to. That night I really felt like I was a part of my village community and it’s nights like that, that make me love Georgia and everything about it.

 

Hundreds and Hundreds of Plates

Mushrooms

My Host Dad With his Favorite Village Baby, Saba, on the Morning of his Birthday

Setting a Table

Neighbors Waiting for the Supra to Start

My School Director

My Host Dad's Daughter (left) and her Friend

The Videographer 

The Gem of the Woman Who Gave me Liquor, Not Wine. (Adopting Her and She is Moving to America with Me.)

Me and My Future Georgian Husband ♥

Because This Problem Is Going To Last More Than The Weekend: Part One

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.

I'm Tallinn you...

Surprise, I went to Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius over Easter break! I don’t want to try to cram all three places into one, blog because that wouldn’t be fare to expect you fine people to read and look at all of those pictures all in one go and most importantly it would be unfair to each unique city.

Tallinn

I will start off with Tallinn, Estonia which is a small country of about 1.4 million people south of Finland, to the west of Russia, to north of Latvia, and east of the Baltic sea. Arriving in Tallinn on April 11th, I was tired from my traveling to I checked in to my hostel and took a two hour nap. I then went out and naturally found, say it with me people I know you all know where I went because I just got into town, the grocery store! Whatever moron, thinks it’s a good idea to let someone go to a grocery store after spending the past four months in Georgia is wrong. I was so giddy to be in a place that sold food that was so bright and clean. The chicken was even already butchered and put in nice little packages to buy. I didn’t have to buy a live one and kill it myself! They also had Ben and Jerry’s, which I wanted so badly, but it was almost €7, so I will wait until I get back to the States in January-ish and have my mother buy me a pint for every month I was gone. (Love you mom!) I didn’t make too many poor choices when I checked out. I ended up with carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, rice, oranges, kiwis, muesli, and assorted liquorish. I just really wanted the option to be able to eat food that is not dripping in sunflower oil and salt. 

When I got back to the hostel I took one of the most amazing showers I have ever had. I am lucky enough to have hot water at my house in Georgia, but to say it’s lacking water pressure is an understatement and when I was in Ukraine I bathed in a bath tub that was in a freezing cold kitchen. (I still love my kitchen bath tub, but it is a bath not a shower.) The hostel, just opened up and the show head is one of those ones that is suppose to mimic rain or being under a water fall or something. All I know is that it was amazing.

Me in my Ukrainian bathtub this past May

After my shower and so dinner of rice and veggies I went to go see the Hunger Games. I have been wanting to see this movie so badly and in Georgia all the movies are dubbed in Russian or Georgian so I had to wait until now to see it. I thought it was fantastic. It was also odd sitting in such a modern movie theater, dare I say better then the ones in Maine, and then leaving it to go back to my hostel. I kept thinking that I would be going back to my house in Maine, but alas it was back to my hostel to get a goodnights sleep.

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On day two in Tallinn I woke up and took shower number two in less then 24 hours (amazing!), ate a nice healthy breakfast and heading out to kill sometime time before going on a free walking tour at noon. I ended up at a great little cafe in Old Town that I don’t remember the name of, but they had real coffee and strawberry cheesecake. I sat in the dimly lit place, just so happy, but feeling a little weird, that I was not in Georgia for the first time in three months. 

I set off and found where the walking tour and for two hours a lovely Estonian girl took us all around and told us all about the history of the city and fun other little tidbits.

Georgian food in Tallinn

Estonian Freedom Monument 

Orthodox Church

Orthodox Church

Orthodox Church

Former KGB Headquarters that are now going to be luxury apartments.

Swedish Embasy

Town Center

Town Center

Town Center

After that I set off and walked along the sea and it reminded me of my autumn spent in and out of Aarhus, Denmark. Tallinn has a very Scandinavian feel to it to began with. I eventually drifted back towards town and found a little bistro that had the most amazing tomato and ginger soup with feta. It was simply to die for. I will find a way to make this when I get back to the States and have a proper kitchen.

Best Soup Ever!

Street Art

Street Art

Street Art

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On day three of my Tallinn adventure, it was raining so I decided to go to their occupation museum, which covered when they were taken over by Germany and Russia. It had lots of artifacts, and showed long half hour portions of a documentary every few meters. Needless to say I did not watch them all, because I would have been there all day. Down in the basement there was this odd collection of Soviet statues, in a room that had a bunch of lockers in it. There was nothing also nothing stopping me from going up and cuddling with the massive Lenin statue. I thought about it, but I have higher standards, now if there was a statue of Stalin there... Just kidding!  Still kind of perplexing that room.

That night I was suppose to go to the ballet, but smart me thought it started at 8, and it was actually 7. I normally never mess up on times or dates, but it happens. I stood pouting in my black dress, looking all nice for the missed ballet, when one of the guys who worked at the hostel asked me if I wanted to go to a metal concert with him and three other guys. Who wouldn’t want to go to a metal concert with a Belgian, two Brits, and a Russia in Estonia?! Of course I said yes. 

To be honest I said yes very reluctantly. I don’t really ever listen to metal, but it was one of those “Oh, why not Emily? It’s not like you are ever going to get this chance again,” moments. I stood awkwardly for the first few songs, clutching onto my beer for dear life, surrounded by hipster metal heads, looking like I had just walked out of Banana Republic, and I felt like someone was going to throw me out for clearly not belonging. I downed my beer, and thought, “Screw it, screw them. This is your last night in Estonia, might as well enjoy this.” I just threw myself into the music and started dancing and moshing, while most people just bobbed up and down. During the breaks the Belgian who worked at the hostel introduced me to some Estonians, and a girl complemented me on not looking like every other douche bag in the place and that I was beautiful. She became my new best friend at that very moment. I really wish I had taken some pictures of me on that night to share, but I didn’t think my camera and metal concerts mixed. (Russian Circles, Junius, Deafheaven, Wolves Like Us, and SoundArcade were the bands I saw just incase that means anything to you.)

Overall I thought Tallinn was a great arty little city, people had hair more outrages then mine! It was full of plenty of cafes, where I could get my coffee fix, and not curse not having Starbucks for once in almost five months. Creative restaurants to get my foodie on and the glorious ocean that I have missed. Possibly the next semi-permanent  destination on my list?

What a gem of a poster.