Soviet Slim Down: An Introduction

Weight, it’s something we don’t openly talk about how we struggle with it, in most of the world. After spending a year in Georgia, my views on food, fitness, and health were changed. We, fellow teachers, talked about it a lot, almost as much as our bathroom issues. I adopted an “I don’t give a shit about what you think,” attitude. I started doing things my way and on a budget. This is an introduction to my Soviet Slim Down that I started in Georgia and am now carrying on during my vacation in Ukraine and will conical from here on out.

It started off as a joke. I was sitting in a Georgian restaurant in February 2012 with a newly formed friend, enjoying our snow day of freedom from our students, laughing about how my host parents put me on a scale a few days earlier, shocked that I weighed a whopping 107kg (236lbs). He said that they had to use the industrial scale, that they used for making Cha Cha, because I would have broken a normal one. I had known this guy for all of three weeks, barley spoken to him, but here we sat, making fun of my predicament and eating habits. For some reason I was ok with him making fun of me, anyone else I would have burst into tears and told them to fuck off. Maybe it was because we were in Georgia and had to laugh at our lives or we would have lost our minds or maybe it was because I knew in my heart that early on in our friendship that he cared and this was his way of showing it. 

I’ve always been fat, not chubby, plump, slightly overweight, or any other nicety phrase you want to throw at me. Something clicked, hard, in Georgia during my time there. I would sit in the teachers room, watching my co-workers, not so much older than me take each others blood pressure, talk about medications for controllable health conditions that were the product of unhealthy eating, and sip coffee that was mostly sugar, thinking that something had to change. It was like a PSA for what you didn’t want your health to end up as that just played over and over. One day I drew a food pyramid on the chalk board and they all started laughing at me, the silly America who thought she was teaching them something they didn’t know. They knew alright, but didn’t care, just like millions of people in America alone. I continued to bitch for a few months about how this country was making me fat, until my outspoken friend told me to shut up and stop blaming my wealthy host family with their sweets and fried chicken and take some control and loose weight. If I couldn’t do it in a country like Georgia, where every kind of produce was coming into season, that cost next to nothing, and I only worked 15 hours a week, was I really expecting that I could do it in America? Because my friend, who I love dearly, is an asshole and I am stubborn, we formed a bet. I had to loose a kilo a week or he got my prized food bag, normally a Kit-Kat, pear soda and some other horrible food, that I would eat on my journey back to my village every weekend from Tbilisi. I didn’t care if I would have to give him this food, because it didn’t matter I could have bought it in my village anyways, I wanted to win and shove it in his face.

Me on my way home to my village with a kit-kat in one hand and a pear soda in the other (Georgia March 2012)

I explained to my host family that money was on the line for me to get skinny. They laid off force feeding me, my well meaning host mother even tried to get me up at 7am to do ‘sport’ with my host brother, and my family would come running when they would hear me dragging the scale out to monitor their American daughter’s progress. Everyone in the village knew what was going on, everyone. My weight was no longer a secret. People openly commented on my figure like I was a livestock animal they were getting ready for the fair. My friend regaled our friends at dinner in the city with my struggles, making them guess my weight. No one could believe that I was above 100kg (220lbs). The odd thing was that after a while I didn’t care that people knew what my weight was. It was a fact of life that I was fat. No matter what I wear it does not hide the fact that I am not a size 2. 

The talks with my weight out in the open, not backstabbing whispers, were more productive then the years I spent as an adolescent in Weight Watchers or trying some quick weight loss diet, which clearly didn’t work in the long run. After that spring, when I went back into western culture I put on weight again, and fast. After getting down to around 100kg (220lbs) I was back up to around the 107kg (236lbs) that I had started at. it was a mix of traveling a lot, eating food that I hadn’t eating in while (years in the case of Denmark), drinking, and generally not caring until it had caught up with me yet again. 

When I got back to the States that summer I had to buy new pants and I squeezed myself into a pair of size 16 jeans that had no right to be stretched that far and have me say that they “fit.” Six weeks later when I went home to Georgia I couldn’t even get them on.

Arriving in Georgia, I was going to be living on my own, in an apartment, for an extended period of time for the first time in my life. After paying my rent I only had about $135 to last me the month on food. I quickly discovered that almost all western brands of prepackaged food wasn’t an option and local produce was cheap. I gave up on any meat I would have to cook at home and almost all forms of dairy, to avoid explosive bathroom issues that semester. I couldn’t eat out of boredom anymore, because it wasn’t in the budget, but I never went hungry. I drank water, flavored with minimal amounts of my valuable Chrystal Light, to add variety, gone were the sugary drinks, again not in the budget. 

I got myself weighed on the street by old women, and their scales who would question if 103kg (227lbs) was really something to be proud about. I had women at a bazaar flat out tell me that they didn’t have pants big enough for me. The friend that I was with, another American, asked if I was ok emotionally after having all of them basically tell me that I was too fat. I said I was use to it. They didn’t need to be any less honest. I knew that I was the one who had to change, not them. I was the one who was screwing with my health, being stupid, and staying depressed because I had decided to eat a whole cake, not just a piece.

Every visit back home to my Georgian village to see my family that fall, I was greeted by them telling me that I was still getting skinny slowly, but surly. They had faith that their America could do it, even if they couldn’t. My host mum set my goal weight at 85kg (187.3lbs). She had no past background history on me, she hadn’t seen the struggles. She was blissfully unaware and thought that I had never thought about loosing weight before. There was something refreshing about this and her blind faith that I could do this. When I came back from a summer away, she blamed my weight gain on America.

When I left Georgia, I got myself weighed on the street by an old woman for the last time in December and I was back down to 100kg (220lbs) after an extremely inactive semester. When I landed back in the States food was over processed and I felt like a freak for complaining. I struggled with eating what my family ate and what I ate. Not a lot was matching up. My mother started calling me her vegan daughter, I still didn’t trust meat and dairy for the fear of toilet explosions. I again had to battle against that American stereotypes of weight and how it was talked about. A few weeks ago my boss spoke with me, right before I felt for Ukraine that when I got back from Georgia I was the “tiny,” the smallest he had ever seen me and then again I put a little back on, but slowly it was coming off again. He spoke honestly about my plans and goals, nothing was hushed. I talked numbers. I don’t know where I want to end up, because I can’t remember the last time I was ever this skinny. Yesterday I got myself weighed on the streets of Lviv by an old woman and I was at 90kg (198.5lbs). I got off the scale and went on my way to the market to buy some more produce and didn’t think much of it until this morning. My license that I have had since I was 18, that says 200lbs (90.7kg) is no longer a lie and for the first time has even come close to being true. I don’t want a medal or a party. I just want to keep going on with my journey, slowly chipping away enjoying throwing out old clothes, because they are too big. Most of all I can’t wait to see my friend from Georgia further down the road, healthier, and being able to say, “I told you I could do it, you ass!”

Breakdown of the numbers:

Fall 2009: 

February 2012: 107kg (236lbs)

June 2012: 100kg (220lbs)

August 2012: 108kg (238lbs)

December 2012: 100kg (220lbs)

May 2012: 90kg (198.5lbs)

February 2012: Barley squeezing into a size 18 in Gap

May 2012: Comfortably a size 14 in Gap 

Break down in photos:

January 2012 (Georgia)

June 2012 (Armenia)

November 2012 (Ukraine)

May 2013 (Ukraine)

One Year...

A year. That is how long I have called Georgia home, and in a week it will all be over. One part of my life, that is so uniquely mine and forever will be mine. Bits and pieces will be told, but the whole story will never be heard by one person, and it’s not intended to. 

None of this would have ever been possible without my family, my Georgian family, Tamariani, and all my friend scattered around the world, esp. those who took me in, fed, and entertained me. Without all of you I would forever be the child sitting alone, in a corner with a balloon tied to her wrist. 

Ok, so maybe I was that child the other weekend...

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for helping me have the most amazing year of my life, even if I just met you for a brief moment. I have nothing but radiating love for all of you!

Emily 

New Years Eve (Lviv, Ukraine)

Christmas (Lviv, Ukraine)

My first Georgian dance (Mid- January 2012 Tamariani, Georgia)

My first Georgian drinking horn (Early February 2012, Lagodekhi, Georgia)

My host dad's birthday supra with Simon, my Georgian husband, if I would only say yes. (March 7th, 2012 Tamariani Georgia)

Azerbaijan Border with J. (Late March 2012 Lagodekhi, Georgia)

Armenia (mid-June 2012)

Volunteering as Roskilde Music Festival (Roskilde Denmark, Late June/ early July 2012)

Mumford and Sons with my sister cousin (August 4, 2012, Portland, Maine)

Sam thought it would be funny to get me wasted on my birthday. Enjoy this picture Sam. (September 28th, 2012 Tbilisi, Georgia)

Davit Gareja Monastary (Early October 2012, Georgia)

Thanksgiving 2012 (Lviv, Ukraine)

Is This The Line?

Physical abuse is something that I do not agree with, especially when it involves a child and disguised by calling it discipline. I’ve never been a parent, but I’ve grown up living in a house where a day care is run and I have a brother who is 11 years younger then me, and I’ve never felt the need to hit a child. In Georgia, unfortunately not everyone feels this way. 

According to Unicef 79.8% of children under the age of eleven and in the eleven to eighteen year age range that number drops to 44%, but that is still alarmingly high. 19% of children in the report, were physically disciplined before their first birthday and 90% of four to seven year olds were. The most common punishments were reported to be shaking, pulling hair, twisting ears, and smacking on the bottom with a hand. “Just over a fifth of respondents (to the survey) 21.5% reported that they had repeatedly hit their child ( beat him/ her up). Eight respondents admitted to trying to choke or suffocate the child and 6 burning him/ her.” 

(You can read the whole report here: http://www.unicef.org/georgia/Violence_Study_ENG_final.pdf and the article which is a little easier to read and takes less time to understand here: http://www.unicef.org/georgia/media_11332.html )

I was back in my village this weekend to visit with my host family and to deliver four backpacks with school supplies and some clothes to one of my old students’ family, who are very poor. I walked to their house, paying close attention to make sure that I didn’t drag any of the straps in the mud, as it had down poured the night before. I reached the house and I heard screaming by the mother at one of her daughters and what was the mother hitting the daughter and she cried out after every hit. I only stood there for a few seconds before I went in the gate. The youngest daughter came out of the house and was over joyed to see me standing there and yelled to her mother that I was there. The screaming by her stopped and there was sounds of shuffling inside. All the adults put on a happy face to see me, but I also noticed that the bedroom door was shut. I wanted to be out of this situation as soon as possible. Teach and Learn with Georgia told us during orientation that we are never to directly intervene with domestic violence, for obvious reasons. I handed out the backpacks to the two children who were in the room and the youngest daughter was the most over joyed about it. The middle daughter was pleased and modest. I was offered coffee and juice and I refused both. I didn’t want to take anything from this family who had so little. 

The oldest daughter came out of the bedroom after she had regained composure, but her face was still red and she was wiping away tears. I should also mention that she is about fourteen. She looked ashamed when I looked at her, because she knew that I knew what had happened. I however did not know what caused her mother to hit her, but I highly doubt it justified her actions. When I was there the mother also got mad at the middle daughter (age 11)  for doing something minuscule wrong and angrily took her in the kitchen and I saw her rase her hand threateningly before closing the door behind her. Coffee did appear for me at one point and I didn’t drink it. It was the one rebellion I could perform against her for treating her children in such a way and I told her harshly that I didn’t want it when I left.

I wanted to take her children with me, but there are currently no laws to my knowledge against corporal punishment in the home. Sadly his isn’t a secret in the village by any means. My co-teacher last semester would tell me what students had a “hard life,” which she sometimes went into detail about, but always meant they were being physically abused. No one speaks out because they are too ashamed and they have to live in such a close knit community for most likely their whole life, where they would be shunned for reporting such actions to the authorities. Out of the four children in the family, the three that I taught last year all showed signs of abuse and neglect. It is easier then I want to admit, to write off things, as they are extremely poor, like their unkept appearance at times. I had even witnessed the mother swat at the children before. The question is what to do with this knowledge, being a foreigner in a country with nonexistent child protective services. How long is one suppose to wait, until there is a visible bruise, a broken bone, or a dead child? 

Goodbye Shadow

It is sometimes easy for me to forget that Georgia is a developing nation. My host house has all the comforts of my house in America, minus good water pressure and being cold in the winter, but it hasn’t been cold for months now. I spend my weekends in Tbilisi with the ability to get whatever I want, besides good Chinese food. It also comes down to the fact that I have adjusted and adapted to Georgia and nothing seems to be too out of my spectrum of normal. 

Yesterday I was going through my things, trying to cut down on everything I would have to lug to my apartment in Tbilisi. I decided to part with a box of markers that I had used maybe once to color with and other wise they were keeping my window propped open. I also had some construction paper, nail polish, half a bottle of lotion that I didn’t care for the scent anymore, and a Little Mermaid coloring book that I never got bored enough to color in. I put it in a blue plastic bag and set off to give it to one of my fourth grade students. My co-teacher had told me that her family was very poor, but in the semester that I had known her and her three siblings I had still yet to go inside her house. The children sometimes came to school a little dirty, but what kids aren’t? There clothing was a little warn and they are on the smaller side, but I just attributed it to genetics and nothing else.

I found the her house and no one was outside so I asked the next door neighbor, who yelled and got my students mother outside. I explained that I was looking for one of her daughters. She happily ushered me inside and told me that she would be home shortly. She gave me a small stool to sit on and offered me coffee. I declined and she took a seat on the floor next to an older women, who it was explained to me that she was my students grandmother. A toddler came over and immediately wanted me to hold her and play with her. I scooped her right up in my arms and held her while talking with my students mother about them, my summer and autumn plans, and our families. 

I had forgotten that I was a curiosity to people, but I was reminded of this. There was a very good chance that I was the first foreigner that they had ever had in their house. They touched my color tattoo and my newly permed hair. I let the toddler wear my nock off Ray Ban sunglasses and she screamed when they were taken away. They all wanted me to take their pictures with my camera.

I looked around the small house that was made up of four rooms. The wallpaper had come off in large chunks. There were cracks all over the walls and even a hole in the corner by the floor that I could see out of. The TV was partially melted on the side, with wires coming out, but it was still functional. In this hot weather the deterioration was not a massive issue, but I could only imagine the how cold the house got in the winter when the wind blew through the cracks. I did not count enough beds for every family member. There wasn’t that many possessions. A few old toys scattered around the house. 

My student came home with her two older sisters, the eldest questioned her mother why I didn’t not have coffee and I said I didn’t want any. I gave my student the bag of things I had brought and she way beyond excited looking at everything. I explained that I was going away for the summer and I didn’t want these things anymore.  She put everything back in the bag and kept a death grip on it, politely stating that it was hers. She told her mother though that she could have the lotion, which I had to explain what it was and how to use it. They loved the smell of it. I felt bad thinking of all the Bath and Body Works products that I have back in the States that if I had here I would give them, not just a half bottle of lotion. 

My student then decided that she wanted to paint my nails with a bottle of nail polish I had also given her. She did one pinky and got half on my finger, which her mother fixed and then asked me to do the rest. I sat painting my nails while the whole family watched and they all told me how pretty they looked when I had finished. The mother disappeared and came back with a bar of soap that she tried to give to me and I explained to her that my bag that I was taking to Australia this summer was really small. She came back with a pair of silver hoop earrings, telling me that these could fit into my bag. I didn’t want to take anything away from them because of how little they have, but I couldn’t keep saying no. I also was given a cup of coffee around the same time. I let my student put my new earrings on me, which was a little painful at one point, but I kept a smile plastered to my face. I didn’t want her to get in trouble for “hurting” the American teacher. 

My student’s sister who is in fifth grade and super smart sat translating between her mother and I. She is easily one of the best, if not the best student I have. She always finds time to do her homework and study, even though she has to help her mother around the house and I don’t mean choirs that a child is given. I’ve been told she takes care of the cows, which is amazing to me that this small 12 year old girl could handle not just one cow, but numerous ones. She also watches her younger siblings. 

Their mother excuses herself, because she had to go tend to the eggplant, which is their source of income. My student and I went for a walk around her part of the village. I live on one of the two main streets and she lives further out, by the border of Azerbaijan. She held my hand with one of her hands and in the other her blue bag. She took me around, showing me where her grandmother lived, which looked like a house even smaller then her own. She said hello to everyone that we passed, happy to show that she was with me. She slipped on mud at one point and almost went down, but we just started laughing. During our walk tears came out of my eyes a little bit, knowing that I was leaving this week and thinking back on the semester spent with her and all of our misadventures. I love being her friend, but being her teacher drives me nuts. She can’t sit still and doesn’t do any of the work, then again she also is lacking books and other supplies. Despite that she has still picked up some English, not nearly as much as her sister though. We started to walk one way, but there was a goose and when she saw it she decided to turn around and go back towards her house. I didn’t blame her, those things can be horribly mean. There is one I pass everyday on my way to school that chased me a few months back and I look at it and think if you try anything again, so help me God, I am going to kill you and cook you for dinner. I pretend to not notice her fear and she ignored my tears. We were even. 

We went back to her house and broke in the Little Mermaid coloring book. I got one page, she got the opposite. She asked me what color she should use on everything, never once questioning my choice. We did this for a bit and then I announced that I should go home. 

On my walk back to my house I thought about the difference I had made in some of my students lives this semester and even though I will be in Tbilisi teaching next autumn it doesn’t mean that I will forget about this school or stop trying to give back to my former students and their families. I am already planing a list of things to purchase over my summer holidays to bring back to them when I visit. I feel that just because my fellow volunteers and I move on to do new things, that we should not sever our ties with our old schools. We could assume that another volunteer will eventually come along to fill our place and pick up where we left off, or we can continue to make a difference, even from afar, not leaving things to chance. 

Six Months: I was Feeling Sad, Can't Help Looking Back

When I came to Georgia six months ago I kept reminding myself that anything was possible here, I just had to give things a chance. My grandfather told me right before I left, that if I didn’t like it over here, then I come right back home and no one would think less of me. I’ve used that advice this whole time, but I’ve modified it to if I don’t like a situation, then get out of it or change it. I have grown in my time spent over here so far. Physically I am still pretty much the same, but I have a different outlook on life that will probably only be intensified when I return to the western world. I will be leaving my village and Georgia next Friday and won’t return until late August, except for about 48 hours in late June when I get home from Armenia and then go to Denmark and less then 24 hours in mid-July when I go from Denmark to Australia. It is safe to say I don’t want to leave.

Georgia has become this cozy crazy little bubble, that I am in love with. Last Saturday morning I was sitting around the breakfast table in my new apartment in Tbilisi, talking to a guy who had slept over and one of my roommates about the ‘bath salts’ drug in the States and all the zombie cannibal people. They hadn’t heard much about it and I explained it to them, after some Googling, and the guy started talking about how he was glad that if stuff like this was going on in Ohio, he could always come back to Georgia where he knew what to expect. I agree with him on that front. Sure Georgians aren’t the healthiest people, they like to drink, smoke cigarets, and eat food that gives them diabetes and makes their teeth fallout, but you won’t find a nation of pill popping addicts for every little hick-up. They value family and children more then any nation I have ever been to. You can have a million dollars, but if you are single with no children your life is not complete. 

This country is also really confusing sometimes. My host family will comment on the size of my butt and say that it’s gotten a little big lately and maybe I should do some sport to get rid of it in the morning. At lunch they will be shoving food and sweets down my throat. The best thing I remember when I told my host mother that I was on a diet, she would even put me on the scale every few days to make sure I was loosing weight, and one day she asked if I wanted strawberries and came back with some covered in heaps of sugar and ice cream. I just shook my head and ate them, and promptly got a sugar headache. I also was told not to drink at school because my host mother did not want my director to think less of me, well it’s a little hard to say no when he is the one pouring you shots of liquor. Drinking in school, while working is also another conundrum, but when it Georgia, do as the Georgians, right?

I’ve had my moments where I broke down crying over silly things, like squat toilets. I’ve also had my moments of breaking down crying over thinking that I was a I was a bad teacher because I couldn’t make students care or learn English. In that moment I had to remember that I was not just there to teach English, but teach about my culture. One of my best teaching moments so far was when my co-teacher had to leave early one day and I watched Katy Perry’s “Firework” music video with my fourth graders. A student who never speaks, because of how shy she is in class started using her limited English to talk to me about the video and share her personality with me. I also have a third grade boy who two months ago wouldn’t even look at post cards of Maine that I was showing him, but again my co-teacher was absent one day, and I had him participate in all of our activities that day. (My co-teacher normally ignores him. It’s common to do this with “slow” children in post Soviet countries.) He now looks at me and says hello and goodbye when he sees me. It may not seem like much, but it is huge for him. Now in school I want to stop and give all my students hugs, as I only have a week left with them, most still don’t know I will be teaching two hours away in Tbilisi this fall.

This morning at breakfast my host mum wanted to get my schedule for the last week here straight and I started crying and have found myself crying all day at random times. Just like any family I have had my issues with them, but I can safely say that when I came back this April from two weeks away in the Baltic it was fantastic to see them, despite all the jet leg and just wanting to sleep. I even let my host dad drunkly stroke my hair and tell me how I was his “American girl,” in a completely drunk proud dad kind of way. I have had my moments where my host mom opens the door for drunk me at midnight after a night of beers with the village guys my age, and just like my mother back in America, she tells me to go to bed and then makes fun of me for it for the next week. 

I’ve fallen in love with someone that was completely off my radar, until it had happened. Relationships aren’t meant to last in the long term here in my eyes. They are meant to be savored and relished in every way in the long moment we have shared. I find myself enjoying small things with him. A day gone awry can be fixed with a bad joke or an immatation. The first weekend spent in a new apartment is made a little less lonely, even when getting nudged awake for have fallen asleep, because I was sick the day before, and had started snoring. Through him, I have gotten a deeper look into who I am, what I want in life, and I am able to laugh at myself. I know next semester without him will be hard, not being a free phone call away, but everything works out the way God, or the flying spaghetti monster, wants it to.

I know this next week will be filled with hard goodbyes and tears, but I am ready for it. I have already cried in the rain at 3am, in the middle of a street closed for construction in Tbilisi to one of my friends about how I didn’t want this semester to end and it is true. I do not want this semester to end. I know I have at least one more here, but this is an end to an epic chapter in my story. I also know that if I don’t continue to take chances, like coming to Georgia, experiences like this would not be possible and I can’t let the past hold me back from enjoying my future.

For the past six months I have had people continually telling me how proud they are of me and everything I am doing, but in all honestly I am proud of my family and close friends for caring enough about me to let me go and support me during this time. I’ve gotten enough Facebook messages and texts demanding that I come back to Maine to know that I am not only missed, but loved. I also know that anywhere in the world I have a friend singing Snow Patrol’s You Could Be Happy to me and I am happy, despite all the tears and goodbyes. Life is about living, and you can’t know how happy you truly are unless you have some sadness to measure it against.

Do the things

That you always wanted to

Without me there to hold you back

Don't think, just do

More than anything

I want to see you go

Take a glorious bite

Out of the whole world

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 ♥

Border Lands

I was out to dinner with friends in Lviv, Ukraine when I checked my e-mail and found out that my new village in Georgia would be Tamariani. I quickly Google mapped it and my first thoughts were, I’ve complained so much about not having a real toilet that they have stuck me in Azerbaijan! By the looks of it, it looked like I was only two or three kilometers away. Since arriving back in Georgia I had been thinking about walking and looking for the boarder for a few weeks and over the weekend when I was in Tbilisi I was talking to some other volunteers. I told them where I lived that that I was basically in Azerbaijan. All of them wanted to know know what the boarder looked like and I had to give them the bad news that I still hadn’t been there yet.

On Monday it was a really warm, sunny spring day. I decided that I might as well try to find the broader and see if it was really that close. I walked through my village talking to a fellow volunteer on the phone about the past weekend and I came across a group of students and waved hello and kept on walking. I reached the end of the village and I had made it to a field. Out of no where my fourth grade shadow came running and screaming towards me, like she always does when I think I am lost and then walks me home. I sighed and looked down at her and tried to reason with her that I was not going to fallow her back to my house today, I was going for my walk. My Georgian is still really, really bad, but her English is worse. A few other students showed up and one was an 11th grader who has a decent grasp on the langue and I explained that I was going for a walk. It appeared that my shadow was not going to take no for an answer and if I wouldn’t turn around she was going to stay with me. We walked in a barren corn field and I started speaking to her in English, it was better then talking to myself and I might as well be good company. I asked her if she was going to fallow me back to America too and she said yes. I laughed because I know she has no idea what I said, but I can picture her really trying to run after my car when I go back to America crying that I am leaving her. I suppose I could adopt her, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

As we walked, we went over the alphabet and numbers up to ten. I felt like we were making progress on our English. Every once in a while she would point back to the village and say that we should go back. I would say no and that she could go back. She acted like she was going back a few times, to see if I would fallow, but she quickly caught on that I would not fall for that game. 

We came to a four way intersection of dirt roads, one was the road we came on, one road went over a bridge, one road lead back to town, and the other road went along a river. I went with the last one. I told my shadow that I was looking for Azerbaijan and pointed in the direction that we were heading in and she told me that I had it all wrong, that Tbilisi was that way. I told her I had looked it up on Google maps and I had been to Tbilisi the past weekend and I knew it was the other way. We walked along the river and stopped at one point to take a few photos. On our other side was a field with horses and I asked if we should go ride them. She shook her head no. (Swear to God this child knows English, but pretends not to just to annoy me.)

I saw two men approaching in the distance and assumed they were the farmers who owned the field and I didn’t want to be rude so I walked towards them. The closer I got, it became clear that they were in fact soldiers. Soldiers with big automatic weapons and binoculars. Oh shit.

They came up and said a curt hello and it became apparent quite fast that they didn’t know English and well my Georgian is again, crap. They tried asking what we were doing here and thank god my shadow started talking a bit. I used my crap Georgian to tell my student to tell them that I was her teacher, we were just going for a walk and taking photos. (It’s funny, but kids seem to understand me better. Adults just don’t listen.) They asked “Document?” I pulled out my cellphone and iPod and was like “no document, I was just going for a walk.” One pulled out his walkie talkie and the younger one pulled out his cell phone. They told us to wait there. There was some conversation and I kind of stood around kicking the dirt with my boots and looking up into the bright sun, thinking can we go yet? I turned on my camera and started to take a photo of my shadow and they said no photos and made me show them the ones I already had. I flipped threw a few and then realized I still had ones of me being silly to have a profile pictures with my new glasses on so I stopped. I was happy to see that they didn’t care, that I didn’t show them all to them. 

I pulled out my phone and called my co-teacher, like she said to do if I ever needed help, and handed it to one of the guys. He handed it back to me and she said, “Emily, listen, you are on the boarder lands. You should not be there. You see the river? Half that river is Georgia, half the river is Azerbaijan. You must stay there until the commander comes in 10 or 15 minuets. Ok, Emily?” The border lands? Where the hell is the “Welcome to Azerbaijan” sign? Shouldn’t there be a fence?

The soldiers just kind of stood around smoking cigarettes, the younger one kept playing with his cell phone. I stood around a little bit more, but I felt a little stupid so I just sat down on the ground and picked at the grass. My shadow was unfazed by the whole thing and was playing with a thorny plant, pulling it apart. The young soldier asked my name and I asked his and he laughed when I said it wrong. It was clear this conversation was going no where.

In the distance we saw dust and a pickup truck speeding towards us. A middle aged man got out and I was relieved that he spoke decent English, at least it was good enough to interrogate me. He again asked for my documentation and I explained that I had just been going for a walk and was unaware I had stepped into the “Border Lands.” He asked my name, nationality, what I was doing in Georgian, when I came and when I was leaving. He didn’t badger me and could see that I was indeed a harmless American. He told us that he would drive us out of the “Border Lands,” even though I was sure we could walk the 500 meters there ourselves. When we reached the edge he said he could drive us home and I said that would not be necessary, I did not want my host family freaking out. We were greeted by a handful of my students when we got out of the truck. One girl gave me flowers, a welcome back to Georgia present I can only assume.

I walked my shadow home for once and headed on to my own house. When I got there my host family was sitting outside talking to a neighbor and I thought, yes they have no idea. I stopped at the picnic table to say hello and they said they had received an interesting phone call from the sheriff. My host dad asked if the army was good. I said yes. My host mom made a gesture that said she knew she should be mad at me, but found the whole thing really hilarious. 

Two days later my host family is still making fun of me every chance they get. I go along with it. I understand I am entertainment for these people. I wasn’t harmed in anyway and I am sure that if I spoke half decent Georgian I would have gotten a date from that solider. I also thought about baking them cupcakes and bringing them to them as a thank you for not killing me, but I am living in Georgia and the closest grocery story is two hours away in Tbilisi, because you know I can’t make cupcakes from scratch. I also would have to go back to the “Border Lands” to deliver them and I don’t want to do that anytime soon. I am however really tempted to go back with a hand painted sign that says, “This Is The End Of Georgia” and maybe some of that yellow cation tape and make my own fence, because really having another country a thirty minuet walk from your house isn’t all its cracked up to be.

I can see Azerbaijan from my backdoor! 

My silly photo that I didn't want the soldiers to see.