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)

Pro Tips for Surviving a Long Journey

I’m not sure how many of you kind folks reading this will be aware of any of my current travel adventures so I’ll fill you in. I left for Lviv, Ukraine on May 20th and will arrive back in the States on July 10th, unless there is some unforeseen delay, like the National Ballet of Ukraine offers me the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker and I have to stay and train, or I get really drunk one night in Lviv and somehow wonder in Chernobyl and get attacked by a radio active bear. But as both of those are highly unlike as I would settle for no less then the Bolshoi Ballet company in Moscow  or the fact that I never drink we should have nothing to worry about, preventing me to make it back to the States. 

What I would like to talk about today is how I’m getting to Ukraine without loosing my mind and without loosing a bunch of cash. To get to Lviv I had to wake up at 1am Maine time (MET for short) on Monday May 20th, to be showered, make sure everything was packed, and make it to the airport in time for my 6am flight. My first flight would take me from Portland International Jetport, to JFK where I would arrive a little after 7am MET (Maine time, trying to keep it simple so you don’t have to do time zone math) My next flight from JFK to Moscow didn’t leave until 2:20pm MET. Upon flying into Moscow around midnight MET, I didn’t catch my next flight to Kiev, Ukraine for a few hours after that. When I got to Kiev it was 4am MET on Tuesday the 21st. I then had to wait around another 4 hours for my train to Lviv which won’t get me there until about 5:30pm MET. Over all about 36 hours of pure travel, in planes, trains, and automobiles, with a whole lot of time to kill. 

-Hydrate. I cannot emphasize this enough. A few days before your flight, especially if it’s a long one, up the water intake and cut back on everything else. Don’t drink the booze before or during a flight, I know it’s free sometimes, but seriously just go out to a bar when you get where ever you are going and find a man to buy you a free drink. You’ll feel so much better emotionally and physically with this strategy. Day of flight continue to drink stupid amounts of water. If you don’t want to pay for water in an airport, like myself, take an empty bottle with you through security and fill it up after. Try to say no to or at least limit soda and juice intake. The carbonation from soda can leave you bloated and the juice is a lot of sugar. I’ve also been told that you shouldn’t have caffein on flight days, but I’m not a doctor and I normally drink about three to five cups of coffee a day so for me cutting it out completely would leave a non-functioning me. Keep drinking water after you land, but make sure to check out the bathroom situation before hand. I once found myself trapped on an Italian train with no working bathrooms for 2 hours after downing 1.5 liters of water. I hated life. Drink water, you get the point.

Ukraine Train Toilet

-Food. Pack a food bag. This is the one thing you will never regret over packing. For this epic journey my bag consisted of three apples, three bananas, a sandwich bag of strawberry and another one of grapes, and another of raw almonds. I also somehow managed to get fresh almond butter through TSA. All very healthy foods, because I knew that airplane food isn’t that healthy (still ate some of it. They gave massive chunks of cheese and walnuts out as PART of a snack. Massive shout out to Transaero airlines and their food that exceeded my expectations!) Also while waiting in multiple airports or train stations, I didn’t want to have to pay to $2 for that, same banana I could have packed myself and a hungry me isn’t a happy me. Also ditch Burger King or some place like that before you fly. No one and I mean no one wants to get the shits on international flight with a limited amount of bathrooms and limited times you can use them. (Yes, I always think and talk about the bathrooms.)

My travel companion and our airport picnic

You can always pick up local food once you land.

-Sleep. Try to sleep at the time you would be on at your destination on travel day.  This can be tricky. I’m a big fan of popping a sleeping pill on the flight over the Atlantic and drooling all over myself and my newly aquatinted seat mate. Sometimes, even this isn’t fool proof. Mine knocked me out for about 2 hours and than I slept badly on and off after that. I’m going to blame it on the fact that we were flying far north, over Iceland, Norway, Sweden and such, so the sun never set for the whole trip.  Also, don’t beat yourself up over not concurring jet lag in the first day. I’m not a master. I will say that for the first part of your day, no matter how shitty you are feeling get a small americano into you and be exposed to natural light. If you don’t drink coffee, forget I said that. 

Coffee, the elixir of life!

Iceland, way later then the sun should be up

-Planing your journey in the best way for you. I could have spent another few hundred dollars and have flown directly to Lviv, but in my never ending quest to save money and my love of Ukrainian trains I chose not to. All my friends in Lviv think I am crazy for insisting on this path of travel, but thankfully my best friend has stopped fighting me on this, still thinks I’m crazy, but ended up booking probably the perfect ticket for me. He threw out the idea of the fast train, which limits luggage (I have way to much as always) and the fact that it doesn’t have beds. The beds are a key factor, as I will be traveling from 3:20pm Lviv time till a little after midnight. I needed the option to be able to lay down, and have been dozing on and off for the past 4 hours of my ride. He also smartly bumped me up to second class where I could get a cabin with a closing door, to block noise, a bottom bed and when he booked my ticket I was the only one staying in my room, so it’s been me sitting around in my leggings and a tank top, drooling on my pillow, and eating out of my food bag without anyone watching. This upgrade was only about $5 more and so worth it. I also have the potential to get some awesome cabin mates who will, most likely feed me if they ever appear.

-Staying fresh. On journeys like this it can be hard. My hair has turned into a grease ball, so I’ve given up on that front. I did pack an extra change of cloths in my carry on. From America to Moscow I had sport leggings on with a tank top, sweatshirt and sneakers. As soon as I hit Moscow I changed into a black maxi dress with a jean jacket, and nice flip flops. It was a new day, so time for a new outfit and one that was more socially expectable. You don’t go out looking like a slob in Europe. The key to the second outfit is something that looks more dressed up, but still feels like cozy clothes and are easy to move in. I also like to look like the local population as much as I can, which backfired and people kept speaking to me in Russian and Ukrainian and asking me for directions.  

-Keeping entertained. I travel with my laptop and iPhone, for electronics, both of which on long journeys will die, no matter how hard I try to charge them when I find an available outlet. I limit myself to just music and audiobooks on my iPhone. I know the audiobooks can sound a little nerdy, but I like to be able to close my eyes and listen to a story I either already know well or something that is easy to fallow. Most public libraries have e-libraries that you can download audio books and e-books for free for a set amount of time. Since my electronics always die I try to take one paperback (less weight than a hardcover) with me that isn’t too taxing to read. There is nothing worse then lacking sleep and trying to get through As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. My brain implodes and I want to cry because of how stupid I feel. Trash magazines are also a decent investment, especially if you can find a fellow traveler to swap with. 

The best possible entertainment source is to find someone to flirt with. Here is my logic, you are in transit, you will never have to see or talk to this person again if you really don’t want to. I lucked out, or my airline was trying to play match maker, on my flight from NYC to Moscow and ended up sitting next to a guy a few years older then me  and decently attractive looking. Our introduction was me telling him that he was in my window seat and to get up and move, now this could have made for an awkward flight, but I started small talk and by the end of the flight we were talking about things that I can’t write here because my parents read this blog. (E-mail me if you want to know the details.)

Even better then finding someone to flirt with is when they find you. When I was transferring terminals in JFK, dragging my 2 fifty pound suitcases and a guy commented on how much I had with me. He continued to tell me about his work and how he traveled every week. We got on to the topic of iphones and how they make life so easy and I admitted that I will hate to go without it in Ukraine and as we parted ways, he handed me his card and told me to e-mail him about my travels if I ever found wifi. Sneaky, sneaky man, but admire his delivery. A for effort! He may get a consolation e-mail.

I think I’ve covered all the bases, but feel free to add your own tips on how not to die on massively long journeys. I am going to drool more on my train pillow and hope for the best! 

Waiting...

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

Awwww Shit!

*The first half of this blog was written in mid December 2011* Being the proud Mainer that I am I have owned a pair of Bean boots (see picture for image, incase you don’t know what they are.) for about eight years now.

I’ve been on all sorts of Maine adventures with them from a walk in the woods, getting stuck in ocean mudflats, and braving down easters with them. I debated bringing them with me to Georgia with me because of limited packing space. I sat on my wooden hallway floor by my bedroom debating the pros and cons and they made the cut and got added to my 100lbs checked bags combined weight. (Who am I kidding? I always knew they were coming. Got to represent Maine in style.) My Bean boots and I are on a new kind of adventure now a days that I could have never imagined. They are now, pardon the term, my shitting boots. Thats right my Bean boots are now my bathroom footwear. You are most likely sitting in is your cozy house back in America reading this. I want you to get up and go to your favorite toilet in where you ever you are and give it a hug. I am dead serious right now. Come on. Go. I’ll wait right here while you do this little exercise. ... ... ... *Me waiting* ... ... ... Thank you for that. I don’t normally ask my reading audience to do such things, but you will understand why in a bit. Now imagine that precious porcelain chair is gone and replaced with a dirt covered stone slab, that has a hole cut into with two stone blocks a little bigger then bricks that are strategically placed around said hole. Surrounding the stone slab is a little shack like structure made out of wood slats and a metal roof and is situated about 30 feet from the house. Is it coming together yet? I have a “squat” outhouse for a toilet. That’s right for the past week and a half I have been going to the bathroom in a hole in the ground.

I normally never talk about any bodily functions in front of anyone besides the family that lives in my house and if I do say anything to someone else it is usually “I need to go to the bathroom”. I however will sacrifice myself to inform you on an issue that has become very real for volunteers here and as my Aussie friend Alex said when I told him about my situation “You know, someday you will look back on this and laugh”. Well, I’m not 100% sure I am at a laughing point yet, but seriously this is really funny when I think about it like its someone else. If you can’t handle bowel movements you may just want to stop reading right now, if you can read on. Monday the 12th, my host mother showed be the toilet, the one I described above, and I just nodded my head and let out a silent scream inside that included a lot of swear words. I then fallowed her inside to eat lunch and tried to forget about what I had just seen. After a while it sunk in, that I was suppose to go to the bathroom there. A slight panic over took me and I kept thinking “This can’t be it. This has to be a joke. Ok Georgian Candid Camera you can come out now and show me my brand new shinny toilet!” They never came. I guess now would be a good time to mention that its not so much that its a hole in the ground as, its not an actual “western” toilet. I’m not the girl who ever learned to “pop a squat”. I’m not a huge camping fan so I never really need to learn how. The sheer mechanics of not getting my jeans soaked seemed to baffle me and the holding it game began. The first night in my new home I held it. I went to school the fallowing day and all the volunteers had been warned about the school bathrooms, but I hoped that the teachers had a gleaming special teacher one. I was wrong. That afternoon I was shown to, two outdoor squat toilets. God Damn It! I thought. After school I was taken with my principal and two co-teachers to the regional resource center for TLG. Once I got there I promptly asked if they had a bathroom. I was shown down the hallway and when I saw they were western toilets, I kid you not, I did a happy dance and tried to keep in a shriek of glee. During my first few days I was having a slight melt down. I tried to eat and drink as little as possible so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom. When my mother called from America I started crying telling her that I didn’t know what to do. Trust me I am 99% sure there is no western toilet in my village. There is no McDonlds or gas station to go to. My mother swung into full Mama Otter mode and naturally called and e-mailed someone to get this all fixed. It was decided that I would switch families after I got back from spending most of my winter break in Ukraine, in the mean time I had about a week and a half to hold on. (Turn that into a poop joke if you want.) After a few days of me freaking out I reasoned that I just needed to put on my big girl pants and learn how to go to the bathroom. After all it most likely would be one of those skills I would learn and never regret knowing it. Well putting my big girl pants on turned out to be more of me taking my skinny jeans off and putting a dress and my Bean boots on. I am sorry to say, but I just don’t understand how to go pee with pants on. I understand the mechanics, but over all I just don’t want to chance it as I don’t get to wash my clothes that often, so dress it is. It also makes sense why so many women wear dresses and skirts here. You all are so smart. Bean boots are a natural choice for any urine covered surface. I am sure my host family finds it amusing when I run down from my room it my bathroom outfit, bare legged in the middle of December. Also to add to there amusement, I’m sure of it, I had a nasty fall a week or so ago that resulted in both my knees being bruised and one got scuffed up pretty badly and the cold makes the marks stand out even more so my legs look awesome. Over all it really isn’t that bad of a situation, now that I have gotten use to it, but then again I can just think of all the horrible things that could happen if this stayed my toilet. The most amusing one that keeps me laughing is the thought of me trying to use it completely wasted in stilettos. First off my host mother doesn’t approve of me drinking. Second there is no place to really drink in my village, no local bar. I could drink in the street I guess. Third there is no one to drink with, I did however see one of my students drinking a beer one day after school. I just kept walking. Fourth I don’t drink. I could just imagine me trying to place my feet in my heels on those stupid blocks and falling with my face landing perfectly in the hole and being so drunk I just kind of lay there laughing in the middle of the night because I knew this would happen, covered in other people’s excrement. What a shitty mess that would be. (Come on it would be kind of funny, if it wasn’t me.) There was also the point brought up that I am perfectly healthy right now, but what would I do if I got sick and had some intestinal issues. That would blow chunks. Part Two. When I left my village in late December and arrived at my hostel in Tbilisi actually used a western toilet, I kind of thought “hmm is this sanitary? I mean who else has sat here?” It took me a couple of days to readjust to my life of western comforts, but I did it. A week ago I was out walking through farm land and I came across a house that was being built and there was a straight up out house for the workers I assume. I had been out shooting all morning and I had, had a cup of coffee on my bus ride to the countryside, so I opened it and peered in and well you can see how it looks from the picture. You better believe that I used that bad boy. When I met my friend at a market a little bit after, he gave me a look that seemed to say “I knew that you were different, but this toilet business is starting to get out of control.” I’ve become a toilet connoisseur in the past month and a half really.

A few nights ago I went to a bar in Lviv and they had a squat toilet, which took me completely by surprise as this was a new bar, and any other one I had ever been into in Lviv had normal western toilets. (Trust me I have been to almost all of them here, even the Harry Potter one.) I looked down at my winter boots that went up to my knees and skinny jeans and knew I had no other option. I didn’t have my bathroom cloths with me and I really, really had to go. It was probably a good thing that I was slightly drunk, because I just went on auto pilot and went for it. I am so proud to say that I did it perfectly, especially after hearing how a Canadian girl in my group, just sat down on the Turkish toilet because she couldn’t figure it out. I felt like I could do anything after that. I feel like I am a master of bathrooms now, however I do not want to test my skills anytime soon when I’m ill.