My Birthday!

The week leading up to my birthday was filled with anticipation. Ever since the first night I was here, when Pridoni and Ramazi asked if they could see my drivers licence, and found out that my birthday was on February 12, they had been telling me that I needed to have some of my friends over to celebrate.

A few weeks before my birthday I invited Matt, Cody, and David to come over. I would have invited more but I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen and I didn’t want to over burden Ramazi with too many guests. I knew that these three would be there, and I told Sopo that I would love it if her and her husband would join. I also found out on the Monday before my birthday that the husband of one of the teachers at the school had died, and that the funeral was to be on Saturday. Sopo then told me that Ramazi would prefer if I had my friends over another day, only to come back five minutes later to say “never mind, Saturday will work. Ramazi wants to take you and your friends out to a restaurant.” Hearing this I began to wonder if the teachers were all going to be at my party too, since this would be the only reason that it would matter that the funeral was the same day.

During the week there were multiple loud debates about “something.” I knew they were all talking about going somewhere…and I figured it was about getting rides to the funeral or to my birthday get together. I thought about asking but figured the suspense leading up to my bday would be better.

Saturday came and we all went to the funeral supra in the afternoon. Around five, all of my friends arrived in Siktarva. As we drove out to the road to meet them, we picked up one of the teachers along the way. This more or less confirmed that teachers would be at my birthday supra. We went to a restaurant between Terjola and Siktarva, and upon arriving I saw four or five more teachers standing outside. This confirmed that teachers would be there. I went in and the majority of the teachers were there.

The civics teacher, who speaks English, told me that this supra would be a gift for my birthday from all of the teachers at school. They surprised me again by giving me two horns for drinking out of to take with me back to America. We ate a ton of food, drank wine, sang, and danced. It was a very fun night.

Dikhashkho

A few weeks ago a few of us visited Cody and Stephanie at their house just outside Vani. They live in the village of Dikhashkho. I set off Friday after school and met Carl and Matt around 5 in Kutaisi. From there, the plan was to catch a marshutka (about an hour ride) to Vani and a taxi into Dikhashkho. Kate also came, but since she came from Tbilisi she didn’t get in till around 7. We decided to wait for her so that she wouldn’t have to make the journey by herself.

When Kate arrived we went to catch our marshutka. There was one problem…they stopped running to Vani around six. So, we looked around for a taxi. Stephanie called to see how we were coming along, and upon hearing our situation, told us that a taxi should be around 20 lari. We found a group of them but were not able to negotiate lower than 35, probably because it was getting late and they knew that they were our only option. We finally settled on the price with one of the drivers, and he smiled and nodded when we tried to ask to make sure he knew where Dikhashkho was.

Off we went, leaving Kutaisi around half past 7. After about an hour drive, our driver started looking at us and making gestures that seemed to say “where do we go from here…” This was confirmed a bit later when he pulled over to the side of the road and looked at us with a frustrated face. None of us had ever been in this part of Georgia, so we had no idea where to go. And it was pitch black out.

We called Stephanie while our driver tried to wave down cars. Eventually Stephanie was able to find a neighbor to tell our driver how to get to the village. Since there aren’t street signs in Georgia, this didn’t help much. We drove around for at least another half hour. Every few minutes our driver would look at us, throw up his arms, and yell something not happy in Georgian. There were a few moments when we though he was going to drop us and leave. But he didn’t. And finally, after going in a huge circle, we ended up on the right road. We drove past a family of Georgians who waved us down, and it ended up being Zaza, the man that Stephanie put on the phone to help our driver.

When we arrived at their house, we invited the driver in for food and wine. He refused, but I could tell that he was pleased with the offer after the stressful drive.

The rest of the weekend included beef stew, pizza, and supras with Zaza. It was fun.

I also played Fallout for 8 hours on Saturday, only to end up in the radioactive area (I’m blanking on the name), with 1 charisma point and no way of leaving without dying…it was dumb…I haven’t played since.

Snow

I'm extremely happy because it finally snowed here last week! We got about 5 inches the first night. Each day after some would melt, but more would fall later on. Sunday we were up to about a foot when it started raining. Monday morning there was about 3 inches of slush, with 4 inches of snow on top of it.

When it snows in Georgia school is more or less optional. Last week I had a few classes with only 3 students. Monday, only 20 students came to school. Good times. Today it warmed up and most of the snow is gone, but it is supposed to cool down and snow more the day after tomorrow.

I had an epic snowball fight with my host bro and sis. I obviously won, but I let them think they were doing OK.

I love snow!