Some Days

Life here…

If I were a whiner (which I have been) what I would gripe about is …

• · I think I have fleas in my bed.
• · The kitten that left them there has tape worm.
• · The part of the house where the bedrooms are have no heat.
• · To get to where the heat is and to the bathroom I must go outside and cross to a different part of the house
• · It rains and rains and in the night I must get dressed to not have a rain shower enroute to the bathroom
• · The toilet does not really flush.
• · The toilet paper must go in a separate bin.
• · There are soup days when for all meals there is soup, sometimes with chicken livers as the stock, most often with cabbage, but breakfast , lunch or dinner there is soup.
• · To get to where the shops are I must travel in these minivans called marsukas (This week one hour long ride had 23 people in it. (seats 12) half were hunched over and butts were in my face and when you share common space with farmers you do not breath through your noise, but then if you breath through your mouth you can taste it.
• · My hair color is mono chromatic out of a box and the cut is all choppy to go with my untweezed eyebrows
• · There is cow dung and chicken dung everywhere, probably on my shoes from Nordstrom’s
• · The TV is on most of the time, most of what is on I do not understand, except when I understand there is trouble in my homeland, and I do not know what it is.
• · They internet is slooooooow and gets slooooooower near the end of the month.
• · Oh and if I have any glitches with technology, it is not that folks do not speak English or I do not speak Georgian it is no one has computers here.
• · And for sure Apple has not made it into this market and thus it is a problem that must wait.
• · I knew I had to be cute and professional, but did not anticipate that I would have to more of the time be dressed for a chilly farm life.

And I could go on and on but then it is also true that:

• · I can walk down the road and be spontaneously invited into a home for coffee or wine or even a meal.
• · It does not matter that we do not speak the same language, long toasts are made.
• · We toast men. We toast women. We toast my children. We toast friendship. Each toast must begin with a new glass of wine made from their vineyards.
• · Unless of course there is much to toast as there was last Sunday and a man called us into his home, where we drank and toasted with 20 year old cognac, ate the honey from his hives and drank dark Turkish coffee
• · I am a farm princess here
• · I have not done laundry, cooked, did dishes or cleaned house since I left on August 10.
• · That the stars guide me at night on my trips to the bathroom.
• · This little cat who I named Mitzi sits at my feet and purr’s adoringly.
• · While I was at a pet shop the vendor who was delivering dog food took in his car to a vet so I could get meds for the cat.
• · That when the rains cease and the skies clear I can sees snow on the peeks of the nearby mountains.
• · That I have never tasted sweeter fruit, more flavorful vegetables and that they can do things with their non-hybrid corn that defies taste.
• · And then the ceaseless kisses, continue, the toothless grandmas, the students who leap up like kangaroos to kiss my cheeks.
• · Though a grueling ride there is a soundtrack on the mini buses that just quells all
• noise. All are patient with the crowded conditions or the cows who stop traffic to cross the road or the stupid American ( I ) who cannot even yell stop in their language.