Last week, Lela introduced me to one of
our neighbors, a woman named Khatuna, who works for the National
Park's Service here in Georgia. She and Lela grew up together, and
Margo and her mother are good friends, as are Leqso and her son. So,
a close family all around. I am still not clear on why it took so
long to meet them, but I am very happy I did. When we went to her
house, I met her niece and nephew who were adorable, and of course,
there was more food than anyone could possibly dream of eating. Then
came the tea. Norwegian tea that was a present to her from her
friends in America. Wait, friends in America? Yes, she spent nine
weeks in California working at Kolkheti National Park's sister park
near San Francisco! She is the first Georgian I have met in Poti who
has been to America. And I am very glad to have met her.
In my last post, I was complaining
about the rain. Well, a couple hours after writing that post it
cleared up and the weather this week has been phenomenal. I man 20°C
phenomenal! I went outside every day and basked in the wonderful sun.
On Wednesday, I accidentally got locked out (for those of you who
think I forgot my key, you are wrong), but I knew where the hidden
key to get in from the other side was, so I found it and got in, but
could not get in past the front part of the house, because they lock
the inside doors too. (I have since been told where the other hidden
keys are) But, I could get into the kitchen and I decided to try solo
cooking. I was successful, in that I did not burn the house down, but
I did find out why Margo switched the pans I was cooking from last
time I tried to cook on my own. My eggs had the very distinctive
taste of fish. It was the pan she fries the fish in. (not my favorite
kind of eggs)
Anyway, the week had been wonderful,
and, as I get out of school earlier on Thursdays, I decided to hop on
my recently acquired bike (thank you, thank you, Mary!) and visit
Khatuna at the Park, as she kept asking me to do. I left the house
around 1:30 PM and headed down in the direction they told me to go.
“down Akaki street until you see the hospital and the park is on
the other side of the street”. Those of you who know me know
already that these simple instructions would be too much for me. Well
I headed off down the street, and saw a sign for a hospital outside
of a huge fenced in building complex. But like many buildings in Poti
it looked completely abandoned. (turns out it used to be the military
hospital)The buildings across the street did not look like like they
fit the bill either, the bill being a national park... The problem
though,was that I was at a fork in the road and Poti and Boston have
a couple things in common, the biggest being a distinct lack of
street signs. I called Khatuna, but my description of where I was did
not help her all that much. She told me to find someone and have them
tell her where I was. A woman was walking toward me, so I said
“bodishi, bodishi” which means “I am sorry” or “excuse me”,
as I waved my phone around. She gave me the funniest stare and kept
walking. After she passed me, she turned around to give me another
look. I found two men painting a store and this time they just
laughed and took the phone. Khatuna spoke to them and then told me to
keep going down the street for two kilometers. Two kilometers?! Based
on the way people talked about this place as being “just down the
street”, I thought I would be there already. The other problem,
“down the street” worked itself out when the painters stopped me
from going down the wrong street by gesturing wildly. I wish the
first woman had been there to see it all. Who knows what she would
have thought.
So I continued down the way and decided
to play around with the gears just for fun. I had gone another
five-ten minutes when, after switching gears too quickly, the chain
slipped. I pulled the bike onto the sidewalk and saw two boys walking
home from school (yes, at this point, school had ended) and decided
it was time to call Khatuna again to make sure of where I was going.
This time, when I asked the boys to speak to her, I actually put the
phone up to the kid's ear so that he would speak to her. It turns
out, once he figured out where I was going, he told Khatuna he would
walk me all the way there. She assured him it wasn't necessary, just
point me in the right direction. He did, but since he and I were
walking in the same direction, we walked along in relative silence
after “hello, how are you” had been exhausted. Then another boy
came out on his bike and called to the boys. I turned around and he
saw me and said “hello”. It was one of my 5th graders.
He gestured to my bike, which I hadn't fixed yet, and asked, I
assume, why I was not on it. I pointed to the chain, and he
immediately got off his bike to come and fix it. Even after we put
the chain back on, he could not understand why I would walk if I had
my bike, so I said goodbye to the boys and went on my way. A minute
later, I saw Khatuna who was walking down the street to look for me.
I love Georgians.
The park itself is very cool; it is all
marsh, and birds. Apparently, it is a stop on a major migration
route, and she promised to let me know when the birds descend in the
spring. We had a great time, and when I come back in January, I am
definitely going to spend a lot of time there. When we left, Khatuna
told me how to get there by Marshutka. It was all pretty funny.
Today in my fifth grade class, I
thanked the kid who had helped me and he got to tell the whole class
about helping me with my bike. It had been a great week, so nice and
dry. Right before my last class, Nana looked outside and predicted
rain later. Of course, halfway into class, I looked at her and
pointed to the window. The whole class looked and groaned, because
sure enough, it was raining. I ran home because I had not brought my
umbrella (I dropped the habit of carrying it with me everywhere) and
went right into the living room to warm up by the fire. There was
Margo sitting at the stove and cracking open hazelnuts. The last time
I had hazelnuts, I think I cracked my jaw instead of the nut by
trying to crack them with my teeth, the way the family did. This time
though, Margo was sitting at the wood stove and placing a couple nuts
on the top. Then she took a piece of firewood and brought it down on
the nut. It looked like so much fun that I joined her for a bit. I
think the rain was bringing me down or something, because I had a
great time cracking those nuts. Then the power went out and I got out
some hot chocolate and my computer and wrote this post. I have no
plans for my last weekend before I go home, but I do plan to have
fun, whatever it is.
Margo has been in the kitchen mashing
things and cutting parsley (smells amazing in there) and just came to
show me what she had made. “Chuba” which looks like a layer cake,
but on closer examination is made of mashed potatoes, carrots, and
beats topped off with the parsley and what looked like frosting on
the top was actually mayonnaise (mayo is a part of every salad here.
Pizza is also assaulted with mayonnaise...) I think it might be a
part of the New Year's fun that has taken over everywhere. Christmas
here is celebrated on January 7th, and is a different kind
of holiday than the Christmas of the west, so Georgians seem to have
taken a lot of the more secular things about Christmas, for example
the tree, and changed it for New Years, so they decorate “New
Year's Trees” with ornaments and such. I can't wait to come home
and accidentally call the tree a new year's tree to help fight in Jon
Stewart's War on Christmas. Ok, so saying that I am going to do it
might not make it so accidental...
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