Superbowl

While I am not as rabid a fan as many from my city (Boston), state (Massachusetts) and region (New England) are, The Patriots are a team that I would cheer for any day. When I found out who we would be playing in the Superbowl, memories of York came flooding back and the feeling of defeat when my supposed friends were shouting eighteen and one on Jackson St almost overwhelmed me. I knew I needed to watch this game. Originally I was all for going into Tbilisi and watching the game there. But I am really not a fan of Tbilisi and I didn't know if or where they would be showing it, remember with the time difference, the game started at 3:30 AM on Monday morning. So a friend of mine who lives near Kutaisi and I came up with a plan to go to a home stay or hostel with Internet and watch on my computer. Together we got seven people together, four from Poti and three from Kutaisi, to agree to this. We were going to attempt to recreate some American snacks and were going to watch movies until the game.

Sunday morning, I woke up to get to the Marshutka station at 9:30 as was the plan for the Poti people. On my way there I got a message from one, that she would not make it, a call from another saying the same, and when the marshutka and I left without the third, I figured our numbers were down to four. I got into Kutaisi and texted my friend in Kutiaisi that I was in. He wrote backing telling me he would be a couple hours, he had spent the weekend in Zugdidi. But as I said before McDonald's has wireless and food, so I settled in and read about a million cracked articles while looking up every time the door opened to see if there were any ex-pats around. Finally, these two guys came in and I joined them. One was from the states and the other from Newcastle. He had been in Georgia for a while, and was teaching English, so he had tamed his accent, but sometimes, he was as near incomprehensible as the girls on the rugby team in England. Good times. We hung out until my friend got in with two pieces of bad news. First of all, we were it for our party. No one else was coming. The other bit of news was that there was a cafe called Amerikanidan (from America) and they would be showing the Superbowl live. Exciting, but it was back in Zugdidi. It was 5:30 by now, but we kinda looked at each other and ran to find a marshutka to Zugdidi. When we got it, we went to Amerikanidan to confirm the rumor and went to Zugdidi hostel, a hostel owned by a Lithuanian ex-TLGer. We had so much fun at this hostel, I showed them some facebook pictures of my time in Vilne, I took a shower, seriously, life could not have been better. At around 2 AM, the staff went to bed and we went back to Amerikanidan. There the owner, also an ex-TLGer had set up the couches to face a great big flat-screen TV. Right under the TV was the space heater, because it was COLD. I had brought my sleep-sheet with me to Zugdidi but left it in the hostel, my BIG mistake. Eventually, there were about ten of us, two from New England, but only two supporting the giants and them only because they hated the Patriots, not because they actually liked the Giants. You all know how that game went, don't need to get into that here, but it was a very unique and fun Superbowl. I will never forget that even though I had the urge to cheer more, the exhaustion and the cold meant a normal jump up and down cheer was a mere fist in the air and even that was done quickly. When the game ended around 7 AM, we all spilled out and even though it was cold, stood around talking for a long while. Then we headed back to our hostel and the greatest surprise of all. We had been given a space heater for the room, which we turned on before we left. When we got back, the room was actually warm! I went to sleep in a warm bed for the first time in what felt like ages (really it had been three weeks...) Oh was that a good day. We woke up around 11 and headed back to Amerikanidan to actually buy something. And there I found something else to warm the heart this time. Pizza that was made with mozzarella cheese and no mayonnaise! I was not as happy as I could have been (I mean, seriously had the last second of the game gone SLIGHTLY differently, how awesome would that have been) but I was walking on clouds. A very good weekend.