The End

I haven't been able to sort through my emotions this week (although they swung between contentment and crying at the Academy twice). It may be a month or more before I'm able to assess my near-year here. That may come out as a blog post. If not, thank you for reading. It's been a vaguely narcissistic blast.

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Things I'm going to miss about Georgia (an incomplete list):

• Marshrutkas. They're like buses, but faster and they stop wherever you want them to! Unlike buses,  the mentally ill, substance abusers, and punk-ass teenage boys don't get up in your face. Also, marshrutkas have a social code of conduct that is strictly abided by - no smoking, if you're standing and carrying bags someone who's sitting will hold them for you, children will be looked after, etc.
• Entreé. A French café chain that is super delicious, super convenient, and carries my (second) favourite English newspaper, Financial. If I was ever going to eat bread again, I'd want to bring all theirs home with me.
• The mountains and hills of Tbilisi. Tbilisi is snuggled between mountains, in the valley of the Mtkvari River. Having a a view of both those things outside my bedroom window made me feel incredibly lucky. (On top of all the other things that regularly made me feel incredible lucky).
• Nabeghlavi. My favourite Georgian mineral water and cure for most stomach-related illnesses - not to mention hangovers, if you're so inclined.
• The Messenger. It was a pleasure going to work most days, thanks to my fun-loving and generous co-workers. I learned so much about Georgian politics and society - this job was absolutely invaluable. 
• The Police Academy. There was heat and air conditioning, a pool and gym, internet, and good friends. I practically lived at this place.
• Black currant juice. The best.
• Payboxes. A paybox is a machine, found usually in convenience stores and Metro stations, where you can pay your bills, top up your Metromoney card, place bets, buy rail tickets, put credit on your phone, and do a million other things. I'm not looking forward to returning to my cumbersome pay-as-you-go phone in North America, which requires a credit card, the last four digits of my (now non-existent) social and a phone call to T-Mobile to top up.
• Luca Polare's hot chocolate. Basically a chocolate bar and some cream melted in a pot.
• Using Georgian words in text messages. Instead of writing the finger-cramping "tomorrow", I write kval. Instead of "the day after tomorrow"? Zeg.
• The jewelry at Kinos Sakhli. In between the souvenirs and questionable art on the steps of the old cinema house, you can find wonderful, eclectic and often handmade jewelry for excellent (and negotiable!) prices. 
• The feeling of bliss upon entering Batumi. The beach atmosphere is instantly calming - no wonder it's the most popular vacation spot in the entire country.
• Platinum Popcorn's creamy dill flavour. There's no better accompaniment to second-run movies and rock-hard seats at the Kolga English theatre.
• Roasted mushrooms with cheese, peasant salad with walnut paste, shotispuri, strawberries from Kakheti, Adjaruli khatchapuri...
• Maniacal dreamboat Giorgi Targamadze. Hellooo, nurse!
• Georgian hospitality. Of course. Of course! What else is there to say about the family that took me in for nine months, the colleagues who pay for my marshrutka ride without saying a word, the friends and students who force-feed me, the strangers who help me with my bags, the innumerable people who took me under their wing when I was an overwhelmed Georgia newbie... it's unparalleled.

And then there are the people. A few thank-yous:

U.K. - role model; recipient and source of awful jokes

T.H. - rival in a fashion cold war; sounding board for my girliest pursuits

H.G. - a source of strength when I had none; an unlikely kindred spirit

C.R.O'N. - muse for the goofiest aspects of my personality; unfailing listener

M.H. - force of nature; source of wisdom

R.E. - salvager of my 2012; intellectual font for a parched mind

P. (MLR) - sparring partner; blog encourager

And to my host family, my colleagues at both the newspaper and the Academy, my students - thank you for building me a new home.

Vignettes

Dracula came up in one of my classes recently. A student said that he admired the real Dracula - Vlad the Impaler - because he was a great warrior who fought for his religion. I told him that was the most Caucasian thing I'd ever heard.

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On April Fool's Day, my host father told me that one of the higher-ups at the Police Academy had called, saying "something about Eshli's visa being revoked...?". I briefly fell for it even though I don't have a visa, but in my defense I'm still scarred from my experience in the US.

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A topic I find fascinating is the way that each generation interacts with technology in new ways, and how that technology influences their brains. There's a good reason why young people find touchscreens, smartphones,  video games, and internet searches effortless - we've been raised on those patterns and so our brains instinctively know how to "solve" the mystery of usage. The same goes for previous generations with technologies that were new then. See Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You or Lewis Padgett's "Mimsy Were the Borogoves".

Anyway, one day I saw my 20-month-old host sister expertly remove the SIM card from her mother's phone and I was terrified. I wonder if that's the way my mother felt when she first watched me use a PC as a child.

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On the E60, the highway between Gori and Tbilisi, there are a number of signs that tell you how many kilometres until you reach any number of notable cities. Tbilisi is never on those signs. Instead, as I wonder how much longer until I'm home, I'm informed of the distance to Baku, Yerevan, and Tehran. (It's only 1200km from Tbilisi to Tehran, if you're curious).

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I went to Turkey over Easter, and toured the Black Sea coast there. It looks very similar to Georgia, but is greatly improved by the lack of Soviet bloc apartment buildings. Also, lentil soup. Is it weird that one of my favourite foods is lentils? 

In Turkey, seven people asked to take photos with me (mostly young women wearing headscarves). The Blonde Mystique at work!

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I spent ten days in Egypt and a day in Jordan last month. I rode a camel and a 4x4, went snorkeling and scuba diving, saw the Pyramids and the Sphinx, drove under the Suez Canal, hiked Petra, got a tan, and was notified, vigorously and often, of my deviant sexual proclivities by angry Egyptian hustlers and taxi drivers when I refused their services. When informed of a particular oral activity that I supposedly partake in "all day long", I really wanted to turn back to him and say, "Buddy, who has the time?"

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Returning to Tbilisi from a recent trip to Batumi, I was overcome with a strange feeling. Although I'm content to leave Georgia in two weeks, I'm very much looking forward to coming back. I don't know when or under what circumstances, but I really want to visit Tbilisi again and be overwhelmed with the memory of my time here - my routine, my haunts, my friends, my Georgian life. I want to bring someone along with me and point out the monuments to my year here. I want to see what's changed, and what's stayed the same. I want to feel at home again, even after an absence. I can't wait. 

My laptop, my laptop, why hast thou forsaken me?

I'm making a real effort to keep updating this blog, even though (1) nothing exciting is happening, (2) I have a bad case of the February blahs, and (3) I've lost all access to my laptop.

Let's address those things in reverse order.

3. I am losing my mind without my own computer. I have to remember all the passwords to my social networking sites. I can't access any of my files, so I can't share anything or get to my teaching resources. I can't upload the photos I've taken recently. I can't download new episodes of my favourite podcasts, or any podcasts at all, which have been my lifeline to pop culture civilization. I can't veg out in my room watching movies, which means I've been ripping through the books I brought at a dangerous pace. I feel like I've lost a limb, or (more accurately) part of my brain.

I get the impression that if you're older and are reading this you think I'm an ass. Fine, although in my defense, my generation has had our brains Mimsy Were the Borogoves'd and we can't function in your primitive Boomer world.

Oh god, now I'm just being mean. Laptoooopppppppppp, come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

2. I always get the February blahs. It's not S.A.D., February is just terrible no matter where I am. Here's why February is the worst:
     a. Valentine's Day, obviously.
     b. The bloom is off the rose, re: winter. Remember when everything was white and sparkly and the ice and snow reflected Christmas lights and good cheer? Was that only two months ago?
     c. It's the shortest month, but manages to drag on like it's the longest month.
     d. I don't know anyone who has a leap year birthday, which would really liven the joint up.
     e. No statutory holidays in Georgia, while Ontario only recently got one - and it's called Family Day. How stupid is that? February 15th should be a Canadian national holiday (Flag Day - it's already there on your calendars!) and there should be red and white fireworks and tobogganing and hot toddies. THAT'S a holiday!

1. This is how bored I am - I work out five days a week. Going to the gym is the most boring thing in the entire world, but I do it (or go swimming) most days because what else am I going to do?

Things less boring than going to the gym:
     a. An entire two-semester economics course
     b. The magazine selection at a dentist's office
     c. Watching TV in a language you don't understand
     d. Your extended family (I know this one's a stretch, but I'm making a rhetorical point here).

In an effort to be less bored, I've been trying to plan some trips. Or, get someone else to plan trips for me, because February has sapped my interest in planning, dreaming, believing, getting out of bed, etc. A Georgian I know wants to take me and a couple of other foreigners to Baku, Azerbaijan. I'd love to go, but the visa is expensive ($120-150). My Georgian friend called the Azeri embassy, who told her that discussing the price of visas is a "sensitive matter" not suited to the telephone, so she should have tea with one of their consuls and "talk it over" it in person. She thinks that Azerbaijan is corrupt enough that she can get us a group discount on visas. Stupendous.

Also stupendous was the time when a car, parked directly below my window, had its alarm go off in the middle of the night. It was one of those alarms that alternates between a series of horrible patterns and tones. The next morning someone had pelted the car with tomatoes. Sweet revenge!

The other day, I saw a very confused stray dog in one of the subway stations. I'm afraid this marks the beginning of Tbilisi's stray dogs mastering the Metro, like they do in Moscow - which is exactly like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but with rabies.

Do you remember how the government of Georgia financed a Hollywood movie about the August 2008 war with Russia, starring Andy Garcia as a very melodramatic Misha Saakashvili? Of course you do. Well, Russia has financed its own movie about that conflict. It's called August Eighth, and its plot revolves around a divorced woman who sends her 7-year-old son to Georgia to be with his father, but must make her way into a war zone to find him once all hell breaks loose. Obviously this is a more audience-friendly story than the Georgian film, which is about some dick American war reporter played by Rupert ("who?") Friend. The Russian film is also co-written by an American, and has been picked up for distribution by 20th Century Fox.

Oh, and there are giant fighting robots in it.

Just like in the real war.

Five Days of War US box office gross: $32,296
August Eighth US box office gross (estimated): A billion

How I pay the bills

I'm back from an extended absence once again, although this one was a little less intentional. I've had a surprisingly dark return to Georgia which, in concert with a broken laptop screen, has conspired to keep me away from my blog.

I've also been stupendously busy. And I don't mean busy in that, "SIGH, I AM JUST SUCH A BUSY PERSON" way, which implies an utter lack of time management skills and a disregard for other people, but in an "I work four jobs" way.

My second term in Georgia has been marked by a burst of ambition that saw me tell more than one person I was going to pick up yoga. I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I do tend to say stupid shit in January, which is essentially the same thing.

This ambitious kick has prompted me to add, in addition to my teaching position at the Police Academy, an editing position at an English-language newspaper, regular tutoring, and freelance English stylist work. Oh, and I'm a voice-over artist now, too.

So I'm getting to know the marshrutka system really well, and walking a lot, and filling the time I'd otherwise spend surfing the internet or watching videos on my laptop. (Which isn't to say that there's not a laptop screen-sized hole in my heart. Because dammit, I was in the middle of season 3 of Scrubs!).

I had a delightful exchange with a cab driver last week. It was very Georgia. I had caught a taxi home from a friend's apartment, when he hit a big pothole and completely blew out a back tire. He tried to get me to wait for him to change it, but it was late, and snowing, and we were stopped in the literal middle of the embankment highway. So I hailed a new cab.

Normally taxi drivers like to test the limits of my Georgian, but this guy was silent. It wasn't until we got to my place when this exchange took place:

Me: რამდენი ლარი? (How many lari?)

Cabbie: шесть.

Me: шесть?

Cabbie: шесть.

Me: ბოდიში, ვარ ენგლისური. რამდენი? (Sorry, I'm English. How many?)

Cabbie: English? I thought you were Russian! Six lari.

The only English-speaking taxi driver in Tbilisi and we sat in silence the entire ride.

Normally, I would have taken a marshrutka from my friend's apartment home, but the last time I tried to do that I was mistaken for a prostitute. I was waiting by the side of the road (first mistake), looking absolutely ravishing in my winter coat and plastic grocery bag (second mistake), when a Jeep pulled up beside me and the two men inside asked me something in Georgian. Thinking they were asking for directions (sidebar: Obviously the blonde girl is the best person to ask in Tbilisi, oy), I asked them if they knew English. The younger one did, and asked if I'd like a ride. Thinking to myself that Georgians are such nice, thoughtful people, I politely declined and went back to waiting for the marshrutka. A few seconds later, the driver got out of the Jeep, and approached me, saying in broken English, "$100".

I didn't quite get it.

"Uh, no, no thank you," I said, a tad confused.

"$150."

"No..." It started to dawn on me.

"$200."

Now I got it. And I was pissed. I told him no again but he wouldn't leave. That's when I snarled "შენი დედა!" (literally, "Your mother", a vulgar Georgian curse and delightfully appropriate in this situation).

Now he was confused. Like it never crossed his mind that I wasn't a prostitute. I pointed towards his car and told him to fuck off. He ambled away.

Later, my host mother told me she had been propositioned at the same intersection.

Eshli once again

Hi gang.

I realize it's been a while. In my defense, I spent a month in Canada on vacation, and there is nothing less motivating than being on vacation. My greatest source of stress was fighting with my brother over who got to borrow my mom's car. That, and failing to knock off my entire vacation To Do list (I never do - but then again, perhaps "Watch the entirety of The West Wing" was a little ambitious).

What went undocumented on this blog were the two weeks prior to my vacation, a whirlwind of exams, marking, parties, goodbyes, and setting up my next term. If I recall correctly, this was also the time of the Tbilisi International Film Festival, where I saw an excellent German film with a cop-out ending (The Day I Was Not Born), a Georgian documentary that failed to live up to its potential (Generation of Tomorrow), and Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre (FASSBENDER!). That fortnight also saw my installation as the new copy editor of The Messenger, Tbilisi's only English-language daily. I start on Sunday, and with any luck jet lag won't impair my mental faculties. Speaking of jet lag, I can't remember half of the interesting stuff I intended to write about. So here's some filler:

Things that have changed in Tbilisi in the month I was away:
- McDonald's Value Menu items now cost 1.90GEL, up from 1.80GEL
- The 105 marshutka has been upgraded to yellow vans with Metromoney card readers. I almost missed  it yesterday because I was looking for an old, beat-up, white Mercedes. One of my friends theorized that this slow roll-out of upgrades is heralding the ultimate piece of marshutka technology - a goddamn route map. I'd call that naive, but hey, Google Maps came to Georgia last fall so clearly anything is possible
- There are new signs in some Metro stations, with bus routes and notable nearby sights. One of them listed a "trade centre" near Station Square. It took me nearly ten seconds to realize this was Georgian-to-English translation for "shopping mall". A month in Canada has made my mind slow; next thing I know I'll be saying things like, "Well, it's reasonable to assume..." (Reason and assumptions are not to be relied upon in Georgia)

Things I forgot about:
- Smoking indoors
- The absurd speed of drivers here (see also, their ability to chat up a girl on their cell phone, while using the other hand to steer, honk, signal, switch gears and adjust the radio. True story).
- A lack of personal bubbles in public
- What it's like to be stared at unashamedly
- The way people go out of their way to help you (a special thanks to the teenage boy who carried my luggage up two flights to my apartment without my asking; also, the taxi driver who hailed me a new taxi when he realized he didn't actually know where he was going, then didn't ask me for any extra money)
- Enrique Iglesias