Galavanting in Georgia!: November

Hello all.
It's blog update time! Flicking back over my previous entries it occurs to me that perhaps I haven't spent enough time describing Georgian culture and their traditions, so I'll jump right into it.
Without doubt, the most obvious aspect of Georgian life is the supra. This is their dinner/drinking party. It can range anywhere from two or three people to hundreds, but all involve endless amounts of food, wine and a tamada. The tamada is the toastmaster, and he (or she, presumably. Hasn't happened to me yet) is in charge of setting the drinking pace for the evening and giving the toasts. The Georgians do not sip at drinks throughout the evening like we do. It is a very ritualistic affair. The tamada will stand up, give a toast and skull his glass. His toast will first state the toast, then he will go into detail and perhaps even tell a story or recite some poetry relating to it. Then, around the table, other people have the oppurtunity to add their own comments to the toast and in turn drink to it. Despite the language barrier I face every day no matter where I am, the one thing that has been consistant all over Georgia is that they will do everything they can to get the point of the toast across to you. The supra is a very important ritual for them and it is something I will miss very much when I am back home. Like us they hang shit on each other all night, but when it comes times for a toast they take it very seriously. Whether they are toasting peace, the dead, family, friends, children, sweet memories or any of the endless amount of other options, they speak from the heart and whatever is said is always respected.
Last week I went to four supras within four days. In Australia this is called binge drinking. In Georgian life (and Charlie Sheen's) it is quite unremarkable. The first day (more accurately an evening, their main meal is held in mid-late afternoon and can continue well into the night) was a supra with most of my fellow teachers at my principal's house. The food and alcohol went on and on and on and I commented on how good the food was...which leads me to the second supra! My principal and his family invited me back for another smaller supra the next day! (I should add that he lives with his parents and a cousin or two. It's hard to tell here, extended families are the norm. Even if you are married it's quite normal to live with the man's parents) Anyway so the second supra came and went and Thursday rolled around (yes, these were on school nights, I'll get into this more later), my older host brother's birthday. For some reason Nika decided it would be a good idea to have me as the tamada. It was my first go as tamada and I was quite nevous, even writing down a list of common toasts to keep close at hand. Even though I was an absolutely rubbish tamada he and his friends at least seemed to enjoy the night. My toasts generally consisted of something like "cheers friends" fullstop, as my Georgian is still extremely limited! But every now and then when I managed to spit out something that almost resembled a coherent sentence the room would burst into applause! Which brings me to the fourth supra: on Friday me and a bunch of fellow "volunteers" met up in the resort town of Borjomi in south-central Georgia. We went out to a restaurant for tea and immediately noticed that a huge birthday function was being held in over half the restaurant with singing and dancing and, of course, boundless drinking. One of our number knew a little bit of Georgian dancing and was soon on the dance floor with the Georgians strutting his stuff. From this moment on we were part of their party! They brought over to us food (including birthday cake) and wine as the five of us tried to mimmick the dances they were doing. The three of us guys in our group were even given a horn full of wine to drink, a staple of a Georgian celebration. All in all yet another amazing random night in this country. It's almost gotten to the stage where we are surprised if we are not given the royal treatment wherever we go here!
So, let's stay on the subject of Borjomi for a minute. I went there for no other reason than to chase snow. I can remember touching snow three times in my life, with the last time being when it snowed in Leneva at age 12 or so. And I'd never seen it falling. Well, I got my wishes. I spent the weekend playing in the snow like a child. I had a snowball fight, surf-slid down the road (we were in a car accident and while the two drivers yelled at each other for an hour I made the most of the free time), peed my name in the snow, sucked on icicles and made a snow angel!! Everything looked so beautfiul, I've never seen anything like it. We found a house to stay that night with a pretty eager-to-drink Georgian man and after dropping off our bags me and one other guy went for a walk in the national park while the other three stayed at the house. Three hours later we returned. One friend was passed out and the other two were on the edge. This is Georgia!!!
Ok. Enough of that. It's time for the regular segment concerning village life and the general randomness of ths country!
- With the cold water has come a slight runny nose. Unfrotunately I have to hide this as if my host father sees me wiping my nose he assumes I'm sick and tried to force me to shot cognac.
- This brings me to the next issue: the one alcohol-free bastion I had - the school - has now been overrun. The cold water has unfortunately brought chacha to the staff room table. I'll give you an example of how a day can work here: The other day I had the option of cognac at breakfast. At school I was poured a shot of chacha and obliged, only to be told that I couldn't have only one and must drink three. A merry afternoon followed and on the walk home from school a couple of guys I didn't know stopped their car and gave me a lift...to the market where they bought me some beers and we drank together while being utterly paralysed in the communication stakes. Following that I got home and watched some TV. The power went out so I decided to go for a walk. Approximately eight seconds after stepping outside the gate a neighbour spotted me and dragged me into another neighbour's house for an impromptu supra. I called it a night at ten, more than a little tipsy. The next day I found out that the rest of had pulled up stumps at around two, and one of them had carried my next-door neighbour home and put him to bed. This is a WEEKDAY! It's like being on the world's longest footy trip.
- I made a joke the other day to my host brother about Georgian's having about 1000 litres of wine in their houses. You know, like an expression. A bazillion litres of wine! Well at the second supra of my principal I actually asked him how many litres he had. I was wrong; he only had 500 litres of wine in his house.
- Back on the alcohol at school for a minute. The teachers have always loved feeding me ridiculous amounts of cake and sweets they make, this has now extended to wine and chacha. It causes me to be late to classes after the break. I honestly think they would be absolutely thrilled if I just left the teaching to my co-teacher whle I sat in the staff room by the fire drinking all day! It's amazing that I work less than them, are paid more than them, yet far from being resentful they are all absolutely delighted by my presence!
- I've mentioned the cold, but it really isn't that much different from Australia. The difference is that in Australia I go from my heated house to my heated car to my heated school. Here I go from my igloo to a forty minute slog through wet rocks and mud to a school without windows - window panes that is.
- I forgot to mention, at Nika's supra I organised a little drinking game, something we call a boat race. For those that don't know, basically two teams sit in rows going backwards. The first person has to drink their glass, place it upside down on their heads, and then the next person can go. I surveyed my team and made the rather confident bet that each member of the losing team must drink a shot of chacha. I was left rather deflated when the last member of the other team, an eleven year old girl, downed her glass and left us begging not to be punished. Their team also included my fourteen year old host brother Gia.
- As the weather gets colder I get less and less eager to have a lukewarm spongebath. Many, perhaps most, of us volunteers are in the same boat. My record without a wash stands at 12 days.
- Every shop sells colgate. I'm not sure for what purpose, as they don't seem to use it to clean their teeth. Even most of the children already have horrible teeth. My host Grandma's are the worst. Combine that with her raspy voice and all-black clothes and hood she very much resembles the Grim Reaper.
- The constant celebrity treatment continues. I have taught 4th class three times a week since mid-September and almost every day the blackboard is decorated with pictures and English phrases like "Hello Adam" and "You are intelligent. You are long. You are fink." (You are intelligent. You are tall. You are thin) They never tire of it! Every day I have to fight my way through the huddle of 7, 8 and 9th class boys trying to shake my hand and asking me "How are you?", everyday with the same answer: "Fucking freezing!" Everyday I have to say "Hello" half a dozen times to every child. A bunch of year seven girls stop what they are doing and stand up whenever I approach as if I'm some kind of King! A girl in 4th grade drew me a picture the other day and since then endless amounts of cards have come my way. The record is three in one day by one girl. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love all this attention! And it's the same for my friends! Each one of us is absolutely revered for a reason we can't work out!
- Another thing I forgot about supras: I mentioned the tamada, which is usually the man of the house. But I forgot to mention the role of the woman. Basically, you will hardly see her. Her job is to cook and bring the food to the table. This starts from a few hours before the supra and goes right to the end. The supra will start with an insane amount of food on the table. A small fraction of this will be eated and everyone will be full. Then more food will be brought out. Then more. Then a cake and/or other desserts will be brought out. Then chocolates. By the end of it there's enough food to feed a small African nation and due to space constraints the dishes are stacked on top of each other. Most of it is not eaten and I'm not really sure what they do with it all. Call this a third-world country, but you will never, ever go hungry here.
- Religion is VERY big here. It kind of surprised me due to this being an ex-Soviet country. Practically every Georgian is religious. They have crosses and pictures of saints displayed in their houses, schools, cars, taxis and marshutkas. Many of them will cross themselves three times whenever they pass by a church. In my experience, while a lot don't seem to go to church, they all identify with their church (their Orthodox church is separate to the Russian and Greek churches and so on) and see it as going hand in hand with being Georgian.
- I love school, but it's not the most wlecoming place physically. From what I can understand it's older than Australia (Federation). The classrooms look like a Unicef commercial.
- People keep giving me gifts for no reason. One teacher had the other teachers and I over for a supra one night and I left with a horn and a bowl as a present. Another day I was walking home from school and the Dad (that I had never met) of some kids gave me a lift. He told me he has some home-made 34 year old cognac that his friend had given him and he only had 4 or 5 little bottles of it (about 600ml). The next day one of the sons gave me a bottle at school. I include this in the blog as just now, while typing, my host father just pulled a fancy-looking bottle of Armenian cognac out of the cupboard and gave it to me to take back to Australia. This is the second lot of Armenian cognac he has given me. I don't know how I'm going to get it all back!

I can't realy think of anything else at the moment. I think I'm becoming desensitised to everything. On the way home from Borjomi I rode a marshutka with a couple of Polish guys and they were fascinated with everything I said. I was tired and kind of wanted to rest but they just could not believe many of the things I was saying. I just can't recall many of them right now. What I do know though is that these random things are happening to everybody and not just me. There's Jacob from New Zealand, who manages to get himself into all kinds of strange situations. In Batumi he went off to find a bottle opener and ended up with a grandma trying to hold him for lunch at her house. Then, of course, there was the time he rode to school on (I think) an ox and cart. I think I was drunk when he told me, as is usually the case here, but it was something like that. Then there's Caitlin, whose host mother breastfeeds in front of her. Nothing wrong with that of course, except that her host brother is NINE! I think it was Cass who went to the toilet once and instead of a toilet roll found an old book nailed to the wall with pages evidently to be used as toilet paper. And poor old Simon's mp3 player and camera broke which leaves him playing with stones for hours on end in his village. There's loads more stories that I can't repeat here, but let me just say that if I was staying another semester I would compile all the best stories from volunteers and write a bestselling book.
Anyway, so I hope this entry has provided a little more insight to the culture of Georgia rather than simply listing weird occurances. I plan on uploading some photos, but it might not be tonight as a cousin of the family is eyeing the computer and he likes to ogle Russian girls on facebook all night.
Until next time!

Playing in the snow on the road after our marshutka collided with a car (nobody was hurt)