After about another 10 minutes I went back in and met a few more folks then we went to dinner downstairs. After dinner Tim wanted to share his 16 year old brandy he had bought here three years ago when he arrived so his brandy is now 19 years old. He and Ron toasted one another and after a sip decided it was harsh brandy but Tim said after five sips it wasn’t so bad.
Saturday I took a taxi to the Iranian Embassy where I was to meet Betsy (as in Betsy’s Hotel). I had told the taxi company dispatcher where I wanted to go and I told the driver. However something got lost in translation and after about 10 minutes I realized he was well on his way to the American Embassy. I showed him the address (remember we have a different alphabet) and he stopped the car. After a discussion where I wasn’t making any headway I called the dispatcher. Ultimately it took a second person at headquarters to get the message. At that point the driver said ‘Ayatollah Khomeini’ and I said YES and we were on our way. Betsy and I went to a great nursery owned by a Dutch ex pat, a young man who served in the military in Afghanistan for four years. Oy! No wonder he now works with plants. I found a lovely large red glazed ceramic pot and bought it. Ivo will hold it until we get moved in. I should mention it is the first glazed pot I have seen and the first large pot I have seen. Our home looks like a stone fortress so I need to soften the look and add some color. It is a small start. I also ordered 100 tulips in bright oranges and purples. That should liven things up in the spring. We can plant tulips until December here and they will arrive mid November. I was told this was the best nursery for selection of plants and price. Let’s just say ‘we’re not in Kansas, Toto’. The selection is limited by our standards. But I am glad to have been introduced as I would never have found this place on my own. The street doesn’t even have a name! Welcome to my new world.
I came back to the hotel. Ron had taken a hike up the hill behind the hotel while I was away. We ate a quick lunch on the patio then headed out to the Ethnological Museum where there are numerous houses from the many regions of Georgia. Here we could see the many styles of architecture in these typical houses. In one of the houses we met an artist who had displayed some of his work, which we both liked. We took his name and cell number. He spoke excellent English as he had studied in the US for a while. 
On Sunday we got up early and took a cab to the Embassy where we met up with about 10-15 other volunteers and we caravanned to a village about 30 minutes out of town. The roads were in terrible shapes and at times there was no payment. This road is used by the large trucks that carry goods between Turkey and Georgia. Here we joined US Marines and some men from the Georgian Army where we all worked to help rehab an old school that is being converted into home for young adults with disabilities such as cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. This is an old Soviet era building: concrete, three stories, no ornamentation. It is in terrible shape and has no running water or gas for heat. The residents are to move into the facility in mid November. Ron and I joined those working outside. For the past five weekends the Marines have been volunteering their Sundays on this project and recently asked for volunteers from the Embassy which is how we found out about it. We helped to clear brush. Unfortunately we were way short handed with tools to get the job done. Fortunately the head Marine had a slew of gloves for us to use. Since we were clearing rose bushes and blackberries the gloves were essential although the thorns went right through the gloves with the slightest pressure. At one point Ron was bleeding on both arms from the scratches. I had fewer abrasions as I was simply hauling the brush to the fire but did manage three healthy scratches. We both lived to tell the tale! No tourniquets were required…We worked for a little over two hours but had to leave as the person with whom we had hitched a ride needed to go as her four year old son had had enough. Prior to leaving we were interviewed by a young woman with a microphone and were filmed by a camera man. It just may be our 15 minutes of fame! She seemed inexperienced as one of her questions was ‘who is working harder, the US Marines or the Georgian Army?’ Being ever so tactful, Ron answered ‘everyone is working hard for these young adults so they may have a good place to live’. Yeah RB!
After another lunch on the patio we decided to learn how to ride the subway here. It is an old system with long distances between stops and only has one main line and a short arm off that line. We managed to transfer to the second line and ultimately find our house. The painters worked all weekend and we stopped by each day to see how they were doing. We had requested that the ‘toddler gates’ used to blocked the stairs on each floor be removed before painting. On Saturday when we stopped by, we reminded the painter of this. He spoke no English so we pantomimed what we wanted. On Sunday the gates were still in place so I found a painter who spoke limited English. When I explained that the gates needed to be removed in order to paint the walls, he remarked ‘it is not our job’. Oy! We took the subway back and climbed the very steep hill to our hotel and cleaned up since we still had our work clothes on from the morning brush clearing job.
Then we took a cab to a new neighborhood where I had my haircut. We had arrived early so took a stroll down the street and found an attractive shop with home furnishings. We went inside as we were quite impressed with what we saw in the window. They had curtains, rugs, and furniture, all brightly colored with flashy designs. There were four or five staff members and no customers except us. I saw some attractive towels and one of the women came over to show me they were on sale. The price was 113 for the set so I asked if this was GEL (Georgian Lari which is about 0.60 per lari). At that point a man came over and in excellent English informed me these products were from Italy from the MOST famous design house in the WORLD (I of course have never heard of them) and the price on the towels were in Euros. Hey a set of towels for about $168 on sale yet!!!!!!!!!!!! If you don’t know us well, let me just say we didn’t buy them.
My haircut took 15 minutes. Luba was recommended by Betsy and she sat on a stool that allowed her to scoot around me as she cut my hair. It was a fair job but no one has ever cut my hair as well as Mike back home and I miss him today. The cost was 30 lari, about $18, a little over half of what I pay at home. Back to the Betsy we realized we were tired from all the activity and went to bed early.
This morning I went to see Rami, the contact at the Embassy and he was going to send someone out to remove the gates. Yeah! I cannot get over how supportive and helpful they are.
I want to tell you about our language lessons. We have a wonderful teacher and we will start seeing her at the Embassy three times a week now. The Georgian alphabet has 33 letters in a script unlike ours: some letters are written on the line, some below the line and some above the line. Some I am sure were created to confuse the heck out of people who use the alphabet that we are familiar with. For instance the letter that most resembles an m is pronounced ‘o’, the letter that resembles a b is pronounced s, the letter that looks like the number three is pronounced v, the letter that looks like an a is pronounced m. Fun huh? The two pix above say the same thing... English & GeorgianBut yesterday as we rode the subway it was fun to read the ads in Georgian and see how many letters I could decipher. It was very rewarding to see that I know about half the alphabet after two lessons! At times Ron and I feel that it will break our brains to learn the language but we persist! Tim was very impressive with his command of the language so I am afraid we have a lot to live up to here!
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