What starts with a Ball and ends with a Bath?

Nov 10 2009

It is a beautiful crisp and sunny fall day here today. There are four workmen here, installing window screens (so far with a day and a half they are just hanging the infrastructure to mount the screens on) and painting our outside gate, garage door and front door. They also are painting the risers on the interior stairs. The steps are stone (granite?) so only the risers need painting. I was home most of the day yesterday because of the workmen and all of today. I so want to get outside with this weather but alas, it ain’t happening. The pace of work here is slowed by the number of smoke breaks. Georgians love their smokes and their wine!

On Saturday we attended our first Marine Ball to celebrate the 234th birthday of the Marine. Oh my, this is a subculture unto itself. The evening started with lots of speeches, a video from a high ranking Marine, and some ceremonies. That took over an hour, starting at 7:00. There were hundreds of people there so getting to dinner took awhile. I think we actually ate around 9-10. Then there was dancing. Prior to that there were a number of performers who were doing various Georgian dances. Like the supra menu I think the Georgian dances tend to be very similar each time we see them. This was our third time I think. We stayed until midnight and came home.

On Sunday we explored our neighborhood a bit more. On Saturday we met some of our neighbors at the ball so tried to find Joakim’s house and were successful. His family lives right around the corner from us on 80 Lvovi and we are at 93 Lvovi. We can’t walk directly there as Lvovi dead ends between our homes so we walked down to the next street and found an alley that got us back to his side of Lvovi. By the way, don’t ever try to mail us anything with a Georgian address because as far as we can tell they don’t deliver mail in this country. For some bills they call you and tell you how much you owe. Think of the paper you save! And postage!! We aren’t sure how the other bills get paid. When Tim left Georgia he found out he owed money for his landline and in three years he had never gotten a bill. Scary! How do businesses stay open when they don’t collect money any more often than that?

On Sunday after exploring the ‘hood’ we took a taxi to downtown and visited some art galleries looking for our next anniversary present. Each year we buy a piece of artwork that we choose together to celebrate our anniversary. This idea was inspired by Ron’s mom who said to us one year “You two are so boring” when we told her we had bought each other sweaters for our anniversary. Well it worked, from then on we have been buying artwork and in almost 24 years we have a nice little collection of art. Our only regret is not marking what year we bought which piece. Many friends have adopted this ritual which we think is way kewl!

The first gallery we visited was very high end and quoted prices in euros which is strange since Georgia isn’t in the EU and lari is their currency. We did see one artist there whom we really liked but the price was 4-5 times what we usually spend on art. We continued walking through Old Town which is charming and stopping off in other galleries. Before long we got hungry and decided to walk to Prospero’s Book where we could get coffee and treats. Along the way we ran into Jock and Laurie Conly who arrived here two days after us. Jock works at the Embassy. At the ball, Laurie and Ron were dancing and Jock and I were sitting together. I commented that Laurie sure liked to dance and that Ron did too. Jock’s response was “good. They are happy and so are we!” I loved it because he doesn’t like to dance that much either. Laurie is a yoga instructor and I have never seen anyone who likes to dance as much as she does. Once the music started I don’t think she sat down. She was a delight to watch. Jock and Laurie were looking for Prospero’s so we invited them to tag along since that was where we were headed. We sat and visited over coffee and discovered we have a lot in common. We were thrilled to make new friends. We parted company and Ron and I walked to the home of Maia who is a fabric artist. She does silk painting and felting. She teaches classes and makes also makes tapestries that are exquisite. They take 100s of hours to complete if not a 1000 hours. Her felt scarves were in muted grays or whites and were the most unique I have seen. She is very meticulous in her work. We want to explore having her make a wall hanging for us. We have a lot of blank walls here and our dining room table seats 10! So the wall beside it is quite large and bare. We will return next Sunday to further explore options. She will have catalog so we can see colors and sample wall hangings. Afterwards we rode the subway home. The subway here has two lines: one main line that more or less follows the river through town and one spur off the main line that goes through Saburtalo which is where we live. So we have to change trains. The main line has very old cars, Soviet era? I’m not sure but they are old and tired. The spur had newer cars. Both lines were crowded on Sunday at 5:00 in the evening.

On Monday we went to our language lesson and pleaded with Elza to slow down as neither of us could keep up with the pace she has set. She said we were the ones who should set the pace so she did a general review and we both did well. She didn’t assign any homework which was good so we can spend this week reviewing ad getting caught up. We meet her Monday and Thursday from 9-10 and on Friday from 1:00-2:30. We practice every night and every morning. We have learned most but not the entire alphabet. I still want to pronounce the letters as they appear so the letter a is really m, the letter b is really kh m is o, n is e. Remember I speak Southern so even English is a trial for me. They don’t believe much in vowels here either. But I can now say a few words and sentences and recognize letters in ads or on signs so there is actual progress.

The painter came on Tuesday along with the screen guy. The risers got painted and the front door. While it was being painted Laurie came to visit so we sat outside in the sun as the paint fumes were awful. The painter painted the inside first. Then Laurie left and I went upstairs while he painted the outside. When Ron came home he pointed out that the door was BROWN not eggplant! I had chosen the color while looking at a color card standing in our hallway, thinking it was a deep purple. I will need to call on Thursday to get it rectified.

We are experiencing problems with our internet and phone line. For two days our service has been intermittent. Welcome to a developing country.

Wednesday

Today is Veteran’s Day. We decided to have a play day and what fun we had. We slept in as I started having a sore throat yesterday and wanted to get enough rest to knock it out! It seems to have worked as I did fine today. At 10:00 Gia picked us up and first we ran by a stationery store to get index cards. No such thing. So we got some spiral notepads to make flash cards for our language class. Then we headed to a neighborhood where there are numerous Art Nouveau buildings. We had a book Tim gave us which identifies hundreds of building in Tbilisi that are Art Nouveau or have Art Nouveau decorations on them. For 90 minutes we walked around and spied quite a few of them. What a thrill! Afterwards we took Gia to lunch in Old Town. From here the three of us walked through the botanical gardens. There were numerous waterfalls here and the leaves were turning colors of fall. It was gray today but dry and not cold so I am not complaining.

We topped the day off with a Turkish bath. They are a number of baths located side by side in Old Town. Most are subterranean with domes above the ground level. Apparently there are sulfur hot springs in this area. We had a private room. There was an ante room for disrobing. Next to it was a large tiled room with a large tiled pool, two showers, a sauna and a bench for the bathing part. So Ron and I were in the pool for about 15-20 minutes when there is a knock at the door of the ante room. There was a glass window in the pool room so we could see into the ante room. A man entered, disrobed and came into the pool room in a towel. He set his basket down, proceeded to put on a pair of under shorts, removed his towel and invited me over to the bench. I lay down on my stomach and he scrubbed me with a mitt. It felt like coarse sandpaper but there was no blood drawn. I turned over and he completed the process. Next he lathered me up and scrubbed again, both sides. This was followed by several buckets of warm water being poured over me. It was so relaxing (after I got over the shock of a stranger in a conservative culture bathing me). I was done and Ron was next. The only difference was he washed Ron’s head and face. He left the room and we continued to lounge in the pool. Delightful! A perfect ending to a perfect day.