Tomorrow is our 24th anniversary! How did that happen? Just the other day we were kids, sort of…it was a busy week. Monday was a Georgian holiday. We had lunch with our neighbors, Joakim and Ireni who live quite close by. Yoakim works for USAID and he is from CA. His wife is Georgian. Laurie and Jock Conly were also there. It was a beautiful sunny day and we had a Georgian feast with many delicious dishes.
On Thursday we had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the Culpeppers. There were 20 of us present and I can remember six Americans and I think the rest were from Great Britain who thought it was a great tradition to have a day of thanks. Patty’s dinner was delightful as always.
We only had one language lesson as the two holidays were on our language days. On Friday we had our traditional Friday night date: dinner and a movie. We walked to our neighborhood Italian place. We had eaten there once before and after our second meal decided it wasn’t that great. We then took the subway to town and saw Inglorious Bastards. I asked to come home in a taxi as I discovered on Friday after a visit to the medical clinic at the Embassy that I had bronchitis. I got some heavy duty drugs and will return on Monday to see how I am doing. We want to avoid pneumonia at all costs. Saturday I had no energy so I stayed in bed the entire day. Ron made the meals and did the clean up. You can see why I am still married after 24 years with a man like that! I am not sure if it was the codeine cough syrup or just fatigue but I slept a lot in between reading my book. The contractor came and hung our new wooden blinds and they really dress up the place. They were very efficient and were done within a couple of hours. I was supposed to staff a concession to earn money for IWA on Saturday night but had to cancel when I realized there was no way I could go out and stand up for an hour. Ron had an invitation to a Georgian dance performance which he said was incredible with about 50 dancers at times on stage. He said the crowd was like rock fans: yelling, whistling and applauding during the performance.
Today I felt much better so after lunch we headed out for carpet shopping. It was our third day in a row of sunshine and I have to admit I LOVE sun in the fall and winter. We took a taxi to Old Town where we had visited a particular shop before during a lecture/tour a few weeks ago. We managed to buy four carpets: two small ones for each side of our beds, one for the bedroom and one for the living room. We were quite pleased with our finds and the price.
Monday November 30
We managed to get through our language class with no great disaster. The physician’s assistant said my lungs were better and continue to take it easy and that I that need any more antibiotics as I was on the mend. Yeah!
I came home to help Nino order some clothes online then headed over to Patty’s where a group of IWA women were working on Saturday’s big bazaar. We worked the rest of the day and I left when it was time to pick up Ron after work. We came home for an hour or so and then headed out to celebrate 24 years of marital bliss. We tried a new restaurant and it was in Old Town. We dined at 24 Rue Chardin and had a great meal. We came home and stayed up too late working on our computers.
Tuesday
Today Lala came over and we took a taxi to a part of town where there are fabric stores. The traffic was very bad so we got out of the taxi and started walking. We stopped in several shops and found one that had linen for the tablecloths she will make for us. However they only had a very dark almost black color so we decided to look at the bazaar which was close by. We discovered why the traffic was backed up when we saw a pedestrian lying in the street who had been killed by a reckless driver. This place is worse than Sri Lanka when it comes to a disregard for pedestrians. As I mentioned earlier in a blog, the color of the traffic light means nothing, pedestrian walkways means nothing. You take your life into your hands when you cross a street here. The body was covered and there were many policemen around to direct traffic.
We proceeded to the bazaar and visited several vendors. Shopping here is a trail as each place we visited did not have enough material, the right color or the right weight of material for our needs. Once again I am reminded of the abundance we enjoy in the US. Not so in developing countries. None of the fabric is wide enough for a tablecloth so Lala will piece it so it will have a nice drape over the edge of the table. Tomorrow she will call to see if this one vendor can get the quantity of material we liked and I will go back on the subway to buy it. Lala lives an hour out of town and tomorrow is her day to stay home and sew. I am supposed to go to a Christmas party for IWA but am not sure I will be able to as Gia is tied up with Ron’s meetings and the party is some distance out of town. Most of the shops were without electricity today and we haven’t even had bad weather yet. I saw several small generators outside of some others shops. I can hardly imagine what it will be like once we get storms or snow.
Today I was trying to finish up an online order for Nino when I discovered I have no phone service and of course no internet so I called the Embassy who in turn calls the phone company who in turn calls here and speaks Georgian as I dumbly mumble that I only speak English. But the phones are now working so I hope I get internet soon. I never remember having this much trouble with phones and internet as we have here. I looked and found I had 13 emails in my outbox. Oy! Surely I will learn patience here.
I didn’t sleep well last night so I am coughing more today than yesterday. I get pretty impatient with myself and want to be well yesterday! It is a busy week because of what needs to get done for the bazaar. IWA sponsors the bazaar and all the Embassies participate. They sell items and give IWA all the proceeds after they take out expenses. IWA also has a raffle, a used book sale and a white elephant sale. Because we did not sell all the holiday decorations and crafts at the open house we will also sell those at the bazaar. Most of the money comes from table sales and proceeds from the embassies. Apparently many artisans participate and over 1000 people attend this event. All the money raised by IWA goes to community needs, often to individuals who fall through the cracks of social service agencies. This year we will help a three year old girl get a cochlear implant and the follow up therapy she will need to learn to hear and speak. Before I arrived IWA helped two people get prosthesis.
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