May 4 2010

On Sunday we were invited to a Kentucky Derby party given by embassy friends Craig and Svetlana Hart. Craig is from Kentucky. They had invited guests to wear hats of all kinds in the tradition of the derby. What fun. Ron and I decided to dress up for the occasion. I used one of his hats and added silk flowers and a scarf and he won his panama with one of my scarves serving as his ascot! He he. See how cute we are in the photo. There were probably 75 people there. The hats were great. Some of our favorites were a heliport hat, a landing strip with plane hat, a race course hat complete with horses, railing, American flags and pendants with all the horses names, the ‘sheik your booty’ hat to name a few. The Harts had prepared a feast, a Southern feast at that: burgoo, cornpudding, ribs and chicken, pecan pie and such. I got homesick just eating the food.

We were invited to buy chances on the race. So we bought one chance for 5 lari (about $2.50). They sold 100 chances so there would be five winners as there were 20 horses in the race. We drew Super Saver. I told Ron we would win because we are…super savers. Ron’s mom says we squeeze the nickel so hard the Indian is riding the buffalo. Sure enough we won 100 lari, $56. Before distributing the money a woman from USAID made a plea for a child with meningitis and the five winners gave her our winnings. 500 lari will help the child get the needed medication. It poured rain throughout the party but it didn’t dampen our spirits. Craig had erected some tarps over the patio and the house was large enough for the group.

Last night Jamal brought over our mafrash that we purchased a month or so ago. Jamal sells and repairs carpets, and other woven items, such as the mafrash. This is a large woven bag used for carrying items such as clothing before the suitcase was created. It has an open top. We will have a structure made and invert the mafrash over the top and use it as a luggage stand or table. See photo.

We are now working with Lala (have you noticed how the names here have lots of vowels? Unlike the nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs). To make us a bedspread from a Turkish textile we bought Easter weekend when we were in Istanbul. She will attach some fabric to the edges of the textile to make it large enough to serve as a coverlet then she will make a bed skirt. Once this project is finished we will have show and tell with photos.

Ron’s work has really taken off since our return from San Francisco. He has had more meetings since our return than in the entire seven months since we arrived. He is much happier to be busy. Tomorrow I will take part in the interviews for the chief alumni officer position at Tbilisi State University. I will volunteer for the project two days a week for six months. Alumni associations are unheard of here and the concept of giving back to the university is unknown also. However the national government was changed the way schools are funded and it is critical that universities find other means of support. This is a grant funded project and I think it will be great fun. How’s that for optimism?