A belated post about an Anniversary, an Armenian and San Jose

October 17, 2010

On October 4th Ron and I marked the end of our first year in Tbilisi. Our language teacher asked us what we liked and didn’t like about Georgia aka Sakartvelo in Georgian. I talked about the food and how limited the variety was: one kind of lettuce, veggies consist of one kind of potato, beets, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers and tomatoes, rarely get to buy broccoli and cauliflower, every supra and every menu in restaurants have the exact same dishes, etc. She said most people complain about the driving. I said that was a given. I must say that is what I absolutely despise about Georgia. Drivers are incredibly irresponsible, reckless and rude. Pedestrians have NO rights. You take your life into your hands crossing a street. Drivers routinely run red lights; turn right from the far left lane across multiple lanes of traffic, never yield to pedestrians, speed excessively in commercial/residential areas, park on sidewalks making it necessary to pedestrians to step into traffic and occasionally drive on sidewalks. Did I mention how they drive in reverse down the streets or that they think nothing of driving the wrong way on a one way street because it is more convenient for them? It is truly maddening. Have I described how they don’t bother to wear seat belts and many, many car windshields have ‘spider web’ cracks where someone has hit their head on the windshield and still the people in these cars don’t bother to wear seat belts. Are they stupid or obstinate? Then there is the frequent sight of children standing up in front seat without a seat belt. OY!

What do I love about Georgia? The scenery is spectacular. The people are gracious. I have noted that Georgians don’t smile when you see them on the street. I would imagine when the Soviet Union fell and Georgian became independent all that ensued caused them to be wary and untrusting. Any money you had in the bank at that time disappeared with the Russians. For along time there were no utilities. Imagine a winter with no heat, infrequent water and electricity, etc. So I can understand the reason for no smiles. Usually if I initiate a greeting I get a response.

On October 9-11 Ron and I joined other from the embassy and took a trip to Yerevan Armenia, about 6 hours south of TBS. We had a small bus and took off early Saturday morning. We stopped for lunch and arrived late afternoon. Several of us went for a quick walk and shopping downtown. Then out to dinner. Afterwards we went back to our rooms and collapsed. On Sunday we started early again visited the Genocide Memorial. This is a beautiful outdoor structure with an eternal flame. We were too early to visit the museum which I would have liked to see to better understand the facts of the genocide. As I understand it about one million Armenians were murdered in 12 contested provinces. Another one of the horrific events in our past where we still haven’t learned to stop killing each other. I assume we will learn since we have been doing this since time began.

Next we visited a huge outdoor market: paintings (mostly amateurs), embroidery (beautiful), real and fake jewelry, souvenirs, wood carvings, and a flea market with lots of junk and a few treasures. These markets are fun but a lot of work if you want to buy anything. It all requires bargaining and I don’t enjoy that. In the afternoon we visited two churches/monasteries out of town. Armenia is an orthodox apostlistic Christian country. Their churches are quite simple and plain: no frescoes or icons to speak of. I was told that the Ethiopian Christian church is the same as the Armenian. Sunday was Yerevan’s birthday so when we got back to town many streets were closed off. Ron, Kirsten, Aquil and I got out of the van before our hotel to do some more shopping. Afterwards we met our group for dinner. There were throngs of people on the streets to celebrate. Live bands we performing on many outdoor stages and fireworks were on display as we walked back to our hotel.

On Monday we headed for home and stopped at another church along the way. We had great weather and enjoyed the trip immensely. We arrived home happy but exhausted from having spent three days in a bus.









On Thursday we went to bed at 11:00 p.m. and got up at 1:00 a.m. to catch a plane for San Jose CA where Ron is attending his annual ICMA conference. Twenty four hours later we arrived at our hotel exhausted but thankful for an uneventful trip. We grabbed a light bite at a lovely, quite and delicious restaurant nearby and came home and fell into bed around 9:00. I managed to sleep until 3:30 a.m. but never did fall asleep afterwards. We got up bleary eyed around 6:30, showered and headed out in search of a good cup of coffee. We found a Starbucks and sat and read our newspapers while munching sweet rolls. We were desperate for a newspaper, one of the things I miss about TBS. I never seem to get to the TV to catch BBC and there are no English international newspapers. So it was a thrill to sit and devour two papers over a good cup of joe.

It took 45 minutes to rent a car at Enterprise. The staff of one arrived at 9:00 with six of us in line. We were second in line! But the employee took numerous phone calls and allowed for multiple interruptions from other customers before getting to us. The usual fee of $9.99 for a weekend rate had become $45 a day since we didn’t book it on line. Then we had to rent it for two days because they close at noon on Saturday and are not open on Sunday. Drat! Off we went and missed a turnoff due to our fatigue. We drove an extra 10 miles before realizing our mistake and turned around. We went to see our dear friend Wendy Wibbens in Alameda. I met Wendy almost 40 years ago when I gave her the GED. At the time she scored higher than anyone I had ever tested and we ended up becoming life long friends. Wendy starts cancer treatment on Monday so she took time to fill us in on the details. In the past month, three of our friends have discovered they have cancer. Wendy has a great attitude and we shared lots of funny moments with jokes about ‘butt cancer’. She has asked us to wear a brown ribbon during her treatment. Her daughter Jasmine treated us to a lovely brunch of a fresh salad, whole wheat toast, scrambled eggs with cheese, smoked salmon, goat and cow’s milk cheese. YUM!

Afterwards we headed to an arts and crafts fair in Menlo Park. We had planned to go to a flea market in San Jose but couldn’t find the roads on our Google maps print out. We decided we were too tired anyway and came home for a 90 minute nap. YUM again. We got up and headed to a shopping center to get some lipstick and dinner. Again we had a light meal of soup and salad. On the way home we stopped to get a few snacks of fruit and cookies for our hotel room. Once home we watched a TV movie before dropping off to sleep.

Sunday we got up and found a breakfast place nearby before Ron headed off to his meetings. I will join him at 5:00 for a reception followed by a dessert reception. In the meantime I have caught up on emails and now the blog so I feel free to go exploring around downtown San Jose. I need to replace a lost black sweater for all occasions.