July 15, 2010

Bill

Sandi

Goodness time does fly! Particularly when we have relatives from the US visiting and then we take off for a holiday weekend. I will try to recount. Sandi, Ron’s sister and her husband, Bill arrived on July 2 in the wee hours of the morning. We all went back to bed, then Ron headed out to work. The rest of us started with a slow morning then met Ron in Old Town for lunch. We walked around Old Town to the Turkish baths, the botanical gardens then moseyed over to the Marriot for cold fresh lemonade and Ron headed out to the embassy for a command performance at a reception the ambassador was having for other VIPs. We went out for authentic Georgian cuisine that evening when Ron returned.

Signahi town wall

On Saturday we got up and Gia drove us to Sighnaghi. We stopped along the way to look at another Russian jeep that Ron is thinking about buying. Sighnaghi is a lovely little town about two hours east of Tbilisi. It has been lovingly restored and it becoming a tourist spot in Georgia. We started out at the Pheasant’s Tears Gallery. Ron had met the owner at the reception on Friday night. John Wurdeman is an American who has lived here for about 13 years after he finished his master’s of fine arts degree at a Russian university. John is a real entrepreneur. In addition to his art gallery, he owns a vineyard and producers great organic wines that were recently recognized by one of the 300 wine professionals in the world. So we had a wine tasting and bought some wine. Fortunately I found out that he sells it at the grocery store where I shop. He also has a room with wonderful regional carpets that he sells. I was impressed with his wares!

From here we wandered through the town, having lunch in a local café and perusing crafts in the town center park. I bought the classic shepherds hat made from sheep skin. These are the hats worn by men who stand by the edge of the road when they want to sell a sheep. They dress the sheep then and there from what we have been told. Who needs signage when you can simply don your sheep’s hat? We visited the museum there which has finds going back several millennia from archeological digs in Georgia. Evidence of wine making from the earliest finds proves that wine has been a vital part of their culture forever!

Lisi Lake at sunset

That night we went to an AM CHAM/US Embassy sponsored picnic at Lisi Lake up the road from us about a mile or so. There was very loud music, and some great food. I rarely eat hamburgers but had one and it was delicious.

Uplistsike

On Sunday we drove to Gori, an hour west of TBS. Just outside of Gori is an ancient cave city, Uplistsikhe. I will call this place Up for short if you don’t mind. It was on the Silk Road oute and was a trading center by at least the 5th century BC. Later it became more isolated and was inhabited by monks until it was destroyed in the 13th century. The ruins include a theater with an orchestra pit, bread ovens, a water system that brought water through a system of ceramic pipes from 5-6 km away, wine storage room, underground prison, pharmacy, a church and a place for the blood of sacrificed animals, another church built in the 8th-9th centuries that survived the onslaught of Mongols although 5,000 monks were slaughtered, a market, and a secret escape tunnel 41 meters long that ran down to the river. We had a guide which helped to understand what the different caves and other features were. It was quite hot so we made this our first stop although it was the furthest point in our trip.

We worked our way back to Gori and visited the Stalin Museum. Strange but true, the residents of Gori are proud of their home town boy. The museum was built in1957, the year after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and his crimes. We had a tour guide here also and no mention was made of his crimes or gulags or the Ukrainian famine. Gia took us to a Georgian restaurant where Sandi and Bill got to sample more Georgian culinary items.

Church in Mtskheta

We headed back to TBS and stopped at Mtskheta, the heart of Georgia’s spiritual identity. Inhabited for over 3,000 years, the site was the center of a pagan cult adopted in the 4th century by the king. There are traces of older Hittite and even Sumerian cults. From the 4th century BC until the 5th century AD this was the capital of Iveria, the scene of the royal family’s conversion to Christianity and the continued seat of the Georgian church until the 12th century. We visited two churches here, one that sits high on a hilltop over looking the two rivers that converge here. By now it was very hot. We have been having a heat wave with temps at 100+ daily and no rain. We came home and ate at the house.

On Monday we took it easy as Sandi and Bill had to get up at 1:30 a.m. to catch a flight to Prague and thought running around town would not be such a great idea. I went to work at TSU for a couple of hours. We loved having our first guests and look forward to more. James Wall, my childhood friend will come for a visit in early September.

Financail Responsibility

June 23, 2010

Okay I now have my favorite Georgian word which I learned in class this week. I don’t think I will ever be able to pronounce it however. As I have mentioned Georgians don’t think much of vowels and here’s the proof! Give it a try. The word is prdghvnis. It means plucking. And yes there really is only ONE vowel in that nine letter word. Fortunately I won’t have much call to be using that word so it will be okay if I never learn to pronounce it.

Saturday I was downtown and came home on the subway. When I exited it was raining so hard I had to wait in the underpass to it to subside. I tried to go to the grocery store but couldn’t cross the street due to the water four inches deep that was coursing down the street halfway across the street. What a mess!

This has been a week of sad stories, tales of woe in Georgia. It actually started before we left for ATL when Maya told us her mother’s roof was leaking very badly and they had put pans and buckets around to catch the water but they had no money to replace or repair the roof. Her mom lives in a village about an hour out of TBS. Maya is our massage therapist who works part-time at the embassy making $2.06 an hour to clean there. I am still upset that the US government pays so poorly here. Then this Sunday she told us a story about a widow who left her 8 months old son with Maya’s sister while she went to the Ukraine in search of work because she has had no income since her husband died. Maya’s sister was happy as she is unemployed and too proud to do housework. The mother was to send money back from the Ukraine so it would be a source of income for Maya’s sister. Maya and her sister live together in an apartment here. Well it turns out there isn’t much work in the Ukraine either. The widow gets work two or three days a week and sometimes she isn’t paid as the person who hired her that day knows she is there without proper documents (illegal alien in the US). Oy! Then she finds out that she needs an operation or she will die. She can’t have surgery there because…she is an illegal alien. She doesn’t want to come back here because she is afraid she won’t be able to get back into the Ukraine (why bother?). So Maya told her to stop sending money here and to take care of herself. So Maya now supports herself, her mother, her sister, the widow’s baby and helps support her niece and nephew of her deceased sister since her brother in law can’t find regular work.

Lala, the seamstress who is making our bedspread came over to measure something and told me her roof is leaking and she doesn’t have the money to fix it. She lives on the top floor of an apartment building. At the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, apartments were given to the current occupants. But no provisions were made for maintenance on common spaces such as entrances, stairwells and roofs. So if the roof leaks and you are on the top floor, you have to fix it, not all the occupants of the building. Lala is 60, works for two Americans cleaning their houses and sews to earn extra money. She is putting her son through university so she has nothing extra. And we are in the rainy season here. We have torrential downpours almost daily. They are short lived but intense.

Jamal, the fellow who sells carpets via house calls was in a terrible auto accident and was hospitalized for 20 days. He was hit head on by a drunk pastor! Jamal’s car was totaled and Jamal was told when he told the priest from whom he expected to be helped financially said that he would be taking from the church. I’ll say no more! Except that they build churches here all the time so I don’t think the church is strapped for cash! Sorry I couldn’t hold it in any longer. So now Jamal came to see us via taxi. He lived out of Tbilisi quite a ways.

Not one of these people has any financial reserves. My guess is this is true for most Georgians.

June 28
Ron has been looking at Russian jeeps, old Russian jeeps like 1960 something. Being a project guy, he wants a vehicle that will carry a full sheet of plywood. How’s that for screening criteria? So Friday after language class and grocery shopping we headed out with Gia to a village high above Tbilisi about 30 miles from here. Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe how beautiful the drive was. In the distance were mountains; closer were green rolling hills, and millions upon millions of wildflowers: wild lupines, daisies, roses, some relative of delphinium, three yellow flowers I couldn’t identify, pinks, purples and on and on it went. The three of us kept commenting on the beauty around us. We passed a few small villages on the way. We arrived at the place were the jeep lived and discovered it would be a two year headache to restore. It was just too far gone. I was thankful that Ron decided that it was more work than he really was interested in. The search continues.

Saturday we went to the flea market and thought about a couple to things and I did buy a salt cellar as it had a spoon with it and the spoons are very rare to find.. We discovered a covered area we had not noticed before and it turned out to be the antique area. I spied a beautiful copper art nouveau coffee urn but it was $600. Then I saw this beautiful vase with metal work and it also was art nouveau. It had a $1200 price tag. Not surprisingly we didn’t buy either item.

Now for a happy ending story. Today our housekeeper’s husband got a job at the US Embassy as a security guard. He has been trying to get a job there for 10+ years. I helped him with his resume for four different positions. Zura wanted to quit trying but I said he had to keep trying and it paid off. We are so happy for the whole family as this will mean a stable income, something Zura hasn’t had in a long time. He has a master degree in Economics. He will make about $600 a month which is a good salary here. Nino was alternately crying for joy and giggling. She is so relieved as she has been the chief bread winner for the family and this is a paternalistic/machismo society and having your wife be the chief bread winner is demoralizing. So you can imagine how big a deal this is for them. They also will have health insurance which they don’t currently have.

I am helping our massage therapist with her resume as well. She has worked part-time as a janitor at the embassy for five years. In addition she offers massages through the health clinic but that is a direct pay job. Now there is a receptionist position available at the clinic and she wants the job very badly. Remember she is supporting many people and could really use a stable income. We have our fingers crossed for her.

June 20, 2010
We left Tbilisi at 7 a.m. on May 28th and flew to Paris, expecting to have a two hour layover. Our plane from Paris was three hours late getting into Paris. We boarded at 5:00 p.m. instead of 1:40. We pulled away from the gate and stopped shortly afterwards. After a while the captain announced a problem with an indicator light on the rear door which is what had made the plane late to Paris. Unfortunately a caterer had opened the rear door that had been problematic in NY or where ever the plane had originated from. So we were struck there for a total of five hours. When they couldn’t fix the problem we deplaned as our flight was cancelled. Then we stood in line for two hours (after being up for 20 hours) in order to get a voucher for a hotel. We stayed at a Radisson near the airport and the advertised price was 400 Euros! Yikes! We got six hour sleep after having been up for 23 hours since we left TBS. We went back to the airport to see if we could get an earlier flight to Atlanta and on to DC where we were meeting our kids. Delta was wonderful and got us on a 10:40 flight instead of a 1:40 and they honored our tickets to DC which were the el cheapo tickets that if you miss your flight you are out of luck. We got to DC by 6:00 that night. I have no idea what time it was body time as we had passed through 9 times zones by then.

We spent Sat and Sun nights with David and Anne who have just moved to Silver Springs Maryland as David has accepted a position with HHS. We went to the zoo on Sunday and met up with Mark and Rachel. Afterwards we all went to D &A’s for dinner. On Monday we went to Centreville and spent the night with M&R. It was great to be with our kids and grandkids. On Tuesday night the kids took Ron and me to dinner at our favorite restaurant in DC to celebrate my birthday and Father’s Day. We got to sit outside and eat fabulous Middle Eastern cuisine. Yum

On Wednesday we flew back to Atlanta where Ron had arranged several site visits for the Georgians who are here with Ron to attend the Government Financial Officers Assoc conference. On Thursday they met all day with the county and I got to hook up with my friend James whom I have known since the 4th grade. He moved here recently from VA. What luck! He took me around to get some of my shopping done. Atlanta is a huge city and they have virtually no shopping in downtown. You have to go to the burbs for shopping. We visited the tiny shopping center that is located downtown and it is basically a food court with a handful of little shops. Useless given our needs. We will take Marta, the mass transit here, on Saturday to get the clothes we need at a shopping center north of downtown.

On one of my shopping trips I was buying a bath mat and was with my friend James aka Jimmy James. There was a woman walking through the bath department and exclaiming to her friend (this is the honest to god truth) “I need some new towels somethin’ terrible”. I looked at Jimmy who was suppressing a laugh and I said ‘can you imagine being a foreigner and hearing that and trying to understand what she just said?’

June 8, 2010
Ron’s meetings are going well and I have completed my shopping. Today Jimmy has arranged a massage for me. What a treat! I went to the Lenox Square Mall where I worked one summer as a gift wrapper and bought a pair of sandals. The mall was not recognizable. I managed to travel using Marta, their metro and was impressed with how easy it is. I was thrilled to see an old friend from high school who now lives in Atlanta. Nan and Jimmy are friends so he connected us up with each other. Nan took me to a medical appointment and out to lunch. She had us over to dinner one night also. It was so much fun remembering our days in high school.

Last night we were the dinner guests of some of the GFOA officials. All the Georgian delegates were invited. We went to a very nice French restaurant. I think I have mentioned how important wine is in the Georgian culture and how when having any kind of celebration Georgians have a toastmaster. Well last night Dato assumed the role. Most Georgian wine is homemade and has an alcohol content of 6%. The Georgians asked the waiter repeatedly to fill their glasses to the rim. Another custom is the toast master will drink his entire glass of wine for his more important toasts. Last night was no exception. Dato had consumed three glasses before appetizers were served. Anytime their wine bottle was empty the Georgians would shout to the waiter ‘more wine!’ Afterwards they went to the president’s suite of GFOA for more partying. We went back to the hotel and off to bed.

June 20
I failed to keep up with our trip. We rented a car in Atlanta on June 10th after Ron’s meetings ended and drove to South Carolina to visit my family there. We stayed with my sister and her husband. Toni, my sister, has lost 33 pounds and counting. She was diagnosed with diabetes and said no way. She changed her diet and eliminated sugar, white flour, white potatoes, etc and continues to lose weight. Toni has been overweight for many years so this is really great. Her doctor has ‘undiagnosed’ her diabetes. We have a hilarious evening on my birthday when Toni’s three kids came over and told lots of family stories. We were crying we were laughing so hard. It was probably my best birthday ever. On Saturday we drove up to my sister’s mountain cabin and on the way stopped for lunch. We ran into Nan from Atlanta who had been in Greenville on business. Too funny.

On Monday we got up early and at 7:30 started our drive back to Atlanta. We hung out at the airport until our plane left at 3:30 and flew to Paris. There we had a layover before flying into Tbilisi at 6:00 Tuesday afternoon where it was very hot and humid. We had a wonderful trip but it felt great to be back ‘home’.

We are now in the rainy season. Almost everyday we have a torrential downpour which is short lived but intense. We also get thunder and lightening. Yesterday as I was coming out of the subway, it was pouring so I waited in the underpass with many others for the rain to subside. I had planned to run by a small grocery store on my way home but couldn’t get across the street as water about four inches deep was coursing down the street. Perhaps if I had on galoshes instead of sandals I would have considered trying to get across the street. I gave up and came home.

Catch-up & miscellaney

May 24, 2010
I must say I am ‘behinder’ than usual. I have gotten very busy here and other things seem to get in the way of blogging so my apologies to our readers.

I have accepted a volunteer position as Tbilisi State University. In 2005 the national government decided to stop funding state schools and the onus is now on the schools to find addition funds to exist. TBS won a grant that had a consultant perform an assessment of the management system. One recommendation was to create an alumni relations office to maintain communication with alums and hopefully obtain some funds from the more successful alumni. TBS is the oldest (90 years) and largest public university in Georgian. Many politicians, and professionals are graduates of TSU. This year TSU won another grant to develop an alumni relations office. I have volunteered to help the newly hired chief alumni officer develop the program. A consultant will visit TSU three times this summer fro assessment and training. Unfortunately I will miss the first visit. He arrives the day after we leave and leaves two days before our return. Bummer!

We leave Friday, May 28th for a meeting in Atlanta. The meetings start on June 3rd so we will zip up to DC to see our kids for Friday-Tuesday and come back to Atlanta on the 2nd. Then we will drive to SC to see my family on June 10th and drive back on Monday June 14 to catch our plane back here, arriving June 15th. My dear friend James Wall has moved to Atlanta recently so I will spend time with him while Ron is attending his meetings. Another friend of high school lives in Atlanta and James has hooked us up so Nan and I will have 47 years of catching up to do! Yikes, can I be that old?

Things are going much better here for Ron. His work is finally moving along, not as fast as he would like but at least it is now moving! IWA is slowing down for me as we don’t meet again until September so there will be no fundraising activities. This is the perfect time for me to help TSU with their project but I think the fall will be real busy when IWA starts to gear up for fall activities. Hopefully things at TSU will be off to a good start and my work will start to wan by then. How’s that for positive thinking?

We are having spring weather here. It rains often but the sun comes out almost daily. We have taken the wool blankets off the bed and opened the window and turned off all the radiators. Everyone says summers are hot here. We have air conditioners in each room but we prefer fresh air over the AC. My guess is we will need AC in order to sleep.

I planted two packets of nasturtiums that I had ordered from the US and they are all germinating. I hope they survive our being away for 17 days. I have asked my housekeeper to come three times a week to water plants. I planted about 15-17 pots to help soften the concrete castle we live in. I am pleased with the results. Our yard is miniscule and I am grateful that I think I can keep up with the weeds. My gardener doesn’t seem to notice them and I never seem to be here when he is here to show him how to weed. We have a horrid grass weed with roots to China. I dig and dig and never seem to find the bottom. My arthritic fingers don’t much like pulling weeds.

We have been engaging in lots of social activities: dinner parties, meeting friends at restaurants for lunch on Sunday, and having friend here for dinner. I am excited to be working at TSU because I will be working with Georgians as I find I don’t have as much interaction as I would like through my normal course of the day. I am learning first hand about some of our cultural differences. For instance, Georgians sense of time is more casual than ours. Today we had a meeting with the Vice Rector of the university. She is the equivalent to the VP. The meeting was scheduled for 11:00. At 11:05 I asked Mariam the chief alumni officer what time the meeting was with the VR and she said 11:00. A minute or so later we got up to go downstairs to meet with her. It’s what Ron calls GST (Georgian Standard Time). Georgians also don’t plan ahead (as evidenced by the way they drive). It was decided this morning that we should have a meeting this week to inform the key staff about the consultant’s visit next week. He will be meeting with the same staff who will be invited to the meeting to be held on Thursday. But that is one of the benefits of working with Georgians: I will learn more about their way of life.

The thing I dislike the most about living here is the driving. When we had our security orientation, the security officer said the biggest danger in Georgia was not the possibility of being robbed, murdered or burglarized but getting into a car. He encouraged us to never drive at night due to the amount of drinking and driving that occurs here. I mentioned lack of planning above. Multiple times a day every day I see drivers in the far left lane making right hand turns. They often do this when stopped at a red light, turning in front of three lanes of stopped traffic. Countless times I have witnessed drivers running red lights without even slowing down. My least favorite offense is the drivers who blow through a red light at a specially designated pedestrian crossing. A pedestrian could be crossing the street and the driver would not see the pedestrian until they had run over them. There are few places to make left hand turns here or to find a convenient place to U-turn. Drivers have to go a long way sometimes to make a left handed turn. For instance to get to our fresh market it is illegal to make a left handed turn onto the street where the market is located so Gia drives across the river, exits under the bridge so he can get back onto the bridge on the correct side of the street re-crosses the river and makes a right hand turn. This maneuver take 4 right hand turns. It is a very typical move here. At an intersection near our house many driver blow through the red light so they can turn left before the oncoming traffic has a green light. As a pedestrian, I have to watch out to make sure one of these idiots doesn’t kill me while I am trying to cross that street. I feel very blessed that I don’t have to drive here and am very grateful that Gia is so skillful. He watches all his mirrors and the road ahead constantly checking to see who is doing what around him. I have seen police cars break every traffic law imaginable: driving in the opposing lane of traffic ( a very common practice here by every driver, not just police cars), driving on the sidewalk, running red lights, making illegal u-turns and left hand turns to name a few. Only once have I seen a police car stop a traffic violator, someone driving top speed in a congested commercial/residential area. By the way, almost every street is a mixed use area: commercial on the first floor and residential above. Most buildings here are four-15 stories high and most have small shops/businesses on the first floor and residences above. There are very few individual homes here. The vast majority of people in Tbilisi live in high rise concrete ugly buildings with tiny balconies where they dry their clothes as almost no one owns a clothes dryer. Recently I asked Gia, our driver, how long he had lived in his apartment. He said “All my life.” I almost fell over. I counted up how many places I had lived and came up with 28. Granted I am older but I had lived in three places by the time I was 8! If you went to the villages outside of Tbilisi you would find people living in small houses for the most part and they would be quite humble judging from the outside. I would guess most do not have central heating if any heat at all. The Georgians that I have asked told me they heat one room in their apartments here as it is very expensive. Our housekeeper and Laurie’s housekeeper call and then ask us to call them back on our phones to reduce the cost of their cell phone usage. It is as though their watch every tetri (100 tetri make one lari about $0.53). A friend of ours said he thinks it is more a matter of getting what you can from the system, a holdover from Soviet days. For example Nino, our housekeeper asked me if she could shower here because her house is not heated. It is now spring, much warmer, but she continues to shower here, saving her water usage and electricity to heat water assuming they have a hot water heater. As Americans most of us have an abundance by comparison. I have been to two apartments where Georgians live and have been made aware of how little space they have. Tim, Ron’s predecessor here, told us the Georgians he knew loved to come to his house because they could spread out and really relax because of the space available. I have been in many homes where American are living or other expats and diplomats and we all have large homes or apartments that for the most part are elegant at best and more than adequate at worst. There are some very wealthy Georgians who live well but I would guess most people here are below middle class.

Ron has gotten a wild hair and want to buy an old Russian jeep to be his project car. Not a project to fix up, but a vehicle to use to pick-up project materials for projects around the house. We know we need a new car when we get home and deciding on what to get has always been difficult because he wants to be able to carry a full sheet of plywood. If we have another way to do that, we will have more options on what to buy. Before coming here he was thinking of an old step-side pick-up truck. But now, he’s looking into what it will take to bring one of these things home. Besides, he likes the way these things look. It must be a “guy” thing! They call it a GAZ 69.

I think I menioned before that we purchased a Mafrash a while ago.  Many of you have written to ask:  "Just what is a Mafrash"  Well, it's an original carpet bag, abour 2 feet long by one foot wide and 18 inches deep.  We had a small table/bench built so we can place the Magrash upside down over it and use it as a suitcase stand in one of our guest rooms at home in Vancouver.

April 22, 2010

Last Saturday we feasted on salmon, fresh asparagus and fresh strawberries. It is SPRING! Our weather is typical for spring: rainy day followed by a warm sunny day, back and forth. It was in the mid 70’s on Sunday so I got the gardening bug bad and dug in the dirt for a couple of hours planting cone flowers, black eyed Susan’s and lupine. For the kitchen I planted thyme, oregano, parsley and rosemary. Sorry about that sage…

Ron’s work has finally kicked into gear. He has had more meetings with Papuna, deputy minister of finance and Giorgi, budget director since we got back from the US than he has had the six months we have been here. This makes both of us happy.

We have been looking at mafrashes, a woven bag much like an open topped bag used when the bridge left her home to carry her belongings or used for carrying other household items. Ron had a great idea to make a bedspread using the two side panels on the top of the bed in the middle and the two ends panels for the pillow area. Easier said than done. We went to Rudy’s and found a mafrash we really liked but decided to look further. A friend recommend Jamal who works out of his home. He brought some mafrashes to the house and we didn’t like any of them compared to the one we had seen downtown. Jamal came back later with more samples including a rug he suggested cutting up to make our bedspread. When we looked at the rug, we really liked it and asked if we could keep it and show it to our friend Anne Patterson who is an expert on regional carpets. Anne said it was a good buy. So we bought it. It will require repairs but that is Jamal’s specialty. Anne has a number of carpets that he has repaired and when she showed them to us we could not see where the repairs had been made. Anne has over 130 pieces in her collection, not all are carpets but she does have quite a few carpets. Jamal also bought some mafrashes we loved, very traditional patterns but the family who was selling them wanted $550. We went back downtown and bought the original mafrash we had seen. We decided to keep it as a mafrash and not disassemble it for the bedspread idea. We asked Jamal to make the needed repairs. The hunt continues.

I was approached by the head of an NGO here about doing a volunteer job with Tbilisi State University. After meeting with Kevin and his assistant Eka I decided to take it. It will be for six months starting in May or June. This is right when IWA shuts down for the summer. The timing seemed perfect. I will help develop an alumni office which is non existent in these parts. Lots needs to be dine but it seems like a neat project with loads of potential.

Saturday we are going to David Gareja on the border with Azerbaijan. There are 15 old monasteries spread over a large remote area that looks like a lunar semi desert landscape. The oldest monastery was founded by Davit (David) Gareja, one of the 13 ascetic ‘Syrian fathers’ who returned from the Middle East to spread Christianity to Georgia in the 6th century. Manuscript were translated and copied and a school of Georgian fresco painting developed. The monasteries were destroyed by the Mongols in 1265 and revived in the early 14th century. They were later sacked and in 1615 on Easter night 6000 monks were killed and most of their artistic treasures were destroyed by Shah Abbas of Persia. In 1675 King Archil initiated some restoration and gave monks a small stipend. They remained working until the end of the 19th century. During the Soviet times the area was used by military exercises. Some of the earliest demonstrations of the perestroika period in Tbilisi were protests against this vandalism. Davit and his disciples lived in caves here. Frescoes from the 11th century still exist and it is now a working monastery once again. We will be able to hike around the area for about three hours before heading back to Tbilisi. We have to visit in the spring as in the summer the area is infested with snakes, yikes!

When we return it will be a quick turn around to attend a charity auction/dinner/dance. Should be a very full day!

Sunday April 25
It rained the entire day yesterday so we only got to see the lower monastery of David Gareja. It was very foggy on the drive up to the monastery so we could see very little. It was cold (60 F). The complex is truly fascinating with most of the structure built into the rock or carved out of the rock. We look forward to going again in better weather. Nino from the Embassy Community Liaison Office said this was her 18th trip and the first time it had been this wet. This region is considered a desert with very little rain fall. Not so today! As it was we were an hour and a half late getting back to town so we walked in the door, showered quickly and changed clothes and headed out the door at 6:40 for a quick stop by at Rami and Patrick’s open house and then on to the charity dinner/dance where we boggied all night to the sounds of the beatles

Repairs, a Party and Sunshine

Feb 25, 2010
Today two plumbers came to clear the bathtub drain on the third floor. They brought a toilet plunger. Three electricians came to find out why our security lights weren’t on and two men came to work on the refrigerator that leaks water on the inside of the refrigerator. So I had seven men here at once working on minor repairs. This must be a hold over from the Soviet era where everyone had a job!

Feb 26
We got a new refrigerator delivered today. It is much nicer than the old one but would be considered small at home. I ain’t complaining about no free refrigerator!

Feb 28
Today we had an ‘art party’ for Maia who made our wall hanging. We had invited a number of people over to meet her and see her work. On Friday I picked her up at her house and brought her over here to hang some of her pieces. Today she came over early and used our dining room table to display her beautiful scarves of felt and silk. About 20 people came by today. It was a gorgeous sunny day. Rain had been predicted so I did a bit of worrying thinking people wouldn’t come out on a rainy day. Then when it turned out so pretty I worried that they wouldn’t come because it was so nice. Do you get an idea of how much I like to worry?!? One person ordered a custom made felt scarf for her husband and two people were very interested in one of her framed pieces. I don’t know if others will follow up with her but she seemed pleased to have the exposure. A number of people took her card.

It was a fun day. Ron and I worked like a well oiled piece of machinery getting ready. We truly enjoy working on things together and have a good rhythm as a team. Clean up is the same way. It goes easily and quickly. Must have something to do with having been together for so many years and enjoying each other’s company. It helps that neither of us likes confrontation or fighting so we rarely have anything that we disagree over. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a loud noise and considered getting up but fell asleep before I managed to crawl out of bed. Turns out someone must have been mighty mad or drunk as they completely wrecked our very strong steel gate. It will still be able to keep people out but I am not sure it can be opened for large deliveries. Because we have these incredible security lights that light up the street for a couple of houses in each direction, we have to assume the driver was drunk as you can’t miss this gate. We reported it to the Embassy. Our contact said it will probably be a landlord issue. Who knows what that will entail?

Last night we attended a concert sponsored by the Polish Embassy. The program featured two Russian pianists who were playing Chopin’s first and second concertos. It was a great program. The conservatory was filled to overflowing. I would guess there were fifty people standing throughout the evening. Georgians seem to love the arts. We met in Old Town, Ron walked from work and I had Gia take me there. I went early so I could explore some of the shops. Old Town is being revitalized and it a very attractive area. No gray concrete apartment houses here. Instead there are charming colorful rehabbed buildings. It has some good restaurants and neat shops, galleries, etc. We had a great meal at the French restaurant where we dined a few months ago.

Today is March 2 and the plumbers arrived shortly after the satellite dish guys. Our boiler needed a new water pump which was installed today. We now have a new satellite dish so we can catch the news. I have no idea what has been going on in the world for the past week. I missed the Olympics and I am sad about that. I love watching the Olympics. Such is life. After they finished up I made a quick lunch then walked to the other end of Lvovi to see where the IWA coffee is being held tomorrow. It is at the Dutch Ambassador’s house as his wife is a member. It is a huge and gorgeous place and I wanted to make sure it was within walking distance. It is a perfectly beautiful day today so when I got back home, I took a dining chair, a small side table and my homework outside on the front porch and spent an hour writing questions for my assignment. Elza has busted us for being so lazy lately and told us we need to be speaking Georgian more. So on Saturday night while dining out and last night we spoke Georgian to each other for about five minutes. We have been remiss with our drills although we do our assignments.

Tomorrow is another Georgian holiday so Ron has the day off. We hope the weather holds and plan to have a play day after I get home from the IWA coffee at noon. We want to either walk up to Lisi Lake above our house or go to the botanical gardens. Anytime the weather is pleasant Georgians pour out of their dreary apartment houses and sit in the parks, or on all the benches that are downtown. I am the same way here. I look for reasons to go outside. Our house is quite nice but there are no windows on the right or left side of the house and relatively little light from the north side, making the house darker than I like. Fortunately we have had many more sunny days here than we have at home in the Greyt NW!

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?