Village Life

Tuesday 11^th October

I don’t want to sound overly negative here but I do want to give you a realistic picture of what it is like here as well.  Have I said how cold it has been here?  We have been really cold as there is no heating in the house at all.  The other night I went to bed in a long dress, a striped t-shirt over the top, a pair of woolly socks and my scarf.  It was not a good look.  If it is like this now then what will it be like in January?  The other thing is that it is very boring.  The TV is non-existent as it is badly dubbed or in Georgian, there is no comfortable place to sit to watch it  -  I need say no more.  I am fed up with the computer as all I do is look for resources that I can’t print or use.  There is nothing in the village and I mean nothing unless you count a little shed with a few groceries in.  The roads are unmade, rocky and covered in cow shit.  There is no street lighting of any kind.  Going for a walk is a pointless as it is difficult and too aimless. Without good Georgian it is impossible to have any meaningful dialogue with people. 

So for our sanity (I should say my sanity really) I plot our escape from the village each weekend.  I have the marshutka times for getting out of the village to Kareli but don’t yet know the times of the marshutkas out of Kareli.  So on Saturday it was a little hit or miss if we were going to make it out of Kareli at all to Tbilisi the CAPITAL!! But fortunately one turned up and we jumped on and arrived in the big smoke for the Tbilisoba an autumnal festival.

We have it sussed now as we line up our little boutique hostel (we have now been given a discount for being TLG teachers and turning up so often) so for a private room we only pay 10 lari each which is £4 each a night.  Not bad eh!  Includes free coffee, tea and wine!  You can see from the picture that it is not the most salubrious place, however!

It was so great to be in the city.  It was warm and happy.  There were lots of people wandering around and just enjoying themselves.  We nearly came to blows when Martin got lost and tried to blame me but we managed to be a bit mature about it (he agreed with me) and cheered up.  There was a great classic car exhibition on one of the bridges.

We sat outside a restaurant for much of the day drinking beer and listening to a concert (we couldn’t see just heard) soaking up the sun.  I had a proper – wait for it- croque madame; it was so yummy and I savoured every bit. Martin had chicken with mash and roasted garlic – it was pretty good French grub.  We thought we had better move on, at least to another bar and went to a Moroccan place that had one of those hubbly bubbly things.  It was 30 lari a go so we thought better of it and stuck to Georgian brandy and played backgammon instead.  Eventually we made our way back to the original bar, in our original seats and had kebabs of delicious pork cubes and chicken cubes and oh yes beer.  What do you think of Martin’s technique of dispensing with beggars?  Stare at your wife until they go away.  It was such a lovely day. 

We had been given details of where we could go to an English mass in Tbilisi on the Sunday which was a 10 minute walk from our hostel.  I thought we would be out in half an hour but to my delight there was a full sung mass with ex-pats in the choir.  The priest is the first secretary at the Vatican embassy and the homily was simple and to the point.  The church itself was very beautiful and I felt like I had come home.  The choir is looking for new members (what’s new?) and so I said we would love to sing every fortnight.  So we are back there in 2 weeks!  We booked tickets for “The battle of Stalingrad” at the puppet theatre for then so it will be a weekend to look forward to.  Next weekend is a long weekend and so we are planning to go to Borjomi and  Vardzia.  On Sunday there is a school excursion to Kaheti and me and Martin will go to that too.