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This cathedral was originally built under the reign of King Bagrat III. The Bagrations were a charming family who claimed descent from the union of David and Bathsheba and possessed a particularly striking coat of arms with the Lion of Judah, David’s sling, the Psalmist’s harp, Solomon’s scales and Christ’s coat without a seam. The story from St Petersburg before the Revolution, is that there was a single holdout elderly princess Bagration who always wore mourning on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on the grounds that it was a family bereavement.

UNESCO did not approve of the brand spanking new reconstruction, which is all you can really see in this photo. Something about it damaging "authenticity".

I rarely have good enough internet to upload photos, but here is a very belated photo of my host Dad making wine in our garage. In the gigantic blue tub to the right of the photo is all the leftover grape skins and stalks, which we use to make tchatcha. The wine comes out tasting exactly like box white, but maybe more subtle? I don't know, I personally prefer reds so I find most homemade Georgian wine too light for my taste. The wine I've had from Kakheti, the eastern winemaking region is much better.

Hip Young Co-Teacher hit a kid today. I dealt with it as best I could (calling authorities, speaking to teacher about how it's not okay), but for the first time ever in Georgia I have more negative feelings than positive about the country, my role in this program, and cultural differences. Maybe it will be resolved quickly, and I really hope it is, but it's hard to figure out my moral imperative in striking the balance between fighting too hard and not enough. If I fight too hard, I will no longer have any ability to teach because I'll be ostracized by all of my co-teachers, and the school will be less likely to take more volunteers in the future, thus negating all of the hard work both I and the two volunteers before me have done. If I don't fight hard enough, I'm condoning institutionalized violence against children.

That's not a breakfast food

I got offered a pale creamish spread in an old off-brand Nutella jar called "crema" for my bread this morning. I suspected the horrifying-cream-cheese-that-is-literally-made-with-the-cheese-that-is-going-off but I clearly saw host Mum take it out of the fridge so it couldn't be possibly be that, because the horrifying cream cheese has rather emphatically passed the point of refrigeration.

After tasting it I realised it was the icing from one of the cakes host Mum made on the weekend. Because of course icing is a breakfast food! Silly me.

Sometimes I get offered a lift home but they can only take me "some of the way". In Georgia some of the way has meant anywhere from the whole entire way, including snacks, or about 100 metres. You never know which you're gonna get so I've learned it's always best to get into cars with strangers (who know my name Mum & Dad, therefore relatives/friends of my host family)

The Obligatory Sick Post

The food has finally caught up to me and I spent the whole day sleeping, vomiting, and feeling sorry for myself. And despite all of my hard work at being sick, I still don't really feel any better. I guess it was bound to happen eventually, they don't really refrigerate things here (except that they keep wanting to refrigerate a tin of pineapple I bought to bake with, which makes NO SENSE)

At least once a week I'll inexplicably be asked if I "love" a certain household object, apparently more or less at random. This week my host sister asked me two days in a row if I "loved" ground. Both times I said yes, but only a little love, not a big love. The second time I asked her what she meant afterwards, and she got out a packet of black pepper that said "BLACK GROUND" on it in big letters in English. I corrected my previous statements and declared a "big love" for "BLACK GROUND".

PS this time confusingly the above title is actually a link, because I feel such a confusing presentation is more symbolic of my real-life day-to-day confusion of loving household objects in Georgia.

Marking Work

I marked all competition results from grades 7 through to 12 today, like a chump. My co-teacher was originally going to mark the work with me but I got kind of possessive, because I wanted them all to be marked against the same criteria, rather than the Georgian criteria of "this student is great so 10 out of 10, I hate this student so 2 out of 10". My co-teacher cannily caught on that acquiescing to my demands meant less work for her, so made herself incredibly scarce for the rest of the day, "coincidentally" only reappearing when I'd finished. I then corrected some papers the other teachers in the staffroom had filled out themselves, and found out afterwards it was their final take-home exam for their English Language Certificate. The moral of this story is that the only idiot in the classroom today was me.

Bebia's Trademark Advice

Tchatcha (her own moonshine) for bruises, because it "smells stronger than ice, so you know it works better".

Iodine in warm milk for colds and sore throats.

For curing hiccups, pray for the deceased members of your family with a stroke of the right eyebrow after each prayer. With the right thumb, quite specifically. ANY VARIATION WILL NOT WORK.

Wearing socks and closing the window for anything approaching illness/ALL OF THE TIME OR YOU MIGHT DIE.

To ensure fertility, never sit on the ground without a pillow, otherwise your ovaries may freeze.

The Non-Dancers on Georgian Dancing with the Stars are Uniformly Better than in Australia

All of the costumes are better too. The whole thing is just so much better. Like how tomatoes are better here and also the hospitality. If Georgians would just learn how not to litter I would consider living here longterm.

My host Mum is a bit miffed at me because apparently all week every time she asks him what he learned from me he's said "Nothing". To be fair this week we learned plurals and also how to write out the words of the numbers and also just revised a lot, so maybe he doesn't think he's learned anything, but tensions ran high enough that an emergency English lesson had to be held this morning where I taught him at least six new words.

We have most of the torso of a dead cow in a plastic bag in the kitchen right now. Celebrations for Bairmi, which I have determined to be the Georgian version of Eid-al-Adha. My host Dad even got up early this morning to drive to the mosque to pray! Also we sacrificed the aforementioned cow, but I missed the sacrifice because I was too busy napping at my host Mum's childhood home. Which has a painting of Stalin on the wall of the loungeroom, directly onto the cement! Just another surprise holiday in Georgia.

Karma

Last week in class the Hip Young Co-Teacher’s wooden stick broke mid-brandish. It flew a few feet underneath a student’s desk. I struggled to maintain the brevity of the moment. Strangely everybody else remained deadly serious. I hope this means the end of the big wooden stick as classroom management.

#hipyoungcoteacher

Pulling a Fast One

There’s one little boy in my grade three class who doesn't know the names of anything in English. Instead, he pronounces the Georgian words for things in a pseudo-English accent, clearly hoping that I won't notice. It's not quite as convincing as he thinks it is, because "vashli" (apple) pronounced in an English accent is still inarguably the word vashli. He claims to love English class but I harbour suspicions he’s only there to work on his upcoming impersonation of me.

Diminutives

I keep accidentally using the diminutive form of my host-Mum's name because it's all host-Dad ever calls her. I don't know if she minds me calling her "little Eleso", but she seems to be tolerating my crazy foreigner ways so far. In my defence, both Eleko and Eleso sound like real names to me.

It also reminds me of the time I stayed with a friends family in Poland and for some reason thought Wujek was a name (it means uncle) and called her uncle that the whole time. And my friends aunt I called by her first name. From memory they both thought I just liked Wujek better or something. The moral of this story is that I still don't Wujek's real name, which probably says something significant about my ability to learn languages.

We've run out of toilet paper, and host family has kindly provided the pages of old English exercise books to use instead.

DO YOU THINK THEY'RE TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING?

#georgianhospitality

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