Cultural Difference and Our Progress

So I realize that we haven't talked in posts about some of the more significant Georgian cultural differences. Here are two of them—take them for what they're worth; the reactions described are only my responses based on my own cultural conditioning, and not intended as judgment of good/bad.

Food/Hospitality: Georgians are unbelievably hospitable, and as a sign of that, food is a significant part. One word you will hear, over and over, is “Tchame!” This is often repeated several times in a row, like this: “Tchame, tchame, tchame!” This means, “Eat!” They put more food on the table than you could ever eat (and quite likely, more food than 4 people could eat), as a sign of hospitality. At first, this is intimidating. At home, for breakfast, I would have something small, like a granola bar and/or a piece of fruit. The first time I sat down for breakfast here, my host mother must have put 8 dishes on the table, and I just sat there, mouth open, thinking, How the heck does she expect me to eat all THAT? What I have since learned is that, 1) They don't expect you to eat it all, but 2) they DO expect you to eat more than you ate in the U.S., and 3) they will almost always want you to eat more, no matter how much you eat. As a fellow PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) commented, this is the only place where he's been told to eat more as he had food in his mouth. Several trainees have been reprimanded by their host mothers for not eating enough, and had food spooned on their plate. This hasn't happened to me, but I do hear, “Tchame, tchame!” I have stuck, from the beginning, to eating what I am comfortable eating, rather than eating the amount I am urged to, and I am now comfortable enough to politely refuse entire dishes (this may seem rude, but there are probably 10-15 dishes on the table for an average lunch), particularly the soup that seems so popular at the noon meal (I don't quite understand why hot soup is so popular when the temperature is 35 degrees Celsius). Any interesting addendum to this is that, while American girls here are always encouraged to eat, this is not always true of Georgian girls. Some trainees have host sisters who are dieting to find husbands, and some female trainees find that their host mother will encourage them and their host brothers to eat, but not their host sisters. It's an interesting dynamic.

Money: Georgians are very open about some topics that Americans aren't, and one of those topics is money. Very soon after arriving in country, we were asked how much we paid in rent in San Diego, what cars did we drive, how much did we pay for those cars, etc. Although we haven't been directly asked, it is quite common to discuss your salary and how much you paid for, well, everything. This has led to several, shall we say, uncomfortable discussions because I'm not sure of a way to politely explain I'd rather not, either in Georgian or in English. In refusing, I don't want to appear rude or offend anyone, so we've simply answered all questions so far.

And, finally, a note on my progresss...as much as the language frustrates me (and there are many ways, mostly recently the fact that there is NO REGULAR way to convert a verb from present to future tense, so you have to memorize it for EVERY verb, not just exceptions), I can get around in Georgian. I can buy what I need at the maghazia (shop) or the bazaar; I can order at restaurants and pay the bill; I can take a taxi or public transportation, and I know how much I should pay; I can explain which foods I like the most; I can refuse politely when people order me to eat or when people offer far too many dishes (this is quite common here in Georgia); I can mail a letter home (this involved a lot of miming, but still...); and so on. There are quite a lot of things that I can do here, comfortably. Perhaps my Georgian is choppy when I explain to the taxi driver where to take me, but I've always gotten home. My trips to the post office have always involved miming, but I've mailed a letter back to my mom and bought postage. I've discovered that maybe I can't elicit a marshrutka schedule at the station, but I can discover it by other means, and I can take a marshrutka (marshrutkas, by the way, are the main means of public transportation in Georgia; they are mini-buses that go pretty much anywhere in Georgia). So, this is the triumph of knowing that I can do what I need to do.

- Carissa