Tea and Photos...

I am somewhat reluctant to post, given my excessive laziness in the last few weeks... Carissa has been prolific, and I've been relatively off the radar. Sorry about that...

I have some photos detailed rural Georgian roads in our region (Samskhe, not Javakheti).

The terrifying this is that this road is less than 10 kilometers from our house. Seriously.

The little green car is a Lada Niva, and the darn things are pretty much amazing. Sure, they tend to last for less than 6 years, but you'd be amazed what kind of obstacles something so small get scramble over. A quick note: this is the ONLY road to a village with over 300 people in it.

On another random note, things that happened to me in the last few weeks...
1) Was on a train that derailed. Note: this story becomes far less exciting after the headline. We were doing about 10mph, and the train (a narrow guage) sort of wobbled off the track and ground to a halt about 100m later. We waited an hour, they decoupled the damaged car, and we continued on... Had to take a marshutka back home, but no big deal.

2) Got hit by a car. Again, far less exciting after the headline. I was in the bazar walking down an extremely crowded street, and got clipped by a van doing about 10mph. The side mirror is the only part that hit me, and it clipped by shoulder and kinda shoved me aside. Definitely no injury... But still, the headline is pretty solid.

3) Saw a dog kill another dog while I was walking to work. Akhaltsikhe has a lot of stray dogs, and, unlike Gori, there appears to be a minimum weight of about 50lbs per stray. The dogs are huge. I sort of had to halt while they fought it out, because they were in the middle of the road I had to walk down to go to work. It was truly disturbing, and I sincerely hope that none of you ever see anything like it. Michael Vick, burn in hell, you sadistic bastard. I was able to edge around them eventually, but sound carries. It's awful. I truly don't understand how people can bet on this and find it enjoyable.

4) Started (slowly)on Russian. I've gotten a book (thanks Gill - you'll get it back soon!) and have started trying to learn the alphabet. The only similarity so far between Russian and Georgian is the lack of articles, and they both use cases. Th at's not a lot to go on... :-)My goal, when I leave the Peace Corps, is intermediate-high georgian and intermediate-high russian, as well as my german. Here's hoping... Anyone that's looking to send a care package, feel free to toss in any language CDs/DVDs for any of those 3 you may stumble across in a garage sale. :)
My region is 60% Armenian, and as a result, speaks russian predominately, not georgian.

5) started work on running a country-wide network of entrepreneurship clubs. My friend Jason started the idea of students running a cafe at their university (he's an english prof there thru the pc) and it snowballed from there. I'm pretty jazzed about it - I'm getting good buy-in from the other volunteers about the concept, and we've gotten some good planning work done.

6) discovered that Ryder, in Ninotsminda, has to pay for web access by the meg. Seriously. He pays 50 tetri (about 35 cents) a meg for internet usage. He checked his email and facebook and ended up paying 14 lari (about 9 USD). Ouch. And to top it off, the internet cafe has a daily limit of 50megs total, *for all their customers*. Basically, he wiped out 3/4 of a day's volume in about 45 minutes.

7) Heard a 6 way screaming match between angry 'chemically enhanced' men at 9 in the morning on a Tuesday. I did not realize how loud this culture can get until there's anger and alcohol involved. Oh, and yes, this was a business meeting where my NGO announced their ability to help fund local projects. I have never seen rage from people being told someone wants to give them money until I moved here. There's always a first time for everything... Quick side note to Dad and anyone at WFP: Do not mix shots with early morning business meetings. 'Pregaming' at 7am may indicate a problem with alcohol. On the other hand, I get the feeling that this is a culture with a deep appreciation of the concept of "beer-i-o's" as a hearty breakfast.

8) Saw a video of a lada (a very small sedan, about the size of the alliance) with 2 cows *full grown* in the back seat. And you thought that passenger cars couldn't haul livestock! Ha!


This country is amazing. We're definitely heading towards fall - the air is getting crisp in the mornings and definitely not as hot. We've had a couple of 10 degree mornings, which is nice to walk to work with.

I discovered how to make my laptop type in Georgian, so I'm going to try typing out your names as a test... wish me luck.

So, as it says on my residence card...
ბრენდენ გარეტი

Nathan - ნატანი
Rachel - რაჩელი
Barbara - ბარბარა
Doug - დოუგი
Garrett - გარეტი