Turns out, political commentary is not my strong point.

I'm not really sure what you all have heard about the events recently in the Georgian capital, but I thought I would do a quick rundown for you all, so you don't have to dig through 18 pages worth of random crap on cnn to find information.

Yesterday, the protesters in the capital decided to block rustaveli ave, which is basically the biggest street there. The government decided that this was not a good idea. The protesters did. And then my "look - they're not using tear gas! yay!" post sort of turned into a big lie, because they did use tear gas. A lot of it...

The Georgian president claims that Russian supported factions tried to have a coup, but were foiled. As a result, the country is in a 15 day 'state of emergency' and the PC has decided that all volunteers can only go to work and home - no travel. The main opposition TV station was shut down on the air as riot police entered and basically switched it off live. I was not home to watch it, but my boss described it.

Our host mother's cousin is now in jail, as a result of the demonstrations, so she's definitely freaked - it's difficult to watch someone cry and absolutely no ability to say anything remotely comforting. "me want he jail no" really doesn't cut it for sympathy.

As is usual in these situations, Georgian/Russian relations have deteriorated, yet again - Georgia has expelled several Russian diplomats for espionage, and russia will retaliate by expelling georgian diplomats, etc. Looks like the wine ban isn't going to ease any time soon.

So, C and I will be hanging out in the house, which is much warmer now that the petchi (wood stove) has been installed - totally awesome. This WILL blow over, but it's a bit odd right now. Akh is so out of the way that stuff like this doesn't affect us at all, with the substantial exception of the cousin. Hopefully, the host fam lawyer can get him out soon.

And as a final note, Georgian riot police = scary. Georgian coverage is NOT like American coverage - there's no scrolling news feed, no talking head, no cuts. They just beam live footage, and let people talk. It's surreal compared to the hypervelocity American news - occasionally an anchor will come on to make comments, but they never do the 'picture in a box with lettering around it' style journalism. It's just there - just the images and sounds, no cuts, no comments. It's incredibly real compared to the prepackaged news that Americans are used to seeing