The (little) men in my life.

Melt. My. Heart.

Mandarin queen.

Sitting on my throne (i.e. 6 tons of oranges recently harvested at my house).

I am the mandarin queen.

Snapshot.

Just a few of the faces (smiling or not) that make me happy to be in Georgia.

Food fight.

My time spent in Russia and especially in Belarus necessitated that I develop a defense mechanism against all the hospitality (i.e. force-feeding) that I have encountered along the way.  While I love the chance to try new things, and I do love eating (like, a lot), I'm just a little girl, and I have my limits.  While initially I obliged eating far past my point of fullness for the sake of politeness, I quickly learned that was a very poor long-term plan.  So I developed strategies to deal with the massive amounts of food forced at me: I quit eating when I've had about half of what I intend to eat, knowing that I will inevitably be given more.  I make sure that I am the only one who touches my plate; it's a lot harder to refuse when it's already on your plate, and no amount of begging will stop the heavy hand of your host mother/sister/babushka from serving you a portion 3x the size of her own.  Go light on the bread and heavy on the juice/broth/sauce/tomatoes/cucumbers/pickles; make it look like you're eating more than you really are.  Eat slowly enough that you are not immediately offered seconds but not so slow that it is noticeable.  Make sure someone is watching what you're eating; if they don't see it, it didn't happen, and you will have to make up for all that you "didn't eat."  Blame the fact that you are a weak American; they're already doing it, so you might as well use it to your advantage.

Georgia has a reputation for amazing food, drink, and hospitality.  I knew that I would have some great culinary experiences here and probably more of them than I would like.  All the same, I arrived with my eating strategies in tow thinking that I was ready to beat my host family and their hospitality (or at least hold my own).  Seven weeks into this little adventure I am here to shamelessly say that Georgian hospitality is kicking my butt.  I am no match for the endless amount of food that winds up on my plate night after night.  I cannot compete with four full meals in four hours (which happens surprisingly frequently) or the full coffee setup (complete with chocolate, fruit, nuts, cookies, etc) upwards of five times a day.  I am officially and publicly conceding defeat in this food fight, but unfortunately that doesn't mean that the battle is over.  It will continue until the day I die or explode from fullness and my host family serves lobio (beans––a traditional Georgian dish) and toasts my memory with tchtcha (Georgian moonshine) at my funeral.

So, a message to Georgia from one of its loving visitors:  Georgia, you are awesome.  You live up to your reputation of being hospitable in every sense of the word.  I've never met people so warm and giving.  Your food is amazing.  I would gladly eat my weight in fried potatoes if it was physically possible, and I will forever sing the praises of khachapuri, your fabled cheesy bread, BUT please look kindly on your weak American visitor, who loves to eat but doesn't want to go back to America weighing 1,000 pounds, and give me a break.  Every meal does not need to be a full-out supra.  I may not really know your language yet, but don't worry, the word 'Tchame!' (Eat!) will never be forgotten. You don't have to remind me of it 100x every day.  I know you love having visitors and you're really good at it, but would you mind loving me just a tiny bit less?  I will forever be grateful.  And full.

All my love,
Lizikho

Days when...

Gotta love days when school is canceled for mandarin picking.

Welcome to Adjara.

When the lights go out.

Last week during our 3-day stint without electricity, when we had nothing to do at night except cook and sit around a candle with our neighbors, I learned how to make khinkali, i.e. Georgian dumplings.  Khinkali are a greatly lauded food here that are generally only made for special occasions, due to the long and tenuous process of preparation.  I've sampled/learned to make quite a few different versions of this dish in other countries (i.e. pelmeni, vareniki, manti), and each are unique while very similar.  Khinkali are by far the "prettiest" of the dumplings.  Each is folded into a nice little package to hold in all the juices.  When eating them, you should make sure to slurp out all of the juice so as not to waste.  The doughy tops are discarded on a communal plate as a sort of trophy showing how many of these little dumplings have been conquered.  The Russian version of khinkali, pelmeni, are eaten with smetana (sour cream), and while I will forever stand beside my love for smetana, I've decided to do things the Georgian way and skip the smetana (as hard as it may be) in favor of black pepper, which is still pretty yummy.

I say all this to say that while randomly losing electricity on an almost daily basis kind of sucks, the food and fellowship that comes out of sitting around a candle in the kitchen completely removed from technology is pretty amazing.  And that apparently the mastering of this dish means that I am ready to get married (or so says my host sister).  

Life is grape.

There are many reasons why I love living in a subtropical, Black Sea, mountain village, but getting to eat stuff like this on a daily basis is probably one of the best.  Not sure what I'm gonna do when winter actually comes...

Why I travel.

Sometimes there are days when all I can think about is home, the little things that are comfortable and familiar and sweet:  My family.  Lying on the couch with my pooch.  Cooking a good Southern breakfast on the weekend.  Ringing my cowbell at a State football game on a crisp fall day.  Family nights spent playing cards or charades with my extended-friend-families.  Summer days spent at the river.  Dear friends that have become part of my family.  Sitting in the pew at FUMC on Sunday mornings...

And then I think about things from my Memphis home, a life that is already in the past:  Walking across Rhodes campus as the sun is setting.  Late night Huey’s cheese fries.  Six roommates crammed into a tiny twin bed.  Lying on my kitchen floor late at night.  Days turned into nights turned back into days spent in the library, the Middle Ground, and Buckman.  The release from Friday afternoon ultimate.  RUF.  An afternoon at Caritas where the stress of the outside world just melts away...

I think about these things and want them so badly.  I wonder why I ever left them behind.  Why couldn’t I stay where life was good and familiar?  Why did I not stay where I know deep love and community?  Why am I constantly forcing myself to pick up my whole self and with few belongings move halfway across the world entirely alone to live with complete strangers who speak a language that is foreign to me and do a job that I have never done before and really don’t know how to do?  Why do I choose to abandon the conveniences of my normal life like the Internet and a Western indoor toilet and electricity that does not shut off at random and a good shower and my car and fresh vegetables and more than five shirts?  Sometimes I cannot help but ask myself: “Why?”

And no matter how difficult a day has been, I always come back to the same answer: “Because I have to…because this is who I am.”  To not explore the world, would be denying myself something that feels very basic to me.  I can’t help but think that if I didn’t leave my home and endure the challenging weeks of misunderstanding, isolation, no Internet, food poisoning, and general village life, maybe I wouldn’t appreciate the sweetness of home quite so much.  Maybe I wouldn’t and couldn’t value every second that I get to spend with my family and friends as much as I do. 

When I stop and take a look around me at the wonder in which I am living, I immediately know why I came.  I see the beauty of the mountains and the sea.  I smell the freshness of the air.  I feel how warmly my host-family and my neighbors treat me as one of their own.  I taste all the wonderful flavors of centuries-long traditions of cultivation, cooking, and wine making.  I hear the sweet calls of “Hello! Hello! Hello!” from my students as I walk down the hallway.  And then I am reminded that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and that I am blessed to have this experience. 

I know that if I did not travel, my wanderlust would eat me alive.  I know that years down the road I would have regret for what I never experienced and wonder what could have been.  I know that it is in my blood to wander and to go and to see and to experience.  I know that (maybe unfortunately, maybe not) my passions lie on two different continents very far away from one another and that I will forever be torn in two different directions.

…

I think about all these things as the days go by in my new Georgian life.  Some days are amazing and some are frustrating, but I try to take the ups with the downs and keep moving forward.  Hours and hours are spent with my host-family and my neighbors and my students.  Walking anywhere without being invited in for coffee is impossible.  Words that were foreign begin to sound a little more familiar.  Teaching English starts feeling more natural.  Cries of “Lizi! Lizi!” from my neighbor baby Andrusha as I walk down the mountain melt my heart.  Time loses all meaning.  The thought of getting somewhere by any means other than marshutka or my own two feet baffles me.  Before I know it, I realize that I have become part of a community, and that when my time here ends, and I return to my forever-home in America, I’ll be leaving behind not a place where I lived but a life and a piece of my heart. 

And that, my friends, is why I travel.  

Things my students give me.

(And no, that is not real money.)

Proof.

Proof that I am still alive and kicking in Georgia.
 (i.e. the first and only picture I have with me in it...this one's for you, Mom).