Здравствуйте мужчины и женщины! პრივეტ კალბატინო და ბატინო! Hello ladies and gentlemen.
Well I've come down from the high of having a hotel room on my birthday a couple weeks ago, and now I'm back to the routine of village life; namely wake up, go to school, come home, nap, study something to keep my brain busy, and then watch endless hours of TV on my computer.
This past weekend was orthodox Easter here in georgia, and I thought I'd tell you a bit about it.
Normally you greet people here in georgia by saying "gamarjoba" or "privet" or something along those lines, but this week the greeting has been ქრისტე აღსდგა (christe aghdga) which means Christ is risen. They're pretty big into Jesus here so it's the greeting that is going to be carried out all week. There's also an appropriate response to this along the lines of "yes, indeed he has", but I don't know it in georgian so in my desire to say something appropriate back i've said "storia" (correct), and when that fails I bust out some latin from the Monty Pythons Holy Grail and say "Pie Jesu domine, domine is requem", and that seems to get the job done, or at least befuddle them long enough for me to make my escape.
We had off of school for about 5 days, and for most of that time I was blessed to have some crazy form of the Georgian flu, so I spent a lot of my time in bed resting, and also studying Russian, which I have taken up in my spare time in addition to studying for the GRE and the LSAT. I have a really good program for it, and I'm able to get help from my family with some of the pronunciation and practice. A problem though is that I'm learning the Moscow accent, and they have much different pronunciations where I'm at, so it can get a bit confusing.
As far as Easter is concerned, we died a whole lot of eggs Red using the roots of some tree that I couldn't identify, and we also made a whole bunch of these cakes called "Pashka", which are essentially sweet raisin bread with some powdered sugar on top of it. They were very good. My family went to church on the night before Easter from about 11:00pm to 4:00am, which is about as much time as they've spent in church combined all year. they claimed it was a good time, but I was just as happy sleeping in bed thank you very much. On the morning of easter we played a game where we took the eggs and would tap them against each other, and the one who's egg remained unshattered won. what this had to do with jesus was beyond me, but it passed the time until the Supra, so I was all for it.
Some of my friends spent the day hanging out at the grave yard and spending time at the graves of the dead relatives. And it wasn't a mournful thing, they were celebrating and dancing and having Easter egg hunts throughout the entire time. My guess is that perhaps if they raised enough of a racket, the dead for follow the example of Jesus and get up out of their graves too. But given that some had been dead for a long time, I don't know how pleasant an experience that would be for any party.
This week we have school on Wednesday, another day off on Thursday, and then school Friday so I'm fully anticipating nothing getting done. Next week the Seniors and the first graders will be done with school for the year, which will drastically reduce the amount of hours I will be in school. I can't say I'm not looking forward to it.
Well I've come down from the high of having a hotel room on my birthday a couple weeks ago, and now I'm back to the routine of village life; namely wake up, go to school, come home, nap, study something to keep my brain busy, and then watch endless hours of TV on my computer.
This past weekend was orthodox Easter here in georgia, and I thought I'd tell you a bit about it.
Normally you greet people here in georgia by saying "gamarjoba" or "privet" or something along those lines, but this week the greeting has been ქრისტე აღსდგა (christe aghdga) which means Christ is risen. They're pretty big into Jesus here so it's the greeting that is going to be carried out all week. There's also an appropriate response to this along the lines of "yes, indeed he has", but I don't know it in georgian so in my desire to say something appropriate back i've said "storia" (correct), and when that fails I bust out some latin from the Monty Pythons Holy Grail and say "Pie Jesu domine, domine is requem", and that seems to get the job done, or at least befuddle them long enough for me to make my escape.
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| 'Tis merely a Flesh wound |
As far as Easter is concerned, we died a whole lot of eggs Red using the roots of some tree that I couldn't identify, and we also made a whole bunch of these cakes called "Pashka", which are essentially sweet raisin bread with some powdered sugar on top of it. They were very good. My family went to church on the night before Easter from about 11:00pm to 4:00am, which is about as much time as they've spent in church combined all year. they claimed it was a good time, but I was just as happy sleeping in bed thank you very much. On the morning of easter we played a game where we took the eggs and would tap them against each other, and the one who's egg remained unshattered won. what this had to do with jesus was beyond me, but it passed the time until the Supra, so I was all for it.
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| We drank from the horns on this clay bull, which one of my students gave me for my birthday. |
Some of my friends spent the day hanging out at the grave yard and spending time at the graves of the dead relatives. And it wasn't a mournful thing, they were celebrating and dancing and having Easter egg hunts throughout the entire time. My guess is that perhaps if they raised enough of a racket, the dead for follow the example of Jesus and get up out of their graves too. But given that some had been dead for a long time, I don't know how pleasant an experience that would be for any party.
This week we have school on Wednesday, another day off on Thursday, and then school Friday so I'm fully anticipating nothing getting done. Next week the Seniors and the first graders will be done with school for the year, which will drastically reduce the amount of hours I will be in school. I can't say I'm not looking forward to it.
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| Here are the eggs we had for Easter. They're red to symbolize the blood of Christ. |
