Random thoughts......................

There are street dogs everywhere, barking all day and all night. No one allows a dog into their house and most of the dogs don't have owners at all. Because of a fear of rabies, the Peace Corps has given us "dog zappers" which emit a high pitched sound when a button is pressed. The sound hurts a dog's ears, but humans can't hear it. We carry ours with us, but neither of us has had to use ours yet.

There used to be a law against regular kidnapping, but kidnapping a girl for purposes of marriage was not considered a crime. The theory is that the boy would kidnap the girl and that after spending a couple of days together the families would say "what's left to protect" and allow a marriage to take place between them. Sometimes the kidnapping was with the girl's consent (though not with her parents), but many times not. A couple of years ago the law was changed to make kidnapping for purposes of marriage illegal also. However, it still happens. Our host sisters were waiting for a marshutka earlier this year and were witnesses to a bridenapping in which the girl was screaming as she was stuffed into a car. The kidnapper and his friends brandished a gun and told the girls that they knew who they were and they were to keep their mouths shut. They reported the incident to the police none the less, but they don't know what came of it.

The electricity is forever going off or we are having brown outs. Any electronic stuff always has an uninterruptable power source attached to prevent damage during the frequent power outages.

We are not allowed to drink the water. The Peace Corps has issued us bulky water filters that we must use to get water that we can drink (or we can boil the tap water for ten minutes or buy water).

Teachers are very low paid. It depends on how many classes they teach, but their pay is in the vicinity of 50 Lari a month (that equates to approximately $33). All teachers also tutor to supplement their income. All kids (or at least all that I have come in contact with) have tutors (English, Russian, Math, Music, Dance etc), so they are very busy everyday after school. In fact, alot of kids, particularly in the higher grades, skip school itself. Surprisingly, university teachers are paid less!

The country has been working hard to reform the educational system. This year, they are transitioning from 11 grades to 12. That means that our two host sisters, both of whom are just entering "eleventh form", must go to another year of school the following year. There will be no graduating high school classes in Georgia this year.

There is lots of smoking (everywhere), drinking and eating (mostly good, but very starchy foods).

There are switches to pump water from the cistern when no water comes out of the tap. And there is also a switch to turn on the water heater to produce hot water (after the appropriate lag time).....but don't turn on the heater when there is no water in the system!! We still have not figured out the timing on all of this.

Almost every family grows grapes and makes its own wine which they serve year 'round (even in the cities). Lots of families also make cha-cha, which is an alcoholic drink of high potency, which if misproduced can kill you. Families take great pride in the quality of their wine and cha-cha. Vodka is a very popular and cheap drink. Depending on the quality, you can buy a bottle for somewhere between $1.75 and $8.00. compare that to a bottle of Jack Daniels, which I recently saw for sale for 60 Lari ($40). Pretty expensive, especially when compared to a teacher's monthly salary.

There is no tipping. If you want to be a sport, you round up the bill to the next full Lari (each Lari = approx. 66 cents).

You pay cash for everything. There may be places in the country that accept credit cards, but I haven't seen one yet.

If you go out to dinner (which doesn't happen often), you bring your own wine.

Women do everything around the house, and often are the wage earners as well.

There is no air conditioning or central heat. You get and split your wood in the summer, because the price increases the closer to winter it gets.

Everyone seems to have a cell phone. You buy cards at the local store in various denominations. You then punch in the code on the card and you are credited with some amount of money against which you place calls and make text messages. For every call that is made there are approximately 20 (or more) text messages made (it's much cheaper than calling).

Men give up their seats to women on crowded marshutkas and buses.

Georgians are very loosey-goosey about being punctual.

Georgians view guests as gifts from God and they are always ready to host more people than they planned for at any dinner or other occasion. It is not at all unusual for guests to drop by unannounced to visit, have dinner and stay until one o'clock in the morning (Georgians stay up late!).

There is no such thing as a doggy bag. Georgians typically over-order in restaurants and there is always much more food than can be eaten. All of the extra food is just left on the table. A Georgian would never think of taking any extra food home with him.

Almost all drinking (other than drinking by the drunks is done at meal time and is done in conjunction with a toast. Toasts are long and and emotional and touch upon everything you can think of (and one usually quickly follows another). All toasting is done with either wine or liquor. You only toast your enemies with beer!!



There are a million other things which make life here interesting and different from what we know in the US. These are but a few. I will post more as they occur to me.