Our host family and our home...............

Our new home is in a city named Zugdidi in the northwest region of Georgia known as Samegrelo. We have been told Zugdidi has a population of 150,000, including the surrounding area, but it feels much smaller than that. The center of the city greets you with a beautiful large fountain and a broad boulevard. The two sides of the main street flank a large park in the center. The park contains huge trees and many park benches which give relief from the sun and provide refuge for people of all ages. All day the park is full of people who congregate to visit, play games (mostly "nardi"-- backgammon) and tend small children. On both sides of the boulevard are many small shops selling 7/11 type fare, as well as numerous beauty parlors in which you can buy your wedding dress while you get your hair done! In front of these stores are many peddlers selling everything----sunflower seeds in paper cones (everybody chews on them), all sorts of gossip newspapers, ice cream and ludi (beer). One block from the main street is a huge, very colorful bazaar with quite literally hundreds of vendors selling everything imaginable. Our house is situated on a residential street which is a 25 minute walk away from this part of the city . During the walk you must share the "sidewalk"/street with many cows and pigs who wander freely munching on the grass and trees. The road is full of potholes and cars are driving all over the place to avoid them (as well as the animals in the road). Unfortunately, the poor road conditions do little to deter the drivers from proceeding at extremely high rates of speed (which makes walking in the roadway quite dangerous). Our street (and every other street as well) has many very small Ma & Pa type stores, each the size of a large garden shed. Although the inventory of these stores is limited, they all sell the basics---cigarettes, vodka, cognac and beer (everyone here smokes and drinks). Although the people here primarily drink wine, the stores generally don't sell it, because every family has their own homemade wine which they drink all year round.
Like all the other houses on our street, our house is located behind a large gate and the perimeter of the property is fenced. We live with a family of three; Beso, Eka and Nino. Our immediate neighbors, Anzor and Nani, spend as much time at our house as they do their own, so you could say we live with a family of five. We occupy one half of the first level of the house. We have a private entrance as well as two interior doors which lead to the family's quarters. Our room is very large, 25'x15' with a 10' ceiling and 3 large windows. One wall has a large credenza with numerous drawers, closets and shelves. We have a long work table, a sofa, a large bed and a small woodstove known as a pechi for winter. The Peace Corps has supplied us with a large water filter which we use consistently (we have been told not to drink the water). It is situated on a makeshift table in the back corner of our room which also serves as Mark's shaving station. Our bed is currently sporting a large mosquito net which I was forced to erect because there are no screens on the windows and I was getting bitten to death nightly. I like to refer to it as "The Kasbah" . We also are lucky to have a fan. It has been so unbelievably hot here that unless the fan is blowing directly at you at all times, you sweat profusely. That goes for the night as well as the day. The only lighting in our room consists of two overhead bulbs, so we hunted all over and purchased (at the bazaar) one of the only lamps to be found anywhere in town . There is a nice oriental type carpet in front of the couch which actually dresses things up quite a bit. There is no vacuum cleaner so we are a good team at shaking our rug. We have fixed the place up pretty well with pictures cut from an Adirondack calendar and prized photos of family and friends. We also have a big map of Georgia taped to the wall on which we have labeled the locations of all our fellow G7 volunteers. Lying on the threshold outside our exterior door can usually be found the family dog, Sherry. She is an 8 mo. old Sharpei mix who actually looks a lot like our dog Jake. In Georgia we have yet to find a family who allows a dog in the house (most dogs don't have owners at all, much less a place to sleep indoors at night). Sherry tries to sneak in the house when no one is looking. She is still a puppy and is incorrigible at times, but all in all we like having her around. At the back of our room is a door that enters the small family kitchen. There is a gas stove fueled by a refillable propane cylinder (the oven doesn't work), a sink, small counter and a baby matsevari (fridge). Adjoining the kitchen is a storage room with cupboards to store all the pickles, jams, preserves and nuts that the family is constantly preparing. At this time of the year, there is a great deal of energy put into the pursuit of putting up food for the winter (another blog theme). From the small storage room you may either: go outside to the back of the house (where there is a sink, a pump, the garden and an outhouse), go into the family's living/dining room (since we took over one or the other) or enter the bathroom.The bath area actually consists of three very small rooms: one with a western style toilet (for which we are thankful since most bathrooms here have squatter toilets) and a washing machine!!!; the second with a small sink (cold water only); and the last (sort of scary to look at but functional) containing a tub, a clothesline and a big hot water tank mounted on the cement wall. Although the tub room is entirely crumbling cement (walls,floor and ceiling), the water is hot and the pressure is good so we are (very)happy.
The family sleeps upstairs. To get there you have to go outside and up an exterior staircase. This is sort of hard to feature in winter, but we will see. This brings up another interesting point. There is no central heat. As far as we know there will be 2 woodstoves downstairs and that's it. The Peace Corps will provide us with a kerosene heater if we want it, but the consensus seems to be that pretty soon both you and your clothes start to smell like kerosene and very few of the current volunteers actually use those heaters. We have pretty much decided that we are going to go with the Pechi and heat with wood. We would prefer to smell like smoke rather than kerosene anyway.
Here are some pictures of our house and family to give you a sense for what things are like. All in all, we are pretty comfortable here and happy that we landed with the family that we did. First up are some pix of the family. Eka and Beso after engaging in a water fight in the yard. Next is a picture of Eka and Nino at our swearing in ceremony, which they attended in Tbilisi. This is a picture of the whole family taken on an excursion that we made to the Black Sea, and finally, here's a picture of Lisa with Nani (the next door neighbor) and Eka. Here's a picture of the outside of the house. Our room is on the first floor, left hand side.

The kitchen, with Nino hard at work.

Our room, after the erection of the mosquito net.

My shaving stand near one of the windows in our room, where the light is good.

This is one of the three small rooms that together comprise the bathroom. As you can see, although we have a western style toilet, you practically have to sit side saddle , since there is no room for your knees between the toilet and the wall.

Here is the room with the tub in it. It looks bad but does the trick. I had a problem uploading the pictures to this blog entry. I will try and follow up with wnother posting whichwill include the rest of the pictures (although they will be out of order.