American French Georgian French Toast

After the Orthodox New Year and Epiphany in January, I had begun the case for extending my six-month assignment with the Tbilisi Urban Area Development Program at World Vision Georgia into a nine-month gig to maintain continuity. The students started the school year with me, so why wouldn't they finish with me? Right? It took a five-page request with a letter of support to convince the Peace Corps.

In May, then, under unreachable blue skies instead of four low-hanging light bulbs, surrounded by timid fir trees instead of chipped walls of lackluster colors, in the school's neglected athletic field that bore flowering weeds for handmade head wreaths, my Wednesday afternoon class and I played bomba, balibuli, and es burti es burti, that is, in English, monkey in the middle, dodge ball, and spud, respectively. We also played a few innings of baseball and several rounds of G-rated spin the bottle and truth or dare on warped bleachers baring rusty nails.

My black dress shoes, clinical obesity, and AARP-qualifying age put me at a slight competitive disadvantage against 10-to-12 year olds, but I was more engaged (and, subsequently, breathing more heavily) than the P.E. teachers who came out with their classes and sat on a rock.

Spud - I had not heard it or seen it for more than 40 years, let alone played it. Did it come from Georgia? How did it get to Temka? I wondered exactly the same thing when, one evening, my host grandmother served "French toast", or, well, sliced bread dipped in egg yolks and fried on both sides. Should we be calling it "Georgian toast"? Back in 1998 in Tartu, Estonia, my host father fried sliced bread in the grease left in a pan sitting on top of the stove. (He also boiled day-old coffee for breakfast.)  

Who first lathered fried bread with butter and then poured corn syrup on it? Or, perhaps more importantly, why do we make fried bread so sweet? Does every American eat "French toast" for breakfast? The beauty of living in another culture is contemplating that neither we Americans nor French ever invented French toast but that we borrowed what existed and adapted it to our (sweet) tastes and resources (inexpensive high fructose corn syrup). 

Old Georgia on Film

Being o'er My Head

The Avlabari quarter is just across the river from Old Tbilisi. It's the next stop on the metro after Freedom Square, and its underground platform greets riders with a smell of rotten eggs (eeewww!) from the nearby sulfur baths (ooohhh). The approach to Old Tbilisi from Avlabari, walking down "Wine Rise" at a perilous 30 degree angle towards King Vakhtang, offers more money shots, both at night and during the day, than the tree-capped view coming down from the Dunkin' Donuts on Freedom Square. Avlabari is Tbilisi's La Rive Gauche, home to the glass-domed Presidential Palace, the gold-domed Holy Trinity Cathedral, and a mom-and-pop convenience store where I used English, Russian, and Georgian to purchase homemade red wine in a re-used, two-liter, plastic soda bottle that came from under the counter.

It's also noted for its wooden and wrought iron balconies, which I had fun taking pictures of one Sunday morning.

Now is the time for all good men

Signs of Something Big

Wednesday, on my way home from work, I stopped at my neighborhood's friendly tone for my customary purchase of two loaves of puri. I put my one lari coin down on the glass service window and confirmed visually and vocally that I wanted two loaves, each 50 tetri. An older gentleman, whom I believed I had not seen in the shop before, told me that I could get only one loaf for a lari. The younger baker, with whom I had exchanged a few Georgian and English words previously, came out from behind the toni to show me that they were baking loaves twice the size they normally bake. I let out an admiring "Whoa", dug into my pocket for another lari, and proudly carried off two loaves of bread the size of snow shoes. It was December 30.

On Tuesday, the day before, a colleague drove me home from work. We took the same road I take to get to one of the schools I have lessons in, a road a bit off the beaten path, I'd say, a good walk from the metro station, with a few shops that look like they sell goods in bulk. Tuesday night, however, both sides of this street were lined with tables with chunks of raw meat on top and men with black beards, leather jackets, and axes behind. Today, Gio, my host brother, took me back to ground zero on foot. There was still lots of really red meat but, curiously, no pools, or jars, of blood.  

Monday evening, walking home from the metro station, near Bingo Bridge, where old men and women sell fresh produce throughout the year, I unexpectedly passed a table of red meat with a calf's head sitting on top, eyes still in it. These are all Georgian signs that New Year's is coming.

I have always thought that New Year's comes too soon after Christmas to be a major celebration. Here in Georgia, though, where 84% of the population are Orthodox Christians (according to the CIA's World Factbook), New Year's comes before Christmas. After watching four or five continents celebrate Christmas December 25, Georgians are ready to celebrate come December 31.

Four years ago, on a wet December 30 made for tea-drinking, Cindy and I met Tiit and Lairi on Baker Street in London, and on December 31, the four of us stood in the middle of Waterloo Bridge with two bottles of sparkling wine and watched the fireworks from the London Eye. Sixteen years ago (when Walgreens was developing the photos I took with a cardboard camera), I stood in Senate Square in Helsinki and welcomed the twenty-first century eight hours before my friends and family in Illinois. I still vividly remember adults holding Roman candles, as long as rolls of wrapping paper, in their hands and a little too close to my head. Even more frightening were the teenagers on the streets holding bottles of beer and vodka. I grew up many, many years ago launching skinny rockets from a glass soda bottle in the middle of Queensway Road and staining the sidewalk in front of 2304 with charcoal snakes. 

Just as loud, glittering fireworks, exploding high in the sky, launch the New Year, so, too, does a smorgasbord of homemade dishes crammed lovingly onto the kitchen table by Gio's grandmother.

Up front, to the right of the bottle of Coke Zero, which is omnipresent the world over, is a cold plate of pkhali, that is, minced spinach with garlic (and sometimes pomegranate seeds or chopped walnuts, depending on the season). To the right of the juice carton is a cold plate of pickled sundry garden leaves and stems. They may have been flavoring a jar of pickled green tomatoes. (First okra in Kurdistan and now green tomatoes in the Republic of Georgia. I thought they both came from Mississippi.) 

Directly above the stems are pieces of churchkhela in a bowl, which is a string of walnuts dipped repeatedly in a grape paste. Reportedly, soldiers carried them into battlefields for quick bursts of energy. Just on the other side of the wire cage from a bottle of sparkling Georgian wine is some of the pizza Gio and I made from scratch earlier in the day. Above the pizza is pea salad with dill, just like the teachers in Estonia made. On the plate to the left (as well as behind the Coke bottle) is khachapuri, the Georgian cheese bread that children eat as they walk home from school with their mothers or grandparents.

On the plate back against the wall, shaped like diamonds, is the holiday favorite gozinaki, which is incredibly delicious for just being nuts, honey, and a bit of sugar rolled out. Next to the bottle of rose sparkling wine is, I believe, a bowl of satsivi, which is almost like an Indian sauce. Utskho suneli, translated as "blue fenugreek", is a uniquely Georgian spice in satsivi that I will no doubt have to introduce to Tapa, Estonia and Springfield, Illinois.

So, indeed, New Year's is something big in Georgia. New New Year's, that is. January 14 is Old New Year's, or Orthodox New Year's. (It's that Julian and Gregorian calendar thing come to life.) Let's hope there's more gozinaki and fewer calves' heads. 

My Many Faces in Istanbul

Istanbul, my London of the East, was just over two hours from Tbilisi by way of the unexpectedly refined Turkish Airlines. The somewhat Far East-themed Manesol Boutique hotel had a fantastic breakfast buffet that included figs and a lovely terrace at the end of our corridor that offered a peak at the Rustem Pasha Mosque. I think; mosques viewed upclose in the daylight and seen illuminated at night from afar seemed magically like different places.

Istanbul, like London, moved. Its people walked resolvedly along Siraselviler Avenue, and its metro, trams, and buses appeared frequently from the Bosphorus Bridge in the northeast to Ataturk Airport in the southwest. I was unexpectedly smitten.

First row above: Rukiya's left eye; my Irish nose, not shaped quite good enough to be a Turkish one; and Rita's smiling face sans eyeglasses on a random park bench overlooking John F. Kennedy Avenue.  Second row: Rita and I are under the enormous chandelier under the even more enormous dome of the cavernous Hagia Sophia. Third row: (l) I am standing with my back to Asia, the Istanbul Strait, and the Bosphorus Bridge, right outside the Ortakoy mosque. (r) We are sitting at Murat Muhallebicisi in Karakoy, a cafe and bakery with kebabs, maybe with a 1920s look, and definitely with a creepy waiter. Fourth row: I am getting my Turkish Oyster card at the funicular's Kabatas station. Fifth row: (l) I was abandoned at the elegant Karakoy Lokantasi but only for as long as it took to smoke a fag on the nearby balcony. (m) When in Rome (or on Edgware Road in London).... (r) The screen, window, and wall are circa sixth century; I am circa the 1960s.  Below:  Rita and I trying to record the powerful allure of Constantinople's waterfront and skyline.

And for These and All of the Blessings I Have Received I Give Thanks

• For celebrating Ava's birthday with Kristi, Eric, Chloe, Ava, and some 36-inch doll at the American Girl Cafe in Chicago.
• For visiting Oleg and Sirle in Brussels (and the sauna in the Estonian embassy) as well as St. Nikolaus in Monschau, Germany.

• For laughing with Gabriel Inglesias and Ed, Doreen, Emily, and Shahin at the Rosemont Theater.
• For seeing Mannheim Steamroller with Mom, Dad, and Shahin at the Rialto Square Theater in Joliet (and watching Shahin eat the biggest pancakes he had ever seen).
• For eating Christmas dinner with Kristi, Eric, Chloe, Ava, Mom, Dad, and Sue in Springfield.
• For having lunch with Claudette in Little Village and drinks with Dave in West Town.
• For swimming in the Atlantic Ocean near West Palm Beach, Florida with Maija, Enni, Henri, and his brother (and watching the Super Bowl outside on Clematis Street).

• For attending Taller de Jose's Sixth Annual Builder's Day celebration.
• For spending spring break with five of my former sixth grade students (now 12th graders) and a week with Ed and Rita #1 and #2 in London.
• For dining with Rukiya, Shad, Sammy, Shahin, Arvand, and Suraj in Turkish, English, Indian, and Italian restaurants in London.
• For spending Easter with Mom, Dad, Kristi, Eric, Chloe, Ava, Sue, Stacey, and Dean in Springfield.

• For attending the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo with Tameeka and Josh (and innumerable super heroes).
• For seeing The Book of Mormon with Christy, Victoria, and Cindy (and drinking at Monk's Pub afterwards) and Kinky Boots with Rita (and having drinks at Monk's Pub beforehand).
• For distributing hundreds of eggplant-coloured tchotchkes with my Saint Anthony Hospital colleagues in Chicago's Cinco de Mayo parade along Cermak Road.
• For helping 250 children make tie-dye shirts with my Saint Anthony colleagues and some of their family members at Summer Fest.
• For riding Divvy bikes to the 31st Street beach with Sammy and his friend and eating at Nando's first-ever restaurant in Chicago with Sammy, Christy, and Victoria.
• For introducing Fabio and Nabhaan to Rita, Christy, Jim, Paula, and Marty at La Taberna in University Village.
  
• For attending the Grant Park Music Festival and the Newberry Library's annual Book Fair with Mom and Dad.
• For spending a weekend with Cian at the Fort Worth Stockyards and the Deep Ellum neighborhood in Dallas and watching his friend eat Rocky Mountain oysters for the first time.
• For catching up with my old Y colleagues Odell and Toby.
• For making my connection in Vienna to Tbilisi.