A Copyright On Universal Truth

We were at a Peace Corps conference all week last week, held in some little conference resort center out in Bazaleti, Georgia. There's a large lake, filled with freezing water, some snow capped peaks peaking out over nearby hills and lots of wind. Seriously lots of wind. Every minute, the wind was blowing and ripping through the cracks in the doors, howling like thousands of souls of damned child soldiers. In that sense, there wasn't much sleep (granted, not that I would be sleeping, as I was busy catching up with the other Amerikelis and drinking profusely), but at least there was plenty to eat. Before, I was accustomed to eating two hard boiled eggs for breakfast, some cheese bread for lunch and some bean soup for dinner. Now we had complete buffet style meals, which meant at each meal, I would stuff myself to near bursting. It was like a vacation, nevermind the eight hours straight of language lessons that we went through. Georgian and Russian and Georgian, enough to make my head spin sixteen times over.

View from hotel room

The nights were filled with drinking and movies, what I imagine Peace Corps volunteers all over the world do when they get together. We'd get together and make funny of all the weird things Georgians do and then do weird things ourselves, like beer pong and limbo. None of us were ignorant of the irony that probably, at the same time, there's a group of Georgians in the United States going on about all the weird things Americans do. But if I could put my two cents on Universal Truth © (I own that copyright, katsos), then I'd say Georgians win the weird contest.

Johnny and Lauren rocking the beer pong

It was strange to see everyone together again. You go through those two months of language training together, two months of living in a completely alien place and trying to get on your feet, where even saying "thank you" is a challenge, of having nearly no freedom whatsoever… your freedom becomes asserted in your relations with each other, for better or for worse. And like a family, you don't choose these people, but you put up with them, and in a sense, grow a sort of love for them. And so a reunion of volunteers has all the charms and awkwardness of a family reunion, a mix of happiness and rubbing on the nerves. But since it's only a week, it wasn't long enough to rub down the nerves. And soon, we'll all be back to our Georgian families…

The last night, Friday night, we decided to have a Thanksgiving Dinner. We all chipped in money for goods and some of the more talented individuals in the culinary arts took the kitchen and whipped up some American food, some of the best I've had in a while hands down. Of course, eating bean soup for six weeks straight might have changed my taste buds. ANYTHING becomes good after that. But I'm of the opinion this food was legitimately tasty. And on top of that, we had a special guest.

The master chef at the Radisson in Tbilisi was this Greek guy who, as a part of his job, moves every year. He and his wife love the life. One year, when they were in Yekaterinburg, Russia, they had become fast friends with a Peace Corps volunteer there (back before the Russkis kicked us out for putting spies in the PC). And so every year after that, if the guy lives in a country serviced by the Peace Corps, he makes sure to cook up some turkeys and serve them. Now there's quite and awesome guy. And that volunteer must have been pretty awesome to make such an impression!

So, on top of the goodies the volunteers cooked, the master chef at the Radisson cooked supplied us with some turkeys that he brought and cooked for us. He and his wife sat down and shared the evening with us. Then everyone departed and returned to beer pong in our rooms.

View of Caucasus from Bazaleti

The last day, most people just milled around, not really wanting to go back to our sites, everyone downcast, tired and depressed. There, at Bazaleti, we had heating and hot water and hot showers and lots of varieties of food. We stood at the bus, looking out to the snow covered mountains, fearing what was to come. Soon it would be back to hard boiled eggs, bean soup and drunk creepy guys in the park. Fuck. There had to be a way to extend this. And some of us knew there was an answer. Tbilisi was waiting for us.