Priorities

The marshutka was one of those rides you don't want to remember. Pressed between two fat, smelly Georgian men, I tried to pass the time by either reading For Whom The Bell Tolls or staring dully out the window. Please to God don't let one of them talk to me and decide to drag me home as their American trophy, "Honey, look what I done killed!" and place me on the mantle next to the ram horns. Except, actually, it'd sounds more like "Topli, ukureba akari!" Which isn't correct either, but I'm losing the motivation to make it correct.

I made it home to Bolnisi at last. It's strange that I've finally started referring to this place as home. The insanity of the place. The utter, perverse weirdness of every aspect of life. Well, at least it's not Africa. Or Utah. So there's always that to look up on. But the day I got back was Giorgoba. Had I known this, maybe I would have known it would have been better to spend the day in Tbilisi, locked away in a hotel room with the curtains drawn and a "Please do not disturb" sign hanging on the doorknob. Not that they have those signs here.

Giorgoba is St. George's Day. This is Georgia's version of St. Patrick's Day. I'll put it like that, since that's the most directly correlation that can be found in America. Sounds all religious and innocent doesn’t it? Like a family holiday, right? To be fair, here it is a family holiday. And it is religious and innocent. It's just in their religion, they take down five liters of wine every day in rams' horns. Had I known that my innocent walk about town would lead to drinking a ram's horn in every single house in the city, while everyone shouted, "God bless America!" and "You should take a Georgian wife!" Had I known that, would I have repeated it? Yeah, probably. Had they actually thrown in some Georgian virgins on the bargain, I think I'd have repeated it a hundred fold. But, such is life, no Georgian virgins to be had by me… yet.

The next day, after meeting more people and being further questioned on my marital status and whether I like Georgian food or not, they took me up a hill to slay a ram. Bonus. I'm told that because St. George cut the head of a dragon off on this week, we have to cut heads off of rams. I'm not an overly superstitious person and tend to believe that all traditions spin from rational events. Probably the dragon stood for something or whatever. Georgians don't like to hear anthropological hooha, so they quickly shut you up by sticking a knife in one of your hands and the horn of a dead ram in the other while shouting and making cutting motions and laughing hysterically. Cutting off rams heads have become like a sport for me, and I must say I'm rather developing a skill for it. With my few sweeps of the rusty blade, the head was off and the Georgians quieted down and nodded their heads in approval. That afternoon, we ate the ram, along with drinking a few hundred more liters of wine. I must say, I'm not overly preferential to the ram's heart. During the supra, more questions were asked of me. "How do you like Georgian women? Would you like one for a bride?"

"Depends on the woman." This, I've learned, is the most important phrase to know in Georgian. It always evokes the response of all the old men slowly nodding their heads, as if I uttered a piece of superior wisdom. Sometimes, a person repeats in a vague whisper of approbation, "Damokidebulia kalze… ki… ki…" "Depends on the woman… yes… yes…" I have begun to become suspicious of their intentions to marry me off though. I mean, what's so wrong with the women that they want to get them all married off to strangers? Or, is it the typical pride of the Georgian, to show off what they have made? This is at the root of Georgian hospitality after all. "Drink my wine, it is the best!" And after you drink it, they want to know how it tastes compared to Dato's wine, or Pata's wine. Walk carefully here. Georgians are easily offended on three things: wine, food and women. They kill over these things. Sometimes I wonder if the problems with Russia were really started over a drunk Abkhazian insulting a Megrelian's wine, then the Megrelian insulting the Abkhazian's mother.

Really, Giorgoba is exactly my kind of holiday. Crazy amounts of drinking, meeting the neighbors and cutting heads off rams. There aren't too many ways to beat that. Maybe if I had some cotton candy with spiders in it, but you know, there's a trade off. That's what we do in life. We make trade offs, we make compromises. We have to prioritize.

I still taught classes that week, though to a crowd in largely diminished size. That is to say, it wasn't a crowd, it was more like ten kids. "So what did you do for Giorgoba?" I asked, going on down the line. The girls all answered, with wide grins, "I went to church for eight hours and then I went to the supra. I didn't drink though, no no!" The boys all answered, with wide grins, "I cut off a ram's head and then went to the supra and had a ram's horn of wine!"