Applied skill and necessity

I've mentioned a couple of times that I grew up in rural Maine. There are many things about my present life in the village that remind me of my childhood years spent in fields, the woods, barns, and gardens. Something about the similarity between the two ways of life keeps bringing back old adages that I often heard in New England when I was young; then they didn't mean much to me. Now they do.

"A stitch in time saves nine." This one gave me trouble when I was little -- I remember working really hard to understand what it meant, to no avail. Now I know! And I have a shirt and a sock that will need more than nine extra stitches if I don't get to mending them soon!

"You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die." I'm not sure if I heard this more from my dad or my grandpa, nor am I sure it is one of ye olde adages.... but I have thought of this saying many, many times since coming to Georgia. Sanitation is not rampant in the village -- the water that is drawn from the well is not filtered -- dirt finds its way into just about everything.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" -- and those from New England summarize and personalize this particular adage and call it "Yankee ingenuity." "Yankee ingenuity" is a prized characteristic of New Englanders, and as a proud Mainer, I am glad to have inherited this knack for thinking about things in a  new way -- applying the skills I have to practical problems and coming up with solutions.

My hand warmers and headband --
they just about match my red nose!

A week ago, I bought a skein of yarn to give my knitting needles -- and my hands -- something to do when I'm tired of reading while sitting by the stove in the kitchen. I made a couple of headbands wide enough to cover the ears -- one for me and one for Tea (although I may make another for her since Koba keeps stealing hers!). I wanted to make some mittens, but I don't have any double-pointed needles with me -- and the needles I have are too short to make a hat. I kept coming back to mittens or gloves..... then I got an idea. My hands are always cold ("Cold hands, warm heart," right?), and with a less-than-effective heating system at school, I wear my gloves everyday during classes. But when I need to write on the chalkboard, I have to take off my right glove to keep it from getting chalky. So, I thought about making some fingerless gloves -- basically an extension of a sleeve with a thumb-hole. I got out a piece of paper and sketched out a rough pattern for my creation. It took a little finagling and ripping out a couple of rows that didn't go as planned, but in the end, my idea worked great! I have some cute little hand-warmers to go with my headband. Now my hands stay warmer at school, and I can write on the chalkboard with ease.

Applied skill and necessity -- the results of this combination are rewarding!

First Georgian cooking lessons

Cooking is one of the things I love to do no matter where I am. Different places bring new methods of cooking -- when camping I cook in a much different way than when I am in my own kitchen, but the food is no less delicious. Now that I have no kitchen of my own, I do a lot of observing instead of actual cooking. But this weekend, cooking lessons abounded! I learned to make three new things that (I think) I'll be able to make when I get back to the U.S. 

Finished cake design ready for its final rising

Saturday morning Tea told me while we were eating breakfast that she wanted to try making the cake that her sister had taught her to make a couple of weeks ago. It is the one that takes some artistry to put together, and she is a bit trepidatious of that part, so I told her that I would help. Then I added that I would love to write down the recipe and help her make it. She agreed, so with pen and paper in my hand, I wrote while watching and listening as Tea measured out the yeast and sugar for proofing, mixed together the eggs and sugar while I melted butter and heated milk on the stove, added them to the egg-sugar mixture, added in the yeast mixture next, and finally, the flour. Everything is done by hand, and measuring instruments are not standard -- a regular spoon, a tea cup from the cupboard, a saucer. As I wrote the steps, I tried to estimate what the standard measurements would be, but I think that a few attempts on my own will tell me since it's all really done by feel. 

Delicious!

Since it's a yeast dough, it has to be allowed to rise a few times before being baked. We started the dough just after breakfast, and it wasn't until mid-day that it was ready to be put together in the pans. Tea did the first one (there was enough dough for three large cakes) while I watched and wrote down what to do. While the first one was in the oven, some of her students came to the house to be tutored, so I told Tea to leave the kitchen to me, and I would take care of everything. What fun! I stoked the fire when it got low, punched down the dough, oiled the cake pans, rolled out the circles of dough for the main part of the cake, spread on the fig jam, then oiled my hands and rolled narrow rods of dough to criss-cross across the top of the jam. Then with scissors, I cut tongues of dough and stretched them to the sides, making a leafy pattern that looked a little like bamboo (in the first picture). It was so much fun to be active in the kitchen instead of passive (I hate sitting around). A couple of times Koba poked his head in the door as I was filling the stove with hazelnut shells or rolling out the dough, and he just chuckled. I'm sure he's not used to seeing a "guest" work the kitchen. After a final rising of the dough in the pans, we baked them. Delicious!

That night we made suneli -- hot chili paste. After clipping the stems off the dried chilies, we washed them, then clamped a metal meat grinder to the table (the same kind my mom used when I was young to grind pork, potatoes, and onion for pork pie). We took turns at the grinder -- the chilies were very difficult to mash through the machine. While one of us was turning the handle, the other fed peppers and, every now and then a spoonful of salt into the hopper. It was such hard work, we kept stripping layers off as we worked the grinder -- usually I wear two tank tops, a long-sleeved shirt, a vest or sweater (sometimes both), and a scarf. With the fire going in the stove and the hard work of cranking the handle, we heated up quickly and by the time we were done, we had peeled off sweaters, scarves, and vests. With two of us working together, it only took about 30 minutes to grind all the chilies. Then we put three heads worth of garlic cloves in the hopper and ground those, too. Along with the chilies, salt, and garlic, Tea added some ground coriander and another spice whose name we still have to look up in English. The chili paste keeps for several months and is added to everything -- the way I usually use Tabasco sauce!

Pelamushi is the last thing I learned to make this weekend. It is like nothing I have ever had anywhere else, and the only way I can describe it is a grape juice pudding…..but not really. This one is going to be the most difficult to make correctly in the U.S. unless I make my own grape juice as well. But I have the directions for that, too, so I just may! But I am getting ahead of myself..

Several weeks ago I went to a birthday supra -- I know that I wrote about it in an earlier post -- at Sopo's house (another Georgian English teacher), and we talked about getting together to make pelamushi some day. True to her word, Sopo called me this week to see if I could go to her house to make some today. So at 1 o'clock I made my way to her house in the rain with my pen and paper in my coat pocket. 

Sopo is a good teacher for me -- I have to do in order to really learn, and she was prepared to let me do everything while she directed. I'll get to the steps in a minute, but first I have to write a word or two about my audience. The fact that an American was coming to the house for a cooking lesson brought most of the extended family to the kitchen to watch. Sopo's aunt, uncle, brother, husband, cousin, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law all congregated in the room -- thankfully her kitchen is large enough to accommodate such a curious crowd. The ladies were the funniest -- of course, they are the ones who usually run that kitchen, so they watched earnestly and nodded deeply with approval and oooo'ed and aaahh'ed over every new step that I did correctly. They sat in a row on a bench along one side of the stove like three great athletes who had been benched for the game while the newbie took a turn. They kept offering to help me during the hot, difficult work, and when I declined to let them help, they nodded their approval anew and called me a good student.

So, on to pelamushi -- the only ingredients are home-made grape juice, sugar, flour, corn flour, and a touch of vanilla and honey. Again, the measuring instruments were a tea cup and a coffee mug. And again I estimated the standard measurements as well as I could. The flours and sugar were mixed together first, then a cup or two of juice was added and mixed in until there were no lumps in the dry ingredients. This mixture and the rest of the grape juice were combined in a heavy pot and put onto the stove for the hard work. The mixture had to come to a boil, but it had to be stirred constantly to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. At first it was easy to stir, but as it heated up, the mixture got thick and heavy, and standing over the hot stove got.....well, hot. Again, I stripped off some layers as I stirred -- hat, scarf, sweater, and vest. (This is when the benched cooks kept asking if I wanted them to help.) The point at which the pelamushi is ready is quite subjective -- it has to be taste-tested for proper consistency -- when the corn flour is soft, it is done. When that point is reached, the pot comes off the stove and the thick mixture is ladled onto whatever it will be served on - plates (large or small) or a large pan. It has to be jiggled to smooth out the surface and then garnished with grated hazelnuts or walnuts. 

Sopo's uncle kept joking that I should open a Georgian-cuisine restaurant when I get back to the States. He told me to take a couple of local grandmas with me to help with the cooking. I told him that I keep telling Tea that if she came to the States and opened a restaurant, she would make a killing -- she's such a fantastic cook. But as much as both Tea and I love to cook, we are teachers..... so the cooking will have to remain for fun alone. Well, that and necessity!

I think Barbie ruined me

I've always been thin. I was blessed with high metabolism and a love of exercise, so I have never had to deal with the yo-yo of diet and weight gain that so many women deal with constantly. Normally my weight only fluctuates a few pounds when I am training hard for a long-distance race -- besides that, it has stayed pretty much the same for the last ......well, I don't know how many years .....maybe since college.

Until this past year.

In the last year I lost between 15-20 pounds, starting with my last marathon-training and ending with the stress of divorce, quitting my job, and moving twice. I didn't have any extra weight to lose, but I lost weight, anyway. And since physical activity is the main way I deal with stress, all the running, cycling, rock-climbing, and mountain-biking I did to deal with stress burned off any ounce of fat that I had. I became nothing but bones and sinewy muscle. I was down to a size 2 -- at 5 foot 7, that's too thin.

So now that I have gained back some much-needed weight, why does it bother me so much?

Georgian food is anything but low-fat. Since all the food consumed at the house where I live is produced in-house, it is all-natural. Anything made from milk is made with whole milk -- and since it is plentiful, dairy products are a part of every meal. With all the cheese, yogurt, and butter I eat, I have gained back the weight that I had lost. One part of me is glad, but another part of me doesn't like it one bit. I don't like looking in the mirror and seeing a little bulge anywhere. Even though I know in my brain that I am still thin, my eyes don't agree. What I think I see doesn't match what I know to be true. My lenses are warped.

I know that it is ridiculous to feel this way, but I am having a difficult time with it nonetheless. I hate that the standards of society dictate that thinner is better, and I have fallen prey to that thinking. How many times have I talked to other women and teen girls who think they are too big and encouraged them to be okay with the way they look as long as they feel good? Many, many, many times -- more times than I can count. And now, I can't take my own advice. Blasted Barbie! That American icon of every little girl's fantasy figure -- a completely unrealistic figure, at that -- and now that's what I think I should be? Asinine! I don't like being influenced by the shallow society that I so often refute, but it seems to be so ingrained in the fabric of my being that I hold myself to that unrealistic standard..... for what? For whom?  Who am I trying to impress? Who do I think wants me to look that way?

I don't know.

But I do know that I need some new lenses through which to view myself. Not the warped ones that American Society has forced upon me. So, since my clothes still fit me, I know (intellectually, anyway) that I am still okay. Hear, that, Self? I'm still okay.

True character

One of the things I was most worried about before arriving here in Georgia was the whole "host family" situation. To have no idea who I would be living with, nor under what circumstances made me nervous. I learned all sorts of things online about the country, the food, the history, the land, the language, the alphabet, and the music before I got here. It was good to have a general overview of the place I would be spending the next several months. But I had no idea what my exact, personal corner would look or feel or sound like. I had read several blogs by individuals who were already here, but their experiences and circumstances varied so greatly, I couldn't nail down anything specific to help me envision my place. I was so afraid of drawing the short straw, as they say, in my living situation. Thankfully, that fear was unfounded, and instead, I feel that I have been blessed with a wonderful host family, especially with Tea.

Back before I went off galavanting around the world over Christmas break, Tea told me something that accurately depicts the depth of her character. We were sitting in the kitchen (of course!), and she said that she wanted to speak frankly with me for a minute. (The Georgians don't often speak frankly or directly.) She proceeded to tell me about the weeks before I arrived as the town and the school prepared to receive a foreign teacher.

The government of Georgia announced its plan to bring native English speakers to the country to co-teach with the public school teachers in an effort to raise the level of English in the classrooms -- both in the students and the teachers. The Ministry of Education asked each school to submit applications from families who would be willing to host a teacher for the duration of their time here. The Ministry put out a carrot of monetary compensation to motivate people to open their homes to so many English teachers.  In Shamgona, there were over twenty applications that were submitted to the school director for consideration. Tea wrote out an application and turned it in to the school director, but the director did not send it in to the Ministry of Education. The school administration felt that Tea's house was not nice enough for the school's guest teacher. But when the Ministry of Education rescinded its promise of payment to the host families, every single one of those who had submitted applications took them back -- except for Tea. She again approached the school director with her application and said that she didn't care about the money. She knew that her house was not the nicest in the village, but she wanted desperately to have the teacher live with her to help her better her language and teaching skills. Since her application was now the only one, the school sent it in to the Ministry of Education.

I know that Tea did not tell me that story to make herself look good. She wanted me to know that she wanted to do this from her heart, not for money. She realized the impact that this opportunity will have on her for the future of her career, and she is serious about wanting to be the best English language teacher she can be. This is only her second year teaching, and she is already a very good teacher. She and I have very similar teaching styles (informal and relational), and her students love having her as a teacher. It is a joy and a privilege to co-teach classes with her, and even more of a joy to live in her home.

So, as I sit in my room and write this before going to bed, I feel blessed. I may be wearing two tank tops, a long-sleeved wool shirt, a hoodie, a scarf, sweatpants, and knee-high, wool socks and be wrapped in two fleece blankets to be warm enough to sit up and type this (my fingers are awfully cold) -- and I can see my breath -- and the rain coming down is just probably just one degree shy of being snow, but my heart is warmed by the acceptance and appreciation that I feel every day in the house I live in.

It seems that everywhere I go, I find good people -- and Tea is among the best!

I love to laugh!

Laughter is the best medicine for whatever ails me. A good belly-laugh is one of the things that snaps me out of a bad mood and refocuses my thoughts beyond myself. Any day that starts with laughter promises to be a good day -- like today. There were three moments that made me laugh right out loud today. Well, two were out loud, the other was in my head only.

It snowed again last night, and when I got up this morning, it was still snowing. I sat at the kitchen table drinking my second cup of coffee, and watched the snow come down in big, fluffy clumps of flakes. It was another wet, heavy snow. I noticed that most of the chickens had come down out of the hazelnut tree they roost in every night. But two roosters and a turkey were still hunkered down against the inclement weather. The roosters weren't even crowing -- I think they dislike this weather just as much as I do. Finally one of the roosters stirred -- it shook the snow off its feathers like a dog shaking water from its fur. Then it ruffled up its neck feathers and let out a better-late-than-never wake-up call. Up in the tree about fifteen feet, the rooster started to look around for a good spot to get down to the ground. It looked down on one side of the branch it was perched on, then on the other side. Back and forth it went for a couple of minutes. Several times I thought it was going to fly down, but after some false-starts, it settled back on its branch. Then, all at once, the rooster lost its balance and fell out of the tree! It flapped and squawked all the way down to the ground, I laughed right out loud -- birds aren't supposed to fall out of trees, but this one did!

The second thing that cracked me up today was something that I wasn't able to actually laugh at -- although I wanted to, and it was all I could do to not laugh out loud. The sixth graders had to write some sentences for homework to practice forming questions and negative statements in the past tense. For example: "I ate breakfast this morning. --> Did I eat breakfast this morning? --> I did not eat breakfast this morning." Lika and I checked the students' work in their notebooks to correct any mistakes they had made. One girl had misspelled the word "book" in the sentence, "He put his books in his bag." She wrote, "He put his boobs in his bag." I just about lost it. I mustered all the self-control I had to keep a straight face as I pointed out the misspelling. Of course, she had no idea what she had written.. Inside I was dying of laughter!

Tonight Tea cracked me up doing something that I would do. It was frigid outside, so we were both sitting by the stove in the kitchen absorbed in books that we are each reading. The fire was getting a little low, so Tea, eyes still glued to the book in her hand, absentmindedly moved to put a scoop of hazelnut shells into the fire. The teapot was sitting on top of the opening in the top of the stove. Instead of moving the teapot aside to pour the shells into the stove, she took the lid off the teapot and was just about ready to pour the shells into the teapot. At the last second, we both realized what she was about to do, and threw our heads back and laughed and laughed! I told her that that was something that I would do. We decided that neither of us should try to do something else when absorbed in a book.

After some difficult moments dealing with culture shock and nasty weather the last few days, it was so nice to have some good laughs today. My spirit is buoyed and I have a more positive outlook for the present. I will look for more humorous moments to see more joy in life in my here and now.

First snow of the winter

I live in sight of rocky, snow-capped mountains. Since I've been here (mid-November), when it rains here in the village, those mountain peaks get coated with a fresh layer of snow. The day following a rain is lovely and clear, but the wind that comes down off the mountains has an extra chill in it. I like the cool freshness to that wind while the sun is shining and warm, but once the sun goes down and the cold turns biting, the kitchen is the only warm place around.

A few words about heat here in Shamgona.... I've written about the heat at the house I live in -- the only heat-source is the wood cook-stove in the kitchen, and there is no heat in the upper house where I sleep. So, when it is cold out, I retreat to the kitchen until bedtime.

School is a different story. When I first arrived and was given a tour of the new school building where I would teach, the teachers were so proud to show me that the building was constructed with a central heating system. Central heat is great....if it is used. 

The heating system runs on natural gas. Although it had turned cold at the end of November, it was mid-December before the gas truck came to fill the tanks at school. That was the day that the male teachers pulled out the instructions for the heating system and worked at trying to figure out how to turn it on and keep it running. The instructions were printed in several languages, none of which was Georgian! Using the Russian section, they finally got the system working a little more than a week ago. All the teachers were so excited to have the heat on....but should you be able to touch the radiators if the heat is on high enough? I don't think so. About the only to gain any warmth from them is to sit as close as possible to one of them and put your hands on the metal. The teachers sit huddled around the radiators in the teachers' room warming up between classes. If the building were insulated, the heat would eventually build up to sort-of-warm, but with no insulation in the concrete/tile/marble building, every ounce of warmth is sapped by the freezing cold materials. So, even though the "heat is on," we still wear our coats and scarves (sometimes even hats and gloves) all day long.

I now know why women in this part of the world wear long fur coats -- it's the only way keep out the terrible dampness and freezing cold. After a couple of days of relatively warm weather earlier this week, it turned cold. The ladies at my school now don their full-length fur or shearling coats, boots, and hats Dr. Zhivago-style. I don't condone the fur industry, but my puffy down coat that makes me look a bit like the Michelin Man from the waist up doesn't keep my lower half warm. And today I really could have used something long, because.....

Looking out the door of the upper house
into the front yard

It snowed last night. Although I have no thermometer to tell me the temperature, when I went to bed, I knew it was colder than it had been other nights, but I didn't think that it had dropped to freezing. Before I fell asleep, I heard what I thought was rain on the roof. I didn't realize that it was snow until I got up this morning and looked out the window. Everything was coated with a thin layer of heavy, wet snow. I love snow -- dry, fluffy, flaky snow that doesn't stick to anything. This snow was not that kind. It was the kind that soaks anything it lands on. The yard and trees looked pretty with their coat of white frosting, but underneath, everything was just mud and wetness. And the cold that followed the storm was the kind that creeps in under the skin and gets into the bones. Today the wind off the mountains felt like God had left the freezer door open.

Although there was not much snow, the weight of it knocked out the electricity. But we had school anyway -- no lights and no heat, but classes went on. There are large windows in all of the classrooms, so light was not a problem....and since the heating system doesn't make that much of a difference when it does work, that wasn't really a problem, either!

I realized part way through the day that it is Groundhog Day.... at least in the U.S. where there are groundhogs. There aren't any here in Georgia, but if Punxsutawney Phil had been in my yard this morning, he would not have seen his shadow...... early spring!!! (I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope!)

From the upper house porch, looking out to the road and the cemetery

Quality

My favorite Italian word is "sprezzatura." I first heard this word in a graduate class on writing literary criticism that I took a few years ago. My professor, Dr. Wertime (one of the best professors ever!) used this word in describing good writing. In a later class that I took with him, he used it again -- this time to describe the manner in which we should present our final projects. The word is translated as "seeming effortlessness." His point in using this word was to show how "we are chronic under-estimators" of how complex or difficult things are. (He said this so often, I have to use quotation marks to cite him.) The word can apply to just about any action, but he used in connection with writing.

Writing -- at least good writing -- is hard work, but reading something that is well-written is not. The easy-reading of a good piece of writing is not an accident, it is the result of "sprezzatura." Although the author labored over the piece for a long time - writing, revising, editing, revising again, more editing - the reader goes through the piece with ease and has no idea how much work went into writing it -- seeming effortlessness. If the work is well-done, it will appear effortless.

A similar concept appears in the book I am (still) reading -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig is dealing with the concept of Quality in the book, and I am reminded of Dr. Wertime's description of "sprezzatura." According to Pirsig, Quality cannot be defined, but we all know what has Quality and what does not. Again, using writing as an example, when you read something of poor Quality, it will be painfully obvious -- it is actually difficult work to read something poorly written. It takes so much effort just to read it, the meaning of the work is lost. On the other hand, a piece of Quality work is a joy to read, and you don't notice the work you put into reading it, because you are able to focus only on the message that is being conveyed.

I shared all of that introduction to write about dancing.

Dr. Wertime often used the example of a ballerina to explain "sprezzatura." When watching ballet, the dancers seem to float effortlessly across the floor. But get out on that stage yourself and try some pirouettes,  and you'll see just how difficult ballet is. At the same time, when you watch ballet, you want the dancers to have "sprezzatura," to have Quality. You wouldn't want the dancers at a ballet to huff and puff and fall over in exhaustion at the end of a difficult piece. You want them to keep the appearance of effortlessness to the very last grand-plié. "Sprezzatura" is what sets apart the dancers who have Quality from those who do not. 


And let me tell you just how difficult it is to dance with Quality! I will no longer "chronically under-estimate the difficulty or complexity" of dance -- Georgian dance, at least.


I had my first actual dance lesson today after school. Before Christmas break, I went to a couple of the dance lessons with my students, and they helped me with some of the steps and arm/hand movements; but today I started lessons in earnest. And again, I will say that it is very difficult to dance with Quality and seeming effortlessness. It is a good thing that I am a decent athlete and in shape, otherwise I would be immobile right now. Dancing for over two and half hours taxes unused muscles in ways that can bring on lots and lots of pain! My feet and calves were tired by the end of the lesson, but thanks to all the running I do, they are strong and can take the beating. 


Wouldn't you think that floating across the floor like a butterfly with as little vertical movement as possible would be easy? It sure looks easy when it's done well (sprezzatura!). And it should be easy to hold my hands in the correct position while dancing, but it's not. Nor is it easy to combine a series of arm motions with a combination of steps. (I can do one or the other -- arms or steps -- but not both together....  at least, not yet.) But with 5 hours of lessons every week (Tuesdays and Fridays), I should get it down soon. 


Then I'll work on adding the "sprezzatura."