Random Musings from Georgia

Have I mentioned that my host family is great?  I feel sooooo fortunate to have been placed with them.  It's a nice, low-key house (most of the time), and this really suits me.  It's usually just the three of us -- host mum, host sis, & I.  The other two siblings are working in Tbilisi and only come home sometimes.

In our house, there is a lot of the following:

Drinking tea
Drinking coffee
Watching Turkish and/or Indian soaps
Surfing the net
Visitors -- mostly relatives that live in the neighborhood, like Nini, who is six and adorable.  She was a bit afraid of me at first.  To her, I talk funny and usually don't understand what she says...but she has warmed up a bit.  Her older sister, Keti, is adorable, too.  And, Keti is super-smart -- sometimes, you can just tell, you know?  Here is Nini:

There is also a lot of cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and light/moderate gardening.  We just got a new calf. Her name is Taplo.  She spends the days in a nearby field grazing. My host mom walks her over there every morning and then retrieves her in the evenings.  She is brown and moos a lot.  Here are some pictures of her:

 

One thing about cows here in Georgia:  Many families have one or more of them, and they usually just live in the yard during the night and go to a nearby empty field during the day.  An extremely common sight in the mornings and evenings is a guy walking/driving his cows out to pasture or back home, on the streets.   Fascinatingly, the cows know where they live.  If they get ahead of the "pack", they'll stop at the gate of their home an moo until someone lets them in!  Just like dogs.

We also have three chickens and a rooster.  Here are two of the chickens. I have named these two Henrietta (left) and Mabel (right).  Another day, I'll post a pic of Marge, the other chicken, and Steve, the Rooster.  Steve wakes me up every morning, and then pretty much crows all day long.  (Clarification: These are just my names for the fowl; I don't think my host family would ever consider naming them! Although...they did name Taplo...)

 

It has also become abundantly clear, just now, that we also have MICE.  There is a mostly derelict upstairs in this house, accessible only from the outside (as is common in the standard two-story dwellings here in Georgia).  As I'm sitting here in the living room, I can hear them running about upstairs.  I just told my host sister that we need to get a CAT.  She agreed...alas, probably only in principle, though, because I don't think she actually likes cats.  Obviously, this is because she hasn't met any awesome cats like Finn, Otto, Betty, Zed, Thongs, Nosy, Louis, Herbie, or any of the other spectacular felines I know/have known in my life!  I miss these two, right now, in particular.  Mom -- if you're reading this -- please send recent pics of kitties!