Georgian/Italian Family - Saturday February 11, 2012

I was kindly invited to Francesco's host family's for dinner. It was a wonderful opportunity to view another host family's interaction with their host teacher.

I left a bit early to meet Francesco at 5:30PM as I could no longer watch my host family getting ready for the death anniversary tomorrow as we had piglets with slit throats hanging up next door clearly visible through our living room window.

When I entered Francesco's house, I was firstly overwhelmed at how many people there were. Francesco has a host father, mother, sister, brother, cousin, and uncle. Plus another cousin came over with her mom and sister later on in the night. This cousin, Kristine, knows English very well and was able to translate for us.

I was secondly overwhelmed with the amount of generosity and kindness I was afforded while in their home. We had khachapuri, fried potatoes, three different kinds of salad, and lots and lots of wine!

We drank quite a bit and the night ended with the family showing me their 700 Litres of wine stored up until the next season. No wonder they take it as shots, there's so much of it!

Francesco, his host cousin, and host uncle offered to walk me home as it is only 15 minutes away. I was tipsy but quite capable of making the 3 turns it took to get to my house. Unfortunately the lot of them were not as capable to take the 3 turns back. Straight off they went right instead of left. An hour later, I received a phone call from Francesco telling me that they had to catch a taxi as they had somehow ended up in the countryside. HAHA!

After I returned home, I went next door to watch my host family get prepared for the ceremony. I was cordially invited by my host uncle to take shots of tchatcha (homemade vodka) with him, my host bro, and random guy. As it is insanely difficult to turn down a drink in this culture, I sat to have 4 shots of tchatcha before running away to avoid more drinks. I headed to bed around 11PM. The whole night was a good pick-me-up to the test taking disaster at the police academy earlier.