The Host with the Most - January 31, 2012

So, now I'm at my host family's house.

All in the Family
I have a 21-year-old host sister, Tiko, who is the only person who speaks English. She is married to a 30-year-old police officer, Dato. They live with his parents, Murmani and Eliso, who own two markets. So, strangely, everyone in my family works which is not the Georgian norm. Usually there is one woman who stays home and attends to "womanly duties" (cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids.) So they work everyday from 9AM-6PM roughly...although it seems like their schedule always changes. Everyone works at the market except for the host bro who has a 24 hour duty cycle supposedly every other day, but I have not seen him for 4 days straight. In addition, we live right next door to my host father's brother, sister, and mom. His sister was never married, his father passed away a year ago, I think is what I understood, and his brother, Kosta, works in Belarus but is on holiday to come home for the death anniversary of his father. Kosta is divorced but has two boys who live in Belarus with their mother. In addition, to Dato, my host parents have two daughters, Sopo and Maga. Sopo has one son named Saba and is pregnant with another boy. Sadly, her husband died a little over a month ago of an aneurysm. Maga and her husband have one daughter named Qeso and one son named Luca.

Temperature
We have arrived in the heart of winter which means we are in the midst of a nearly unbearable cold front. Something our program forgot to mention is that families in Georgia have one room in which they keep warm. The rest of the house is as cold as it is outside. I talked the host family into letting me have a small electric heater in my room that I turn on an hour before bed which doesn't exactly make it warm, but makes the cold a little more tolerable. My host sister also sent me to bed with two soda bottles that had been emptied of soda and filled with hot water (instant hot water bottle). I clutch those two bottles as if my life depended on it. Once under the three blankets hugging the water bottles for about 30 minutes, it starts to warm up and sleep is possible.

Food
The food has been pretty tasty. I arrived during the period where my family was mourning for Sopo's husband which includes fasting. They did not eat meat for 40 days. They are now back to eating meat but understand that I do not eat meat. I think they are worried now about what to make for me. I eat a lot of bread, cheese, salads (cabbage, carrot, mayo), cabbage/potato soup, ghomi (a grit like food), and fruit. Still working on the protein aspect. I had beans once and haven't seen them since. My host family also realized that I like wine, so I have homemade wine with dinner every night.

The House
The houses in Georgia are bigger than what I thought they would be. They are equipped for housing parents and children and children's children. So, when you walk into my host family's house, there is a living room with 6 doors off of it. One is the front door, one is the back door, one is the parents' bedroom, one is an extra bedroom, one is the kitchen, and the other leads to the shower room and to a staircase that goes upstairs. There is a small hallway with a door at the end upstairs that leads into another huge living area. There are two bedrooms off of there, one mine, and one the bedroom of the son and daughter in law. There is a toilet inside that doesn't flush. We are allowed to use it but have to "flush" with a bucket of water afterward. To add too much information, the inside toilet is only if you have to pee. You must use the squat outhouse for the alternative. I pretty well pray that I don't have to go.

Next post will be about my job. :)