About Me

I'm the thing that's not like the others.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Sept. 19 - The weekend

Yesterday I spent the day in Kobuleti with The Sailor (because she used to work on boats). Before going into the city, though, I had an English lesson with HB1. When we were finished I left and started walking for the city. About halfway down the mountain, HM and HD passed me in the car. They stopped and picked me up and drove me in.

I had a while to kill, waiting for The Sailor, so I walked up the main street looking for a bakery where Kiwi (she's from New Zealand) and I had gotten really good cakes. I walked a long way up and was pretty sure I’d passed the café, but hadn’t seen it. So I turned around, just as The Sailor called me that she was in town.

We met up and then headed into the Kobuleti bizarre area. The Sailor was looking for school supplies and the hunt was on. We stopped in so many little market stalls and shops and none of them had what she was looking for. We did manage to find a 24 pack of Crayola crayons for about 80 cents, though.

After the school supply search fizzled out, we went back to the cake hunt. We finally found the bakery, but it was closed, I’m hoping that it was closed because it was Saturday and not because the tourist season ended. After stopping in at every open café, none of which had cake, we finally found the blessed bakery cooler in a little mini-mart, right by the bus station. The pieces of cake were huge and only cost about 80 cents. Way better than a café. The Sailor and I took our treats around the corner, where we sat on a stoop, in true Georgian style, to wait for Boston (it's where she's from) to arrive.

When Boston finally got there, she got some cake from a market and then we went to a café for a drink. She and I swapped pieces and both were delicious. We all decided to walk home, partly to save money and partly because Sarah wanted to take pictures of the countryside. We made it past The Sailor's turn-off, but then a bus full of teachers from my school went by and stopped to wait for us.

We took the ride back to my house. We had a bit of a snack and then came upstairs. We spent the evening watching English tv. Shows of note include "The Simpsons" and "How I Met Your Mother". At one point, Bebia and HB3 came in, so Boston played with him, while I translated conversation between her and Bebia. When the English tv started sucking, we put music videos on in the background and read our respective books. I got a book of Stephen King short stories out of the library on Friday and they are super messed up.

This morning we were lazy and slept in. Even once we got up, we had breakfast and then continued to lounge around in our pajamas for hours. Since Turk tv doesn’t show English shows during the day, we read our books and put on music videos. I read some of the Stephen King book, but had to switch to something less bizzare. We also discussed the tres exclusive guest list for my birthday party next week. Finally, around 1 we decided to head into Kobuleti to hang with Pop (called because of his habit of randomly singing pop songs mid-convo) . Since there were no buses in sight, we decided to walk down, giving Boston the chance to take more pictures. When we got a little way down, a car saw us and stopped to give us a ride. It was someone from the village, whom I didn’t know, but they greeted me by name, so we crammed into the back seat and made it safely into town.

After a stop for cake, we headed to the beach boulevard to meet Pop. We met up and chatted on the walk back to Pop’s house. His host family served us a ton of food for lunch and then we were all sleepy. We started to walk back toward the bus station, so that Boston could get back to Batumi and I could go home, but we flagged down a marshrutka. It happened to be the same green one that I took on Friday, with the detour and the drunk guy, though today there was neither of those things. Turns out, Pop knows the driver. I got them to stop at the station and took a taxi home, because I’m too impatient to wait for the bus.

At home, I read and napped a little and was then called downstairs. I got there in time to eat some roasted chestnuts with HM and Bebia. The chestnuts are cool, because they grow inside these spiky green balls, which get left all over the roadsides under the chestnut trees. I helped HB1 through his English homework and now I’m hanging out upstairs watching Cold Case, Big Bang Theory and Doctor Who.

P.S. We also finally figured out that the herb that they put in everything is coriander. Turns out I don’t like coriander. At all. I can’t wait to eat food without dill or coriander.

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