By Emily - Peace Corps 2005

23 June 2005

Here I am at my host family’s house. It is the Janashvili family. I am learning a lot. I love it here. It is so much fun and everyone is super nice. When I wake up from a dream I am very confused because now my dreams are closer to my normalcy than reality. When were are walking around Khashuri I have to concentrate to make it real. I mean, it looks rather like a slum but clearly it is not. The people are very well educated, the food is incredible, the landscape is absolutely gorgeous. I feel like I will never want to leave. I do miss Mom and Dad a lot though. The frogs are loud at night.

8 July 2005

I am in my room and in my bed and it is not yet dark, but dusk still and there are the frogs someplace and the train echoing off the hills and Maia knocks and asks something about ‘parkshi’ which although I didn’t understand I really don’t want to and so reply ‘ara’. I am trying to read Chekov and it seems to resonate which is a welcome change from Tolstoy but still I am distracted. I am sitting in my tree or on the parking garage with Manny or dancing with him or just anyplace but here and now why would I want to go back when it was certainly not better and and nearly definitely worse I just can’t get my head on straight and keep it there. I can’t watch dubbed Georgian television for five hours. I can’t call people I don’t really know for much needed attention. I can’t take refuge in my room. So I go to sleep. In sleep I am not anywhere. I will sleep my life away I am afraid.

21 July 2005

Iza braided my hair. The party was fantastic. It was the most fun I’ve had since we arrived. I just enjoyed myself with zero stress for once. Everyone was relaxed. It was parents and kids and different ages and everyone had so much fun. Tomorrow again my life will be different. That has happened quite a lot in the last year. Since I moved to Long Beach everything has changed so fast. One minute I am listening to my roommate fight with her boyfriend, the next I am selling my car, touring DC and now I am halfway around the world, my bangs are braided, my sheets haven’t been washed in a month and I am thinking about the party and it makes me happy anyway. Maybe that is it. When you are in and around these moments you forget the rest and you add it to the episodes of your life as one you will retell or relive watching a sunset or something. Oh, it was so much fun.

4 August 2005

The moment I woke up this morning I regretted having done it and immediately thereafter cursed myself for beginning the day so poorly. What good could come from a beginning like that? And later in the marshrutka as I nodded off, I worried not about my bags or ticket, but about my drooping head grazing the driver. The white line on the road was merely a suggestion, maybe less. And it went on and on. Traveling from someplace you didn’t want to be to someplace you don’t want to go is torture in that even when it’s over it’s only just beginning.

21 August 2005

I have created a masterpiece of mosquito net engineering. With the aid of just one push pin, I have constructed a fortress of netting which even most cunning of mosquitoes could never penetrate. They thought they had me beat; well, think again my little friends! Now I just have to let the twenty-five or so bites I already have heal. I can’t wait for winter.

23 August 2005

Oh! That my computer would work and the toilet and the phone and the lights when I want them. That I could write a letter without repetition, whining or regret. That I brought Spanish materials and black socks. That I could leave it all. That he weren’t so far away and I that I knew which I refer to as I write that. That the world were bigger or smaller but not this way. That I had money in my pocket. That I didn’t look forward to the end of each day. That I were either stronger or weaker. That I could enjoy Tolstoy. That I had the means to construct my life exactly as I would like it. That I had recognized what two years meant. That I could drink it all away. That I were not faced with squalor each day. That this were the worst of it.

Won’t I take it all for granted a month after I return just as now I sometimes forget that they cook from scratch and truly care about me? Someday when you sit in the pedicure chair, light rock playing on the speakers, gazing blankly at the white walls, instead of wishing she’d hurry up with that second coat, thank yourself for getting you back there and go eat a burrito afterwards, two even.

24? August 2005

Not only do I not know the date but really it is nothing to me. Today there with the children and the bats and the sun I just wanted to pack them all up and take them out of here. But can I do that? Should I? Here is fine in theory: fertile, clean, near Europe, people are educated and good. Shouldn’t they get their own acts together? Shouldn’t they get up and look outside and see the tragedy and potential and and say no more? Whose fault is this and it all?

18 September 2005

Look at that. It was the 15th and now it is the 18th. We are progressing. What are those clowns doing out there? It is dark and they are chopping wood? Freaks.

20 September 2005

I am sitting on this log by the river. I still cannot remember the river’s name. It is the perfect day for this and I am looking at the water and the mountain and really I am glad to be here in this moment. I can’t even think to write. I had all these good thoughts about wealth, California, good, rights, but they have gone. What I’d really like now is a towel and a swimsuit to lay out on this log. Soon I’ll be going back. To my room. Then I can write those other things. Now I am just going to sit. You will remember this moment.

26 September 2005

I dreamt about prom last night. I just don’t know how I feel today. The eleventh form made me so mad. I really wished I were not here. Remember when you were free? You had your little sphere of influence; enough money, places to go, a car to get there, a flushing toilet, boys you could call, ate what you wanted when you wanted. This is proving to be just what I thought it would be and still nothing I thought it would. Everything I wanted out of it I will get, but after college and everything else why couldn’t I have just let myself go for awhile? Will I never be that person? Maybe all of us volunteers are masochists. We revel in our own misery. Oh shut up. Go home you big idiot! You know you will be better for this, you know it will give you exactly what you want: your golden ticket.

27 September 2005

Who is America to send its youth out to improve the world? Who I am to think that by birth I am so special, so wise, that merely by showing up I will make the world a better place? What a silly notion! For us it is the only place, so better than what? Than itself? Can you improve what is already all? Me thinking how lucky I am and feeling guilty for it and wanting to do something good. I sit on this hard stool day after day imagining scenes from my past in brilliant detail to escape this all too benign misery.

1 October 2005

I love Georgians because they will have a birthday party for someone who is not even there.

2 October 2005

This really is like a treadmill. Each day is a struggle to the end but through it all I see how much I am gaining, how much richer my life will be, is becoming. Today is Sunday, my wasted day, but another day passing to get me home. Sometimes I entertain these romantic fantasies of taking him home with me and giving him a better life, but realize it is not him as him but him as a project, the romantic comedy of it all. When he asked me “Why can’t you be Georgian?” he was so right. You need an American, that is certain, who can laugh at ODB with you. Language is thought! Remember it. Be careful. However jigari he may seem you can never be sure.

5 October 2005

My worst fear has been realized. I have broken a pipe or something. Even now there is a hissing from the gas meter. We may be blown to bits before lunch. Oh man, oh man.

29 November 2005

Sometimes I really want to think and realize and grow but I am too lazy. I settle into solitaire and songs I’ve known forever. My eyes lose focus and my ears fall into the rhythm. Always on the cusp. Always seeing the glimmer but still a blur. Reaching for it, fingertips feeling the heat but never catching it. Can we catch it? I think not. Today I think we cannot. Today I wish I had been satisfied enough with myself not to have chased it halfway round the world. I wish I could have looked through the blinds at the ugly fence and neighboring building and seen the truth in it. That I could have spent Thanksgiving with my family. That I could have learned life’s lessons and still have been free. For I am not free. I was free. Rent and exams are not barriers, I see this. Custom and expectations and judgement are barriers. This room, this house, this village, this country is my prison. And as I am held here I hope that once I have served my sentence I will never again doubt what I know. That life is life here there and anywhere on this earth. What is different is freedom and love. Here there is love but there is not freedom, not for me. I am alone and I am stuck. And sometimes I am happy and sometimes I am not. And now I seem to be unhappy but really I am ok. I am taking my days and they come and doing what there is to be done as time passes. Soon it will be December. Really it is almost December. And it will be 2006 soon enough. That is good. But the idea that all of 2006 will be spent here is really very frightening to me right now. What would I like? Let’s talk about that. Let’s say I could be anywhere, anyone, anyway right this instant. Here is what I would do: I would be in a nice little house or little apartment with a view of the city. Two bed rooms, one for us and one for guests I think. It would be evening, sun just dipped behind the skyline. A warm day with a breeze. We would have guests, not too many. Maybe his parents, maybe my sister and her boyfriend, maybe his buddies, six of us altogether perhaps. I would be just taking the food out of the oven and telling them to sit down, music on the stereo low still. And we’d sit down to eat and talk and laugh and just be fine. It would be so nice. And then we’d finish and maybe they’d stay over, or maybe not. Maybe they’d leave early and he’d get a movie ready while I washed the dishes. Then we’d settle down on the couch with a blanket and just be fine. Isn’t this the life I left? Didn’t I do almost this once? I am crazy? No. No. I think I am more sane now that I have ever been. Maybe that is the problem. Everyone that gets it gets it and effectively bows out, gets offstage and lives. The ones that shout in the spotlight are the ones that don’t see it. Maybe that is the reason for the shitty state of so many things.

16 December 2005

Lately I have been doing nothing. Neither reading, writing, nor thinking. The entire afternoon was spent baking brownies which turned out poorly anyway. The electricity went out two days ago and there is little hope for its prompt return. The darkness makes us quieter. Just sitting. Even my fantasies about the future have lost their appeal. I don’t even wait for the days to end. I am devoting myself to Georgian verb conjugation. No small task, but not exactly stimulating. Here I am, at a quarter through, not sure how I made it this far, dreading the year and a half ahead, but feeling ok about tomorrow and this month. As long as I can keep my shit together and not cause a scandal in the village I should make it. Really though, my hair is clean, I am warm, it is nearly bedtime, what more do I really want? Let’s get to January 16th before we panic. We’ll regroup then. Oh they are just sitting there by the pechi like a couple of bums. Can’t they occupy themselves? The TV is out and you’d think the sky came crashing down. I can’t understand it. You’d think they’d be able to cope. This is their world, not mine. Oh, but isn’t it?