By Laura

Peace Corps 2005

Email to friends from Ozurgeti, Georgia (the country)

Let's see, I started teaching English at the College two weeks ago, I teach Monday-Thursday from 10am-2pm...excellent hours. I teach Sophomores and Juniors-the students are mostly girls aging from 17-25 but there are some non-traditional aged older women in the classes as well.

I love the old ladies who teach at the college, we have coffee together daily and gossip about people in the town. I'm also enjoying going to the beach towns on the weekend and going to lots of "supras" which are just big feasts where you gorge yourself on really good food and get toasted.

I've been enjoying getting to know people around town, including all of my host families' large extended family. Overwhelmingly my interactions when I first meet people go like this--

But before I go on with that...a note, a comment about my representation of my interaction and what I so far written. Is it simply relating fact? No. Things were as I have described? No--
By writing I situate myself vis a vis both society and the nature of literature (literature? this little conversation snippet? I hardly think so), that is to say, the tools of creation. The way I encounter or incorporate the former, in other words, is the way I confront merge into the latter, for these are the two inseparable faces of a single entity. Neither entirely personal nor purely historical, a mode of writing is in itself a function. An act of historical solidarity, it denotes, in addition to my personal standpoint and intention, a relationship between creation and society.*

This is my entity of societal and historical creation. In a tiny village, near the black sea...How I am introduced.

Host Ma: Nino meet Laura, Laura is from America and is teaching English at the College. Laura, this is Nino, she is my mom's brother's wife's daughter's niece. You remember my mom's brother's wife don't you? Of course you do!
Me: Uh--yeah---of course....
Me: Nice to meet you Nino
Nino: Oh my goodness, she speaks Georgian! What a good girl! Do you speak Georgian?
Host Ma: Of course she does!
Me: Well I am learning
Nino: Oh what a good girl you are! Oh what a good girl you are! How do you like Georgia?
Me: I like it very well. It is a very beautiful country and Georgian's are very welcoming people. I love your food too! [my scripted to response cause folks ask me how I like Georgia hourly]
Nino: Oh what a good girl you are. Are you married?
Me: Uh--
Nino: Well of course you wouldn't be. What a good girl you are. You will marry in Georgia. I know a very good boy for you. You are such a good girl and you like Georgia. You will stay and marry in Georgia.
Me: Oh well I don't want to get married. I don't want a husband
Nino: Oh what a good girl you are. You know Georgian so well and you like our food, you must marry here. Of course you want a husband. I know a very good good boy.
Host Ma: Well we must be going
Nino: Oh what a good girl you are
Me: Bye, nice to meet you
Nino: Bye, oh what a good girl you are..bye

Well anyhoo lots of thoughts from Georgia and you know if you have a sec write me an email just to let me know you are still existing somewhere out there cause sometimes after I haven't showered in 10 days and haven't spoken English in a week or have 35 new mosquito bites and am riding in a bus that has broken down six times and continues to backfire while the sketchy man next to me keeps elbowing me in the hip -I just can't believe that you all are alive somewhere experiencing a totally different reality.

Yours,
Laura

*paraphrased from Trinh-Minh-ha