Georgian Hospitality

Today, I attempted to take a walk, and I definitely experienced the Georgian hospitality that I had read so much about. Last week I had Khatuna, one of my co-teachers, write down the words "I am going for a walk" in Georgian so that I could inform my family if my host sister wasn't around. There's always Google Translate too. Anyway, my sister was at a dance lesson--more on Georgian dances later--and the sun was shining, so I let them know that I was going and left before they had a chance to protest or insist that someone join me.

Churchkhela and tatara

I walked up the hill past some cows and men, and I saw one of my students, Eka, in her yard. We did the "hi, hello, how are you" routine, and I continued on my way. A couple houses up, the gym teacher at the school greeted me and beckoned me inside. I didn't really want to, but I followed her out of politeness. Little did I know that she'd roll out the red carpet. She treated me to American hot chocolate, dried grapes still on the vine, churchkhela, tatara, and peach preserves. Also, it turns out that she's the mother of one of my other students, Mary. Tatara is grape juice boiled down and thickened with flour. It looks a bit like caramel, but it's more gelatinous and less sticky. Churchkhela is made with tatara. Basically, a string of walnuts is dipped into the tatara, like dipping a candle, until it's the right thickness, and then it's dried. Voilà, churchkhela.

Visting with the gym teacher, who is also named Khatuna, was pleasant and confusing at the same time. I was so happy to get some fruit in my system, but the whole point of walking was to burn some calories. Also, Khatuna doesn't speak English, her son only speaks a little English, and my Georgian really isn't that good yet, so there was a lot of smiling and nodding. When I got up to leave, she packed a doggie bag for me so that I could bring churchkhela and tatara home to my host family, but that wasn't quite the end of our visit. She called me over into her neighbor's yard because she was baking bread, and she sent me away with some fresh tonis puri.

Tone oven

Speaking of puri, I watched my host mother and grandfather make some yesterday. Megi, my host mother, had a massive bowl filled with flour and salt in the kitchen yesterday morning. She added some water, mixed it up, and kneaded the dough. She let it sit for a few hours, and then we went outside to the tone, a circular oven. She rolled the dough into separate balls, and Grandpa stretched the dough and stuck it to the inside of the oven to cook. It was definitely an interesting process to watch. Maybe in the future they'll let me help although I'm rather abysmal at cooking.