A hike up the mountain

Our hike to Mtatsminda. June 23rd. 

Since our first week in Kvishkheti we had heard about Mtatsminda and how beautiful it is to hike there. The actual Mtatsminda holiday set the hike in motion. My family and Caitlin’s family helped to coordinate a good time for all the volunteers and our LCF (LCF stands for language and cultural facilitator. They are in charge of teaching us Georgian, making sure we get to the places we need to be, and being our number one go-to person during training. All the LCFs were amazing, but our Lela was top notch. She went above and beyond with tutoring each of us multiple hours a week, was always there to help us, guide us, and care for us).

So hiking… The day before my family made rice pies (I helped!) for the hike. They are pretty much just starch on starch, but tasty nonetheless. We also made a dessert called guliani. ‘Guli’ means heart in Georgian and ‘guliani’ literally translates to ‘with heart’. They use the same dough used for lobiani (bean stuffed bread) and the rice pies but in the middle they put a mixture of sugar, butter, and flour… it’s pretty much a take on a doughnut.

We set out early the next morning (I think it was Sunday since we didn’t have class). Everyone from my family, except my host father, Jumberi, came. Host brother, Shalva and his wife, Elene, and their beautiful baby boy, Andria, host sister, Lela, host mother, Marina, and host cousin, Teona. Caitlin’s mother, Maka, and brother, Giorgi, came, along with our LCF, Lela, and all the volunteers. Another volunteer named Kristin came to visit us for the hike as well. We were quite the caravan. Shalva took the lead and led us on what seemed like a vertical path up the mountain. We didn’t understand why we took such a difficult way until later, when we discovered the reasoning was this way was covered by trees and we’d stay cooler. I’m not too convinced the tree coverage was worth it though. This path was very steep and we were all huffing and puffing practically the entire way… everyone except Andria that is. The benefit of hiking as a baby is that you don’t actually have to hike; you just hitch a ride the whole way up. He also got to have lunch at one of our pit stops and managed to squeeze a nap in the last leg of the trip up. I was very jealous.

This is Andria. Don't let the face fool you. He loves me. 

A pre-hike game of frisbee

On the way up

At the top of the mountain stands Mtatsminda’s church. Churches in Georgia range greatly in size, and this church happens to be a very tiny one. It probably measures to about 20x20 feet. In order to enter the church (and many traditional churches in Georgia) the women must wear a skirt or dress and cover their hair, and the men should wear long pants. Us girls came prepared with scarves to tie around here and there, but some of the boys couldn’t go in due to shorts. Another step to entering the church is walking around the perimeter four times, kissing each corner of the church as you go. I found the whole process interesting and while for me it wasn’t much more than cultural observation, I was touched by the emotions that our host mothers were flooded with.

Mtatsminda's Church

Church's bell

View from the top. Khashuri in the distance. 

After some time and pictures at the top of the mountain, we went to find a lunch spot. We found a little makeshift table in the woods with precarious log ‘benches’ on either side. We had a pretty respectable spread, especially for a hiking trip, but that’s just how Georgians do hiking. We had the rice pies, guliani, bread, khatchapuri, tomato and cucumber salad, herbs, cheese, cake, and what hike wouldn’t be complete without liters of wine and liqueur to take shots of?!? We ate, drank, toasted, sang, and even danced. One hiking tradition in Georgia is people will leave liters of wine behind along the trail so that future hikers can enjoy and be connected to them. While I think it’s quite sketchy to drink home-brewed wine from repurposed Coke bottles that you just happen to find in the woods, I also love the significance behind it and how Georgians still manage to be hospitable even when they are in the middle of nowhere. And of course, like a true cultural ambassador, I decided to partake in this great tradition. We drank a couple of bottles of the mystery wine, and to continue the tradition we left two of our own.

Toast to the hike

The hike back down was much more enjoyable. It was downhill, a little bit cooler, and we had some wine in us. We also broke up the trek down with an ongoing water fight that resulted in allegiances being built, ambushes being planned, and a bunch of sopping wet hikers.

This was our second to last Sunday (our only day of the week completely free) in Kvishkheti and I cannot think of a better way to have spent it. As a group we decided that Mtatsminda will be our official day to reunite with each other and our families in Kvishkheti. I already look forward to next summer’s festivities.

Our group (minus Von):

From left to right: Eric, Caitlin, Marina, Me, Lela, Shalva, Elene with Andria, Teona, Maka, Ian, Giorgi, Lela, Melissa

Mtatsminda Celebration

Mtatsminda holiday. June 20th:

Mtatsminda is a very special celebration for Kvishkheti. Mtatsminda translates to Saint of the Mountain, Holy Mountain, or something like that. The main point to take away is that it’s a holiday meant to honor the beauty and grandeur of their mountain and the mountains of Georgia.  There is a church at the top of Kvishkheti’s mountain dedicated to Mtatsminda. This church is one of two of its kind in all of Georgia (the other being in Tbilisi). Needless to say, the people of Kvishkheti are incredibly proud and are sure to honor it properly.

Mtatsminda fell on a weekday, but that didn’t stop the whole town from stopping everything. My classmates and I had work to do to prepare for our community project (you’ll see about that later), but I remember I couldn’t get out of there soon enough. I knew there was a huge supra taking place at my house and wanted nothing but to go there and celebrate. After planning, most of us headed to my place. The entire entry room and living room had been taken up with a long supra table filled with men drinking wine (my favorite wine of my entire Georgian life, in fact) and feasting. **Side note: In the English language we have the verb ‘to feast’ but we rarely use it, it seems outdated and to carry an overly dramatic tone. I know I only use it when I intend to be funny. However, in the Georgian language they use their verb for feasting ‘keipi’ on a regular basis because simply eating at a supra is not sufficient. The Georgians do indeed feast. **

This is the wine at my house alone. I don't know how many liters it was in total, but that larger jug is a little bit bigger than a 5 gallon jug.

The feast

My host sister and I. 

After a good amount of time, we headed to Caitlin’s house since they were also having a supra there and celebrating her birthday. They had a karaoke machine at her house, which we didn’t know at the time, but we had heard the (extremely) loud singing all the way from my house. It was actually almost too much to handle while we were there… but there was cake to be eaten, an abundance of wine, and the machine even had ‘Happy Birthday’. We enjoyed some time there, made friendship toasts (see below), ate, and got dragged to the dance floor.

                                                                                                                                                              

Caitlin and Melissa on the dance floor.

 

Kviskheti's ladies

This is what a Georgian friendship toast looks like. You link arms, chug to the bottom, turn your glass over to prove you drank every drop, then kiss each other on the cheek three times to seal the deal. 

After Caitlin’s we attempted to meet up with a friend of ours who, although he didn’t live in Kvishkheti, his family had relatives there and had come to celebrate. On the way there we even saw another volunteer on her way home to her village after celebrating. Unfortunately, we never made it to our destination. But it was a thoroughly entertaining trek. Between the wine we had drunk and the slippery muddy roads (it had rained heavily the night before and sporadically during the day) we were kept attentive and laughing at one another.

When I got home it was probably about 9pm and there were still a few men at my house going strong. I hung for as long as I could (not long) and then called it an early night since I still had homework to do for the following day. When I woke up the next morning and went down to breakfast, my host father and his friends (who I guess crashed at our place) were already up, eating leftovers and drinking wine. It was 7:30am… I’m almost convinced they never stopped from the night before.

I cannot express to you how much I ate that day (primarily in cake form) but it was a lot. I think this was the day that one of my cluster mates Eric coined the title of his Peace Corps Georgia memoirs; “I thought I was full”. The truth is, in Georgia you can always eat more cake.