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 **Side note: In the English language we have the verb ‘to feast’ but we rarely use it, it seems outdated and to carry an overly dramatic tone.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.