Happy New Year!

Akhalkalaki rings in the New Year with gusto. The market is jammed in the weeks before with everyone in town and from the surrounding villages stocking up on candy, fruit, drinks, decorations, fireworks, presents, produce and the obligatory whole piglet. Our central park was turned into a meat market, and you could hardly turn a corner without finding a box of live geese or a cow (in whole or in part) waiting to be served up as part of the New Year’s feast. Meanwhile, walking the streets was a nerve-shattering experience as the local youth made full use of the truckloads of cheap firecrackers being sold like chewing gum at every store counter and stall in town. Decorations popped up everywhere – a big New Year’s tree in front of the town’s Culture House was the focus, but lots of people had lights or other decorations up.

One of two New Year's trees in our house

Every woman in Akhalkalaki was busy cooking in the last days of December, a feat made more impressive by the lack of electricity for 4 of the 5 days leading up to the New Year, and every family lays out a kingly table for the guests. We had (among other things) a whole piglet, chicken, ham, Canadian bacon, cabbage rolls, stuffed grape leaves, half a dozen different salads, two kinds of cake, scads of fantastic (and beautiful) pastries, a wide range of cheeses, nuts, candies, and dried fruit, bottles and bottles of wine, champagne, vodka, champagne, and soda.

Our Family's New Year's Table (more was to come)

2011 is the Year of the Rabbit

On the 31^st, people tend to go to the church in the evening to light a candle, then go home to greet the New Year with their families. All day long the Russian, Armenian, and Georgian TV channels are showing their own Rockin’ New Year concerts and holiday movies with the same standing as It’s A Wonderful Life or a Charlie Brown Christmas. Shaen and I had been working on our renditions of "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," with me on guitar and he on drum and (English!) vocals. We gave a lot of concerts over this holiday season, and I think it went really well.

At midnight, there’s the champagne toast and then a general rush for the doors to witness the sometimes alarming and altogether dramatic spectacle of every single household in a city of 10,000 people simultaneously setting off a month’s accumulated fireworks, bottle rockets, screamers, fountains, smoke bombs, sparklers, M80s, and various other pyrotechnics. Not quite to the scale of a DC or Boston Fourth of July, but with a kind of immediacy that a display put on by trained professionals with a fire crew standing by just can’t match.

Then, an hour later, we did it all over again, this time on Moscow time.

Father Winter brings New Year's presents to kids just like Santa Claus on Christmas in America, and Shaen was really excited to find a card game and a miniature foosball table. (He had persuaded his grandmother to give him his present early, so we had already met the laser-blasting, missile-firing, walking, talking robot).

A few days later, Melissa coming back from Tbilisi was able to surprise him with a gift from her mother, which he wore for about 4 days straight (when his parents made him take it off for bed, he got up at 3 am and put it back on).

Lilit was likewise happy to show off her new outfit from the Kuhlman household:

The next day, January 1, the visiting began. Fortified by a hearty breakfast of grape-leaf dolma, we settled in to receive guests, and then set out on our own visits. The next four or five days were a food and visit-filled blur. It was a great chance to spend time with our friends and acquaintances here in town and celebrate with them. We managed to stumble through a few toasts in Armenian, and somehow survived the week without exploding a la Mr. Creosote.

It’s a really nice tradition, though by the end everyone is exhausted. It’s expensive, too; even people who really can’t afford to feel like they have to lay out a lavish table. People shake their heads over the amount of food that goes to waste, and more than one person said that they would prefer a one-day celebration with family and close friends. Still, we were really glad to be here to celebrate the New Year with new friends, and as usual words can’t even express how kind and hospitable everyone has been to us.

Another milestone: today marks 6 months since our swearing in – we’re officially 25% through with our service as Peace Corps volunteers!

Tomorrow we leave for a week-long trip to Armenia with one of Melissa’s teaching counterparts. We’re excited to see our neighbor to the south and we’ll be back with stories and pictures before school starts up again on the 20^th.

Happy New Year to all of you reading this, and we hope 2011 brings you all the best!