Gamarjobat!
As I write this, I am now eclipsing the 24 hours awake mark from
when I woke up in Tbilisi to go to the airport, which was 1:45 AM local time.
Currently, I am cruising at 400mph 30,000 feet above sea level. I have slept as
much as three hours, sporadically, including a nice nap on a bench in the
Munich Airport (Flughafen Munchen for you Deutsch speakers), and through the
last half of Tommy Boy on the trans-Atlantic flight from Munich to Newark, NJ.
So it should prove to be an enjoyable blog post, what with my insomnia infused
rambling and all. Ha.
My last week in Georgia was definitely a great one. When I
last had updated everyone, I was heading to the site to look at the bones that
just came out of the ground and to escape the stifling Tbilisi heat, which was
hanging between 97-99 degrees for the last week. We showed up at night and had
some laughs around the table, playing some cards and drinking some ludi. I woke
up the next day, ready to start working on some of the bones that had come out,
so I went in to the lab to scan the bones and see where I wanted to start. It
took about thirty seconds for me to spot a small, conspicuous looking vertebra,
which I knew immediately to be human. It
was a great start to the morning and along with some other great finds (human) it turned into a great day.
And any great find does not go unrewarded. We were eating
dinner when our good friend from past years, Giorgi, showed up to visit
everyone, mainly his wife, and celebrate his birthday. We also learned at
dinner that we would be having a second dinner of mtswadi (skewered pork) and
wine to celebrate our great finds. We did indeed have a celebration, of
Giorgi’s birthday, of our finds, and of our great team. I stayed up long enough
to see the 20 liters of wine disappear and to sing many of our favorite
Georgian drinking songs, which are mostly not Georgian, but are just fun to
sing. I was the only American to make it to 11PM and stayed up late with dozens
of Georgians. It was so much fun. I am obviously not fluent in Georgian, but I
am getting better at understanding words and figuring out what everyone is
talking about. I still am lost most of the time, but Nika, Giorgi, and Teona
are all nice enough to translate for me. Maestro was our tamada for the night
and did an excellent job. Many a gaumarjos’ later, I was in bed and ready to
face the bakhmelia I was sure to have the following day. We looked at more
bones that day and I stopped at bone number 1000 for the year. It was an
awesome trip to cap off a relatively monotonous, although very productive,
year. We said our goodbyes to everyone at the site and headed back to Tbilisi
for the weekend. We spent more time at
the museum wrapping things up and looking at some more bones, as well as
looking at all of the rhino teeth and aging them. It seems we have maybe a
dozen rhinos at the very least, which is really cool to see. We had a few more
meals and received more wine from Sergio, which I hope is still in its bottle and
not all over my luggage.
It was another great year in Georgia, and I know I am going
to miss it. I got to explore new areas of the country and really take in the
breathtaking beauty of the country I am beginning to think of as my second
home. I have added another couple dozen words to my vocabulary, which include
left and right (martskena da mardjvena) and I understand (gavige). Hopefully I
will remember them and perhaps spend a little more time learning more words
before I go back next year. This is one of the first years where I am certain
that I will be going back next year, so I am a little less sad to leave than I
have been in years past.
Only a little while left on the plane, and I couldn’t be
more excited to be done with this August 14th, of which I will see probably
30 hours of. Ugh, and I’ll have been awake for most of it. Oh well, it’s the
journey not the destination, right? I’m not so sure.
Thanks for following the blog this year, and I will be sure
to post in the fall or winter if anything big comes up. I hope you enjoyed my
ranting and raving and rambling and run-on sentences as much as I have enjoyed
recapping my events.
Nakhvamdis until next year!
Reed
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