Creamy Goodness!!

Yep..I had some Belgian chocolate for breakfast and it was goooooooooooooooooood!! Got a box from Lara and Nico yesterday (nom nom nom nom nom nom nommm!!) before we went to the Ossetian place, which was pretty good, but VERY noisy :( (Serg was NOT happy, but oh well, they heard some authentic and deafening Georgian singing and yelling...)

Oh ya, Serg was finally able to come out!! :)

And before the restaurant, we visited Lara's old driver, Nodar, who was overwhelmed by the unexpected visit but he and his wife, Nadia, were very welcoming and sweet. Nodar showed us a lot of interesting antics and items from Vietnam and Egypt and who knows where else, but what was most interesting and astounding to me personally was his panoramic photography.. He showed us some of his images and they were absolutely breathtaking, some of them spanning as much as 270 degrees and requiring about 60-something shots to piece together the masterpiece :) Nadia and Nodar then showed us some of the home-made alcohol and gave us a taste as well...throat burnnnnnnn!!

Anyway, another very eventful day! Lara & Nico's friends have arrived today so they're going to be doing stuff with them during the day, and then I guess we'll meet up towards the evening :)

What strikes me as a little painful is that I've been trying to contact Nino for the longest time.. Before L & N got here, I asked her if she knew whether there was a mountain bike rental spot here in Tbilisi, she replied almost immediately and said there was and she'd get back to me asap..and I haven't heard from her since. I've been texting her and sending her FB messages to see if she wants to meet up with Lara and me for a chat, and nothing so far. And then yesterday I was browsing through some of the stuff on FB and came across a new gorgeous shot of Nino, taken by Tika, and a long string of comments shared between the two and another friend of theirs, asking if the "plans for Saturday were still in force" and all... I completely understand that Nino and Tika are both exceptionally busy, and that, honestly, the relationship between me and them isn't as close as the one between them two..But still, after all my attempts to reach them both and arrange a meeting so we could sit and talk for a bit, their unresponsiveness stings a little....But oh well..I will definitely ease up on the messaging, but definitely not give it up...again, on the other hand, they might have very legitimate reasons for not getting in touch.. We'll see I guess...

In the meantime, it's Friday!! :P ♫

Aaah :)

So many things going on with Lara and Nico here! Tuesday we decided to go up to Shatberashvili and see Lara's old house..we wandered along Rustaveli for a bit, and by the time we returned from house-viewing, it was too late to up to Turtle Lake, which was actually our initial plan... So we went straight to New York Pizza and got our grub on there..it was deliciously scrumptious as usual, but those two tricky Belgian-slash-half-Filipino ended up paying for the meal, despite the fact that they were strictly forbidden beforehand to do any such thing..

So yesterday, we had dinner at Mom's and looked through the mounds of old photos and yearbooks, and had a really nice laugh once again thinking back to the "good old days" :)

Today, they've set out to Ananuri, and I hope they'll make it ok! I gave them instructions on how to get to Didube and then get a marshutka to Zhinvali, stop at Ananuri and walk 9 km to Zhinvali again on their way back, where they can hopefully get another marshutka back to Tbilisi.

Evening plans so far are to take them to the Chardin street, and then to the little Ossetian place where we went for my birthday last year..Love the khabidzgina there!! :P

And again, I hope the guys make it there and back ok!

10 Years Later!

Went to the airport after work yesterday with Mom in the insane heat! But it all paid off! It was soo nice to see Lara again and it brought back so many great memories! She's wonderful and hasn't changed much! Just grown up, like we all are :) Her boyfriend, Nicolas, is also a really great guy! We spent the entire time on our way back to the apartment chatting and reminiscing about the past, remembering everyone in our little "gang" and where they are at the moment in their lives...

The apartment's huge! Three bedrooms, and a very very nice spacious balcony! Lara and Nico's friends should be arriving on Friday and spending a couple days here before they head out to Batumi..

And of course, what's the first thing you do in Georgia when you've been away for so may years, or when it's the first time you're here? You go eat Georgian food! Which we dutifully did! They're both meat-eaters, which makes it the right place for them to be :) We had piles of the traditional stuff, including red wine, and they seemed to enjoy it immensely :)

However, in the midst of all the conversation, I totally forgot to call Serg and let him know where we were, so he could join us! Hopefully he'll be able to come with us today (thinking of going up to Lisi lake..)

Kyle and I got home pretty late again after walking L & N back to the apt, and got into a pretty nasty fight...He was upset with me wanting to stay longer and see them home (since they had no idea how to get there themselves, I thought it was a reasonable decision), due to the fact that I had to get up early in the morning.. I completely understand his concern and am very grateful for it, but at the time, our detour was only going to take a few minutes, which I was perfectly willing to sacrifice to make sure our friends got home safely. Kyle said that in my efforts to persuade him that it was fine, I apparently pushed him away, which, according to him, was "embarrassing". In all my honesty, I do not recall pushing him at all, but if he says it, then I must have done it inadvertently.

So I apologized on my part, but then went into a discussion of how his actions were a bit on the authoritarian side, and that while we were walking home he refused to walk beside me, which resulted in some idiot pulling up and asking me to get in his car..and that did not contribute to my self-esteem a whole lot.

Anyway, don't want to get into too many details.. But we both went to sleep on pretty bad terms... In the morning it was a bit better, and we even shared a kiss :) but I know that marriage isn't a jolly ride all the time, so we need to be patient with each other and accept each other's and our own faults...There's work to be done, but no matter how much we fight, there's always love..and that keeps us strong :)

World Cup Weekend

Soo another caffeine-infiltrated day ahead since we got back from watching the game with the guys and girls at around 3 am this morning! Dammit I hate Mondays! :(

Ian, brother Steve, D, Humf, Serg, his new girlfriend Sophie, and Scottish Dato came over yesterday for lunch/dinner (linner?). I cooked up a "storm" with my salad and pasta, which actually turned out to be pretty ok, since I pressed everyone for nothing but the trooth about my culinary skills...We watched "Zombieland" and "Black Dynamite" the former of which is probably one of the better zombie movies if not the best, and the latter never fails to throw me into fits of hysterical laughter :D and played with the baby kitty, of course.

After all the food was devoured and all the movies were watched, we made the decision to go watch the World Cup final at the Theological Academy garden near Chardin, since most, if not all, places required additional expenses. It was pretty fun, despite the fact that we watched the game on the wrong side of the big screen, which made us feel a little like Alice in Wonderland, where everything's backwards :)

Of course, as Octopus Paul had once again correctly predicted, Spain won after a horribly grueling and quite boring exchange of kicks. I obviously don't care at all for soccer (or "football" as them English call it!) but for old time's sake, I was rooting for Holland :D

After the game, the guys decided to pop by the Leselidze shaurma joint to get some grub..But the poor guy working there had a huge preceding order so he was sweating his ass off trying to get everything done.. It. Took. Ages.! By the time he was finished, I was ready to hop on the next taxi.

Oh! Also, Serg got an actual job! At this "Prime Time" magazine as a graphic designer! So today's his first day! Pretty awesome!

And last, but definitely not least, Lara's arriving today! She and her boyfriend missed their flight on Saturday because of some problems with checking in their bikes, but hopefully they'll be here today! Their flight should be arriving at 5:15 pm (quite a decent hour, I must say!) so Mom and I are probably going to the airport to meet them :)

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy

Soo I'm over here with my second cup of coffee in the last 10 minutes, hoping that the caffeine will keep me awake until at least 4pm.. Got home this morning at around after 3am from D's dinner party, where, despite of the always-wonderful veggie food, I didn't really eat much and ended up with a cup of yogurt in the wee hours on our bed watching Family Guy with Kyle until I finally fell asleep at 4 only to wake up 3 hours later...

It was great fun though! Met a whole bunch of new interesting people and, as it seems, made as many new friends :)

Kyle got drunk out of his wits though, and being his hilarious drunk self, wanted to stay and sleep on the couch.. It took all of mine and some of Humf's efforts to convince him to go home with me :)

Before the dinner party, Khatuna, Iana and I went to see the tailor lady who'd made my wedding dress..I feel very flattered that Khatu chose the exact same design since she liked it so much :) However, the tailor lady, Manana, charged her about 10 lari more than she did me (probably because Khatu, unlike me, told her straight up that it was a wedding dress).

Following the all-too-familiar measurement procedures (I actually felt a tinge of nostalgia while watching Khatuna getting measured for her dress), Khatu and I went to have a drink together and in the process discovered that we had a whoole lot more in common than we'd thought. For starters, we're both Libras :) and technically, the "breadwinners" in our families; both of our men spend most of their days at home, and we spend a lot of ours scheming how to make sure they're meeting new people and making new friends so they're not completely and entirely bored...so, hopefully, these two can hang with each other, and, along with Ian, form an "Unemployed Men's" club :)

By the way, as for employment, Kyle and I decided to start looking for a different jobs for him, so I've been spending some time browsing through the several Georgian job sites that I know..There are some interesting options, but nothing that pops out so far..will keep looking!

All in all, quite an eventful day indeed, which leads me to a very high probability of a third and fourth cups of coffee in the very nearest future :)

Thank God it's Friday! ♫

First

Ok, I am now hopping on the bandwagon of blogging... Soo many people have been doing this for ages, and I'm a total newbie, if you don't consider the fact that I used to keep diaries as a kid and maybe the fact that I enjoy reading over them so much now that I'm all "grown up" (or am I?) was the main reason that I started this up again....on a much more electronic scale though..

Wish me luck! :)