LivingWithCaucasians

This is our street, looking toward the main road on the left, and looking up the hill on the right. Note the handy store, right across the street from our house, where you can buy phone cards, cheese, panta (there is no "f" in Kartuli), gum, juice, and shirts. Two doors up from us is a great bakery, strategically located in a basement apartment.

The front of our house. Our apartment is on the second floor, on the left, with the metal shutters, which open into our reception room.

Walk through the black iron gate and down the passageway into our courtyard. The grafitti says: "We love wine, women, and basketball."

Up the stairs, under the grapevines, is our front door. I feel like I am living in an Atget photograph. At least three other families use this courtyard as the entrance to their apartments and as an outdoor work space.

The steel door to our apartment has bolts, locks, and wired glass. Once inside, you are in the gallery that wraps two sides of the courtyard. The door in the middle of the hall is the door to the kitchen. All the rooms off the gallery have large windows onto the gallery, and are very light during the day.

All the windows open onto the courtyard, and the view into the courtyard is always interesting: the grapes are turning purple, the neighbors doing something fascinating (like drying huge piles of sheared wool, or washing all the carpets in their houses, or arguing loudly about something), and the light is so beautiful.

The kitchen has a gas stove, but since the gas is off (and nobodyknows when it will be on again) we cook with a gas tank perched on the stove. The armchair in the kitchen is a great place to sit and read. When the electricity is on, the voltage stabilizer for the refrigerator makes a buzzing sound. We make hot water either electrically or by gas and our bathroom is wonderful.

First, looking out of the kitchen toward the tv area, and second, looking out from my small office toward the tv zone. Above the couch is a heat-pump thing, which cools and heats. I have watched a little tv, but it is mostly uninteresting. We get NTV from Russia and the Rustavi channels from Georgia.

Our grand reception room. The fireplace has shampoori in it for making mtsvadi (that's shashlyk to the rest of us [for the American audience: skewers for grilling meat]), a delightful thought for November, when it will be cold, dark, and horrible. China suitable for entertaining government officals is right there in that cabinet.

A small selection of the art in the house.The painting in the center is actually a cunning bas relief. The last painting is, we believe, a portrait of the landlord's wife.

And, of course, every room has a magnificent light fixture.