Accidentally bought what looked like it was going to be cherry-flavored yogurt, but instead was cherry-flavored cottage cheese. Very interesting. (Grocery shopping in another alphabet is always an adventure! The first time I tried to buy milk here, I ended up giving up and walking away without getting anything, because there were about 40 options and none of them made sense to me.)
I went and bought bread from the bakery woman again (a little basement corner redolent with the scent of wood smoke, from a little round wood-burning stove) and again she cackled with delight at my attempts to ask for bread in Georgian. Then I think she tried to tell me I was beautiful (Lisa said people here give compliments all the time, and her students are always telling her how very, very beautiful and smart and wonderful she is), but I'm only guessing, because I don't know the word. Then I said "madloba" (thank you) and she was super impressed. Well, come on, that much I can manage...
People smoke indoors here, unabashedly.
Just getting to the other side of the street can be quite the
production, involving first finding then traversing a series of
pedestrian underpasses, because traffic is mad and there aren't any
traffic lights, so crossing the street itself is not really an option. These underpasses become basically small, underground shopping malls, lined with miniature stores selling clothes or food or electronics.
Oh, goodness, and these uneven streets of scattered stone, and the half-broken sidewalks, with women walking around on them in their super fancy clothes and little high heels. I don't know how they do it, and manage to stay both upright and not covered in dust.
There's a Georgian appetizer that involves wrapping one kind of cheese
(cottage-cheese-ish, with herbs) in another kind of cheese (very thin,
salty sheets of a mozzarella-like cheese). Cheese in cheese. Hee! Good fun.
The pigeons are unusually small and pretty. Maybe they're doves?
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