pre-trip commentary #6

This morning I totally remembered something that happened when we were in Georgia (in April 2005) that I had forgotten about. It was pretty funny:

So, we were in Kutaisi at Pastor Zaal's parents house. We had just done an outdoors "concert" and like a ton of the neighbor kids came and were all excited because there were Americans (us) there and everything. Anyway, I had met Pastor Zaal's niece, Lika. She was like 13 or something, but she totally knew English. So, I was asking her how to write stuff in Georgian and we bonded and all. Well, later I had to use the restroom. *NOTE: this was before I had ever encountered a "squatty".* So, she took me to the back of the house where there's this little outhouse sort of thing, but it was much cleaner than a real outhouse, and she was asking her dad (I'm pretty sure it was her dad) for the lantern or something to go out there (it was night and yes they had electricity in the house, just not in the bathroom area I guess). So, we got it and she opened the door and I gasped. I'm sure it's not exactly what I said, but I think I told her that I couldn't use that kind of toliet and explained that in America we don't really have those so I was unfamiliar with it and everything. But then she had to like tell her dad something because she had just asked him for the lantern because I needed to use the restroom, but now I was like "not needing" to use it. So, I was like "Just tell him that I just need to wash my hands." So she did and I washed my hands and my bladder was still full, but I didn't really care. It was so ridiculous. And even though she didn't say anything, I know she thought I was ridiculous too. You know, kind of like dorky-American-in-a-foreign-country-ridiculous.

I did conquer the "squatty" however, later in the trip. And sorry for all the scatological conversation...but it was like a huge deal to me when we were there. Huge deal meaning I was like freaking out.

21 days and counting. Oh geeze.