Wow,

Just had an unexpectedly fabulous evening.

C and I took our friend Pam out to our favorite restaurant near City Hall in Tbilisi. We were coming from a Fulbright hob-nob session in Saburtalo. It had been fun, and we'd left pretty happy, looking forward to visiting an Armenian restaurant near the Isani Metro station that I was planning on writing about for GT this week.

Our bus was a long time coming. By the time we were in the neighborhood of Old Tbilisi, the further journey to Isani Metro seemed less appealing, so we opted for our (name as yet unknown!) khinkhali place up the hill from Tabisuplebis Moedani.

We were greeted by this very friendly man, Temo, who is invariably seating people at this restaurant. He waved us into one spacious room dotted with rectangular tables. We sat, checked out the menu, ordered some delicious kebabs, melty khbos shashapuli (?), badrijani nigvsit, pomidoris salati, and kartolpili pri (shemsvari).

A few minutes after we'd ordered, the room filled with music -- Georgian folk songs, sung by an expert choir. I looked around to see if anyone was seeing, and the source of the sound seemed to be a speaker mounted on the wall above a curtained window. I figured that the restaurant must have put on a CD of an old recording of a professional folk choir. Cool, I thought -- nice and atmospheric.

C, however, was pretty sure that beyond the curtained window there was a room of people singing. After a little while, it was clear that he was right -- the curtains stirred, and parted briefly, and I could see the besweatered torsos of presumably Georgian men at supra.

As the night went on, they kept singing. I thought about asking Nana, our waitress, who the "jgoopee" behind the curtain was, but then decided that she probably wouldn't know. C speculated, "Could it be Anchiskhati?"

The Anchiskhati choir kicks ass. They're a group of a dozen or so virtuoso vocalists, all of whom have marvelously warm hearts and lovely senses of humor. They are friends with my mother, who helped host them on a tour they did of the US, and who has sung with them in other contexts as well. This fall, when my mom was in Georgia, C and I accompanied her to a "thank you" supra that the choir and their friend, L, hosted It was a really good supra, with incredible music, food, expressions of friendship. C and I sat opposite Dato, who beamed his extroverted, sunny, and extraordinarily kind smile at us all night.

Anchiskhati has visited my house in Vermont, and played drums with my brother, Kei, who did Beatles jam sessions with some of their bass singers. C and I saw them in Bloomington when they toured the US with our friend, John Graham. We'd just been speaking of their director, Malhaz. This weekend I copy-edited an article about Anchiskhati's collaboration with a French composer, who iss making new compositions based on Georgian traditional folk and sacred music styles and techniques. I'd just added their new songbook to the Village Harmony online store.

So no, it couldn't be Anchiskhati, could it? That would be too much of a coincidence.

And then Dato stuck his head through the curtains, spotted us, and came over with his 1000-watt smile and warm bear hugs. We were invited to join their supra.

Weee! I still have a bit of a warm buzz going from the two (or so) glasses of wine I had, and so will maybe write about this in more detail tomorrow, but basically, it was a great evening.

Anchiskhati was hosting a French composer and a French chef, who were in Tbilisi to study Georgian music and food, respectively. There were two Georgian women, translating between Georgian and French. And there was music to down in.

We joined the table, nibbled on some khinkhali, and basically basked in the music and company until the supra wound down. It was nice. It was very nice.

And Malkhaz picked up our bill -- even though we'd eaten before we even sat down with them--
and I tottered home full of much better feeling than I had for a little while.

Dato made a toast to the effect of, "This was not a chance meeting -- this was not God's mistake." I certainly hope not. It pulled tight quite a few threads of the last several months, and I think I am going to approach Malhaz to see whether I can finagle an interview with him about his work.

Anyway,

Aba he!

Labels: Georgia

Wooosh.

I've been working on application essays since before Christmas, and I am finally, almost, very nearly finished. So far I've written and submitted essays for Columbia and The New School's MFA programs, for NYU's mouth-watering Cultural Reporting and Criticism journalism MA program, and for the dual MA in journalism and folklore at Indiana University (which required two separate applications). The only one left to finish is the application to Syracuse University's Arts Journalism program, but that isn't due until Feb 1.

Man, it's a good thing no one came to visit over Xmas break - I was a sad, stressed-out sack. But now it is a day and a half into 2007, and I'm DONE FOR NOW! and overdue for a little rest and respite. Tomorrow I'm going to Sighnaghi, where C and I will stay through Georgian Xmas (Jan 7) and a ways beyond that.

Jess, who is living at the Sighnaghi house right now, tells us that the water pipes (ingeneously routed outside the house, and not insulated) have frozen, so no running water for the downstairs half of the building -- which happens to be where C and I stay, and where the washing machine and warmer kitchen and bathroom are.

Oh, well. We'll be dirty, mostly, and our clothes will be dirty too. But at least my atrophying limbs will have a yard to work in (however frozen - I can still rake leaves and chop wood!). And I'll get to spend a solid week far from the unchallenging, warm, internetted confines of the apartment, which I've scarcely left since I dug into the aforementioned application essays.

A whole bunch of people are going to use our apartment while we're out of town. Loma, and his girlfriend Ash, have been vacationing in Turkey right how; Loma asked if he could use our place as a B&B for a week in exchange for some cash. I'm cool with it, as long as he doesn't eat any more beets in bed! We only have one fitted sheet - no more beet juice thereon, SVP! Jess' dad and sister are also in town, and they'll be heading into Tbilisi as we go to Sighnaghi. They've been in Sighnaghi, though, and are way overdue for a hot cozy shower and whatnot.

How to celebrate the start of vacation? C wants to go out to dinner; I want to empty the fridge. Who will win?

We rang in 2007 by going with our introvert instincts.

We bailed on attending Jake's Xmas-in-Tbilisi party. Chris is slightly under the weather, and besides, we don't know Jake all that well. And,we reasoned, we'd want to bail uncomfortably early anyway, so why haul ass across town just to drink champagne with strangers at midnight? Better to lounge on our own old balcony, split the Bagrationi bubbly two ways, and skip the introductions and apologies phase of the evening.

We did leave the house, though. I had been working, with ever-decreasing enthusiasm, on my application essays for Columbia. Once I was ready to abandon the endeavor for the evening, we headed out on an exploratory amble up the Mtkvari river over to "Europe Square." There, the masses were congregating with their fireworks. It was fun to wander through the crowd at first, but soon the constant too-proximate BANG! BANGBANGBANG! CRACK KSHHH! of new year's explosives—both underfoot and overhead—got on my nerves, and we left.

We walked up to Tavisuplebis Moedani (aka Freedom Square, nee Lenin Square), where there was an even bigger thronging throng of new year's celabrents, and an even more-constant rattle of random BANG!s and CRACK!KSHH!s. As the midnight hour approached, we headed back to our apartment to watch the Tavisuplebis Moedani festivities on TV from the less precussive environs of our apartment.

Chris, with his dashing good looks and curvy feet, was our first-footer for the year. He darted out the door at 11:55:30 PM and reentered at 12:00:30 bearing good tidings and Tabasco sauce, a wrist-watch, salt and a good pen. Then we went out on the balcony, where drank our bottle of champagne while watching the city fireworks display blossom over the roofs of Old Tbilisi.

Then we watched some more TV and went happily to bed.

Now it's January 1st. I'm finishing up my Columbia application, and may be able to send off my Indiana applications as well.

Happy New Year!