me and the Liffey River in Dublin

me at Slaibh Liog, Europes highest cliffs, at 1,600 meters, in county Donegal.

me and Marina Proseckina, a former student, one of many Lithuanians in Dublin- Irish food in a pub in Sligo

My hometown

Today i wandered the streets of my hometown, the city of Traverse City, on the shore of the West Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan... and i am stuck with a dilemma.

What do you do when the people who are supposed to be your people, your Volk, suddenly no longer feel familiar to you in anyway, and feel just as foreign and weird as the strangers you saw on the streets of Dublin, Ireland just a couple days before...

What do you do when your hometown, the place you lived for 18 years, the place that raised you, the place where you roots, feels as unfamiliar as any random medium-sized city in Germany or France or Armenia or anywhere else...

Is it a sign i have been travelling too long? No seriously, i was wondering down Front Street today, and nothing seemed familiar- new buildings everywhere, gigantic cars, huge lanes on the asphalt streets, concrete sidewalks, the overheard snatches of conversation that seemed so trivial and superficial in a dialect of English whose rates of nasality are notorious among linguists... the Northern Cities Vowel Shift now has Traverse City firmly in its grasp. The foods seemed all like gift boxes and not real foods, the fashion seemed different, even the hills that once seemed to me so large and awe-inspiring and beautiful, even the azure expanse of the bay, with the turtle shaped island in the middle of it... all these things felt rather small and understated compared to the cliffs of Ireland, or the Caucasus mountains... people say my town has a "european feel" in its downtown. I have no idea what they mean...

and these aren't Americans- i expected to be somewhat shocked by americans behavior on arriving in chicago... these aren't just Michiganders, my home people, but these are NORTHERN michiganders, my home tribe, the people i always felt such a close affinity with when i met one at Michigan State University... And even THEY feel weird to me. What do i do now?

i tried to exchange 100 Euro today, and the lady at the bank just laughed and said there was no bank within hundreds of miles that would exchange Euros....

even my parents house seems totally different to me...

and yet... i appreciated the friendliness of people, and the very interesting conversations i was able to get in on the sloooooooooooow amtraaaaaaaaaaak train to Grand Rapids.

I was in some sort of existential crisis today about homelessness (6 weeks in the US is long enough to feel the full shock of readjusting, yet not long enough to feel like i should fully readjust)... until....

.... I went on a walk in my neighborhood. When i saw a painted turtle sunning itself on a floating birch log, surrounded by lilypads, and the deep earthy smell of a forested, sand-bottomed northern inland lake... when i heard its plunk as it dove into the water, when the mini black squirrels rushed infront of me up into the branches of a white pine, when the hammering of a pileated woodpecker resounded across the coves and stream bed.... then i felt home. My friend Casey wrote in his blog that he felt frustrated by america, until he came to tennessee and felt the true south, and then he felt home.... i guess for me, the painted turtle, mkinaak, sitting on a log of wiigwaas, in the small gaami, the wind sighing in the zhingwaakaag , is what it took to make me feel like home.

a lot more to blog about- had a two day whirlwind tour of Ireland, etc... but my jetlagged self must go to bed...

Leaving Lietuva

Today is my last day in Lithuania- on tap; stuffing clothes into my bag and seeing how much over Air Baltics 20kg weight limit i am, taking a box to the post office, taking all the kitchen implements back to the dorm, writing a couple letters, a beachside barbecue, enjoying the longest day ill have ever experienced in my life, and the shortest night.

It is al so surreal.... a place is home, and then suddenly, its not...

An orthodox youth group from K'ut'aisi I met in Kazbegi

Mts'kh'eta Georgia- the sister city to my hometown. I have a really cool story about this town- ask me about it. THis is looking down the valley of the Mt'k'vari River, from a gateway in the Jvari Church, built in the year 545!!!

Last night i had a bunch of friends over for a kind of good-bye party. Thank you so much- Aciu labai visiems kurie man padare mano laikas cia Lietuvoje tiesog nuostabu... As turiu tokia gera bendroumene cia, ir dabar man labai liudna mastyti apie isvaziuoti ir pradeti nauja epocha savo gyvenime... bet as niekada ne pamirssiu Lietuva. I got a beauiful card, and a dove! I have never held a dove before, and letting it go was very symbolic and cool. I have a Lithuanian hat and a T-shirt that reads "100% Lietuvis" :) We had a really cool worship time, and it ended by going to the beach at Karkle cemetery, and enjoying the beautiful sunset sky (which is around 11:45pm this time of year here in Lithuania)

I will miss spaghetti dinners with peope randomly strewn about our assemblage of furniture on the scratched hardwood floor at Janonio 16, the sunlight shining through the orange curtains, the cheerful mix of Lithuanian Russian and English which constantly surrounds me, the piles of shoes by the doorway....

sigh

Dieve- as zinau kad tu visad su mumis, su manim.... Tai buvo irgi man labai sunku isvaziuoti is Amerikos, pasilikti visus Amerikoje gyvenancius draugus, ir tavim pasitiketi kad tu man duotum gera ateiti, naujus draugus, naujus galimybes garbinti tave ir augti kaip krykscionis ir kaip vyras. Ir tu esi su manim ir busi su manim, ir niekada mane ne pasiliksi. Bet stiprink stiprink padrasink mano klaipedoj esancius brolius ir seserys. Stiprink baznycias cia klaipedoje, ir isgelbek daugiau lietuviu.

Reflections of Armenia (Hayastan): monasteries of Haghpat and Sanahin in Alaverdi, Armenia; Last bell celebrations in the main square in Vanadzor, Armenia; Me and Mt. Ararat in Yerevan, Armenia; Me on the Hanrepetutyan Hraparak (Republic Square) in downtown Yerevan.

Our taxi driver in Alaverdi, Armenia was Anastas Migoyan, the nephew of the man who invented the MIG fighter jet, and yes that is the last remaining original MIG in his backyard. He showed us pictures of his uncle with Castro, Stalin, Kennedy and Nixon. Not too many people have met with all those leaders! Alaverdi was a sad town, high unemployment, but beautiful monasteries from the 1100's that are on the World Heritage list

Caucasian mountain scenery in and around Kazbegi, near the Russian border. In three days of walking, I climbed over 10,000 veritcal feet, and felt it

Borjomi mineral water park. Water from Borjomi is famous throughout the former Soviet Union. Here Georgian school kids are pushing each other to get water from the well in the park newly reopened by Ukrainian president Yushchenko and Georgian president Saakashvili

Off the tourist path in tbilisi- Tbilisi is the city of balconies- it is their symbol

Typical scene- didube bus station where all the marshrutkas head out across Georgia, and where you can buy old car parts, live chickens, basically anything you can imagine

georgian military highway- notice the cows in the road on the bottom left

Me standing in Azerbaijan, the first country that ive walked into, without official clearing customs

ivy colored wall in old tbilisi- with Mother Georgia statue (truly monolithic) on mountaintop far above. the catherdral at right is the seat of the Georgian Orthodox Church
Davit Gareji monastery on the Azerbaijani border- up to 700 monks once lived in these caves before they were slaughtered by the turks

Asia's largest church- holds 30,000 people- was amazing!

Globalization- McDonalds and Coca-Cola on Rustavelis Moedani.

Old Tbilisi

the Mtkvari river in Tbilisi

8 things that would make it easy to live in the Caucasus
1-2. Hospitality- This is worth two points! Almost aggressive in its intensity- I know it sounds cliché- everyone comes back from a trip and says “the people were so hospitable”. For Caucasians it is a solemn responsibility, a joy, and I was continually floored by the incredibly depth of openness of the Caucasian people. I have been groomed here in Europe to be so suspicious of anyone who approaches me, but time after time, waiting for a catch, I found that there was no catch, that these strangers just genuinely wanted to make things easier for a foreigner

3. t’k’mali- cilantro-ey tomatillo-ey goodness in a bottle

4. wilderness- even though some of the usual third world problems with trash disposal were there, I was amazed at how intact and pristine the natural areas of the Caucasus were- hiking in the Kazbegi preserve or Borjomi national park were absolutely gorgeous- you’re never too far from a mountain in the Caucasus

5. openness- people are just open to each other in general, something I miss after the relative closedness of Lithuanians. The two ways I appreciated this the most was in the openness of people to strangers- making eye contact, touching, asking questions, being very interested, and the openness of people to talking about spiritual things. Faith is a public discussion topic in the Caucasus and it isn’t hard to get people talking about it at all- people seem to be very hungry about spiritual questions, especially young people

6. views- horizons are amazing- almost always are there mountains everywhere- the Caucasus has beautiful forests, look outs over canyons, river valleys, vast agricultural valleys, snow capped ridges, church studded skylines- you name it.

7. café culture- eating outside is a huge part of the culture- and long evenings when it is finally warm enough to be outside- seeing all the young people in your city dressed in black (even very poor people dress up very nice to go out in public in the caucasus)- sipping cold coffee drinks and just relaxing, chatting with the people around you.

8. the languages- amazing kartvelian and Caucasian languages, using alphabets of their own devising, clusters of glottalized consonants “clinging together like mussels, and just as hard to swallow”, copious amounts of concatenative morphology, polypersonal verbs, ergative past simple forms….. a linguists dream.



8 things that would make it hard to live in the Caucasus
1. Bargaining for prices all the time with taxi drivers- can’t there just be a fixed fare?
2. The heat- I am definitely a child of the north

3. Driving- Have you ever passed someone who was themself passing someone in the presence of oncoming traffic and livestock on a two lane road before? In Georgia- no big deal? Or ridden in a taxi with no ignition, no brakes? Hotwiring and shifting into neutral are easy Georgian solutions to those problems!

4. Sad stories- in a society that suffered an almost total collapse of its manufacturing sector, you hear story after story of chronic unemployment

5. Walking uphill- I’ve always lived in flat places, and walking up the steep hills carrying your groceries in the hot weather could get tiring

6. How many khinkali can someone eat in a month?

7. The ubiquitous presence of the Orthodox church- and suspicion toward all evangelicals and outsiders- I would have to develop a well studied and carefully thought through theology of orthodoxy- are orthodoxy and evangelicalism in someways compatible? What would jesus say about these questions? A complicated matter

8. work ethic- basically “relax”. Sounds nice at first maybe, but can make a simple task like boarding passengers onto an airplane into a complicated process involving contests of wills, shouting, inefficiencies, frustrations, just to give it a “Georgian” touch.

Hayastan

There are fewer countries i have had more conflicting experiences with than here in Armenia. A sad country, poor and rich, beautiful. I have met the most hospitable people i have yet met on earth, and some of the most conniving too. In Kazbegi Georgia last week we met a german woman who has motorcycled all over the third world meeting people, living with them, and she is a confirmed humanist, a believer that all people are good. She has never had trouble in all her time motorcycling around the world as a single woman. And i must tell you my experiences in the caucasus so far have mostly been similar. Yet today in Sevan, on the shores of Lake Sevan, it is a city used to tourists. People are used to being able to make a living by taking advantage of others, and we had to really fight to keep from being ripped off, and we weren't able to relax or trust at all. It reminds me of animals. Animals that have never had contact with humans before are usually pretty tame and friendly. When they start getting fed, they get aggressive and lazy. Maybe its the same way with people. We are generally friendly and hospitable, but once we learn we can get an easy meal out of taking advantage of someone, all the greed and laziness lurking in the human heart comes to the surface....

What do you guys think?

PS- if you ever want a city with an amazing cafe culture- where beautiful young people of all sorts hang out enjoying the pleasantly warm evenings all night long in a city of 3000 cafes- come to Yerevan, Armenia

PPS- i have a hundred storeis to tell about the caucasus later- if you have ever thought of coming here, please do!