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.