December 14

This morning, my mom went to a Georgian bathhouse – Tbilisi means “warm water” -- she says “Spent much of the night trying to get home to take care of my mom, who’s broken her hip. In the morning, went to the baths – they are about 1500 years old, and subterranean. You take a sulfuric shower, soak in a sulfuric tub, lay down on a granite slab, and then have a big, middle-aged woman in her undies splash more buckets of warm sulfuric water on you while she loofas, scrubs, soaps, and pummels you. It is more like surgical prep and meat tenderizing than a North American massage.”

Then we drove from Tbilisi (capital of Georgia) to Yerevan (capital of Armenia). We had a very bad driver who was very addicted to cigarettes (so the car stank), who kept trying to pass cars in the other lane even when he couldn’t see, and then we’d all yell at him. There was one highlight – we stopped at a small family restaurant in the mountains, and had a feast of Armenian cuisine: river trout, beef kebabs, lavash (a spongy bread), and lots of roasted veggies. We saw lots of factories that closed after the Soviet Union collapsed, and lots of incomplete construction that was stopped because they ran out of money.

In Yerevan, we walked to the Republican Square (formerly Lenin Square), and saw the government buildings that were beautifully lit up, and went on a fruitless quest for an ATM that would accept our credit cards.

December 13

Hung out with my mom in the a.m., and I spent the early afternoon reading and watching “House” on my IPod while my Mom had meetings. Then the son of the hotel owner took us on a walking tour of Tbilisi. First we went past traditional sulfur baths, then we went up a long hill to a castle with a church, where there were lots of ruins that I climbed around on.

December 12, 2008

This morning we had to get up at 4 a.m. to take a flight to Kiev (and I’d had a big stomachache during the night and hadn’t slept very well). When we arrived in Kiev, we had 3 hours, so my crazy mother decided that we should go into Kiev. We found a driver who would take us past all the main attractions – so we got to see the beautiful big old churches, and the old buildings from the Communist era, and from before the Communist era – they were a lot more beautiful. At the airport, we ate traditional Ukrainian perogie and borscht. We then flew to Tbilisi in the country (not the State) of Georgia.

December 11

First, something to report about last night. There was a fire at a building across the street. But that’s not exactly what it looked like. There was a big fire, and many multicolored explosions. Then the police came with sirens and light, and we thought there was some political trouble. My mom hid behind the curtains and peeked out – I thought she was overreacting a little bit. She went downstairs to see what was happening, and it was just a house fire. I’m glad to live in a place where you can assume that it’s a house fire, and not shootings.

Today we rented a car, and drove to the Dead Sea. On the way there, we drove through the desert, and we stopped and I got to take a ride on a camel. It was like riding a big, shaky horse.

The Dead Sea was really cool. Because of its high salt content, it lets you float really high without swimming at all. It also forms salt all over you and your clothes. There was salt in my ears, on my shoulders, on my nose, I had a beard of salt, my upper chest was salty, and my hair was crusty with it! In fact, there was so much salt in my hair, that when I shook my head, it looked like it was snowing. And if you were unlucky enough to get any of the salt water in your eyes, you couldn’t open your eyes until more than five minutes had passed. But it was really cool to bob up and down with no effort. Also, there was abundant, very gushy mud that they used in a spa down the road. Most people gave themselves mud treatments, and you could see them sitting around with mud all over them. But, even at the beach, and even in the water, the Muslim women were fully clothed with head shawls.

Where we went for dinner, some people were smoking hookahs. It’s actually pretty nice smelling (unlike cigarettes), sort of creamy, but still not the best smell (pipes still win in the smoking smelling contest).