{"id":226,"date":"2011-11-11T07:19:40","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T07:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/?p=226"},"modified":"2026-03-19T11:12:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T11:12:01","slug":"synching-into-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/2011\/11\/11\/synching-into-georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Synching into Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I returned home from a yoga class Tuesday\nmorning around 11:45 to find Jim pacing the terrace outside our front\ndoor.  He wasn\u2019t locked out but was\nwaiting for Michael, whose 1999 Ford Explorer we are buying.  I was surprised to see Jim because when\nI had left the house at 9:15, he was expecting to meet Michael at 9:30 to finish\nthe business part of the deal\u2014a brief visit to a notary bureau and then a quick\ntrip to the office of automobile registration–and we would be the Ford\u2019s legal\nowners.  Former Soviet states are\nreputed to excel at bureaucratic efficiency, so Jim expected to finish and be\nat work in his office by noon.  But\nnotary bureaus are private enterprises; some post business hours beginning at\n10:00, some at 11:00, and apparently even those are subject to change without\nnotice.  In the end everything\nworked out (by 3:12 PM a big green Ford sat parked just inside our front gate) and\nthe actual registration process took about twenty minutes (compare that to your\nlast experience with any Department of Motor Vehicles in the States!), but\nsynching our Western expectations about time to Georgian realities is a\ncontinuing learning experience that requires some patience.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another example is the yoga class I took\nthat morning, which was a minor victory over more than my own tendency to allow\na body at rest to remain so. \nRelying on a class schedule I picked up a couple of weeks ago, I had\ntried twice before to take an exercise class at the D-Star Dance Studio, a\nfive-minute walk just down the hill from home.  Both times I was stymied by schedule changes and\nmisinformation, but finally I found success\u2014and an updated class schedule\u2014at the\n9:30 Tuesday class, taught in Russian. \nAfter the confusion and false starts around timing, would a little thing\nlike language keep me from exercising? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly Georgia is not unique in its ways of regarding time as a more flexible dimension than we Americans are accustomed to.  It seems to me concepts of time and its value must be a cultural hallmark, possibly deserving a whole sub-specialty in the field of anthropology.  Mexico is stereotyped as the land of ma\u00f1ana, <\/em>and the (pre-BlackBerry) United States used to be characterized as a nation of relentlessly driven 9-to-5ers.  I remember how charming and old-world the Italian custom of riposo <\/em>seemed when we first encountered it in the 1980s.  Shops and schools actually closed for two or three hours at midday to allow everyone to go home for a big family meal and a little rest.  Then they all went back to work from mid-afternoon until evening.  It was adorable until you understood that it meant four rush hours instead of two each day, and that all the shops closed at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon, re-opening only after 2:00 on Monday afternoon.  If you ran out of cigarettes on Sunday, you were out of luck, Carlito.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course the real difficulty lies not in Georgian\nconcepts and customs about time, but in our reactions to our new\nenvironment.  How do we cope?  Are we in conflict and opposition,\ntaking an adversarial attitude, or can we adapt, synching into Georgia?  What did I do, for example, on Monday morning\nwhen I arrived 40 minutes early for the next scheduled exercise class?  First I fumed a bit, but then I set out\nto accomplish one or two of the items on my to-do list, planning to return for\nthe 10:00 class.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the truism \u201ceverything takes an hour\u201d applies in the West, how do you imagine it plays in the developing world?  It is not possible to hurry through errands in Tbilisi, and it is futile even to try– but of course that\u2019s what I did.  I had to visit two little grocery shops to find the three items on my list and along the way I spied a rare and beautiful bunch of leeks at a vegetable stand, which I stopped to buy because one of the cardinal rules of life abroad is: if you see something you want, or might need at some point in the future, buy it because you may not see it again for a long time, if ever.  By then I was several blocks from the dance studio and the time was 9:55\u2014too late to get back in time for the 10:00 class.  I fumed again momentarily, but without much conviction, being far too happy about the leek and potato gratin that had appeared serendipitously on the horizon of dinner.  The morning was fine, sunny with a clear sky and warming up nicely, and I decided to finish my errands.  A half-hour later I was passing the entrance to a park that I\u2019ve been meaning to explore and suddenly realized the wisdom in the old clich\u00e9: there\u2019s no time like the Present.  I turned and went into the park, a typically Tbilisian alloy of once-lovely, neglected treasures, graffiti and trash.  I emerged sometime later, thinking that perhaps here, where clock-time is a rough guideline rather than a ruling construct, it\u2019s more useful just to align with the continual flow of one Present into the next and forget about the clock.  Of course, I am free to allow a morning to take whatever shape it will and count it as a gift.  I no longer work in the world of meetings and deadlines, measured in hours and minutes, days and weeks.  Here each day presents its own opportunities to choose between fuming about thwarted expectations or synching in to Georgia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Into the park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sculpture group<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sculptured map of Georgia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Murals<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Trash afloat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Cottage in the park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Out of the park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sculpture: boy on a slide<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I returned home from a yoga class Tuesday morning around 11:45 to find Jim pacing the terrace outside our front door.  He wasn\u2019t locked out but was waiting for Michael, whose 1999 Ford Explorer we are buying.  I was surprised to see Jim because when I had left the house at 9:15, he was expecting
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