Let the Holiday's Begin

So I'm a little behind with my posts because the holiday season started a while ago but none the less I will share a few of my holiday experiences so far. So the Georgians don't celebrate Halloween, in fact they advertise against it but I love the holiday and wanted to celebrate but as I mentioned before I was in Kazbegi and Georgians don't like the holiday. Well, I only wanted to do one thing and that was carve a pumpkin. Before Halloween I couldn't find a pumpkin anywhere but a few days after I found one in a little shop as I was meandering down the street. I bought it, hid it in my bag, brought it home. It sat on my bedroom floor for nearly a month while ever once in a while I would look at it and want to carve it but I didn't know where to do it. My host family would never allow me to do it in the house, my hostess made that very clear when I carved a little jack o'lantern face into a persimmon. So, a couple days before Thanksgiving there was a Georgian holiday called St. George's Day. There was no school (i.e. no work) and my friend was visiting from Kazbegi so it seemed like a good time. So we took the pumpkin down into the park in front of my apartment building where there was a picnic bench. Trying to be a little more discrete about it, I decided to use my 4" pocket knife, that I had bought at the outdoor market a few days before, to carve the pumpkin. As I was cutting the top off of the pumpkin I notice that the knife wasn't locking open like it should have been. The pumpkin was very thick and tough to carve into so we had to use a lot of pressure. After we got the top off and pulled all the guts out I was trying to carve out an eye when the knife slipped shut on my finger. I'm pretty sure it only stopped when it hit the bone. I immediately grabbed my finger, held it up in the air and squeezed tight. It was a pretty clean cut and because I did this it didn't bleed much. So I stayed out there while my friend helped me finish carving the pumpkin. There where a few kids that stopped by to see what we were doing and thought it was very entertaining. When I went into the house to get my finger bandaged up, I told my hostess what we were doing. She told me, "I knew what you were doing and this happened because you were carving a pumpkin on St. George's Day." I knew that's exactly what she was going to say and thought it was pretty entertaining. She helped me bandage my finger and then I went back out so that we could find a candle to put into it.

Here it is:
 

 

 The next day I came home from school to this:

There was a fire in our stairwell on like the 5 floor. My hostess said that when she went to open the door the hallway was all black, filled with smoke and she couldn't see anything. By the time I came home it was mostly gone and the firemen were just cleaning up their equipment. I did have to wait about 20 minutes before I could go up one flight of stairs to my 2nd story apartment.

 

 

My host family was watching from the balcony.

The day after that was Thanksgiving and I celebrated with the missionaries at the senior couple's apartment.

A few of the lights they put around the city for the holidays. It's very pretty.

 

Freedom Square