Metropolitans, Monasteries, English, and a Supra

I can't follow my own advice, it seems:  another week has already flown by, and I find myself without blog entries.  Hopefully, this doesn't become too much of a norm.  Also, hopefully I will soon be up to date on posting these entries--right now, I've posted two online.  I tried to put a third up, but as one of my fellow school faculty members said today of the internet at school, "modis, midis" ("it comes, it goes").

As I mentioned would happen, on Tuesday Mama Davit took me to see the metropolitan.  What I didn't know is that we were getting up at 6:30 for a reason--our priest also serves as the priest to a relatively nearby women's monastery on Tuesday mornings (if not on other days as well) before going to teach a few classes at the seminary in Gremi.  The monastery is beautiful and relatively small--around eight monks (or nuns, as they are commonly called in the West) and novices in total.  Their choir is really, really good.  It was a truly gorgeous service.  After that, we went to the seminary at Gremi, which was an ancient town, but is now the the site of this small seminary, a small museum, an old church, and a small castle, which was the king of K'akheti's residence of old.  On a clear day, you can see about 80% of K'akheti from the top of this castle--a considerable area.

Anyway, I was able to meet the metropolitan, and together with a couple other priests and an English teacher from the nearby 1-12th grade school (where, I believe, Mama Davit also teaches) for translation, we had a nice chat in an outdoor clearing.  As some of the seminarians had a break in classes, the metropolitan took them, the few resident monks at the seminary, and me to the monastery of Nek'resi.  It's up in the mountains (way up in the mountains) and, if you can see 80% of K'akheti from Gremi, you must be able to see clear into Kartli from Nek'resi on a clear day.  It was great--they have a couple nice, small churches (i.e., a small main church and a tiny chapel), a small museum, and the room (I forget the technical name) where they house the excavated bones of righteous monks who lived there (this is a common practice in older Orthodox monasteries, and is a testament to the holy history of the monastery)--which I was able to venerate.  Sadly, because of the seminary schedule, we soon had to go back to the seminary so they could finish their classes.  Mama Davit said that if the metropolitan agrees, I can teach English at the seminary on Tuesdays.  While that would be great, I do have mixed thoughts about his complete confidence that they will be able to convince my school and the whole TLG program (i.e., the Georgian government) to amend my contract and allow this (as I do normally have three classes to teach on Wednesdays).

Anyway, after the seminary got out for the day, we went to the main church (the old one I mentioned above) before heading back to town.  It was beautiful.  The entire inside was frescoed centuries ago with saints, many of whom I knew, along with a few Georgian saints who were new to me, and with a Theotokos-with-child aspe and a Pantorcrator dome (yes, I realize these terms mean very little to most non-Orthodox;they are easy to look up if you are truly interested).  I had never before been in a church fully frescoed like that, and it was truly beautiful.

They changed the schedule at school to where this is no longer true, but on Wednesdays I didn't use to have any morning classes, so I was actually able to go to the parish's festal liturgy the following fay for their patron, Ts'minda Toma (St. Thomas the Apostle) and still go to my classes in the afternoon.  Thursday and Friday were fairly uneventful, but on Saturday, some of the other teachers (that is, from my school, not other TLG volunteers) and I went on an excursion (here's the standard word Georgians will use whenever you go anywhere--probably because of its closeness to the Georgian word of equivalent meaning--though probably slightly different usage--eksk'ursia) to a few different churches and monasteries in and near Mtskheta.  First we went to Jvari Monastery (The Monastery of the Holy Cross, "Jvari" meaning "Cross"), a small monastery overlooking the joining of the two rivers on the border of Mtskheta.  It has an octagonal base and a giant cross in the middle of the church.  In fact, this cross was erected by Ts'minda Nino and King Mirian, and the actual encompassing church was a later addition.  At the moment, it has only one monk and five novices, if my information is correct.  Next we went to Shiomghvime, a large monastery of about 25 monks.  It is also up in the mountains, and is nestled to where two or three sides of the monastery complex are surrounded by what appears to be a mesa rather than a mountain.  I say this only judging by its great similarity in appearance to the mesas surrounding Archangel Michael's Skete in New Mexico, where I spent a month earlier this year--but as I have not been to the top of the one at Shiomghvime, I could easily be wrong.  Unlike the few caves in the mesas near this skete in New Mexico, which were made of a sort of sandstone and thus relatively uninhabitable, the caves at Shiomghvime are, apparently, habitable, as in the past they have housed all of the monks of the monastery.  The church itself was large and beautiful.  It was fully frescoed, like Gremi, but was more newly done, and in a more Western style which I cannot say I was particularly enthralled with.  The iconostasis and icons in the altar, however, were in traditional Georgian style and very beautiful.  Before we left, a monk who spoke a little English took me to the well (currently in a state of restoration) in which Ts'minda Shio (One of the Assyrian Fathers) spent his last years and was buried.  An absolutely wonderful place.  After this, we went to Svet'itskhoveli and the small Ts'minda Nino's convent in Mtskheta (which I had already been to the previous Saturday on my excursion with Mama Davit and company) before going to a restaurant for a supra of food (and wine, of course) both brought and bought.  After the singing, dancing (Georgian dance is so awesome!), eating, and drinking all subsided (and our waitress came to tell us, I assume, that they were closing soon), we headed back home.

After Church on Sunday, Mama told me to come back to his house at 2:00 for something involving the metropolitan.  All I can say is, this "something" was the largest supra I've been to yet.  It was over fifty people, and took up two rooms in Mama Davit's house.  The room I was in had the metropolitan, a couple priests, the monks from the convent Mama Davit serves, the seminarians and monks from Gremi, and myself and three other laymen.  The other room was full of other laymen, mostly from right here in Ch'ik'aani.  On each table was literally a pile of plates and glasses from head to foot--to get to most of the food, you had to pick up a couple overlapping plates full of food which were placed, by necessity, directly on top of the former; my glass was buried under a plate, and in the first fifteen minutes or so after I arrived (so about the first half-hour after it started), they kept bringing out more plates, platters, and full pots of food--and so the piles got higher.  After about an hour, the metropolitan (and monastic entourage) had to leave, but that just meant the supra went from two rooms to one.  I'll just say this:  you know it's a supra when you get there at two and leave around eight, with no real break in the meal.

Well, that's been the week.  All I can say of interest about today is that they changed the schedule (so that I can teach in all the I-VI classes; before some were being taught at the same time), and that today is the first day I've actually been able to sit down and plan lessons with my co-teachers, which I think will be very helpful for especially the younger and older grades.  I-IV are all in their first year learning English (the government just this year expanded the curriculum to include English in every grade), so it's very easy to teach on-the-spot; letters and basic words aren't particularly hard.  Having a few basic games prepared for them with the co-teacher, however, should keep the larger and younger classes better contained in terms of attention and noise (I have a few classes at more than twenty students, and a few under ten, so there's real variance in this aspect).  Sixth grade is the one for which it will be especially helpful to have prepared:  though it's only their second year (at least, as I understand it), they're already in the third-year book, and reading, translating, and commenting on longer dialogues and short stories.  I'm mostly glad just to have this chance for better communication with my co-teachers.

Next weekend, I hope to go to Tbilisi to buy a few things, do a little banking (we get paid by the 30th of Every month), and hopefully attend Sunday morning services at Sameba (meaning "Trinity," this is what the Georgians generally call Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi, the giant one where the Patriarch serves, and which I mentioned having gone to in my first or second blog entry)--we'll see if this little excursion actually happens or not.  Hopefully, to avoid such a long blog entry next week, I will blog a little again before then.

In Christ,

Teopile/Theophilos Porter