Pictures (And a Ton of Them)!

January 25:

More snow, as you can see.

Our snowman got covered pretty quickly.

January 28:

And yet more snow...

He kinda died.

January 31:

And at school.

February 10:

And yet again...

February 28:

My host sister had a blast doing a "fashion show" with my (very big even for me) coat, and wanted me to take pictures.  It was quite funny.

March 24:

Our new cow.  Very, very adorable.

Its older "brother" seems to like it.

And here's a blurry picture of him coming toward me.

Our garlic.

Violets.  (A very plain flower, in my taste, but Georgians love them for some reason; perhaps because they're the first flowers in spring?)

A couple hens sitting on a ton of eggs we put under them (so we can get some new chicks).

The mountains (from the house).

My first walk of the season; this is just outside Ch'ik'aani, more toward the mountains.  This and the next few pictures are of the northern mountains that border with Russia.

These next pictures are looking across the valley of eastern Georgia (to the west, in this picture), and back toward Ch'ik'aani and the southern mountains.

March 25:

More pictures of animals around the property.

March 28:

A nice spring day...

...so I took another walk, and got to see lots of butterflies and things...

...and the beautiful mountains...

...travelling along the road less travelled...

...which ended up taking me into somebody's field...

...and orchard.

And there were some of the biggest thorny, brambly bushes I have ever seen before on the sides of this path.

March 31:

I took another walk, and there were lots of different, beautifully flowering trees along the way.

I went a little farther than normal, and started up on the mountains.  You don't have to get very high before you can see a ton, in this flat region of Georgia.

Above the church (which you'll see soon) on this mountain are a couple buildings, with no roof whatsoever, and completely enclosed, with no door.  I have no idea what it's all about, but one of them had part of the wall cave in, so I could see what appears to be a cross in the middle of one (I went inside it, but there's no clue as to what it is; no writing or anything).  None of my family has any clue what they are, either.  War memorial of some sort?  But then why have it enclosed and inaccessible?  They're certainly not upkept.

There are tons of these little bugs around.  I have no idea what they are.  Any guesses?  (There are also a lot of much bigger, more exotic beetles and moths around in the evening, now that it's warmer.)

The inside of the small church on the hill, which I thought was quite peaceful and quaint.  It is the doing of one man in Zinobiani, as I later found out, who is now in Germany, working to get up the money to finish it as he would like.  It's a wonderful thing to do, dedicating your time and efforts into building a new church for the use of the people (Zinobiani as of now only has one small room in an abandoned old building with icons and stuff, which I'm sure is not consecrated as a church).  It's also left open, which is really awesome, in my opinion, as then anyone (like myself) can go in whenever they want to pray in peace.

As you can see, it's nothing fancy, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

St. Andrew (Andrea) the First-Called and First Apostle to the Georgian Lands, and St. Nino, Equal-to-the-Apostles, Enlightener of Georgia.  These, as is the case with many of the subsequent icons, are in good, traditional Georgian iconographic style.

 St. Barbara (Barbare).  This is a major saint in Georgia, but when I asked, assuming that it was the Great Martyr Barbara, I was told that this was probably a different saint, who was not a martyr (as far as my host mother knew; and she would be a good resource, as she taught Christian History and hagiographies for many years until it was banned as a school subject by the government), and somehow helped children and/or the ill (in having an orphanage and hospice, perhaps?  If only my Georgian was better...)  But it doesn't seem to be the same saint (she seems to have been a Georgian, I should note, and the Great Martyr Barbara wasn't), and her icons certainly don't have the general martyr's cross in her hand.

 Kings Vakht'ang Gorgasali and David (Davit) the Builder of Georgia, great revitalizers of the Orthodox Church in Georgia.

I tried to get a better angle for lighting.  Forgive my difficulties in this.

 The much-beloved icon of the Theotokos, Shen Khar Venakhi, or "Thou Art the Vineyard."  (There isn't much on the web I could find about this icon, but there's a little bit on this page; search "I would like to make" to find the two paragraphs about it quickly.)

Again, forgive the lighting and angle issues.

 An icon modeled after the Iberian icon of the Theotokos.  This is Byzantine style, not Georgian; Byzantine icons are also fairly common in Georgia.

 A somewhat stylistically unusual icon of the Theotokos.  Definately back in the Georgian tradition.

Another icon of St. Andrew.

An icon of the Image Made Without Hands (not to be confused with the image of St. Veronica).

 Another icon of the Theotokos.

 The center icon-stand.  The church must be dedicated to St. George the Great Martyr, a much-beloved saint in Georgia, and relative of St. Nino (though he never actually set foot on Georgian soil, as far as we know).

The church, as viewed from the outside.

A few families' vineyards (anywhere from 3 families to 8 or so, I would guess).

April 1:

And more pictures of life around the house.

Another walk.

You probably can't see them, but there were a bunch of tadpoles swarming around (there are tons of frogs and lizards out and about now that it's warmer).

April 9:

My icon corner now.

Top row:  Sts. George and John of Betania, whose graves I have pictured in "New Pictures! [And a Short Blurb on Mortality, Oddly Enough]" under January 2; St. John (Ioanne) Tornik'e; St. Andrew the First-Called; St. George the Great Martyr.

Second row:  Iberian icon of the Theotokos; Shen Khar Venakhi; the Holy Archangel Michael; St. Ketevan the Queen-Martyr of Georgia

Bottom:  Ascension

This is the plant they use in Georgia instead of palms (even though they have palms aplenty) for Palm Sunday (the name of the day in Georgian is named after this plant, not palms, of course).  It is green all year 'round, thus symbolizing everlasting life.  They put these behind their icons in their homes on Palm Sunday, and leave them all year, burning them in the tone (the traditional outdoor oven used only for cooking bread and a few other baked foods) each year when they put the new years' behind the icons, out of respect and to kind of "cleanse," in a sense, the tone and have the plant go only into the air and food (as opposed to burning it in the woodstove with the garbage and wood).

April 10:

Some flowers and trees around Ch'ik'aani.

This is a very beautiful plant, which, now that it is warmer, is just dripping with these flowers.

Unfortunately, a somewhat blurry picture.

On another walk.  Compare the greenness of the mountains here to the pictures on March 31--I remember the change; I took a walk one day, and it was all brown.  I went two days without a walk, and on the third--bam! they were bright green!

April 14:

And another.

April 17:

The first chicks of the season!  They're adorable!

And don't really mind if you just pick them up!

Well, that's it for now, except for a picture of an icon which I took on Bright Tuesday (the 17th of April), which I will show and discuss in a subsequent post.  I hope you've enjoyed the pictures!


In Christ,
Teopile/Theophilos Porter