What's the Difference?

What's it like to be the stranger, odd person out, the one not like the others? I've had to ask myself this a few times before in my life, but these days I'm asking it almost every day. I don't stand out here because of my skin color; after all, I'm a Caucasian living in the Caucasus. Instead, it's my blond hair that's a give-away that I'm not from here. From what I've seen, it seems like 90%-95% of Georgians have black--and I mean black--hair. On top of that, Georgian women love to wear their hair long. Pretty sure I only need one hand to count the number of other women I've seen here with hair as short as mine. I find it very hard to blend in when my crowning glory is telling everybody that I'm not from this neighborhood.

But seriously, the real differentiator between me and everybody around me is language. In various travels, I've been in places where I couldn't speak the local language, but I at least had some familiarity because the local language had commonalities with English or French. Here in Georgia, I am completely stymied by both the written and spoken language. The Georgian alphabet (33 letters) is beautiful to look at, but as yet indecipherable. It doesn't have any straight lines and looks a lot like a flock of sheep walking across a page. There are no capitals to help me find the proper nouns in a sentence or a paragraph, and none of their letters remotely resemble any of ours. Speaking the language also presents a challenge. The Georgians make sounds that we don't have in English, and even when I think I've mastered a word with one of those sounds, a Georgian friend will nod and give me that "isn't she cute" smile, like an adult listening to a toddler who's just learning to talk.

I'm still mystified by the buses, because the destinations all look like a secret code. Many of the foods in the grocery store are labeled in Georgian, Russian, German, Arabic, and other languages; I found one labeled in 8 languages, none of which was English. I'm limited to only saying hello (gamarjoba) to our apartment security guard because of my paltry Georgian vocabulary. Often I find myself completely detached from a lot of what is going on around me because I can't even pick up on a single tidbit.

This feeling of "otherness" has made me think a lot about what it's like for so many people who come to the U.S. with no ability to communicate. Even if you learn a few simple phrases, you're still completely at a loss when someone asks you a question or expects something more than "hello" to come out of your mouth. I couldn't fill out a form here to save my life, I can't read the text messages from my cell phone provider, and I will probably never really be able to read a Georgian book even if I do eventually master the letters of their alphabet.

On the other side of the same coin, what is it like for a Georgian who wants to leave Georgia? When you speak and read a language that is only spoken in a country the size of South Carolina, are your chances of success in the outside world so limited that you might not try? Like most Europeans, Georgians usually speak at least one other language (usually Russian or English), but they may or may not speak that second language very well or read it well enough to fill out the paperwork necessary to get a job in another country.

The saving grace for us is that a good number of Georgians speak English, many of them fluently. Even in the grocery stores, the clerks are likely to know enough English to answer our questions. Menus are usually in Georgian and English, some street names are in both languages, and our landlord speaks enough English to help us out with issues in our apartment.

As many immigrants and expatriates before me have proven, language is not an insurmountable obstacle in adapting to a new home. Fortunately, the Georgian people are very warm and welcoming. They want to teach us about their history, their food, and their wine, regardless of what language we speak. They are happy for us to be here helping their country move forward while they help us become just a little more Georgian each day.