Mr. Bean goes to Georgia!

So!
A little while ago I was on a walk with my friend Erin. We had just bought some food at the store when I mentioned to her that I was in desperate need of face lotion (No, I’m not that high maintenance. I live in a semi-arid place and it’s very dry here. Especially because of global warming! Eeek!). So we wondered into the nearest aptiaki in search of some moisturizing balm. We first approached the glass cabinet with moisturizer-like products to see if we could find some face lotion on our own. However, upon realizing that the cabinet was locked and all of markings on the products were written in Cyrillic I decided that the best way to procure face lotion was to ask the clerk at the medicine counter. In Georgian I queried,
“Face balm, do you have?”
To which I was met with a series of awkward glances between the two sales clerks. Erin stepped in with,
“Face cream. Do you have cream?”
At this point I started rubbing my hands over my face in circles in an attempt to mimic applying face cream. The clerk then seemed to understand and she walked over to the glass cabinet, promptly unlocked it, and showed me a blue box of what appeared to be Nivia lotion. She then said something to me in Russian and I asked her to please repeat herself in Georgian. (This sort of thing happens a lot to other volunteers in Georgia. Even if they speak perfect Georgian people will automatically reply to them in Russian. However, this rarely happens to me. Normally I’ll sit down in a restaurant with the other volunteers and the waiter will hand them all English menus and me a Georgian one.) She gave me a blank look—possibly because I continued to mime that I was applying lotion to my face—and then she turned to the other sales clerk and asked her to translate her Russian into Georgian for me. The other sales clerk did just that, but Erin and I with our stellar Georgian still couldn’t understand what she was saying.
At this point the two sales clerk begin to talk to one another:
“These girls are German. Do you know German?”
Seeing as neither knew German, they then began to ask the other customers in the store if they knew German and could translate. I then butted in with,
“No. We are American. We speak English.”
Then the sales clerk walked over to the phone and held up a her index finger making the universal signal for “wait a second.” Thirty-second later she took me over to the telephone and had me talk to a girl on the other end of the line to tell her what product I was searching for. I told the girl, who had impeccable English, what I wanted and handed the phone back to the clerk who then spoke a few short words in Russian to the girl on the phone. We then filed back to the cabinet and she handed me a yellow box. Then, she pointed to the corner of her eye with one hand and made a thumbs up gesture with her other hand in a way I could only assume she equated with fighting off wrinkles. Erin then informed me, rightfully, that at this point I really couldn’t leave the store without buying the cream. So I made a thumbs up sign of my own and we headed to the counter to pay.
I paid a reasonable-ish price for my wrinkle cream and decided to cut and run before I embarrassed myself further at the aptiaki. However, as I’m crazy, on my way out I thought I dropped some money on the floor. I then dropped down into the squat position and started to peek under the counter to see if I could find my phantom missing money. This wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been wearing pants that were two loose and mooning half the store. But, alas, I was. The lady behind the counter (bless her soul) saw me in my lunacy and decided to abandon her new customer in order to help me find my missing make-believe money. Needless to say, there was no money on the floor. I’m insane. Erin in all her wisdom was waiting for me outside the apothecary when I came out. She said I was hopeless and thought it best to bail when she saw my uncovered derrière on display. I don’t blame her. She also said that the whole experience played like an episode of Mr. Bean and that my life was like a page from “Mr. Bean goes to Georgia”.

There was really no point to this entry. But I decided to update anyway. I have a new analytics tracking system on my blog page and evidently I have a fan base! 10 hits yesterday! YES! I think two were from me, but that’s of no consequence. So, if you are a new visitor to this site you should consider hiring me for a fabulous job at the end of August this year. I’ve decided I have no real skills but fairly good grades in college. I also speak Georgian. YES!
Hire me!