Thursday, August 19, 2010

Telenovellas...Georgian Style!

In Georgia there seems to be a national obsession with telenovellas, the Spanish soap operas dubbed into Georgian. One station here plays them all the time...literally. And if a a telenovella is not on, the song "Lady in Red" is playing. (The guy who sings that song was in town on Sunday for a concert. I find it curious that I had no idea who sang that song until moving to a former Soviet country. When I met with the President he said he was actually arrested and jailed for listening to one song by this guy.) The female members of my family are all big watchers of these shows. Curiously enough, my family is not alone. It seems as the families of all the TLG participants are big watchers of these shows. Now by default we are watching them too. The other Americans and I often clarify what we think has happened for those who may have missed an episode. My friend Wes' family has satellite and as he has said, have like a billion stations, but the TV is only ever on channel 3 for the soaps.Fortunately, as they are soap operas, they are predictable and formulaic shows, so following along is not difficult. Add bonus: we can work on our Georgian.

The favorite of the female members of my family is one called something like "Aberienze del Fuerte." It features the main character of Juan Pablo, who last night at the end of the show driving a Jeep and the breaks stopped working; they had been cut by another character. Last night there was a funny moment when there was an audible gasp from my host cousin and aunt when one of the characters showed up as a nun. Lola, the cousin, explained to me that the character had disappeared with amnesia no less and for quite some time had not been seen. I said that such a story line seems to be present in every soap opera at some point. The aunt, when Lola translated, found that to be hilarious.

So tonight at 9 p.m. I am headed next door to see what happens to Juan Pablo and crew.

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