Turkish baths

We had a new set of translators at the conference Friday morning. They couldn't hear the presenters, so they listened on the headset to the Russian version and shouted the resulting incoherent stew at me and my fellow English speaker.

All the yelling meant nobody else could hear, either, and the dirty looks from the other conference-goers was stressing me out, so after lunch (naturally) I escaped to the Turkish baths.

Aside from the faint rotten-egg smell, the Turkish bath is now my favorite activity in all of Tbilisi. I paid 10 lari (about $6) to have the adorable grandmother (pictured blurrily above) scrub me down with what felt like an entire bar of soap and an enormous loofah that removed several layers of skin.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends at the Ossetian restaurant and was so relaxed that I accidentally drank an entire jug of wine.

This has made Saturday morning a little slower than usual, but luckily I also picked up a bag of French-press coffee at the English-language bookstore, so I think things are going to work out.