Farmandia: a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship

Ironically enough, the reason I’m able to blog fairly often is because I basically never get to use the internet at home. While my family and their friends are busy using the internet on the family computer, I tend to sit at my internet-less computer and write blog entries on Word. But why can’t I get to the computer? Two words: Russian Farmville.

Russian Farmville (Farmandia) sadly has a huge presence in my home. Eka is, for lack of a better word, obsessed with it. She spends countless hours each day working on her cyber-farm. She tends to her garden, plants trees and fruits, and even has several factories that make things like pizza, perfume, and jam. (I hate that I know all this).

It’s actually ridiculous how much time Eka dedicates to her farm. She even plants flowers in such a way that they spell out words in Georgian when they’re in full bloom.

Eka plays so much (these are beginning to sound like “yo momma” jokes) that she even refers to the little red-headed gardener in the game as her husband. Sometimes I get confused which husband she’s referring to: her Farmville husband, or her real husband.

Once in a while she’ll call me over and ask where I would theoretically like to go in her farm. I usually prefer sitting by the lake eating fruit before heading into the geisha house for tea. (Though lately there have been many scary-looking geese in her pond, so I’ve strayed from this general area). Clearly, you can see that this game is constantly being played in my house when even I have somewhat of a theoretical routine on Eka’s farm.

Eka is not alone though. Half of Samtredia has a farm on Farmandia, and this half of Samtredia is always at my host family’s home tending to their farms.

I don’t mind not having internet, I just can’t stand that everyone and their mother (that’s not an idiom, that’s a literal statement) spends so much time on virtual vegetable planting. Like seriously, who knew cyber cotton plants would be such a sensation.

But the worst part about Farmville is that even though I hate it very much I think it’s actually somewhat educational. You read correctly. Nino, the fifth-grade teacher in my school learned all about the holiday of Halloween from Farmville. (They had some special pumpkin seeds and haunted houses available during the Halloween season). She stopped me in the hallway to ask me some questions about American Halloween traditions. There you have it; Farmville is an American cultural ambassador.

Then there’s Irakli, Eka’s twelve-year-old godson, who has actually learned the Russian names of all sorts of fruits and plants. He often requests that I sit by him when he plays and he tells me all about his farm in English. He always asks me to tell him the English words for all sorts of things on his farm, and because he loves Farmandia, he remembers all the new words I teach him.

Irakli even made up a song in English about Farmandia which occasionally gets stuck in my head.

It goes:

I have many factoriiiiiiies
My farm is very boo-tiful
I have a good farm! I have a good farm!

I have many cotton plaaaants
Tractors dig in the grouuund
I have a good farm! I have a good farm!

My godparent made my farm boo-tiful
So I say to her, Thanks! Thank you! Thaaaaanks myyyyyy godpareeeeent!

[Those last three words are sung opera style in a high octave]

The song is actually pretty cute when Irakli sings it, but all in all, I curse this damn cabbage-planting game.