Because.

Saturday, May 24^th, 8:00pm

At the hostel, I chat with a former TLGer who is back in Georgia for a visit after a couple years away. We share stories with each other and others hanging out at the hostel about the craziness that is Georgia. His host family, for example, was an extremely traditional family full of men who very well could have been connected to the mafia. They had a stock pile of questionable weapons and assured him that if anyone in Georgia gave him a problem, they would kill that person. And their parents. And their children. Sounds like a good place to live. Why not?

10:00pm

After a while we head out to indulge in the small but potent Tbilisi underground, comprised of disgruntled 20-somethings who know that their country is backwards but can’t escape it. We end up at Dive Bar…a popular hang-out for us foreigners and the locals who enjoy our company. I see a Ukrainian guy my age who I’ve met here before, while he was hosting a crazy group of travelers from Barcelona. He tells me they were traveling in a caravan, but couldn’t take it to India, so they just left the vehicle and all its papers with him. He also tells me that he and some other friends are going to the wine festival tomorrow, and then camping tomorrow night. I’m welcome to join. Sounds like fun…why not?

 

Sunday, May 25^th, 2:00pm

A TLG friend of mine and I meet up with the Ukrainian and his friends, and he shows us our weekend home. As you might guess, it isn’t a usual sight in a country where black is the most popular color of clothing. She also hasn’t been used in a couple of months, and they didn’t clean her out before they left…but hey, our chariot awaits! We hop on board and settle in on the bed in the back. Looks like this could be an adventure…so why not?

 

 

9:00pm

We camp out at a lake called Lisi Lake. By the end of the night I’m sitting around a fire with two British guys, another American, a Ukrainian, a Turkish guy, and an Iranian girl. As it gets darker, the scenery around us gets more beautiful. In front of us is the water, dark and still. Part of the city is framed by hills to our right, and we can see large buildings with hundreds of little golden lights lined up in rows stories high. To our left are more hills, standing tall and deep purple, never minding the quiet lightening lighting up the sky behind them. I can’t help but think to myself that this is what being young should be like. No…that’s not enough for me. This what I want my life to be like. Spontaneity, companionship, beauty….I mean really, why not?

My First Georgian Excursion

Friday, February 28^th

11:00am

Classes are all short today so that the teachers can go on an excursion to an old church in Tbilisi, where the body of a Georgian saint is being kept for the weekend. As teachers trickle into the teacher’s room after their last classes, we sit down to celebrate one teacher’s birthday with cake. And homemade wine. And some Russian drink that is definitely more alcoholic than wine. And a little prompting from our directorio (principle), who notices how slowly my wine is disappearing and asks, “Don’t you drink?!”

Not anything we would expect in a school back home. But I can certainly enjoy the differences. I think I’ll enjoy the excursion, too. At the very least it gives me a free marshutka ride to start off my three-day weekend out of the village. I'll hang out with friends in Tbilisi, then head to Bakuriani for a ski trip with other friends. Monday is a holiday, so I don't have to return to Zovreti until then.

5:00pm

We are running on Georgian time, aka late, but finally reach the old and respected Semeba Cathedral.  The walk from our marshutka to the church is heartbreaking. Every beggar in Tbilisi seems to have found a place to camp out.

When we get there, there are already hundreds of people crowding together on the cathedral steps. I ask my co, “What are those people doing?”

“They are in a queue.”

“To see the monk’s dead body?”

“Of course.”

Of course. What else would they be waiting so long for? Silly American me.

Before long, I give up on the monk viewing and leave early so as to not be late meeting up with friends. My co and his brother walk me to the metro, scan a card, and push me through before I can ask which train I’m supposed to take. Thankfully there are only two options.

10:00pm

I’m at a Georgian restaurant drinking and talking with quite an interesting group. There’s the Georgian university student who I just happened to meet at the airport during my connecting flight from Istanbul to Tbilisi. He was traveling home from a semester in Estonia. There are also a couple teachers from the same batch of Teach and Learners as myself: the Irishman who spent six months in China just to learn kung fu and the Scotsman who has already taught in Japan and Thailand. Then there is a friend of the Scotsman, who he met in Serbia, and who happens to be a fellow Arkansan and a Teach and Learn veteran. Quite possibly the only other person from my little state who has even done Teach and Learn with Georgia. And here we are meeting through a mutual friend who is from a completely different part of the world.  How does that even happen? I don’t know, but I love it. I enjoy the conversation. I enjoy the company. I enjoy being part of a group of young adventurers who care about the world and its happenings and its past and its future. And its present.

I really belong here. I thrive here. Not in any place, but here.

Teach and Learn Orientation, Spring 2014

As I write about my experiences here in Georgia, I must confess, I’ll be giving you a censored version. Yes, this is my story, but the other characters involved are real people who do not want their names or lives plastered all over the internet. At the same time, I’m not going to fabricate an experience which isn’t the one I’m having, and I’m not going to leave out many (if any) situations which I find integral to it. So those who read my blogs from afar will have to excuse my being vague at times; and those featured in it (should they even know English or someone who does), will have to excuse my honesty.

Orientation Training Week:

By just a couple days in, it feels like this my life. It feels like I know these 20 people, but not like I just met them. It feels like I’m subject to this schedule, but not like it’s something different. This just….is.

We are learning way too much Georgian in our language classes to remember, but I know that only those of us who make the effort to study consistently on our own will get past the basic tourist-guide-book phrases.

Our intercultural training and methodology lectures have some interesting info but can be very boring. It’s funny how sitting in a chair all day can drain you.

The hotel feeds us three times a day, and it’s all REAL food. Bread, cheese, and meat seem to make an appearance at every meal. Which is great, but does get monotonous. But oh well. We are told that there won’t be a huge variety of menu options in the villages either, so I suppose we might as well get used to it now.

We also explore Tbilisi in the evenings. We ride a tram up a mountain to a small amusement park. It’s covered in snow and abandoned for the winter, and in the dimming light it’s wonderfully eerie.

Another day, we explore a park. It’s modern and artistic, with the brick path coming up in swirling mounds every here and there. But at the back we find a very post-soviet feeling block of concrete. Like, seriously, it’s a huge concrete cube with many openings, including two huge circles on opposite sides, and slits on the floor through which we can see that the ground is far enough away to make for a deadly fall.

Another time I’m able to meet up with a skype friend I met online. Yes, he turned out to be a real 19-year-old Georgian university student, just like he was on skype. We walk a ways down the road and stop in front of a monument erected for those who died in the 1989 protests. His parents were there. They took part…saw the tanks, heard the chaos. It blows my mind to think about. The biggest protest I have been a part of was a counter protest when Westboro Baptist came to my uni. We stood across the road and sang happy songs at them.

On Valentine's Day, a bunch of us head to a bar/restaurant on the same block as the hotel for a traditional Georgian dance. When we get there, it’s almost empty, and although there are some young men with instruments, there is no dancing. We end up asking the waitress if someone can show us….and to our delight, a young man and young woman who work at the restaurant come dance for us. And then to our further delight, a guy dressed in a weird woman-suite (I have no other way to describe. Look for the video and you will see!) comes and joins the dance, and even dances with myself and another tlger. They give us a bottle of wine after 10 because we “won a game,” aka are the only people still there; and they light two heart-shaped lantern candle things. Already jolly from wine, all but the Irishman head to a club for some dancing. Its great fun, but we end up leaving when we’ve had enough of this local guy who seems to know English with the exception of the phrase “she doesn’t want to dance with you.”

The last note-worthy excursion is a trip to a local bar…the artsy bat where the stoners hang out. A VERY unique look at a VERY small part of Georgian society. I’m there with a few guy friends, and although I’m ready to go back at midnight so I can get up for class in the morning, they are in the mood to party all night. I can’t go into details for their sake, but I want to give you a taste of the real-life intercultural training we received that night by giving some quotes from people we met:

~

“I do NOT need a Georgian man. I know Georgian men. When I was seventeen, I was married to a Georgian man. He is in jail now. My father is a Georgian man. My brothers are Georgian men. I do NOT need a Georgain man.”

Here I will also note that in a culture where women are expected to be virgins until they are married, shooting for a one night stand may get you into an uncomfortable situation with a drunk girl who thinks she is your girlfriend.

~

“That was my mom calling me. She wanted to check on me.”

“At 2:30am? How old are you?”

“I’m 21. It’s just the way Georgian moms are. If I am with a friend of a friend of a friend, she will call HIM. And I am like, how the f*ck did you find me???”

~

”Weed grows wild here. You’ll find it everywhere. It’s really easy to get. But if you get caught, you can go to prison for 8 to 9 years.”

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”I am traveling from Turkey. I translate for Greenpeace. But I just wanted to go out for a while. There are protests there now because the government shut off the internet. They claim it was because the people were using it to watch porn!”
~

So yeah. That’s over  a week of TLG and Tbilisi smushed into one post . I hope the pieces I’ve given you are poignant enough for you to get a good taste!