I can't believe how fast my service here has flown by....has it really been two years?! April 23rd marked my two year arrival here to Georgia. I've definitely grown as a person during my time here. Also I have gained some very useful skills (grant writing, teaching, NGO management, how to not pee on one's self in the squatty potty) and some not useful skills (flagging down a speeding marshutka, or how to eat khinkali without spilling the juice for instance).
I've also been blessed to meet some of the most dedicated, resourceful, selfless, adventurous human beings on the planet. My volunteer group of 29, the G13s, have been my family since the first time we meet in Philadelphia that April 21st day in 2013. We have taken up hobbies together, traveled together, consoled one another, experienced both the really awesome and really negative parts of Georgian culture, and have even fallen in love with one another. In fact we commemorated these last few months together by traveling to Mestia, another picturesque village hidden in the Georgian mountains.
It is a bittersweet time for sure. Don't get me wrong, I am totally excited about coming home, seeing my family, eating all the Mexican I can stomach and going to Austin for graduate school. But I am going to miss my two host families, my counterparts and various other folks in my community. I'm also going to miss the slow pace of life where one can simply be and watch a flock of sheep gather together in a neighboring field. Additionally, I am going to miss the times where my neighbors came over at all hours of the day to drink coffee with me and my family.
That being said I'm not quite done with my service yet. I've got a little less than two months before my COS date (Close of Service date). In fact, I have....50 days, 6 hours, 28 mins, and 55 secs to go. I'll finish my service on June 19 and then I will travel to Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland before returning home early July. Before the 19th however, I've got a dozen or so things to do between now and then, such as going to America for a week for my sister's wedding, doing my medical clearance, packing, giving stuff away, cleaning my room, finishing my paperwork for graduate school, finding an apartment to live in in Austin, and researching where to go during my travels....that's just a sample...there are a lot of other thing still left to do.
Well I'll leave you all with a few photos from Mestia, my latest Georgian journey.
I've also been blessed to meet some of the most dedicated, resourceful, selfless, adventurous human beings on the planet. My volunteer group of 29, the G13s, have been my family since the first time we meet in Philadelphia that April 21st day in 2013. We have taken up hobbies together, traveled together, consoled one another, experienced both the really awesome and really negative parts of Georgian culture, and have even fallen in love with one another. In fact we commemorated these last few months together by traveling to Mestia, another picturesque village hidden in the Georgian mountains.
It is a bittersweet time for sure. Don't get me wrong, I am totally excited about coming home, seeing my family, eating all the Mexican I can stomach and going to Austin for graduate school. But I am going to miss my two host families, my counterparts and various other folks in my community. I'm also going to miss the slow pace of life where one can simply be and watch a flock of sheep gather together in a neighboring field. Additionally, I am going to miss the times where my neighbors came over at all hours of the day to drink coffee with me and my family.
That being said I'm not quite done with my service yet. I've got a little less than two months before my COS date (Close of Service date). In fact, I have....50 days, 6 hours, 28 mins, and 55 secs to go. I'll finish my service on June 19 and then I will travel to Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland before returning home early July. Before the 19th however, I've got a dozen or so things to do between now and then, such as going to America for a week for my sister's wedding, doing my medical clearance, packing, giving stuff away, cleaning my room, finishing my paperwork for graduate school, finding an apartment to live in in Austin, and researching where to go during my travels....that's just a sample...there are a lot of other thing still left to do.
Well I'll leave you all with a few photos from Mestia, my latest Georgian journey.
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