Two Years Down and Two Months To Go

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 Been Around...

I have been living with my host family for almost two weeks! Things are a little awkward…but what do you expect when you move into a new family and can only speak a few phrases to them. The first two days I completely let myself go and slept for most of the day…PST will wear you out like that. The next day I went on an excursion with 24 15-16 something year old girls to see some of the churches and lakes around the area. At one point I could see the mountains where the boarder of Russia lies. The trip was amazing; it was like being in summer camp again. The girls were braiding each other’s hair in the marsh while others were singing traditional Georgian songs in a round.

Our first stop was to Gremi Church, a 16^th century church. It is the Church of the Archangels in the little town of Gremi in the Kakheti region. It has a secret tunnel and everything. Very Game of Thrones like!

After our visit to Gremi, we went to go see Nekresi Monastery. Nekresi Monastery is a 6^th century monastery located on top of a steep mountain. This place has some interesting history behind it causing it to be the only Christian church where pigs can be sacrificed. Legend has it that during the Muslim Lezghins invasion, people sought the monastery for refuge. They covered the area with pigs’ blood and skin making it impure for the invaders to enter. Very interesting indeed and because of this piece of history, we were allowed to have grilled pork kabobs for dinner.  It was very picturesque and overlooked most of the countryside below it. We even saw the remains of an old pagan structure in the field below us.

Nekresi Monastery

Me at Nekresi Monastary

Well seeing all those churches worked up our appetite so we then had huge women’s supra with water fights, dodge ball and badminton in-between. We later closed the day’s activities by swimming in Illia’s lake.

Getting Ready for a our women's supra

Pagan Site below

Later That Week...
Then this past Saturday a few G13s and I took a trip to the beach to bring our vacation time into full swing.  The beach is quite a journey for me since is on the opposite side of the country…but I made it! It only took 6 different marshutkas, one metro, and a book and a half but I finally made it to the beach and back again in one weekend.   A lot of work to only be at the beach for nine hours but it was totally worth it. There were 11 of us that got together on the beach. Most of the time there we spent trying to figure out the best approach for entering the water…rock beaches and their rocky shores can be hard to navigate.

My weekend Journey to the Beach and Back again:   

Friday:

2:30pm Friday afternoon take 45min marshutka ride from Sagarejo to Tbilisi

3:30 Arrive in Tbilisi…take one metro to the Didube  Bustop in downtown Tbilisi

4:00 Meet Brenna at stop, procure a marshutka ride to Khashuri

 5:30ish Arrive in Khashuri, stay with Melissa for the night

Saturday:

5:30am Get up and board 6am Marshutka for Batumi

10am Arrive in Batumi …hang out at the beach and coffee shop

 7pm board marshutka and drive 3 hours to Kutaisi…Stay at Ann’s for the night

Sunday:

2:30pm Failed to catch a marshutka to take us to the marshutka stop in order to catch another marshutka  to take us to Tbilisi…projected arrival time to Tbilisi at this point, 8pm…last marsh to leave from Tbilisi to Sagarejo leaves at 7:30…screwed.  End up staying another night at Ann’s-

Monday-

12pm Catch the marshutka in Kutaisi a

4pm finally arrive in Tbilisi 

At this point, i  met Emily, the older Response volunteer that was finishing her service and had a few drinks together in order to celebrate her last night of service in Georgia. After drinks we took another marshutka back to our site. I had planned on going to my house and passing out from exhaustion but Emily’s family insisted that I have dinner with them before doing so. She had somehow overheard her director making plans to rent a marshutka and have all the girls in Emily’s organization take it to the airport and surprise her there. We had to pretend to the girls and her director  that we were unaware of said plans….This was much harder than we thought since the girls assumed I didn’t know the plan and kept on insisting that I go to bed…(by this point it was 10pm and they were planning on leaving at 12am). After an hour nap my sister woke me up and told me of the big surprise. We, along with eight other girls and Emily’s director, climbed into a marshutka in the dead of night and took the windy countryside roads out of Sagarejo and to Tbilisi. (Funny, I just left this city 4 hours previous). We “surprised” Emily at the airport and waited with her until her flight left at 3am. Then we piled back on the marshutka and drove the next hour back to Sagarejo.  

 4am crawl into bed…but can’t sleep…at 5am my Skype rings and friends in America want to talk…and so it goes

Like I’ve said, I’ve been around