I’ve been pretty busy for the past month. I don’t know what
happened but the time just flew by. I’ve been on a few adventures recently so I
hope you have time to read them.
On May 23rd I had puppies! Well I didn’t but my
Georgian dog did. I knew she was pregnant but wasn’t sure when to expect them
but along they came. I only noticed because she was making a lot more noise
than usual so I went to go check on her. I didn’t notice anything different at
first. She had dug a hole, which was weird because I had never seen her do that
before and then I noticed she kept staring down the small incline where she was
tied up. That’s when I noticed a wiggly, furry and brown puppy in the grass. It
had rolled down the hill even though she tried her hardest to dig a hole to
keep it from rolling away. Poor little guy. That night when I went to bed she
only had 3 puppies the next morning there were nine of them. 9! That’s an
insane amount of puppies. They are all so cute though. Unfortunately two of
them died within a day or two but that still left us with seven. They aren’t
quite three weeks old yet but my host mother felt compelled to give two of them
away already because our dog was getting so skinny (really she just needs to be
fed more). It happened while I wasn’t home. I got pretty upset at her for that
because they aren’t old enough to leave. She said it was fine because they were
able to eat bread soaked with milk… I’ll just leave it at that because it’s
really frustrating to talk about the lack of care for animals in Georgia. Here
are some cute photos though.
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| They were two days old here. |
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| Here they are at almost three weeks. |
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| Too cute. Pink noses, blue eyes and little brown mustaches. |
May 26th is Georgian Independence day. It is the
day when they left the Transcaucus Federation in 1918. They also have another
day in April that marks the day they left the Soviet Union. It’s kind of an
interesting concept to have two independence days but the one in May has more
fanfare. In honor of this day there was a big military parade in Kutaisi. Now
Kutaisi is not the Capital city but they just opened the new parliament
building there so that is why they got all the fun stuff. I went to Kutaisi and
met up with my “family” that lives there. We had a late lunch then headed out
to see the parade and the new parliament. It was a cool to see all the
different branches of the Georgian military and a variety of vehicles. The best
part were the flyovers at the end. They had planes that streamed red and white
smoke and to end it all they had a helicopter fly down the middle of the road
and drop confetti. That was awesome. It was a really fun day and I enjoyed
pretending to be a Georgian waving my flag around. I stuck around for the
concert and the fireworks and then I went back to my family’s house where I
spent the night.
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| These are the Lazika tanks. Made in Georgia. |
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| Fly over! |
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| This is the side of the new parliament building |
The next week was a fairly boring at school and as my host
mom put it there won’t be much learning going on in the final weeks. I did end
up skipping Friday to go to Lanchkhuti with some of my students to watch them
play soccer in an area tournament. They ended up in 3rd place and
one of my 6th graders received a small trophy for scoring the most
goals in the tournament. It was fun to support them. The next Wednesday, June 6th,
I went to the graduation party for the 12th graders from Kenneth’s
school. They start at school and their teachers talk to them for a bit and then
we all pile into vehicles and go to the party. It was the same kind of party
like a wedding except I knew a lot more of the people attending this time so I
didn’t feel as uncomfortable when they wanted me to dance. It was fun and
really enjoyable but we stayed out late. I’m glad I didn’t have school the next
day. Instead I spent the next day packing to head out to Tbilisi. The minister
of Science and Education invited all of the departing teachers to a ceremony
where we would receive our certificates of completion. My program, TLG,
provided the transport and hotel accommodations for the night. The ceremony was
on Friday. It was nice seeing people I hadn’t seen since training but also
bittersweet. It was the last time I would see most of those people and had to
say goodbye to old friends. After the ceremony Kenneth and I hung out with some
new friends and wandered around Tbilisi with them. We didn’t do too much but
eventually we left Tbilisi to head to Kashuri for the night.
The next day was a great adventure. We woke up early to meet
up with the 11th graders from Kenneth’s school to go on an excursion
(field trip) with them to Vardzia. Vardzia is another cave city/monastery in
Georgia. That was about all we knew about the trip so we hopped on the bus and
went along for the ride. First stop was the Borjomi Water Park. No not water
park with slides and things but rather a park where Borjomi mineral water is
found. It’s really pretty and they have rides and things for children. You can
even fill your own water bottle with Borjomi. The fountain we found was warm
Borjomi water and that was something else. It was definitely only for mineral
water enthusiasts. It was okay at first but after it sat in the bottle for a
bit it became really potent. We eventually poured it out and refilled with
normal water. We left there after a little while and made our way south. We
stopped at an old castle and old church before arriving in Akhaltsikhe (New
Castle). We stopped at a small café for lunch. This sounds pretty normal but
rather than sitting inside and ordering food, the food just started pouring out
of bags from the bus. I think each kid brings something and it just gets
shared. It was all really good food.
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| Waterfall in Borjomi park |
We paid the café a little money for use of the space and
then we got on the road again to finally arrive in Vardzia. There were a lot of
really beautiful things on the road there. Great nature. We finally arrived and
it really lived up to expectations. It was all carved out of the side of a
cliff in the 11th and 12th century. Monks still live
there. You hike up for a while on a road and then you start your hike across.
There was a surprising amount of tourist infrastructure: handrails, real steps,
lighting inside the caves and even a sign or two in English. There was a part
where you could walk up an around the caves and come out at another part where
you could meet the rest of your group if they were less adventurous. It was so
cool. I liked it a lot. I had been looking forward to going there and I think
it was even better with a bunch of students.
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| Vardzia cave city from a distance |
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| Ready for the close up! |
From Vardzia we stopped at another castle called Khevtvisi.
Another old castle with a good view. Next stop was Abastumani and the
observatory. Unfortunately we arrived at 7PM and it doesn’t get dark until
around 10PM. We still went inside and looked at the 40cm telescope and toured
the small museum. It was interesting but not as cool as it could have been.
This is when the real adventure began. We were to spend the night in Khulo a
small town in the mountains that was about 60km from where we were. However,
the road was terrible and it was dark and as we got closer the fog closed in.
It took 3.5 hours to arrive. Upon arrival we still had to find a place to
sleep. 23 people and no plan for a place to sleep, just hoping there was room
somewhere. We did find a place, ate a very late dinner and went to sleep after
a long exhausting day.
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| Cable car in Khulo, you can barley see the other station if you know where to look |
The next day we got up to leave Khulo but before doing that
we rode the cable car across the valley. The cable was 1.2km long and it took
about 8 minutes to arrive on the other side. It was another nice view, we
stayed as long as the car was waiting and then went straight back. We took a
bit of a detour down the way to go see some things. We saw a bridge that they
call Tamar’s bridge. It’s an old stone bridge and Tamar was a queen of Georgia.
I didn’t get the story behind it but it was a pretty, old bridge. We drove past
a memorial to avalanche victims in 1989. It wiped out a small village (17
people), most of them being from the same family. It made me wonder why other
people would continue to live near there is they knew that could happen. After
that we went to the village where our bus driver grew up. We had some of our
own food but the family also cooked up some delicious things. One of them was a
dish call borano. It is mashed potatoes, cheese and butter all cooked together
in one delicious bowl of amazingness. It is a specialty from that region. After
many thanks we left the house and made our way to Batumi. The road from Khulo
to Batumi is 1000 times better than the road from Akhaltsikhe to Khulo so it
only took just over an hour to get to Batumi. We were let off the bus and the
kids were let loose and told to come back at 9PM. It was nice to wander around
Batumi a bit but I had seen most of it before and fairly recently. The kids
were late arriving back. We watched the fountain show and then went to a
khinkali restaurant for dinner. Half the kids didn’t want to go (because that
meant going home soon) but the other half was hungry. So we ate and then went
home. I got into my house around 1:30AM. I had some things to do so I didn’t
get to sleep until almost 3 but I still woke up and went to school the next
day.
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| Batumi fountains at sunset. |
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| Delicious Khinkali(Georgian dumpling) |
I was tired but I made it through the day and I made it
through our final English club. There were only two students but we made them
write some things down in English and then we sealed it up and told them not to
open it for 5 years. We’ll see if they remember but the idea was that they
would have a sample of their English now and in the future they would be able
to look at it and laugh.
I got another package today from home. I had to go pick it
up and I knew I had to be back in the village by 12 for the 4th
grade send-off. I didn’t make it back in time. I rushed around to get
everything done but you can’t rush transit. I arrived just in time to see the
last 2 minutes and everyone crying. I got flowers and that’s about it. I went
home to get some rest. It had been a long hot day.
This Friday is the last day of school. On Saturday I’m going
to Turkey for a week. The plan is to see Trabzon (again), Ankara and
Cappadocia. I’m excited for this first half of my Turkey adventure. When
Kenneth and I get back from that we are going with his family to the Svaneti
region (upper caucus mountains). I imagine we’ll be going a few more places too
before leaving Georgia but those haven’t been planned just yet. Stay tuned for more fun adventures.
