It's June and the end is approaching.

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 23^rd 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.

They were two days old here.

Here they are at almost three weeks.

Too cute. Pink noses, blue eyes and little brown mustaches.

May 26^th 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. 

These are the Lazika tanks. Made in Georgia.

Fly over!

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 3^rd place and one of my 6^th graders received a small trophy for scoring the most goals in the tournament. It was fun to support them. The next Wednesday, June 6^th, I went to the graduation party for the 12^th 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 11^th 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.

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 11^th and 12^th 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. 

Vardzia cave city from a distance

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.

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. 

Batumi fountains at sunset.

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 4^th 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.

It’s the last week of school and attendance has been at record low levels. I don’t have many students to start with but this has just been ridiculous. Here a some photos of my kids(and co-teacher). I tried to take candid shots but that didn’t work out so well. I have very few students, 35 in grades 1-6. So don't be surprised.

These are two of my 6th graders, the other 3 were MIA today.

Hello 5th grade! Again I'm missing about half of them but don't they look cute.

Welcome to 3rd grade. Only one was missing and I got my co-teacher in a picture for once.

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.