Little Background on Saqartvelo

Jamie rocking out to a giant piano in a park in T'bilisi

Recap of the week spent in T'bilisi!! I met some awesome people and have had some amazing experiences. I got so lucky and my roommate Carly and I both got placed in the same region and district. Although there's really no info on the villages we got sent to, from Google Maps it looks like our villages are only about 10 miles apart and at the base of the mountains which is ammmaazing. There were about 60 volunteers in this group that got placed all over the country, from the Butomi area on the Black Sea, to villages in the mountains, and we got placed 10 miles away from eachother.. winning! You don't get your placements until a few days after you get here, which made packing a bit tedious considering the different climates here, but the only info they give you after that is how many family members you'll have, whether or not your bathroom/toilet is indoor or outdoors, and whether or not you have internet. Apparently I'm the first volunteer this village has had, I won't have internet, I'll have a host grandfather, mother, father, and 2 sisters ages 15 & 9 that I'll be staying with, and the bathroom is indoors but the toilet location is still up in the air. The cell phones they give us have flashlights on them for those lucky enough to have outdoor outhouses or turkish toilets. Carly got an outdoor toilet and bathroom so I expect we'll spend some weekends in the Turkish bathhouses in the city that's near us :)

Future teachers.. scary..

  We've definitely had some amazing times in the past week and I've made some amazing friends already. One of the best quotes of the week would go to Max and his discussion of how much of an honor it was for all of us to get AIDS tested together. We got to see eachother's urine after the drug test as well which I think bumped up our friendship levels ten fold. Carly and I made friends with the workers at a coffee shop and they haven't let us pay for an iced coffee since so that was pretty cool. We also turned down two separate petitions to go home with random men that would pull up on the side of the road next to us while walking home. Even after blowing them off, flipping the bird, and repeated saying "Ara, ara" (no, no) they didn't quite take the hint and proceeded to just drive along next to us for about 5 minutes trying to get us in the car.. didn't quite get the hint. Apparently the men here can be super forward which kind of sucks being a foreigner. Women are supposed to be virgins before marriage, but men are supposed to be pretty experienced (which makes no sense) so apparently they think foreign women are the way to go. I'm going to play the whole engaged card because apparently the host fam will try to set you up with everyone in the village.. should be interesting.

Max and I with Giorgi who offered us great dancing lessons
and free chacha shots

Shopping at Goodwill 

Fort Narikala at night

  Other things that I've learned since arriving here is that there is apparently there are a lot of rabid dogs running around and the only advice the TLG recruiters gave us was the not make eye contact and assume the fetal position.. excellent. There's about to be a big election here so it's been a cool time to be in T'bilisi. There's been peaceful protest with people just marching through the streets, some wearing surgical masks, or just posting up in front of government buildings. People are always out lining the streets and fences with campaign posters and it's just really been pretty cool to see. Max has decided to elect himself Mayor of his village so we'll see how that goes. We've been warned about once a day not to go into the occupied territories here and informed about the various conflicts, the US Consulate came in and talked to us about being "safe" travelers. Someone took a shit in a closet. You only toast beer to your enemies so we've made toasts to everything from cat abortions to the Soviet influence. The consider special needs children here to be those from Armenia and Azerbaijan. We've drank and danced with the locals, I've yet to try the homemade chacha (vodka) that's supposed to be amazing here but men will come up and offer it to the guys in the group freely. Within every family someone has a vineyard so I'm just holding out that my family is the one to have it in the backyard :)

Carly and Boca, our self nominated tour guide

 But we get to all go meet our host families today which will be both exciting but terrifying nonetheless. Living with people that you can't communicate with will pose quite the barrier at first but I'm hoping that it will all work out! Much love to all!