As the end of my Georgian experience approaches, I now find myself reminiscing on my time here. Georgia has been exciting & always full of surprises. September marked the beginning of my journey and was basically characterized as a time of discovery and adaptation. Most importantly, since I stepped foot on Georgian soil, I was immediately fascinated by its people, customs, food, landscapes, and language.
I arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia on September 1st as a volunteer teacher for Teach and Learn with Georgia (TLG). My first surprise was that my luggage was lost. My carry-on was filled with books, a pillow, my laptop and a sweater. Therefore, my first priority was to get a toothbrush & some extra clothes. Thankfully, the very next afternoon, one of my suitcases arrived. Luckily, the second one came a week later and I felt like myself all over again.
On day 2, we met with many other volunteers that had arrived the day before and some that morning. Since we were all staying in the same hotel, we had a chance to get to know each other and many of us made friends from day 1. That afternoon, we all went to the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and were greeted by the Minister of Education, Dimitri Shashkini.
That same night, almost 100 volunteers, including myself, traveled over 3 hours to Kutaisi, Georgia's second largest city. Here, a training center and a very, very demanding schedule was waiting for us. Every single day was packed Georgian language, methodology, inter cultural learning, and other random meetings. Very useful and informative, but also very draining.
To the joy of many and the disgrace of our TLG staff members, there was a bar conveniently situated across the street. Well as good foreigners, many of us made wonderful use of the bar, and many of them took it a little bit further, got wasted, and acted like morons. Aside from the bar incidents, training was a great time to get to know the rest of the volunteers.
The end of the week marked the time to say goodbye to our new friends and hello to our host families. Those that lived close to Kutaisi, including myself, were picked up by our host families. The rest, were taking in buses to their regions. This is when I first met my super awesome host family and English co-teacher. I was also introduced to my pretty little town of Terjola, where I was to live for the next four months.
A few days after I arrived in Terjola, I had my first day at school. The pretty, white, two story building, held about 500 students, from kindergarten to 12th grade. On that first day, I had the opportunity to meet my fellow teachers and students, which was actually quite exciting. I introduced myself in each of my classes (6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th grades) and every student introduced themselves to me, in English of course.
My fellow teachers were the ones that introduced me to the Georgian supra. This can be described as a party, dinner or feast, with lots of food, lots of wine, and an incredibly amount of toasts. A supra is lead by a tamada, or toastmaster. He or she is in charge of all the toasts and basically speaks for hours, one toast at a time of course. The dinner is followed by singing and dancing, and then more drinking.
The rest of the first month was characterized by random times with some of the other volunteers: random sightseeing in Kutaisi, day trips to Zestaponi and random beer and wine. September marked the beginning of what I hope are long friendships with several of my fellow volunteers.
September was also the start of numerous visits to McDonald's. This was one of the only places in Kutaisi that had food besides kachapuri and pizzas with mayonnaise. Most importantly, they have free wi-fi, McFlurries and french fries (or chips for the Brits). Basically, this was the perfect place when the need to "escape" Georgia arose.
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