Tbilisi trip, hours of nothingness.

You know, it's a good thing that I spent the past few years living in a small town in North Carolina. because had I not I don't think i would quite have been prepared for living in a 45 house village in Georgia the way that I am. There's just hours  upon hours of nothingness that I have to try and occupy. I read books, and I play computer games, and I go onto the internet as much as my crappy connection will allow.

two weekends ago I went to Tbilisi to hang out for the weekend, and I was able to see Batman with a whole bunch of other volunteers and that was fun. It was even in English! The sound system was pretty bad though, and no one could really tell what was being said by most of the characters. I had thought it was just my already poor hearing getting worse; that this was just my new reality. It was comforting to know though that I wasn't the only one having this problem though, so that made me feel good. I walked around the town a bit, even ate at a McDonalds. Here are some pictures from the trip, these are from old town. The first one is a panorama of the old town from a bridge, showing multiple churches. The second is of a statue in near the Jewish temple. if you look closely in his right hand, you'll see that he's holding a drinking horn, which is something that is typically filled with wine and chugged at supras.

Village life is slow, but I don't mind it yet. I tend to leave my room at about 10:00am, go downstairs, eat breakfast, and then just BS with my host mom for a bit. then I go upstairs and play on computer, read, and take a nap til about 4:00, when we have lunch, then I go up to my room, play computer, read, and take another nap until it's around 9-10, when we sit down to have dinner and drink some wine. Oh I also have a super cute kitten at our house named Gary, which I play with and try to feed him something other than bread (which is what they usually feed him here).

Gary the cat, sleeping on my bed. 

Gary and Bhuta, my very large dog. the dog is afraid of the cat, but not wolves or buses. 

The other day my host father took me out driving to see an old 12th century stone bridge called Dandelo bridge. It was in pretty good shape, and honestly I was just thankful to get out of the house and village, even if it were just for a short period of time. We took pictures, and watched the water flow, then got back in the car and came back home. it was the most excitement that I had in days.

Me on the bridge 

Teacher work days start up next week for school, and this Friday I'm going to Batumi to meet with some other volunteers about summer camp (I'm doing a village Olympics, which should be interesting to see if anyone shows up), and then I'm also having a meeting about being a part of coordinating a national spelling bee (in English). So at least I have some things to look forward to. I have no idea whatsoever as to what I am actually going to do during the teacher work days other than review the new books we are using this year, and drink coffee and pretend to understand what the other folks are talking about.

So yeah, this is my life now, with the occasional spattering of Cha-cha (moonshine) mixed in at random intervals.