Finally!

Hello, hello friends and family!
This blog has been a long, long time coming. I apologize for the delay in getting it up and working...my internet here in georgia has been spotty, at best. Anyways, here is a recap of my life. Seriously.

My flight from the States to Georgia was on October 1st...my birthday. My special day began with my dad and I sitting at the airport, begging the Delta and American Airlines crew to give me a flight out of boston. Five hours of pleading and re-working, I had a flight to JFK, and a whole new itinerary. Stressful for somone who loves (read: needs) a plan. My flight to JFK went smoothly and there I had some time to meet my now close friend Caroline, with whom I was to be traveling to Kiev, Ukraine. Turns out there were many other TLG friends on the plane, and we all met in Kiev after our 8 1/2 hour flight in which I befriended both the cute Russian girl next to me in order to understand the menu choices and the large man behind me who kept waking me up with his goings to the bathroom. Lovely.
Anyways, we arrived in the Ukraine for just a quick layover, and quickly got ready for our much smaller plane bound for Tbilisi, Georgia. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and claustrophobic sitting next to two large Georgian man, on the back of the plane, squished up against the widow eating what appeared to be a small piece of turkey  (but we really dont know). However, when we started flying over the Caucasus mountains, I forgot all my worries and just revelled in how stunningly beautiful this part of the world is. It really looked like it did in pictures.....enormous, majestic snow capped mountains laying the ground for green, rolling hills. It was BEAUTIFUL. suddenly, this random trip seemed less random and more determined.
We landed in Tbilisi aroud 5 30 pm, met our TLG leaders, other TLG members (TLG is the organization that runs my program...it stands for Teach and Learn with Georgia--google that!!!) and were whisked away. Where? We didn't know. No one decided to tell us anything, so imagine our suprise when we pulled up to none other than the Sheraton hotel. One week in a five star hotel with pool and hot tub? BYE. Couldn't have been a better birthday present. We were thrilled, I hopped in the pool, we ate dinner, and went to sleep early.
The following week was comprised of training....for roughly ten hours a day. Four hours of Georgian language lessons, four hours of Georgian cultural lessons, hours of teaching methodologies, and meetings with doctors, bank represetatives, and group leaders made a week fly by, yet despite the crazy schedules, I managed to make some wonderful friends. Everyone on this program is so different and interesting, and they come from all over the world. We all bonded so much in just five days, and though most of us are clustered in or around Tbilisi (the capital), it was hard to leave each other at the end of training.
The day we met our families was like a really twisted and anxiety-provoking game of red rover. The teachers stood on one side of the room, the expectant families on the other side. It was WEIRD, and felt like we were eyeing the "good" families, and they the "good" teachers. My name was called and I met my host mother, took my bags and got in a cab to start my new life here.
To make a very long story short, it didn't work out with my first host family. They were absolutely lovely (mother and son), but the living arrangments and set-up were not what I was expecting and not what had been arranged in my contract. After nights of not sleeping and feeling ill, I finally called a TLG team member, and he came to my home that night to take me away. He literally whisked me into a hotel (I was a sobbing, bubbling mess by this poit) and promised to find me a new host family within three days. Thus, I spent the next two days and nights in a lovely hotel with a room all to myself, and even met a few other teachers who were at the hotel, also waiting for a new host family. I made best friends with them (obviously), and we scampered around the city and shopped and became more and more acquainted with this amazing country. One afternoon (Thursday?) I got a call from Giga, the man I had talked to, saying that he would be by to get me at 6 o'clock that evening to bring me to my new host family. A brief freak out moment later, I raced home to pack my bags, and was brought by TLG to my new home, where I am now.

I now live in Saburtalo, which is a district in Tbilisi. There are various forms of transportation that I can take...and while I'm learning how to get around and where to go, what the names of the streets are, etc., I am definitely rising to meet this challenge. I'm speaking more and more georgian with the bus drivers and marshutka drivers (and obviously my family), and have taken getting very lost on the outskirts of tbilisi (ie last night) in stride. This is a big challenge for me...as many of you know, this is my first time out of the country, and moreoever, my first time traveling ALONE. It has been very, very difficult at times, and I have thought about coming home and giving up. But I think about why I came here, and how it is that we grow into more mature beings, more in touch with ourselves--and I realize that it is experiences like getting lost on a bus on the outskirts of tbilisi that we come to better know ourselves. This is hard, but it's also incredibly amazing and rewarding and I think will be transformative in ways I didn't think possible. "We grow only through discomfort," is a quote that I read the other day. It has proven to be true thus far.

My host family here in Saburtalo is wonderful; I have a mom (deda), a dad (mama), and a da (sister), named Mari. They are lovely--the parents are in their 30s, and Mari (who I call 'chemi kartopili' (my potato)) is nine. I love them, and their house is comfortable and I feel safe in it...which is all I needed. They give me my space when I need it but also encourage me to be with them and obviously want me to spend time with them, and they me. I feel so incredibly luck to have them.

Anyways, I need to go take a nap because I didn't get to bed until late last night. On the way home from meeting some friends for dinner, I got a call from one of my Georgian friends asking if I would please come to his birthday "supra," or a big, big party with lots of drinks and food. Last minute? Yes. But i wasn't passing up supra....for the Georgians, it seems, no plan, no problem!!!