Orienteering at orientation

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We seem to spend a lot of time in Tbilisi running, walking, and generally trying to work out where the hell we are. The running is a direct consequence of the fact that the roads here are fucking insane. Literally the only way to cross them is to wait for a (rare) break in the traffic, grab the hand of the person standing next to you and run like the clappers. We are genuinely in constant fear for our lives every time we leave the hotel. Ok, I’m exaggerating. But now I completely understand why volunteers are told they’re not allowed to drive here. The poor buggers wouldn’t make it to the end of the first week.
Those of us who arrived on the Friday are pretty lucky ‘cos we get an extra day to explore before training starts. It turns out that neither Jane nor I slept at all on the first night and simply lay awake not speaking. Although for my part I genuinely thought she was asleep ‘cos she was silent as the grave. So I for one was feeling pretty shit on Friday morning. Jane appears to be some sort of bionic woman who can survive on fresh air and meditation alone. We grab some breakfast and decide to go for a little wander up the road. We have to be back to go for our medical exams at midday so we don’t stray too far from the hotel and manage to survive our first encounter with Georgian drivers. On the way back we decide to take a ‘short cut’ and I make the mistake of reminding Jane how to say hello in Georgian which she promptly tries out on the first Georgian guy she sees, who then proceeds to persistently speak to us in Georgian for the next five minutes until we give up trying to make him understand they we didn’t have a clue what he was saying and decided to go back the way we came.
We were split into three groups for our medicals and headed off on the mini bus (or Marshrutka). This was the first time we really got to see Tbilisi and, from what I saw out of the window of the bus, it really is a beautiful city. We all had blood taken and had to pee in pots but there was a lot of hanging around which gave us the opportunity to speak to yet more volunteers. There are so many different people here – different nationalities, ages, accents and motives for being here but I’ve yet to meet a fellow volunteer I don’t actually like (give it a week). We arrive back at the hotel and as we’re walking through the door something occurs to me and I turn to Jane and ask her, ‘When do we pay for the medical exam?’ to which she responds, ‘You didn’t pay?!’ Whoops! Turns out we were supposed to hand over our 72 Lari at the medical centre. Unfortunately I am neither wealthy, nor honest enough to own up to this so I keep my head down and so far no one’s mentioned it. After what they jokingly refer to as lunch (I’m saying this because it happens at 3pm, not because of the food) a bunch of us decide to head into the centre of Tbilisi for the first time. We’re all slightly miffed because we were warned that it would be bitterly cold here and consequently filled our luggage with thick scarves and thermal underwear, only to arrive to blazing sunshine, so the primary aim of our mission is to find one of the girls some sandals so she no longer has to walk around in snow boots or whatever footwear it is she brought with her. We ask Tamara the best way to get to ‘the shops’. She advises us to get a bus but we really want to walk so finally, as a compromise, we decide to get a cab there and walk back. After some nifty haggling on the part of Ara, who speaks Russian, we agree on four Lari to take us to town and off we go. We find shoes almost immediately in a shop beneath the underpass which runs under the square where we were dropped off and, almost as soon as we do, one of the other volunteers says we should head back because we only have about two hours to get back to the hotel before a meeting we’re supposed to attend at 7pm. I don’t really see the problem, partly because Tamara has told us it’s a 20 minute walk back to the hotel, and partly because, whilst I do think it’s rude to be late to a meeting that’s been arranged for our benefit, I also think the chances of them imparting any vital information to us when half the volunteers are still in transit to Georgia is slim to none. Still, we have a quick look around, take some photos and strike out towards the hotel. Now, I’ve been maintaining ever since that I’m convinced that at no point were we actually going in the wrong direction; we just went a really really long way round. In actual fact I’m pretty sure we were on the wrong side of the river. A couple of the volunteers panicked by the time it got to about 6.30pm and jumped in a cab. We stuck to it and walked into the hotel at 6.59pm feeling, I have to admit, a little bit smug. The whole thing’s actually quite funny looking back now given that the hotel really is only a twenty minute walk from town and the route is laughably simple. To this day I still don’t really know how we went so wrong. After dinner a few of us decided to head to a bar a short way up the road that Jane and I had passed on our little outing earlier that morning. Our experience there could probably best be described as uncomfortable. It was really just a little shack but when we’d walked past earlier they’d been playing music and it looked like fun. When we got there, there was nobody around and the place was in darkness. We wandered in and someone came out and turned some lights on for us. Ara once again took control and ordered us a couple of jugs of wine. We actually had a really nice time, despite the atmosphere. It was just impossible to tell if they were happy for our custom or were just about to go home and simply wished we’d just piss off. Anyway, we drank a few toasts Georgian stylee, told some jokes (I like to know what I can get away with when I meet new people – the dead ginger baby joke went down a treat I must say), and headed for home. I find I’ve drunk just enough to ease me off to sleep and get my first proper night’s rest in days.
The following day we have all to ourselves, save for a meeting we need to return for at 7pm so we decide to take advantage of it and head out once again into Tbilisi. We soon learn that it’s impossible to keep a large group of us together and our group accidently, and inexplicably, splits in half within seconds of us all getting out of the marshrutka. We have the vague aim of finding a big bazaar that is held in town but there’s no rush so we wander. As I said before, Tbilisi is a beautiful and intriguing city and we take photo after photo. We walk up to (man on horse) and take in the views over the city. There’s a garden around the back of the church and I wander to the end of it and find a little bakery where I buy my first Khachapuri (cheesy bread). It cost me around 50p and is roughly the size of my head. We then go to Sioni church which is truly breath-taking. One of the other volunteers is something of an amateur photographer and has me standing in all kinds of contrived poses while he snaps away. Although when I look at his pictures later he has taking an amazing shot of a little old Georgian woman lighting candles in the church, completely lost in her own thoughts. If you want to check out his pictures he posts a selection of them on his (much more professional) blog at carljwilliams.wordpress.com. We eventually find the bazaar but there’s not a whole lot there. It’s extensive but, without wanting to sound offensive, it’s mostly junk. Well, not junk exactly, it’s just like one massive car boot sale, without the cars. At the end of it there’s an art market and the quality and diversity of what’s on offer is actually quite impressive. I have to resist the urge to buy things. Normally if I see something I really want I find it hard not to just start handing over money for it but even I can see the impracticality of lugging a sculpture around Georgia for three months. We did, however, find these gorgeous little book stalls that hug the bank of the river. I didn’t see a single English book unfortunately but there are about 100 of them and they’re permanently attached to the wall. At the end of the day the vendors just lock all the books inside and leave them there ‘til the following day. We have a couple of beers in a bar in the old town and then decide it’s time to head back to the hotel. We bump into what remains of the other half of our group on the bus on the way back so at least we left and arrived back at the hotel together. We’re not sure at what point we’re supposed to pay on the bus so as we’re getting off we go to put some coins in the machine at the back of the bus but the Georgians just wave us off. Seems like I just don’t pay for things in Georgia then.
At the meeting that evening they give us our mobiles. This is about the best thing TLG does for us. We each get given a brand new (albeit old style) Nokia phone which we will return before we leave, but the best part is that, as long as we keep a negligible amount of money on them, it’s free for us to call any other volunteer. These will be our lifelines in the following weeks after we are all ripped apart and sent to the farthest flung corners of Georgia.
Opposite our hotel there’s an ‘entertainment centre’. From the pictures on the outside we ascertain that it’s something like a casino but that they may also have bowling etc and we think that this might be a fun way to pass the evening. Boy, were we wrong. We picked up a Scottish guy in the bar as we were leaving and we immediately bond over, not so much being British, as just not being American. Not that I haven’t loved all the people I’ve met, but it’s comforting to hear a familiar accent. We spend several minutes throwing insults at each other and are immediately friends. After making a death defying dash over the road we enter the ‘entertainment centre’ so find a grubby room lined with fruit machines with a tiny little bar in the corner. This is evidently not a fun way to spend an evening so we beat a hasty retreat. After being given our phones earlier I had gone into the restaurant next to our hotel to use the credit topping up machine (best way I can think of to describe it) in the entrance hallway. It was busy and loud with live music and I suggest to the others that it might be a good place to get a drink. So we head over there and, it turns out, I was right. We had a great evening, mostly because our new Scottish friend got molested by a young Georgian guy. By the end of the evening he had forced him into a slow dance while the rest of us were falling off our chairs laughing. I’ve never seen a Scotsman so scared (except when walking past the job centre of course). The strange thing though, is that homosexuality is a massive taboo here in Georgia and when I mentioned the incident to our intercultural teacher she said that it’s very strange for somebody to be openly gay in a public place. Then again, almost every time we describe one of our experiences to our Georgian teachers it appears to be completely atypical. Anyway, we drank, we danced like idiots and, all in all, a good time was had by all (with the possible exception of Ally.) It was also the first time I’ve experienced that Georgian hospitality we’ve been hearing so much about. Some girls came over to have their pictures taken with us, we were sent over cake by another table because we starting clapping and cheering when they sang happy birthday to one of their party and we were sent over bottles of fruit juice from another table, although I feel for the sake of full disclosure that I should mention the flip side of that coin. When we go out in town we get a lot of stares and not all of them are friendly. There seem to be two types of Georgian; those who are really friendly and happy to see you and those who look at you like they would quite like to kill you and eat your liver. Then again we’ve been told that, as a rule, Georgians don’t smile at strangers so maybe they’re just looks of curiosity…curiosity about what your liver might taste like that is.

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