Blogs from Eastern Georgia, Georgia, Asia - page 4

As the snow continues to recede more baby animals in our family’s flock have been born. On the weekend Aaron and I decided to go along with our younger host brother and father to herd the sheep and saw a very different Shilda than the snow covered land that has proceeded in the previous months. This weekend I truly appreciated the beauty of Shilda, with the endless vineyards and mountain backdrop it really is breathtaking. We started the day by walking with our host brother an hour toward where the flock would be located when we saw our father driving past. He proceeded to stop, pick us up, drive us all the way home, pick up his cigarettes and then drive us back to the herd. We were obviously confused, but as we are far too ... read more

The past three weeks in Shilda have been both challenging and enjoying. The temperatures have dropped and the snow has continued to fall at varying rates. Electricity has been intermittent and water has been non existent within the housing pipes. Water does come on for around an hour every second day...most of the time. This is enough time for us to fill up the many water bottles, pots, pans and buckets that the family have. We have had a total of three showers since returning as we were lucky enough to not be at school when the water decides to run, actually Mikaela is having one as I speak, this is an exciting day! (False alarm – the water ran for 10 minutes and then decided to stop)We get by having hot water boiled on the ... read more

What a week it has been.. We attended Supra after supra ...drank and ate...drank and ate. We toasted to the gods, children, women, family, and peace..Have put on a least 20Kg..And Aaron‘s kidney is surely crying. We slaughtered a pig which we ate for the rest of the week (breakfast, lunch, second lunch and dinner). Aaron had to take part in this along with the other males of the house hold mean while I sat in our house horrified at the pigs screams. Every part of the pig was eaten including the tongue and intestines which I did eat, they were not delicious! Our family hosted the New Years supra so there was a lot of food preparation happening in our household which I really enjoyed (see pictures below). Our week ended with New Years. Georgians ... read more

A question we seem to be asking ourselves a lot lately. Every day we think we know the plan or have a vague idea of what is in front of us and then bam, one of the family members will say its time to go and we are off herding sheep or going for a walk to the villiage ending in cha cha at some random persons (to us anyway) house. Today we departed our house thinking we were going to a church service, instead we visited the villiage of Gremi and its royal citadel and the Church of the Archangels, as well as a Khaketian museum. Our family insisted we have a tour guide to take us around the palace at their expence without our input. It was very interesting seeing how they use to ... read more

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 ... read more