khevsureti

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OK wow what a weekend!

so this weekend we went khevsureti, a region in northern georgia near the chechen border. since this isnt the official blog i can write that we went to the border here or else teh school would flip out. i didnt feel the least bit scared and it was not dangerous or anything. I am not gonna write about the history of the khevsureti because u can read it here on wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khevsureti
of course the journey was just as fun as the destination. it was a 2 day trip and they told us to pack warmly and be ready to hike a lot.
so we get to the meeting place at 7am like tehy told us. so we are sitting in the bus waiting for everyone to come cuz obviously no one is on time except the foreigners. and then the daughter of the head honcho (whom we had met on our tour to kazbegi) comes onto the bus and starts speaking in georgian to the couple in front of us and tells them to translate in russian to me, that her dad wants us on his bus with us. we werent sure why but were happy to oblige because his bus is nicer and we already knew the guy from our last trip. of course we only left around 7:30 but it was worth considering we were put on the highly entertaining bus. let me break down our bus
-2 party gals (think middle age wine drinking women, party girls)
-our driver -david
-maka, the driver's daughter
-couple that would not stop making out, and were displaying way too much public affection, even by american standards and their friend( 3rd wheel) but luckily she made friends with the 2 party girls
(mind u the couple werent young teenagers etc, they are like 30!)
-morgan and i
-a man who saved my life
-2 of the guides
-an old man who is exactly like John Locke from LOST-mountain man, knows everything about hiking, etc, missing a couple of teeth, jack of all trades


OK so theses were gonna my friends for teh next 2 days and boy did we become friends pretty quickly. we made a our first stop like 20 minutes after leaving to buy some drinks for the road some food etc. so 2 minutes later 'john locke' pulls out his flask and starts offering it to everyone. from that moment i knew it was going to be an entertaining trip. (i will give the PG version since mama and papa are reading this 😉
so on the bus ride the 2 "party gals" were dancing singing drinking etc. and here i thought they were on teh bus with all the ppl that knew each other. nope none of tehm new each other. LOL i guess thats teh georgian way you are jsut friendly with everyone form the get go.

the road to khevsureti was AWFUL. the roads arent paved and it is so bouncy. honestly i think i got a work out from just sitting on the bus holding on so i dont fly out of my seat. there was also that always present fear that the bus well fall off the road and down the mountain and we would fall to our deaths.
anyhoo so we made it to shatili and camped there that night. sorry i could for hours about the night and camping adventure. basically it was like being back at summer camp and there was bbq, drinking, food etc. they made me take a shot of chacha-georgian vodka made from grape leaves. omg it burns so much, but i did it actually quite well ( not that i have had lots of practice 😉 and they proclaimed me as one of their own.
they even found me a husband, granted he wasnt there but his dad was and was adamant i marry his son because 1. to continue the georgian blood line 2. because he is tall and we can have tall children
it was really sweet actually how much they liked me. i was so nervous that georgians would treat me differetnly because i am russian but they are the kindest ppl i have met. they are so open and hospitable. and honestly they loves russians, just not the russian government. and i cant blame them for that.
ok so khevsureti is beautiful we went to this town called shatili where we camped. the city is a cluster of tours that served as a fortress protecting georgia, practically from everyone: russians, chechens, persians etc. ppl still live there. in teh winter u cant even access teh village.. i cant imagine living there in teh winter. it was sooo green. think lord of the rings middle earth, new zealand plus swiss alps. i dont know how to describe it.
sooo the sleeping situation was interesting as well. they gave us tents and sleeping bags. the bags are actually military bags provided by teh USA. well the USA must think ppl in georgia are midgets cuz omg i didnt fit in the bag. it was TOO short. my body was too long and so half of it was exposed. of course for morgan it was like a king sized bed. the tent was a little small too, but i made it work. luckily the parts of me that were in teh sleeping bag were so warm that i didnt get cold. my back hurt like hell the next morning but it was ok.

Alright so the next day, we headed even further north to Mutso. read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutso

Well on the way to mutso we drove by the russian/chechen georgian border. we saw the russian military post in the distance on a mountain and saw the goerigan was as well. we stopped at a place where people would go to die. if u had the plague or something like that ppl would voluntarily leave home to these little stone homes to die and to make sure no one else would get sick. when the next person would come to die, he/she would clean the body etc and then wiat their turn to die. in fact this idea continued well into the 20th century. it was here where we stopped near the border. it was so amazing to see russia and then sad i couldnt get to it. i actually almost started to cry. i mean actually in the car my eyes swelled up. it made me sad taht i couldnt go to russia, which i do have an inexplainable connection to and it made me sad knowing how good russian georgian relations USED to be and how things have crumbled in the last couple of decades. at least thought georgians here love russians and even when i was in russia natalia borisovna would tell me how well they got along and they got along the best out of everyone in teh soviet union. maybe one day there will be peace. i can only hope.


alright, so we get to mutso. if u clicked on the link, u saw how high up the city is. how did people live up there. and secondly why would u want to live up there. its liek the builders were thinking let's build our village on the highest peak and in the most inconvenient place, and tehy did. i was told that people used to climb up and down the mountain several times a day back then. omg these people must have been in the best shape of their lives. it was on my climb to mutso where the man saved my life. i was grabbing onto a rock to climb over it to continue the hike up when my foot slipped. a little. i think i would have been ok if he hadnt been there but i will be forever grateful to the man who caught my arm. he then started boasting to people he saved my life so now i am calling him the man who saved my life.

the drive back was just as nice, we made more stops along the road and then everyone was like "lets go to a restaurant on teh way back" by now its sunday 11pm. suure why not, i only have work in the morning. so dinner turns into an event. the 2 party gals on my bus as expected started the party. start buying drinks, making toast to georgia, to friendship, to the future, and then back to friendship. i bettter be friends with these ppl for life because i must have drank to friendship a million times. then for some odd reason tehy decide to the "live" music (it waskind of a kareoke kind of band) playing georgian and ukrainian music. i dont know how or why i agreed to this but when they started playing this russian/ukrainian song i know, they asked me to dance. and i did! i must have looked like a fool doing my little russian dance. i felt like i was at a belei ball or something. it was fun but i couldnt believe i did it considering i was sober. then they tried getting me to do georgian dancing which was just a complete failure so i took a back seat and just clapped. we finally got back to tbilisi at 1am but luckily our boss said we could come to work an hour later, and so here i am at work writing this blog. more later 😊

wow this was long.....sorry and sorry if it wasnt that funny

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