Spring has arrived in Georgia

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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 used to such events happening in Georgia we asked no questions.

We followed Nodari around with the flock for some time, there were at least 25 kids and lambs that had been born recently and I was clearly excited at their cuteness. After a few hours Aaron was sick of taking photos of the babies and I so Nodarie decided to take us up one of the smaller hills and around the area. We came across a waterfall (Shilda Falls) and to a really small church hidden in the middle of nowhere.

As we were trying to get off the hill Aaron lost his footing and fell and decided that he would just slide down./ He thought this was quite an easy and clever way off the mountain. Nodarie suddenly got very concerned and started trying to grab at him yelling Ara! Ara! Ara! (No! No! No!). Luckily he was able to dig his feet in and stop. When we reached the bottom we soon realised that there was actually a drop off of about 15 meters on that part of the mountain. Nodarie pointed at it excitedly, although when once we saw the drop we were no longer laughing, he would have ended up looking like a dead porcupine.

We ran into some trouble moving past other flocks with the large herding dogs unfamiliar with us, luckily Nodarie had rocks on hand persuading the large dogs to move on, they really can be quite brutal at times if they have to be.

We were able to get some great pictures along the way, the novelty of our camera has still not worn off for our family.

As I write this we are packing to go to Armenia for the remainder of the week. We have looked forward to going to Armenia since arriving in Georgia and when some other volunteers said they were going we jumped at the chance to go along. I can only hope that we get a ticket on the night train from Tbilisi today as we are still yet to book our tickets. Our host grandparents doubled the weight of our baggage as they do every trip packing it with nuts, apples, bread, churchella and cha cha - I guess we will have to eat it all on the train!

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Photos

Shop
We stopped in and Nodarie bought us sunflower seeds.

Nodarie and Kandar
Our families herding dog, she is apparently very good at keeping the wolves away.

Some sheep
The black sheep is quite popular with the family.

On the mountain
We came across some girls I teach picking flowers on the mountain on our way up.

Shilda
Beautiful Views.

Avto
Avto had to force this mother to feed as she had rebuked her baby born the day before, her behaviour made me very sad as her baby followed us around all day instead of her mother.

Comments

[jaiyen]

Very Peaceful
We have a friend here in Thailand who is heading home, but is planning to teach abroad again in the future. She mentioned Georgia and I thought she was crazy. I guess I was just thinking of separatist movements and the devastation from the war with Russia. Anyways, the countryside and the mountains are beautiful. It sounds amazing to go wandering and find a little waterfall and church in the middle of nowhere. It looks like a very relaxing way of life. I will have to pass your blog on to her. By the way, I love the picture of the herd.