Blogs from Tbilisi District, Georgia, Asia - page 12

I wake up to my first full day in my new home feeling apprehensive to say the least. I’m not sure what the showering situation is so I get up and get dressed as quietly as possible prepared to face my first day without a shower since I last went to festival . I also have quite a lot of washing (that’s laundry to all you Americans out there) to do but I also don’t know what the situation is there either. I know the English are notorious for not wishing to offend people but I take it to the absolute extreme. I am constantly terrified of doing something wrong. Anyway, we have breakfast and Eka tells me we’re going into Zugdidi. I’m eager to see the town but first let me tell you a little ... read more

Today is when the fun really starts. From Sunday to the following Thursday we have eight hours of classes a day, four of Georgian language and four of intercultural training. I find the language lessons both useful and entertaining but, whilst I really like our intercultural trainer and she does give us some useful information, I can’t help feeling that what she tells us in four hours could be covered in about 30 minutes. Still, our classes are made infinitely more entertaining by one of the other volunteers, who shall remain nameless, who just comes out with the funniest shit. I don’t have the time or the space to give you all the examples but my personal favourite so far came during our second language lesson during which he asked the teacher, ‘Will we be given ... read more

It started off so well. I said this was going to be a blog about living and teaching in Georgia, and it is, but I'm not even there yet (I'm writing this somewhere in the air between Istanbul and Tbilisi) and I feel like a rant. So consider this a preliminary post; a prequel if you will, to the main event. The journey started off well enough. I got everything I needed done and was even packed on time (which, considering I was given 24 hours' notice of my flight was a small miracle.) My lovely friend and one-time housemate Andrea drove me to the airport and I had plenty of time so I had a cold beer in the airport bar and then went a bit silly buying gifts for my, as yet unspecified, host ... read more

From August 15th to 18th... read more

In Georgia there are lots of churches and fortresses If we are asked to describe Georgia using only three words we would say "churches and fortresses". If you visit a few places in Georgia you quickly realise that there are churches and fortresses everywhere. Many of them are really old and are also in very good condition. We knew already before we arrived that we couldn't visit them all because we would get bored after the first dozen or so. But even though we skipped many churches we still visited quite a few. In this blog entry we have focused on the capital Tblisi and the places we visited around Tbilisi. First we would like to write a little bit about a town a few hours by car north of Tbilisi, a town called Kazbegi. Kazbegi ... read more