A Little About My New Home

Alright, I’ve finally found some time to write a little. I’ve been living in Georgia for a little more than a month and so far everything has been great. It’s surprising how quickly you can get used to this place. Right now I pretty much feel at home here. My Georgian is also coming along quite quickly. I still cant speak with any fluency whatsoever, but I can scramble around and usually get my point across when I need to. As I’ve said many times already, the people here are incredibly nice and, for the most part, love America.
My classes here are great but way too intensive. I have four hours of one-on-one instruction five days a week for Georgian language, which is not what I was expecting, but it all cost the same so I’m not complaining. I’ve been surprised at how long words are in Georgian and how difficult they are to remember. It seems like the average word in Georgian is always twice as hard to memorize than it would be in some other language (“chrdiloeti = north “aghmosavleti” = south for example). But hopefully words will become easier with time.
I live with a host family. It’s two parents, Marina and Vasha Bokedze, and no children. My “host cousins” are here a lot though. I have about seven I’ve met so far. Everyone is great and most of my host cousins speak at least a little English.

Other than that here are a few things I’ve noticed about Georgia:

Cars always have the right away. Even on sidewalks apparently... I’m not joking. In general, the roads here are ridiculous. Since I’ve been here I’ve seen someone get hit by a car (he flew about ten feet but was ok) and a car crash that involve three cars and a glass building. I was within about thirty feet of both accidents.

People are generally Christian Orthodox and very conservative. Churches are everywhere and most people cross themselves every time they pass are see one.

Beggars and gypsies are everywhere on the streets. They will hassle you constantly for the first few weeks your in Tbilisi.

A lot of people think that if they tell you a huge six syllable word that’s nearly impossible to pronounce and recite it a two or three times you’ll be able to remember it a week later. I unfortunately can’t.

Guys kiss each other on the cheeks and walk arm-in-arm all the time. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s still kind of strange to me.

Food here is pretty amazing. Khachapuri is the classic Georgian dish. It is basically cheese and bread. It’s ok, but I still cant eat it that much and I think Georgians kind of resent me for it. My host mom makes all sorts of dishes and they’re always good.

*please forgive me for mistakes...I still didn’t have that much time to write this.

Arrived

Well I arrived in Tbilisi about two weeks ago. I really haven't had time to make any entries (and still dont really), but I will say that Tbilisi is an interesting city. I have had a great time so far. The people here are about as nice as everyone says they are. In downtown it is actually quite western...I guess, but there are still a lot of homeless people on the streets and the city's little dirty. I have taken a lot of pictures, but only been able to upload a few of them...go to http://flickr.com/photos/71521658@N00/

Washington D.C.

I just went to Washington D.C. for the NSEP "Orientation and Convocation". It was okay. I was surprised to learn that there are indeed smart college students out there who understand that Georgia is a country as well as a state. I gotta say, meeting other scholarship recipients was by far the best part of the trip. Although there were no other students going to Georgia, I did meet some cool people, and I met one girl that was going to Kyrgyzstan on the Eurasian Regional Language program (the same program I'm going on).

As far as my study abroad goes, I actually learned very little. The orientation was basically a summarization of everything I had already learned in other orientations and classes, but they did put me in a nice hotel and I got to check out some of the nightlife in D.C. although it was very limited considering I'm only 20. Anyways, there's only two or so months until Georgia.

Ohh yeah, I also got to see two policeman pull their guns on some homeless person when I was touring downtown. I was only like 20 feet away. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so no pics...sorry.

Bored at Home

I'm going to Tbilisi, Georgia in September or August so I decided to make this to post pictures. I dont really have anything to say now because it's May, and I dont really know anything yet except that I have been accepted to the ACTR program and that I got the NSEP scholarship. But I'm putting down some pics now because I'm bored. The first is from the internet and the second is one of my friend's pics or vise versa actually.