Gamarjoba!

As per usual, I procrastinated until the last minute to pack for my 2+ year adventure. I actually bought my pants and quite a bit of other stuff on the last day in LA. I packed and clean my room all night and didn’t get any sleep at all. The next morning, I hurried to LAX to find a 4 hour weather delay! Not wanting to be left behind, I was forced to stay up because they kept delaying us by 30-60 minute intervals. Arrived Friday night in Philadelphia after a long delay in LAX only to find a crazy beautician convention at the hotel we were staying at. Many “Jersey Shore” looking girls with poofy hair and plastered out of their minds by the time I arrived. Met my roommate, Aaron, cool guy—I know cause he likes Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and my LA PC pal, Laura. I was ready to sleep, but, I couldn’t escape the lure of the hair spray. I had to go down and see what’s up.

Haven’t had anything to eat since the morning, and haven’t had any sleep except for a 3 hour nap on the plane, I proceeded to drink with my new PC friends who I would spend the next 2 years with. We befriended a group that owned a hair salon, and went with them to the private club party in the hotel where we got a table, bottle service, and champagne!

The next morning the real party started. Having woken up by my alarm and a pounding desire to drink 10 gallons of water, I proceeded to try to cure my hangover before an all-day session of what the Peace Corps calls “Staging.” Won’t get into much details about the specifics, since I don’t think we’re allowed to blog about it, plus its quite boring, but I met the other 30 folks I would spend my time in Georgia with. That night, me, Aaron, Laura, and our new friend Patrick, got picked up by my friend in Philadelphia for what I would call my last meal. We had Pat’s cheesesteaks and it was absolutely delicious. We then went to a bar where we had a couple of interesting beers, I had one that tasted like chocolate, and I somehow ordered a small pot of mussels, that actually contained like 50 mussels. Since everyone else was full, I proceeded to devour every single one of them. Our journey back to the hotel was a weird one as well. We stopped by the rocky steps, for the enjoyment of my other friends, since I had went to college for four years in this city, and did the whole climbing up the steps. Then our cab driver gets completely lost where and cuts across 8 lanes of highway to make a crazy u-turn at which point I decided it was a good idea to get out of a moving cab and find another cab to go home in.

We then took a 24+ hour journey to Tbisli which was only bearable due to sleeping pills. On an 11-hr flight from NYC to Istanbul, I think I was only awake for 2 hours of it. Finally we had arrived in Georgia where we were greeted by press, peace corps staff, and the U.S. Ambassador. Everyone of us looked tired and miserable from our long flight and bag hauling (my bags ended up being 50 lbs and 56 lbs! + my carry on which was also very heavy).

We also had our very first Georgian Supra (feast) that night. It was full of bread, fried cheese bread, corn bread, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, meatballs stuffed in bell peppers (my favorite!), and an assortment of other food. It was very delicious, but I think they said it was a special meal, and wasn’t the usual meals we would get.

I’m probably writing my last post for a while, as I will be going to my host family site tomorrow where for the next 2 days, the only people I’ll probably see are my host family who don’t speak a lick of English, and I don’t speak a lick of Georgian. This should be fun!

Pictures will be uploaded when I actually get some decent internet, which might be a while! But I do have pictures!