Random Observations...

Sometimes I feel my time in Borjomi is like being in a gay bar where no one is really gay (or so I suppose). Going out to a disco here where men are dancing with you is really weird and awkward.

I feel there are mainly 2 types of Georgians. 1) Those who know me and really like me and think I'm cool. and 2) Those who don't know me and have a strong dislike of me mainly because I'm Chinese looking. Its a weird and interesting dictomy. Very little in between.

Now for some obligatory pics of clouds...

Picture during my hike...

Picture taken from my iphone in Kvibisi right before a thunderstorm.

More Pics...

And this was one of the better bridges in the park. The rest were... iffy, and this one was too.

The rain forest. I was tempted to try a mushroom, but as our PST training taught us, that would probably be a bad idea.

I wish I were on horse at times...

Hiking through the national park.

A Georgian picnic. We unwrapped an entire chicken then proceed to eat it even as it fell on the grown and got dirt all over it.

Theres a catapiller in my pants!

No really, there was literally a catapiller in my pants. It wasn’t a subtle self deprecating title, its about my fun time with bugs here in Georgia. I was in class one day, and I felt something near my knee cap, I quickly reacted and grab at my jeans and cupped whatever was there, and in my mind I’m thinking the worst, even though its probably a piece of lint or something that tickled me. But as the title tells, it was in fact a catapiller in my pants! I rolled up my jeans and out popped a scrimy catapiller.

In other bug related news, as I was typing this blog, something startled me. Now usually things don’t startle me any more here, since lots of strange things happen all the time. But seeing a quarter-size giant spider roll down from the ceiling on her silk line straight to your keyboard was pretty freaky. Bugs here are not afraid of humans too. If you pretend to swat them away, they’re left unfazed. I’m not so lucky.

So I started working this week as well. On my first week here, I was tasked to join an expedition of sorts to improve the trail markings of one of the more popular trails in the national park. It's a 3 day trail and it was quite challenging and diverse. It was made more challenging by the fact that after the first day's hike, we celebrated with shots of cha-cha which definitely didn't help my stamina the next day. The first day was a good hike, I felt fresh, there was definitely a lot of uphill and we climbed probably 2 kilometers up. It was like walking through what you would expect a national park would look like. The 2nd day very different. We started by walking through high mountain terrains right at the cloud line, so it was very misty. There were also quite a bit of horses running around. It was pretty cool, and cold, unlike the first day, which was quite hot. The whole terrain looked like a painting of sorts, with very beautiful wildflowers all around. After the flowerly mountains, we went downhill through what could be best described as a rain forest. It was muddy (2 feet of mud at parts) and damp. It was also very green and dark. It was sorta fun running downhill through lots of mud, but when your shoes get stuck in the mud and when your shoes and pants get all muddy and wet, it isn't so much fun. Overall it was pretty cool, very adventurous, especially with a hangover. The last day was more of a routine hike, but with lots of bugs and mosquitoes and even leeches! It was more of a day where I had to cross log bridges, swat bugs away, and ignore the pain of my blisters on my feet.

In other non-nature related news, the volunteers here were able to visit Hilliary Clinton. It was brief, but a cool experience. We also swore in as real volunteers finally, and moved into our new host family houses. My move was quite brief, as I just moved one village down, to Borjomi, a resort town. My new digs are in a smallish apartment building. I don't have a lock yet, and I have a balcony which everyone uses so they go through my room. But it's comfortable and I leave the balcony door open at night which allows me to sleep in a cool-ish temperature. Last week, the Borjomi volunteers (me and Ruta) had American visitors from previous peace corp groups (G7's and G6's). We visited Vardzia which is a city carved into a cave walls. It was a fun hike going through short and cramped stairs, something out of those 3-d maze books we had as kids. I know a lot happened since I last posted, so I'm trying to include everything, but my most important observation happens to be about Lebron James going to the Heat. I mean, WTF? I'll leave it at that.

Running down a misty rain forest with extremely deep muddy tracks was very fun and challenging.

Wild horses spooking us in the mist. After the clouds past it was very beautiful.

My crew walking up in the clouds. We were there to put up new signs and repaint old ones.

The city of Vardzia. Its a spectacular cave city with crazy maze-like stairs.

We waited several hours for a few minutes of Hilliary. The McDonalds afterwards was well worth it. I can't believe I would ever crave McDonalds... but in Georgia...

Changes, Changes, and no Change...

I've been to Tbilisi, Georgia's Capital City 4 weeks in a row. Now some might call that lucky, I call that tiresome. Especially since 2 of those days were one day trips, and that trip is a bumpy 2 and half hour ride on a sweltering hot van they call a marshutka. I also visited my ex-host site. I say ex, because I was recently informed that there will be a ban on Americans to my particular site because of its proximity to Chechnya (like a few kilometers away). So now I have a new site. This site is not really a new site, since it is Borjomi (I wasn't stating actually places before because I thought we weren't supposed to, but it seems everyones doing it... so why not). Borjomi! A very awesome site, and I'm pretty excited and happy to stay here, since I've enjoyed it here. On the other hand, I was also excited to go ride the horses up on the steppes of Tusheti. Oh well, I think there are horses here as well. I'll still be doing the same thing, just for the Borjomi National Park, which is actually a more popular park, but a different kind of park. Tusheti was more for the adventurous and brave, Borjomi is a lovely park, but a different kind of park. So, still a park ranger, just in another park.

Me and my cluster successfully hosted an American Supra at my place a few weeks ago. I made some crepes for the supra, and since then, my host family has always asked for more. So I've been making lots of batches of crepes, and I'm becoming quite the expert at crepe-making. I'll like to thank my friend Teddy for the recipe (sans vanilla extract, which I can't find). Tomorrow me and my cluster are going to have another American Supra, where I'll attempt making fried rice. Yep, crepes and fried rice are American food I guess...

2 weeks left till the end of PST. Then swearing in and off to... well... down the street? Not really, but its really close. Now, I just gotta meet my new host family. Looking forward to that.

The TV I watched USA draw with England on. These are the TV's we have in Georgia. Even on these small TV's Italy still flops and look like wusses.

This guy was outrageous. We did shots of wine from that same thing on his finger. Death Supra... gotta love it.

Drinking from the horn... not just once.

Picture from my many Tbilisi trips.

Picture I stole from Sean's blog. My first crepes, they have turned out better since, but these were also delicious.

I'm a Ranger, a Park Ranger...

So today was site announcements. I'm just going to write a little about that since I'm not sure how much we can describe right now. Let's just say the west side of Georgia is the less hot, less cold side, next to the black sea and the beaches and turkey... and the east side is the hot, cold side with all the good wine. 27 volunteers got sites in the west (with a few on the beach probably) and I got one of the three in the east. I'll be working for a national park doing eco-tourism and business development (I think). The park is very beautiful and it looks sorta like new zealand, with plush landscapes, glaciers, tall mountains, and lots and lots of nature. Needless to say this is going to be a big departure from my life in LA. One good thing I heard about my future site is that it has a very nice toilet, which in Georgia is a very big deal if you haven't figured that out by now. I think I could tolerate the extreme weather just for that alone. You know you're in a developing country when you visit resturants or nice places so you can use their toilets and you count the hours/days till you can (especially since recently my house didn't have running water for 5 days and the electricity shut off for a day -- damn random storms!).

A week ago, we had our Job Shadowing trips. These trips were to let us experience what the previous year's volunteer (who are entering their 2nd year of service) do and how they live. I got lucky and got Johnny, a guy who works at a winery! I drank a lot of wine, and had a lot of fun. But it was sooo hot, I'm glad I shaved my head or it would've been unbearable. Oh, did I mention that this area is in the same area my new permament site is going to be? We also had a picnic where we barbecued tons of meat (barbecuing in Georgia is making a fire, putting meat on sticks, and cooking them over the fire... it was good!), played beerpong, and had a lot of general merriment.

We're doing site visits next week, which we get a first glance at our new sites and our new organizations we're going to work at. I'm very excited. I think I might be riding a horse even! If I get a park ranger uniform and a horse, I'm going to be very happy. Although I doubt it, since I'm mainly doing business development and developing eco-tourism in this place. For those who know me, I like to complain when I hike. I think I'll be complaining a lot soon. Fun times in Georgia! This is like the quintessential Peace Corps experience.

Stalin's favorite wine... it's pretty good actually.

Friends standing on a statue of Ilia who is a very big deal in Georgia. Also, I think we saw Russia from this statue on a hill... I'm like Sarah Palin!

Wine tasting was good... got kinda buzzed, didn't want to spit anything out.

"Special Reserve" wine, which we tasted, and it was delicious!

I should've asked for a case... or put a few in my bag...

Park I'm going to be developing Eco-tourism in... beautiful.

More Pics...

Get out of the way cows! I'm trying to go to class!

View of my village from top of a hill which I was not fit to climb... it was exhausting

You would think there would be more statues of the most famous Georgian in history?

View of my road to school with a turkey family and all!

Cow just chilling on the side of the road. He says moo when you say whats up in Georgian.

Summer rains bring cats and dogs...

In one of our PST trainings was a topic about animals in Georgia. What I took away from it was that basically all the animals in Georgia were everywhere, dangerous, and have rabies. The 3 painful rabies shots we got recently was a remainder of that. But recently it seems I've been surrounded by animals, and cute ones!! Puppies, kittens, chicks, etc... all adorable and makes me want to pick them up and pet them all! Which I have, and have not gotten rabies as of yet. Time will tell on that one.

Sorry I haven't posted as often as I wanted, but I've just been so busy with training and learning the language. I think I'm getting fairly well with it, I can have decent conversations now and buy stuff and get around okay. Still kinda weird for me since I'm the only Asian here in the country, and Georgians love to stare at foreigners, especially Asians. So I do a game where I stare back at them, and it usually dissuades them from looking at me further. The weather here is wild, its cold one day, crazy hot the other, and rains either days. There's even hail sometimes.

In the next few days, I'll be job shadowing a guy whose working for a Georgian winery. Needless to say, I'm super excited. We're going to be wine tasting friday. I've been kinda bad with alcohol here, since we drink it all the time, and have been black-out drunk at least twice. Good times in Georgia I guess...

p.s. I just shaved my head. Not sure I like it (I didn't like it last time), but it should be a lot cooler now.

This was later today with me rocking the mohawk mid-shave.

Is it a kitten or a ferret? This was today..

This puppy runs up and tries to bite my shoelaces off. Very adorable...

My Cluster-mate Sean holding one of many chicks around the town.

Getting caught in a hailstorm is not fun!