Aug. 2 - Last Day in T'blisi

We=ve learned that life in Georgia doesn=t start before 9am. It=s a little surprising, and I may find it annoying later, but for now it=s nice, cuz we=re having long days and late nights.

This morning we had a reception at the Ministry of Education. There was LOADS of media there and I was asked to give another interview. The reporter who spoke to me was one of the ones that interviewed me at the airport. She also asked me for my personal phone number and gave me hers. It was a little weird.

The minister gave a speech and then we all got little packages of Georgia maps and a notebook. We schmoozed a little with the embassy people, not that there=s a Canadian Embassy here, but we=re registered with the U.S. one.

From the Ministry we headed to Kutaisi, which is where we will be training. On the way, we stopped at mtskheta, which is a church originally built in the 4^th century and rebuilt in the 6^th and 11^th. It was beautiful and apparently used to house part of the shroud. There were fantastic gardens where we saw what was either a giant bee or a miniature hummingbird. I=m pretty sure it was a hummingbird, and it was so cute. It was weird, though, because most of the exterier was under construction, but it was still open to the public with no restrictions. And along the outside, there were little stalls selling all kinds of religious paraphanelia, like rosary beads and the head coverings.

The rest of the bus ride to Kutaisi was long and scary. Georgian drivers don=t really have road rules. They=ll pass anything at any time and don=t care if there are other cars coming, or cows crossing the road, or pedestrians. As a group, we are not allowed to drive, here, because the co-ordinators don=t want anything to happen to us. We had to drive through the mountains, which means that I slept. Yay Gravol. At the halfway point, we went to a rest stop that had pay toilets. That in itself was bad enough, but the toilets were squat toilets (or Turkish toilets) and there were no doors on the stalls. It was quite uncomfortable. Back on the road, our driver put on some Georgian pop music for us to listen to. It sounds a little bit like gregorian chant. It was pretty cool.

Arriving in Kutaisi, we were dropped at a school building, quite far from the city center. We are in the middle of a slum. It looks a little post-apocalyptic. There aren=t many elevators in Georgia, so we had the fun of lugging all of our bags up to the 4^th floor, which is the girls= floor. The boys are on floor 3. Luckily most of the boys were very helpful and carried some of the girls= bags once they were done with their own.

I grabbed a shower before dinner. Also before the other girls realized that there are only 5 shower stalls for about 30 of us. Dinner was not as elaborate as before, which was nice, because I=m always stuffed. We went for a walk down the street and passed a police station and numerous abandoned buildings; except that some of the dilapidated buildings had lights on, or clothes hanging out of windows, so I guess they=re not actually abandoned. I have 2 new roommates here, both American, but I won=t hold that against them.