Its been an exciting few days! The TLG meeting in Urek was pretty pointless, I knew all the information already, and we didn’t get our books, in fact I still don’t have my books and school starts on the 15th. Lesson planning without the material or a schedule is pretty difficult, but I am trying.After the meeting my school principal took me to the Black Sea to walk around for a little bit, and get ice cream! It was a swell day indeed. The next day I went to Poti (a port city about 20km from my house) where my host father works. We went to the propane distributing facility and then to the market which was comparable to something you would find in Kenya or Colombia. Then Erecle and Ana (host siblings) and I walked down to the port and watched some ships come in. The city of Poti itself is nothing to write home about, but it was nice change of pace. That night I was part of my first supra. It came out of nowhere; I was about to go to bed and then some cousins showed up and boom it happened. Copious quantities of food came out of nowhere and so did the wine. A supra is a series of toasts that range from toasting presidents to the family deceased. It was quite an experience to see one in person! The next day the whole family woke up early and we drove about 2 ½ hours to Kutaisi which is Georgia’s second largest city. We went to the market to get school supply, clothes, and miscellaneous items. We then drove about 10km to Gelati which is a church and monastery that was built in 1106! It was awesome. The academy and the church are just great. The church is perched up on a tall hill and the views are wonderful. There also was an active archeological dig site of the monastery’s wine cellar. Finally before going home we visited Monsameta monastery! The nearest road gets you about 1km from the church and then there is a nice path to the monastery. It is perched over a gorge of the TskhaltsitelaRiver which means red river. There was a massacre by the Arabs there in the 8th century where bodies were thrown into the river. The legend goes that lions brought the bodies of two Dukes up to the church. The bones were later taken by the KGB, but unfortunate consequences followed them and the bones were promptly returned to the church, where they still are today, in a casket where you can see them. Yesterday was pretty uneventful, I hung out around the house, lesson planning, reading, studying Kartveli, ect. Last night though, we made wine. We started by picking grapes, de stemming them, putting them though a masher, and finally adding water and sugar. We ended up making about 20 liters worth. I also tasted the best grape I’ve ever had. It actually tasted like grape flavoring. Way better of course, it was just fantastic. I hope everyone is doing well, hopefully I get my books soon!
Click on this link for pictures of the previously mentioned!
No comments:
Post a Comment