Is that the president?

Yes, it had been awhile since my last update. A series of events has caused the delay of updates. 1^st I’ve become significantly more busy since I last updated. I am now working at 3 schools and have started 3 levels of English club after school. Coupled with “coaching” my school to play in its first ever basketball game against another school. It might be the first “official” high school basketball game in Georgia. I’m pretty excited about it. 2^nd of all I’ve had some very exciting weekends which I will expand on later in this blog. Finally internet outages along with power outages have made it hard to update.

My Celebrity weekend!

3 weekends ago I planned on spending a weekend sightseeing in Tbilisi. On Friday as I was traveling to Tbilisi I received a phone call. TLG teachers were being invited to wine making as well as traditional food making in Kaheti, they also told us that the Minister of Education would be there, and that the president might make an appearance. That night Leslie and I arrived in Tbilisi and stayed with Leslie’s school director niece. She lived in your stereotypical Soviet bloc. The outside was pretty drab and dreary and the stairs had no lights and it seemed like a crap hole (for lack of better words). Once we open the door to her apartment it was gorgeous, nice hardwood floors intricate crown molding, the works. Talk about exceeding expectations. They even had a very small vineyard on their balcony. (they are serious about grapes here) The next morning we got on a few busses and headed to Kaheti. When we got there the security was intense so I figured the president would probably be coming. It was a huge vineyard we were at some kind of Agriculture College. The vineyard we were picking grapes had a sign that said it was sponsored by the US government. I felt at home in weird way. As I was picking grapes a large military helicopter did a really low fly-by of the vineyard and then landed followed by a luxury helicopter, that I got reprimanded for taking a picture of. It was the president, naturally the press was there. The teachers kind of made a semicircle around him. He then came over to me and asked me my name, where I was teaching and where I was from!!!! Needless to say I felt like a big shot for a good bit. Then I realized I was a teacher and not the prince of Monaco…. That has been the highlight of my trip so far, without question. He was there for maybe about a half hour and then flew away literally. The rest of the day I made and then proceeded to eat traditional Georgian food. That night when we got back to Tbilisi we went of with the women we were staying with to a night club. What they didn’t tell us was that it was a club opening, after a little haggling we got in. We had a great time; the band was from the late night show in Georgia and they were fantastic. The next morning I was watching TV and club opening was on the news. They interviewed the owner and I happened to be in the background scarfing down some pizza. Later that morning (Sunday) we went to the main church in Tbilisi, the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church was giving mass, so it was ridiculously packed. It’s a beautiful place, but ill have to go back to really take it in.

The laid back weekend.

2 weekends ago I stayed in the village. I went to wedding, the amount of food was insane (check out the pictures on facebook) It was a great time, of course I got toasted and got put on the spot to say a toast in Georgian in front of 300 people. It was a great time, but definitely different than a Colombian, or American wedding. The next day a reporter from the regional paper stopped by and interviewed me. I got a nice half of page write up along with picture in the paper.

Ill be covering my Armenia adventure in my next blog... so stay tuned~