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| View from Narikala Fortress of Georgian Church Architecture |
Welcome to Tbilisi! It is a stunningly gorgeous place, with
some of the most beautiful buildings, architecture, public art and scenery that
I have ever seen. The river runs through the middle of town like a heartbeat,
but it doesn’t divide it. While I am by no means an expert yet, it seems to me
as though the city simply continues on over the river, expecting it,
anticipating it, enjoying it. This is a city that has been conquered at least
15 times in its history. It has different expectations that the rest of us. The
newest onslaught, in the form of tourists with guidebooks and buses, pales in
comparison to the brutality of the past. The architecture is a wonderful blur
of Persian, Ottoman, Imperial Russian, Soviet bloc, modern weirdness and traditional
Georgian architecture, which is most evident in its churches. But the time
should not just to be spent looking up, because come down to eye level and you
will have the chance to meet some Georgians, who are some of the kindest,
friendliest and most helpful people I have ever had the good fortune to meet.
While smiling to people on the street in seen as socially unacceptable, staring
completely is. I have gotten some stares. On the bus the social barriers break
down and people begin to chat. Once we started our Georgian classes and could
have extensive conversations like “Hello, thank you, excuse me, pleasure to
meet you” whichever Georgian you are conversing with, or alternatively the
entire bus, since they are all watching you, will turn and smile broadly at you
and your attempt at their language. Since no one ever tries, your three or four
word vocabulary places you far in front of the pack.
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| Central Tbilisi |
All of the new volunteers are training together right now.
There are approximately 40 of us, about 60% female and all but one under 25
years old. We have two Brits, a South African and two or three Canadians, with
Americans making up the majority. We had a few days free as people arrived from
their various places, all of us with ridiculously long layovers in various
cities (mine was Warsaw, 10 hours). I went into the old city, saw the Mtsaminda
Cathedral, walked up to various churches in the hills above the city, walked
along the river and took the funicular down from the amusement park. We started
training on Monday morning, with three to four 50-minute Georgian classes and 2
or 3 classes covering cultural differences, teaching methodology or program
information. The Georgian classes are going well, but I have become so accustomed
to the intensity of classes with 2 students that being with 18 other people,
many of whom have little to no other language experience can be slow. I expect
the attitude to be ‘keep up or drop out’. Many people are overwhelmed by the
amount of information but I know that they’ll be fine. We can figure we’ll be
working from 9am to 5pm with coffee breaks or lunch in between every program.
We get fed at the hotel three times a day, consisting of bread, tomatoes and
cucumbers, meat stew of some kind, potato salad, and some form of carb (bulgar,
potato, pasta rice) and a stew of some variety featuring pork most frequently.
At dinner we always get fed either khacapuri or lobiani, which is bread with
cheese or beans baked in respectively. After training we often go out and
explore the city more. We saw more of the Old City, ate delicious Georgian food
and drank delicious Georgian wine and went up to the Narikala Fortress which
sits above the city. We took the cable car down just after the sun set, sending
us over the river just as the lights of the city started to twinkle on. Tbilisi
has a very laid back feel, with people in no rush to get any particular place
in any particular time, and the buses leave whenever they are in the mood. The
flexibility (read: chillness) about the linear and concrete nature of time
could be frustrating if I weren’t so used to it. My time in both Turkey and
Azerbaijan has prepared me for stuff to start when it does. So too did Baku
prepare me for Tbilisi traffic, which can be frenetic at the best of times and
overwhelming at the worst.
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| Monastery in Mtskheta, with Georgian National Flag (left) and the Georgian Ecclesiastic Flag |
Probably my favorite things that we have done so far
happened in the past 24 hours. Last night, knowing that we had a field trip
today, we went out into town to a restaurant which was supposed to have
traditional Georgian folk dancing, but in the end did not. Even better, they
had polyphonic singing which is a Georgian practice recognized by UNESCO and
featured on one of the space flights. It is practiced only by men and is
achingly beautiful to listen to. I can only look forward to listening to much
much more if it. Today we went into Mtskheta, which was the former capital of
the Georgian kingdom and still has some of the most important churches and
monasteries in the country. Jvari monastery is the site where Saint Nino planted
the first cross in Georgia and monks still live and work the church. We got to
go into the town of Mtskheta and visit the church and walls surrounding it, and
walk through the cobblestoned streets full of poorly translated tourist signs.
A priest inside the church read the liturgy and the side alcoves smelled
deliciously of incense. Orthodox churches always have a certain mystery to me,
in part probably because I don’t fully understand everything that is going on
around me. I like the coldness of stone walls, and the contrast of the bright
frescoes and jewel adorned icons. The flicker of candlelight contrasts to the
streams of light coming in through open doors. I find even tourists fall silent
in the sanctuary of the stone walls. In Jvari Monastery we were awed not just
by the octagonal walls but by the stunning views from the mountaintop, of
rivers, of towns and of some wonderful cows eating on the hillside. We then drove
down the road and had a spectacularly enormous and delicious picnic of Georgian
food, sitting on the ground next to a corn/sunflower field. The people on this
program have proved themselves to be intelligent, passionate, fascinating,
insightful, dedicated, and motivated. The staff of TLG have put in longer hours
than any US bureaucrat has ever even heard of. They are always available, they
know us all by sight and they want us so badly to be happy and to love their nation
and its people. I cannot imagine people more willing to bend over backwards to
make us happy despite the fact that they have hired us to work for them. They
picked me up at the airport at 4 o’clock in the morning, they made sure that we
always have more water food and coffee than we know what to do with, they help
us figure out how to get into the city, to get back afterwards and to keep us
comfortable and happy in our placements.
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| Cathedral in Central Tbilisi |
Beautifully written and so interesting. Thank you.
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