Today I had my first village experience outside of Vardisubani. After a trip to Telavi yesterday (we visited the castle), I went with my fellow TLG friend, Shannon, to her village Saniore. Her village life seemed a lot more like how I imagined it would. They had chickens, a sheep and lamb, cows, a dog with puppies and cats. And there kept being horse drawn wagons going through the cow-poop covered streets. And the view of the mountains was awesome. Shannon's host sister, Salome, is 16 and seems pretty rebellious as far as Georgian teenage girls go. She likes to drink and smoke in the shadows at night (not kidding). Her English is also really great. Shannon and I bought a bottle of vodka and some orange soda in Telavi and snuck it into her bedroom. There is a lot of sneaking around involved in drinking apparently. It's like being in high school again. Except I'm 22 and Shannon is 25. Which makes it just seem really surreal.
At twilight, we headed out to an old playground with Salome and a couple guys she knew, where Shannon and I drank our water bottles filled with vodka/soda mixture and Salome and her friends had cups of beer. This experience felt so strange, like being in a weird alternate universe version of Chico when I was 16 years old drinking vodka in playgrounds with Tyler and Brian. After this, we ended up at Salome's half brother's house where I had my first experience using a true outhouse with a hole in the ground. Then we had to leave quickly and go back to the house because host mother was wanting to know where we were. We ate dinner and drank some wine and then retreated upstairs to drink the rest of our vodka. It was a good night just hanging out and talking and listening to Britney Spears and Queen.
Today we slept in and took a walk to the next village over, where one of my co-teachers, Darejani, happens to live (which I didn't know). Salome's cousin gets private English lessons from her, and we ran into him so he told us to come with him over there. Darejani was pretty surprised to see us and she gave us chocolate and coffee. She kept asking if I would stay there for the night and go to school with her in the morning, which was really sweet but I declined because I didn't have any clothes to wear or anything. It was strange to see her in her natural habitat and in normal clothes besides her school clothes.
We wandered around a bit and then went back to Saniore. I wanted to catch the 4 o'clock marshrutka back to Telavi, but for some reason it didn't seem to come. So Salome put me into a random car and said he would take me to Vardisubani. It was a very strange experience that is difficult to describe. But apparently it was an unmarked taxi, and this taxi would take multiple people to different destinations. We started going to random places in the nearby village and more and more people were piling in. It ended up being me, a woman and her two little children, and two teenage boys stuffed in the backseat of this car with another woman sitting in front. And the driver just kept putting Rhianna's "Only girl in the world" on over and over again. Everyone else got dropped off in Telavi, and then he took me to my village. The best part is that it only cost 3 lari! It made all the weirdness totally worth it.
Now I have another week at school, and then on Friday we go to Tbilisi. Hurray!
At twilight, we headed out to an old playground with Salome and a couple guys she knew, where Shannon and I drank our water bottles filled with vodka/soda mixture and Salome and her friends had cups of beer. This experience felt so strange, like being in a weird alternate universe version of Chico when I was 16 years old drinking vodka in playgrounds with Tyler and Brian. After this, we ended up at Salome's half brother's house where I had my first experience using a true outhouse with a hole in the ground. Then we had to leave quickly and go back to the house because host mother was wanting to know where we were. We ate dinner and drank some wine and then retreated upstairs to drink the rest of our vodka. It was a good night just hanging out and talking and listening to Britney Spears and Queen.
Today we slept in and took a walk to the next village over, where one of my co-teachers, Darejani, happens to live (which I didn't know). Salome's cousin gets private English lessons from her, and we ran into him so he told us to come with him over there. Darejani was pretty surprised to see us and she gave us chocolate and coffee. She kept asking if I would stay there for the night and go to school with her in the morning, which was really sweet but I declined because I didn't have any clothes to wear or anything. It was strange to see her in her natural habitat and in normal clothes besides her school clothes.
We wandered around a bit and then went back to Saniore. I wanted to catch the 4 o'clock marshrutka back to Telavi, but for some reason it didn't seem to come. So Salome put me into a random car and said he would take me to Vardisubani. It was a very strange experience that is difficult to describe. But apparently it was an unmarked taxi, and this taxi would take multiple people to different destinations. We started going to random places in the nearby village and more and more people were piling in. It ended up being me, a woman and her two little children, and two teenage boys stuffed in the backseat of this car with another woman sitting in front. And the driver just kept putting Rhianna's "Only girl in the world" on over and over again. Everyone else got dropped off in Telavi, and then he took me to my village. The best part is that it only cost 3 lari! It made all the weirdness totally worth it.
Now I have another week at school, and then on Friday we go to Tbilisi. Hurray!
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