Doctors:
On Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment in Tbilisi. I have not had my period since the first week I arrived in Georgia. That was three months ago. No, I'm not pregnant. It wouldn't even be possible for me to be pregnant. But still, it's really disconcerting. I know that a lot of things can affect this, like diet and stress and all that, but I don't know. Three months is a really long time. So, I sucked it up and got an appointment. Basically, the doctor's here love ultrasounds. When I was sick a couple of weeks ago with a stomach problem, the doctor in Telavi first thing did an ultrasound on my stomach. In Tbilisi, the doctor's office I went to is supposedly really good, or at least that is what my program told me. The doctor, Nino asked me some questions and then straight away took me to get an ultrasound. There is a whole area of the building that is all ultrasound rooms. So I got yet another ultrasound and they told me I wasn't pregnant (big shock) and declared that I must have a hormone problem. I was then taken to the gynecologist room, where I tried not to panic, and thank god they did not make me have an exam. They just asked me random questions like "do you like sweets? do you eat sweets often? do you eat sweets between meals? do you have any rashes?" Then they decided they needed to do a blood test on me, but I had to come back another day because it needed to be a blood test where I did not eat beforehand. So, I was scheduled to come back on Monday morning. So, yesterday I took yet another day off of school and went to the doctor again. They took a vile of blood from me. Then made me drink a DISGUSTING drink that was warm and sugary and thick and made me want to gag immensely. Then an hour later they took another vile of blood. And an hour after that, a third vile of blood. It was a glucose tolerance test (I googled the letters of the test, because no one thought to tell me what I was being tested for). I also think they are using the blood for some sort of thyroid test. I will hear my results on Friday I guess. I wish I could have taken pictures of the doctor's office, because everyone in the US would probably be shocked by it. There was weird wall paper that was all peeling and it looked like the floor hadn't been mopped in years. Also, the doctor's and nurses all wear crazy heels.
Batumi:
Batumi is the summer destination for Georgians. It's a town on the Black Sea and the government has been putting ridiculous amounts of money into renovating parts of it to make it more of an attraction for tourists. There are all sorts of fountains and statues and the buildings are quite nice. At least that's how it is in one part of town. The rest of the city, including the guest house we stayed in, were basically like the rest of Georgia. Except, I think the streets were actually worse there than in a lot of areas. They were all broken and dusty and dirty. The guest house we stayed in was really pleasant though, and the people who lived upstairs were really nice and gave us a full breakfast one morning when we went up just to ask for a spoon. The beds were incredibly comfortable and we nicknamed ours (mine and Anita's) "the cloud" because it was so soft and the blankets were amazing. Needless to say, we spent quite a lot of time in the cloud. The rest of our time was basically spent at the beach. We got so much sun it was amazing. The beach itself was pretty much all rocks, and that is uncomfortable, but we found a bar/lounge place that had wooden platforms you could lay on all day, as long as you bought a drink or two. So we did that every day and had a great time. One day, someone even delivered me a free coffee drink. Awesome! Elyse and Shannon got burned on the first day, but luckily I reserved the burn for the last day, which means the train ride home was horrible, but at least I got to enjoy the sun fully the entire trip.
Hippies:
On the third day at the beach, some of our friends somehow came across a group of hippies. 1 American, 1 Australian, 1 Danish and 1 English (I think) all with massive dreads backpacking across the world for god knows how long making money by playing their music in random plazas and streets everywhere they go. They walked up while we were laying on our wood platforms and Elyse writes to me (yeah, we were on our iphones) "where did the pirates come from?" That's basically how out of place they looked. We left Cody with them all day and that evening we met back up and we all (except for the dane and englishman who went to sleep in a park somewhere) went to a restaurant. We drank vodka and beer and the two guys took out their guitar and violin and started playing music. We ended up having some good singalongs including backstreet boys, hanson, fleet foxes and the beatles. Then we made our way back to the beach and went swimming. We then found wood and had a bonfire on the beach, and the cops came and didn't quite not what to make of this event because a) some people were not quite clothed b) there was a fire on the beach c) they had probably never seen dreads before. But we weren't doing anything illegal I guess, so they left us alone. After we ran out of wood (this didn't take long because the only wood we could find was like random bits of palm tree), the sun was already starting to come up so we figured we should go home. The hippies didn't have anywhere to stay (a lot of the time they just sleep outside), so we invited them to our guest house and after getting a lot of junk food, we returned to the cloud and we sat in it eating until the rest of our group arrived (I took a cab with the boys, and the other girls walked because they had to stop and look for a sweater that had gone missing). Then, five of us crammed into our "cloud" which was two single beds pushed together, and we slept for about 2 hours until it was time to wake up and get the train back to Tbilisi.
Stupid:
I missed work yet again today, this for no good reason except for that I'm really stupid. I am actually feeling pretty guilty about it! It happened because yesterday after my doctor's appointment I was running some errands and such (you know, the important things like getting money out of the bank and eating ice cream), and then my friend D said he wanted to hang out but couldn't until 4:30, so I was like ok no big deal. So then he picked me up at the hostel and we went to get ice cream (yes, I got ice cream twice in one day, I'm obsessed with ice cream! I didn't tell the doctor this when she asked me if I eat sweets), and then we ate it in a park. Then he got a call from some workers who were going to his house to fix his bathtub and he had to go right then, so I went with him. So, time passed and then I realize I had been there quite a long time and there wasn't going to be a marshutka back to Telavi anymore! I was like "oh crap, I'm incredibly stupid!" so I texted my co-teacher and said I would try to get on the first one in the morning and just miss the first one or two classes. She said not to worry or be in a hurry, but I still felt like I needed to. My friend let me stay at his house since I didn't want to have to pay for yet another night at a hostel. We had a pretty good time and just hung out and drank some vodka-cranberry (which was so exciting to me, since that is my staple drink in the US but I haven't come across cranberry juice since I've been in Georgia), and we got some food from the store to eat for dinner. The woman at the store wouldn't sell us a certain dish though for some reason. She kept saying I wouldn't like it, and actually refused to give it to us. She told him that if it had just been him she would have given it to him, but since I was a foreigner she wouldn't. Weird. Anyway, this morning I woke up early and tried to get an early marshutka back, but it ended up not leaving as early as it was supposed to because it wasn't filling up quickly (yeah, that's how things work here, nothing is really scheduled, or if it is, the schedule is like a vague plan instead of a set thing). So I ended up missing three of my classes by the time I got back to Telavi and I had a raging headache because my allergies are acting up. I just went to sleep when I came home. I feel so bad about missing work though!!!!! I've missed so much lately with being sick and the doctor's appointments and meetings all throughout May. Oh well..............
Side note:
People in Georgia stare, A LOT. They don't really make an effort to hide it either. It's especially bad if you are a foreigner. They are just so interested. I'm getting kind of used to it now. But yesterday when I was in the store with D, out of nowhere he was like "You don't especially look like a foreigner. But people stare at you all the time!" And then we had a conversation about it, and I was saying I probably dress like one, and he said no I don't look that different, he can tell when someone looks like they don't belong and I don't look that way, and some foreigners even walk differently (haha) and I don't have anything glaringly foreign about me. So now I just feel weird because he even noticed that people stare at me more than usual (I assumed that they just stared at me because I looked weird here), but it is also cool to know that a real Georgian doesn't think I look like a freak out of place tourist. Ha.
On Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment in Tbilisi. I have not had my period since the first week I arrived in Georgia. That was three months ago. No, I'm not pregnant. It wouldn't even be possible for me to be pregnant. But still, it's really disconcerting. I know that a lot of things can affect this, like diet and stress and all that, but I don't know. Three months is a really long time. So, I sucked it up and got an appointment. Basically, the doctor's here love ultrasounds. When I was sick a couple of weeks ago with a stomach problem, the doctor in Telavi first thing did an ultrasound on my stomach. In Tbilisi, the doctor's office I went to is supposedly really good, or at least that is what my program told me. The doctor, Nino asked me some questions and then straight away took me to get an ultrasound. There is a whole area of the building that is all ultrasound rooms. So I got yet another ultrasound and they told me I wasn't pregnant (big shock) and declared that I must have a hormone problem. I was then taken to the gynecologist room, where I tried not to panic, and thank god they did not make me have an exam. They just asked me random questions like "do you like sweets? do you eat sweets often? do you eat sweets between meals? do you have any rashes?" Then they decided they needed to do a blood test on me, but I had to come back another day because it needed to be a blood test where I did not eat beforehand. So, I was scheduled to come back on Monday morning. So, yesterday I took yet another day off of school and went to the doctor again. They took a vile of blood from me. Then made me drink a DISGUSTING drink that was warm and sugary and thick and made me want to gag immensely. Then an hour later they took another vile of blood. And an hour after that, a third vile of blood. It was a glucose tolerance test (I googled the letters of the test, because no one thought to tell me what I was being tested for). I also think they are using the blood for some sort of thyroid test. I will hear my results on Friday I guess. I wish I could have taken pictures of the doctor's office, because everyone in the US would probably be shocked by it. There was weird wall paper that was all peeling and it looked like the floor hadn't been mopped in years. Also, the doctor's and nurses all wear crazy heels.
Batumi:
Batumi is the summer destination for Georgians. It's a town on the Black Sea and the government has been putting ridiculous amounts of money into renovating parts of it to make it more of an attraction for tourists. There are all sorts of fountains and statues and the buildings are quite nice. At least that's how it is in one part of town. The rest of the city, including the guest house we stayed in, were basically like the rest of Georgia. Except, I think the streets were actually worse there than in a lot of areas. They were all broken and dusty and dirty. The guest house we stayed in was really pleasant though, and the people who lived upstairs were really nice and gave us a full breakfast one morning when we went up just to ask for a spoon. The beds were incredibly comfortable and we nicknamed ours (mine and Anita's) "the cloud" because it was so soft and the blankets were amazing. Needless to say, we spent quite a lot of time in the cloud. The rest of our time was basically spent at the beach. We got so much sun it was amazing. The beach itself was pretty much all rocks, and that is uncomfortable, but we found a bar/lounge place that had wooden platforms you could lay on all day, as long as you bought a drink or two. So we did that every day and had a great time. One day, someone even delivered me a free coffee drink. Awesome! Elyse and Shannon got burned on the first day, but luckily I reserved the burn for the last day, which means the train ride home was horrible, but at least I got to enjoy the sun fully the entire trip.
Hippies:
On the third day at the beach, some of our friends somehow came across a group of hippies. 1 American, 1 Australian, 1 Danish and 1 English (I think) all with massive dreads backpacking across the world for god knows how long making money by playing their music in random plazas and streets everywhere they go. They walked up while we were laying on our wood platforms and Elyse writes to me (yeah, we were on our iphones) "where did the pirates come from?" That's basically how out of place they looked. We left Cody with them all day and that evening we met back up and we all (except for the dane and englishman who went to sleep in a park somewhere) went to a restaurant. We drank vodka and beer and the two guys took out their guitar and violin and started playing music. We ended up having some good singalongs including backstreet boys, hanson, fleet foxes and the beatles. Then we made our way back to the beach and went swimming. We then found wood and had a bonfire on the beach, and the cops came and didn't quite not what to make of this event because a) some people were not quite clothed b) there was a fire on the beach c) they had probably never seen dreads before. But we weren't doing anything illegal I guess, so they left us alone. After we ran out of wood (this didn't take long because the only wood we could find was like random bits of palm tree), the sun was already starting to come up so we figured we should go home. The hippies didn't have anywhere to stay (a lot of the time they just sleep outside), so we invited them to our guest house and after getting a lot of junk food, we returned to the cloud and we sat in it eating until the rest of our group arrived (I took a cab with the boys, and the other girls walked because they had to stop and look for a sweater that had gone missing). Then, five of us crammed into our "cloud" which was two single beds pushed together, and we slept for about 2 hours until it was time to wake up and get the train back to Tbilisi.
Stupid:
I missed work yet again today, this for no good reason except for that I'm really stupid. I am actually feeling pretty guilty about it! It happened because yesterday after my doctor's appointment I was running some errands and such (you know, the important things like getting money out of the bank and eating ice cream), and then my friend D said he wanted to hang out but couldn't until 4:30, so I was like ok no big deal. So then he picked me up at the hostel and we went to get ice cream (yes, I got ice cream twice in one day, I'm obsessed with ice cream! I didn't tell the doctor this when she asked me if I eat sweets), and then we ate it in a park. Then he got a call from some workers who were going to his house to fix his bathtub and he had to go right then, so I went with him. So, time passed and then I realize I had been there quite a long time and there wasn't going to be a marshutka back to Telavi anymore! I was like "oh crap, I'm incredibly stupid!" so I texted my co-teacher and said I would try to get on the first one in the morning and just miss the first one or two classes. She said not to worry or be in a hurry, but I still felt like I needed to. My friend let me stay at his house since I didn't want to have to pay for yet another night at a hostel. We had a pretty good time and just hung out and drank some vodka-cranberry (which was so exciting to me, since that is my staple drink in the US but I haven't come across cranberry juice since I've been in Georgia), and we got some food from the store to eat for dinner. The woman at the store wouldn't sell us a certain dish though for some reason. She kept saying I wouldn't like it, and actually refused to give it to us. She told him that if it had just been him she would have given it to him, but since I was a foreigner she wouldn't. Weird. Anyway, this morning I woke up early and tried to get an early marshutka back, but it ended up not leaving as early as it was supposed to because it wasn't filling up quickly (yeah, that's how things work here, nothing is really scheduled, or if it is, the schedule is like a vague plan instead of a set thing). So I ended up missing three of my classes by the time I got back to Telavi and I had a raging headache because my allergies are acting up. I just went to sleep when I came home. I feel so bad about missing work though!!!!! I've missed so much lately with being sick and the doctor's appointments and meetings all throughout May. Oh well..............
Side note:
People in Georgia stare, A LOT. They don't really make an effort to hide it either. It's especially bad if you are a foreigner. They are just so interested. I'm getting kind of used to it now. But yesterday when I was in the store with D, out of nowhere he was like "You don't especially look like a foreigner. But people stare at you all the time!" And then we had a conversation about it, and I was saying I probably dress like one, and he said no I don't look that different, he can tell when someone looks like they don't belong and I don't look that way, and some foreigners even walk differently (haha) and I don't have anything glaringly foreign about me. So now I just feel weird because he even noticed that people stare at me more than usual (I assumed that they just stared at me because I looked weird here), but it is also cool to know that a real Georgian doesn't think I look like a freak out of place tourist. Ha.
