Kazbegi (Stepantsminda)

Because I couldn't celebrate Halloween here in Georgia (they think it is an evil holiday) I went up into the mountains of Georgia for the weekend to visit my friend. He is the one that originally told me about the TLG program. He requested to be sent to the most remote part of the country up in the mountains.

I left on Friday evening in a Marshutka (the large vans) and rode in the back corner where luckily I could crack the window to try and get some fresh air otherwise I think I would have been sick. The sun didn't stay up too much longer after we left so I was unable to see the drive up the mountain, plus it was rainy and foggy as well. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to get off, I just knew it was the last stop. Luckily the people on the Marshutka were very helpful. Although, when I got out of the van there were a few young boys telling me to go with them. I was a little skeptical at first but they seemed to know I was coming. Come to find out, one of them was the nephew of my friend's hostess, who lived with them. They were very hospitable, my friend gave up his room for me and luckily most of the rooms in the house had a gas furnace because it was cold up there.

On Saturday morning we decided to hike up to the church on the hill because that is what the area is famous for that and Ice Mountain which has snow on it year round and I believe is around 14,500 ft high. It rained all night and was very foggy that day so I could barely see the church up on the hill. My friend had hung his clothes on the line the day before and so they were soaking from the rain. It didn't look like it was going to get any drier outside so before we left on the hike, we took his clothes in, rung them out and we rigged up a few sticks and string above the stove to get his clothes dry.

 After we got the clothes drier up, the rain had stopped so we left for our hike. We took a walk around town first and then headed up the mountain.
This the few from their front door. The church we hiked to, you can barely see on top of the hill.

 

 This is an old Russian truck I thought was cool.

By the time we started to hike the fog had dropped.

 

This was the start of the road up.

We had to hike through this other little village called Gergeti on the way up.

From Gergeti we cut through to a little mud trail. 

On the way up the trail I lost my footing in the mud and had a good 10 foot slide on my side down the trail. Got my left side all nice and muddy. When we were almost to the top of the hill to the church, there was a fountain. So I tried to rinse myself off with the freezing cold water.

We finally reached the church and to be able to go inside I had to put on a skirt (wrap-around) that they provided.

We stayed for a little while in the church, while we were there they started a service where they would read a bit out of the Bible (I think) and they blessed the church by spreading incense around. I was sitting by the furnace trying to dry my mud cleaned clothes. When we finally left the church it had started snowing.

 

My friend wore sandals all the way up and down the mountain.

We saw this cute old lady climbing up the hill in the snow.

The church that we hiked to after it snowed.

On Sunday (Halloween), after it had snowed all night, we took a walk around the village, up to a cemetery, to the school where my friend teaches, and to an old abandoned Russian hotel. He said it was abandoned when the Soviet Union fell which I think was at the end of 1991. I found an old Russian newspaper in the hotel from 1989.

Some cows we said hi to just hanging out on the side of the one of the village roads.

 The schools my friend teaches at.

The old abandoned hotel still had springs of old mattresses, bed frames, shoes, shampoo bottles, broken bricks and tiles everywhere, and there were a pile of sheets down in the bottom 

 

 Check out the date.

Check out these stairs...sketchy.

 
 
 It was kind of fun to explore the old building deserted building knowing it was Halloween, I'm just glad we did it during the day. That evening we ventured out and found some horses roaming the streets.

This horse was a beast, very big.

                   My little pony. 

Horse at a gas station, here's some horse power for you (haha, knee slapper).

I was going to head home Sunday evening but the roads seemed a little to snowy for comforts so I decided to stay one more day. It was a good thing too because the whole time I was there it was cloudy or foggy and I could never see the famous Ice Mountain. When I woke up Monday morning, I looked out the window and it was blue sky. I could see up to Ice mountain perfectly.

Can you see the church?

 On my way to the Marshutka we stopped by the village church.

I really enjoyed my time in Kazbegi, it was a beautiful place. My trip back down the mountain back to Tbilisi was beautiful as well and will be my next blog entry.

Through the Looking Glass of Disney

So a couple days after my birthday my host mom and little brother took me to the top of the mountain where, from most parts of the city, you can see this giant T.V. tower (it's even lit up at night). We took the Metro into downtown and then caught a bus to the top of the mountain. That was my first experience on the bus. We were crammed in there like sardines, I ended up standing on the wheel well for part of the ride. Some smelly guy with a box, taking up a lot of space was standing next to me and everyone was giving him stink eye because he was hogging so much of the space. Fun times. Anyway, when we reached the top of the hill...come to find out, there was an amusement park of sorts up there called Mtatsminda Park.  This place was very interesting to say the least.

This was the entrance to the park, the first thing you see.

Can I lend you a hand?

A fountain, a metal tree, me and my cute little host brother.  

 

This guy was sneaky sneaky but you could really get into his brain.

Creepy Micky...what do you think?

Guess what this is...yep, you got it, it's the bathroom.

It did have a very nice view of the city up there.

            That is the biggest church in Georgia.

The evening before I took a walk to this glass bridge which spans across the river and is a little out of place with the rest of old style Tbilisi.

My Birthday

October 26th - The director of the school I teach at and the scheduler, our translator, took me out to dinner at nice traditional restaurant for my birthday. I wish I would have taken a picture of the food before we had eaten, but all there is, is the after the fact. You can see the cold khinkali in the middle.

The school director is on my left, our traslator is sitting across 

from me and the other woman is the biology teacher that I 

didn't know as well.

After dinner i wanted to do something so I called a few people to see if they wanted to go play pool. I ended up playing pool with Jiayi (friend from TLG) and Nino (teacher I work with) and then going to this restaurant with live music and super good ice cream.

It was a happy birthday. I forgot to mention that I brought a big bag of candy to school and passed it out to the kids during the breaks and told them happy my birtday. It was gone by the 3rd hour.  Also, one of my 12th grade classes had a surprise for me with a banana cream cake with mega cream frosting and big sparkler coming out of the top when I entered the room. It was the coolest "candle" I have ever seen on a cake. They were very cute and excited to have the cake for me. I also received quite a few articles of jewlery from various people.

Kakheti

One of my host brother's turned 13 and had a little party with just a few of his friends so I took a picture of some of the food.

 This was his birthday cake. I watched my hostess, Inga, make it the night before.  It consists of sugar, honey, butter, two eggs and baking soda and then placed it over heat and brought to a boil. Then she slowly added flour in to thinken it. As soon as it was as thick as sugar cookie dough, she rolled it into a snake and cut it into 5 pieces. Then she spread each piece
onto a cookie sheet very thinnly so it covered the cookie sheet and cooked it for a short time. She cooked all 5 pieces scraped them off the pans and then added sweeten condensed milk mixed with butter and glued all the layers together with it. Then she took the crumbs from scraping off the layers from the pan and put them on top. I was quite tasty and very light as far as cakes go (well light weight probably not light in calories).



We made a trip out to Kakheti with two bus loads of teachers from the TLG program. We went to a... well what I would call a school/farm.  When we go there they divided us up into about 6 groups and sent us to learn differenet things. There was animals, pickle making, bread making, chacha making, khinkali making and something else I can't remember. I volunteered for the first group that they announced, which was animals. I was secretly hoping we would be able to ride horses but, they had no horses unfortunately. I did get to do another interesting thing instead though. 

Yes I milked a cow. 

I also saw a few other animals as well.

                           

 Feeding time.

 I just kept thinking Thanksgiving Dinner.                                                      

 This was the biggest pig I've ever seen.  You can't really tell from the picture. Look at that snout.

 Pretty sure we enjoyed a friend of his a little later that day. They season and bbq pork on skewers, it's called mtsvadi.  It is one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life...mmm so delicious.  I couldn't stop eating it. As soon as it would be done cooking, they would take it off the fire and give it to us right from the skewer.

 Making khinkali. Khinkali is a ground seasoned beef wrapped in dough and looks like a dumpling.

 
 These are edible candles called churchkhela. They like to call them the "Georgian Snickers". They string together walnuts and then dip them in a gooey, boiled grape extract that turns into a rubbery shell after it cools.

They had prepared a full meal of traditional Georgian foods, very tasty. It had started raining while we were there and didn't let up much the rest of the day. When we went back to Tbilisi, we walked around the city for hours in the rain.