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.

Batumi

My host family took me to Batumi. We left the day after the holiday in Mstkheta and were there until Sunday, October 17th.  I went with my host mother and her father (my host grandpa). He drove us in his car about 2/3 of the way across the country to the Black Sea.  He has a cousin there in Batumi so we stayed with them. His cousin and family were very nice and had an apartment just a rock's skip from the beach.  It took us nearly 8 hours to get there when it probably should have taken at max 5.  It was because it was raining most of the way there and the car’s defogger and windshield wipers didn't work very well so he drove very slow. Also, I don't think he knew exactly how to get there because we kept stopping for directions. We stopped and had lunch in this small town about half way there.  The drive was half of the experience because I saw a lot of the countryside and all of its wonderful people and animals.

The first hour of the drive was on a major divided highway but most of it was on a single lane highway that went through many towns large and small. Along these roads were cows, pigs and goats just looking for things to eat and sometimes they decided that there was something tastier on the other side of the road right in front of you.  Unfortunately for one pig, it chose the wrong time to cross the road. We were driving behind this medium size semi with no load on the back, when I could see the truck start to swerve. I could just see something moving right in front of it and then, thump, thump, the truck couldn’t swerve quickly enough and right in front of us was a poor slaughtered pig.  We quickly swerved around the mess and passed by the truck who had hit the pig, he was pulling over. I asked my hostess what happens when animals are hit and she told me that the person who hits it has to go back and pay for it.  Anyway, it was an experience.

 Where we ate lunch.

 Here we were forced to take a detour along a super potholed road. I forgot that was another thing that added to the length of our drive.

 A government building in a small town we passed through.

 These cows were just chillin' in the middle fo the road. My favorite though was (which unfortunately I was unable to get a picture of) cows at a gas station while people were there getting gas not paying them any attention. I thought it was quite entertaining.

When we arrived in Batumi it was dark, so after we ate some dinner our host took us around the city to see some of the lights, buildings & parks.

 Statue holding the golden fleece.

 Used to be Catholic church converted to Orthodox.

The next day was still cloudy and rainy but the rain let up a bit so we went to check out the Sea and my hostess (Inga) and I took a walk along the boardwalk. Before we took the walk our host took us out to breakfast for a tradition cheese bread that is know to be from Batumi called acharuli. It is shaped like a boat, the 2 ends of the bread are twisted up and in the middle they put cheese, a raw egg and butter. I ordered mine with out the egg but they mix the egg in with the hot cheese and it cooks it. I loved it the first time I had it without egg. I didn't dare try it at this time with the egg but since then I have been a bit more daring... it's pretty good with the egg.

Our host and his childern. 

 (I wish I would have taken a picture of the acharuli)
Park between our host's apartment and the Black Sea.

 The Black Sea (Shavi Zghva)

:)

There was a zoo along the board walk. The few animals they had were in cages behind glass.

Walking.

We walked down the boardwalk and I saw what looked like a lighthouse. 

I wanted to go up it but Inga was a little skeptical.  We went in and found out it was a restaurant and I started heading up the flight of stairs I found. Inga I don't think wanted to come up but she had tochase me all the way up because I had a bit of a head start.

When we got to the top, the view of Batumi was amazing.

 

 

 

 

 There was a short pier across from the lighthouse.

We headed back to the apartment after this because we both had to use the restroom and there were none available where we were. Plus, if we would have kept walking on the boarwalk we would have eventually reached Turkey (which, I wouldn't have minded except I didn't have my passport with me.)

The next morning I got up a little early and took a walk down the opposite direction on th e boardwalk than where we had gone the day before.

 Found some older people taking a dip in the Black Sea in what seem to be their underwear (but I don't know for sure). I really wanted to go swimming but my time was limited that moring.

 Some interesting art work and a ship in the background.

 Found a jelly fish on the beach.

 And a rainbow.

When I got back from my walk we at some breakfast and then it was time to head back. Luckily it wasn't raining when we left. I saw some interesting things on my way home as well.  I forgot to mention that the whole way there I was trying to take a picture of a pig (well, until I saw the one get slaughtered) and I wasn't able to get one but I finally got my picture of a pig on the way home.

Just kidding, that wasn't the only pig I got.

Some of the apartments we passed by.

 Man on a bike with sticks.

 The view.

Experience a few seconds of the drive.