{"id":7049,"date":"2012-02-23T13:57:43","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T18:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=7049"},"modified":"2012-02-23T13:57:43","modified_gmt":"2012-02-23T18:57:43","slug":"in-kutaisi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/in-kutaisi\/","title":{"rendered":"In Kutaisi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
This is the city where I'm going to be living for the next 4+ months.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So the training period for TLG is finally over, and I’ve received my assignment: I’m in Kutaisi, the second largest city in Georgia! \u00a0It’s about a four hour haul from Tbilisi; I spent it cramped on a bus with my host-mom and brother watching Georgian sketch comedy, with rampant cross-dressing and men getting bride-napped<\/a> by women. \u00a0Hilarious.<\/p>\n

I live in an awesome dilapidated Soviet-era apartment with a fairly large family: mother and father, grandmother, and three kids ages 17, 15, and 9. \u00a0The father works full-time as a welder and the mother works part-time as a nurse. \u00a0There’s another son, age 18, but he’s in Tbilisi for college. Only the kids speak English, but<\/p>\n

The other host brother showed me around Kutaisi today, and it was pretty interesting. \u00a0This probably doesn’t make any sense, but it feels a little bit like something out of an Asterix comic, fast forwarded to the modern era. \u00a0In any case, the city is really nice; cleaner and not as crowded as Tbilisi, with cobblestone streets and European-style buildings with a giant park in the middle.<\/p>\n

I’ve already figured out how to get from my host-family’s apartment to the city center and back by marshrutka–if this were a video game, that would be an achievement. \u00a0Crossing the street would also be an achievement, though it’s much harder in Tbilisi than it is here.<\/p>\n

Some more pictures:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The old cathedral that overlooks Kutaisi. Built in 1003, destroyed sometime in the 18th century, it's being rebuilt now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
My host brother Gura and me, overlooking the Rioni river.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Didube bus station in north Tbilisi.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
A sleeping dog at the bazaar near the Tbilisi stadium. There are a lot of stray dogs here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Just one of the many Nutella stands at the Goodwill supermarket in Tbilisi (no relation to the American thrift store). Apparently, Georgians are crazy for chocolaty goodness.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Some books at a booth in the bazaar. Most are in Georgian or Russian.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

And the last one, just to show how ubiquitous Stephanie Meyer has become:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A shelf full of Stephanie Meyer's books literally on the other side of the world from her...this, my friends, is what success looks like.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So that’s what’s going on here in the land of the Kartulis. \u00a0I haven’t been writing a whole lot, obviously, but once things settle into something of a routine, it shouldn’t be too hard to get back into things. \u00a0Georgians have a way of managing time that, as a strongly perceiving ENTP, I actually find quite appealing. \u00a0But more on that later; I should probably get to bed.<\/p>\n

Kargaaad!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the training period for TLG is finally over, and I’ve received my assignment: I’m in Kutaisi, the second largest city in Georgia! \u00a0It’s about a four hour haul from Tbilisi; I spent it cramped on a bus with my host-mom and brother watching Georgian sketch comedy, with rampant cross-dressing and men getting bride-napped by… Continue reading In Kutaisi<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[335,698,364,705,697,148],"class_list":["post-7049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adventure","tag-cultural-experiences","tag-culture","tag-georgia","tag-teach-and-learn-in-georgia","tag-travel","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1PH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7049"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7064,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049\/revisions\/7064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}