I hear the Aragvi's roar in front of me
--From a poem by Aleksandr Pushkin
After 36 hours of travelling (including delightful 6 and 7 hour layovers in Chicago and Istanbul), I have finally made it to Georgia. I am sitting in the Bazaleti Palace Hotel, delirious from travelling and frustrated by the fact that, despite it being 5:00am, my body has no real conception of the time and I do not feel the urge to sleep. My impressions of Georgia are currently very limited, insofar as I have only really seen the airport, viewed the city under the cover of night from a moving van, and gone to my hotel room. I have gotten to know the group with which I will be spending the next week, as we were all on the same flight coming in. As it turns out, there are few flights from the USA to Tbilisi.
Other highlights of arriving in Georgia included a somewhat failed attempt to communicate with the driver of our van in Russian. Speaking mediocre Russian and knowing little more than the sound that each letter in the Georgian alphabet makes, communicating with Georgians in the coming days should prove to be both trying and hilarious.
