Georgia week 6: cooking, dancing, goodbyes and couchsurfing

This week seemed so busy and so relaxed at the same time. We continued working on our project in Campus Lions Club, I continued preparing trainings which hopefully one day I would give and brainstorming ideas how could we make a change in Georgia so that we would be remembered.

Global village

We tried our hand in cooking this week and it was very hectic. We bought the supplies, prepared our presentations and attacked the kitchens with full force. I was even making a dessert at 3 am to have it ready for the following day. For the Lithuanian table I had some Saltibarsciai (cold borshch - with kefyr), Lithuanian cheese and chocolate and tinginys (a Lithuanian sweet from cookies, butter, sugar, eggs and cocoa). Cooking in our small kitchen was a disaster especially when the home owner was peeking every minute over your shoulder to see what you are doing. But we managed and transported our stuff to the library.

Everyone prepared their special dishes and some of them even had traditional clothes - my roommates from Qatar and Algeria were wearing their traditional clothes - it was amazing. We heard everybody's presentations, tasted everybody's food, ugh I ate so much. Some of the presentations were quite long, but others were short and funny (including mine - everybody loves the story of Gediminas and the Iron wolf. oh and the fact that you can sell 10 Lt bill in gay bars). After this even we had a looot of leftovers, but they didn't stay for long.

Global village

The goodbye marathon

In this week three people left and everybody started feeling that the internship is coming to an end. It's hard to face it. It's weird even to think that the people you were laughing, dancing with soon will go to their countries and the only possible way to see them will be on Facebook, Skype and with a small possibility to ever meet again as most of the countries need visas to travel.

We already said goodbye to the girl from Taiwan, and this week it was time to say goodbye to a guy from Tunisia, and two girls from Ukraine. So the goodbyes started on Tuesday - we went to the riverside to have a nice chat, sit a little and relax (again it was a perfect time for the Lithuanian fairytales - this time it was Egle the Queen of Snakes time - they loved it). Later we went to have some shwarma and went to rest before another goodbye party which happened the following day.

Ohhhh....for one of the Ukrainian girls we went to the club of Kutaisi - Tetri Xidi Bari (White Bridge Bar). We put on our dresses (or jeans who wanted to, it's everybody's choice) and we destroyed the dance floor. The epitome of the night was King Shit by the Hi-Yahs. Georgians were just staring at us during that song - I guess it's not really their style. We then sat on the White Bridge and said our goodbyes and gave some presents.

The last goodbye this week happened on Thursday when we went to the other intern house, had a nice sit, chat, we cooked some food and said our goodbye to the other Ukrainian girl. Everybody promised to see each other again and we wanted to sit some more, but we got kicked out of the house by the house owner as apparently we made to much noise (it wasn't noisy at all if you ask me).

Couchsurfing in Batumi

From the start of the week me and my roommate were searching for hosts in Batumi. It was her last weekend in Georgia and Batumi was the city she wanted to see again. So all week we were checking possible people we could live with. On Friday we finally agreed with a host. So Saturday the bus moved to Batumi (we slept most of the ride) and when we were there we called and got the key for the apartment (apparently I wrote to our host's roommate asking for a couch as well). The apartment was amazing comparing to what we were living in Kutaisi.

We changed our clothes and hit for the beach where we spent half of the day and got a really nice tan. The sea was very salty compared to the Baltic sea and very very calm, so we could have the best time to relax. After that we hit the shops and prepared ourselves for the night. There was a festival preparation next to the beach, so most of the time we could hear Boney M or Ace of Base preparing themselves. At night we went to eat, have a sit on the beach and watch the waves crash and of course we went to a night club to dance of all our worries and charge ourselves with positive energy. We met our hosts there, so we didn't have to worry how to get home.

On top of Batumi

The following day we searched for some souvenirs, walked around and took the funicular to the top of the mountain. The view was amazing and the funicular was very nice and fast. After taking some pictures there, we went to eat, pack and headed home to Kutaisi. ugh, the ride took three hours with the driver stopping for almost each person - you want ice cream? I'll stop. You want water? no problem. uuuuuugh. The bus drove through Qobuleti as well, which seemed like a nice and loud city at night - you could see people walking around and dancing in the clubs. When the bus finally reached Kutaisi, we decided to have a night snack at McDonalds (I was so tired I ate chicken with ice cream) and headed home.