Excitement in the Capital

Winter's been monotonously creeping by so it was nice to spend 9 days in Tbilisi for camp meetings, Georgian language lessons, an education conference and presentations for our "Teacher Training" program. You may be asking, "How can this girl with no education degree and no experience in the classroom be qualified to train Georgian teachers?" I was thinking the same thing myself hehe but soon realized that with the condition of schools in this country, being brought up in the American school system is more than enough. My topics are called: Alternative Discipline Methods (why beating children and pulling their hair and ears is not effective), Ways to prevent cheating (letting your students collaborate on every test and quiz is not effective either), and Alternatives to the Memorization of Passages (reciting a text word for word is not actually learning the language!).
But back to the Tbilisi trip..the hotel owner's son was a criminal running from the cops so he decided to hide out in the hotel while we were having our lessons. We heard men screaming downstairs and our director came in soon after and said a man was running through the hotel with a gun but he has been contained in the basement so we could be evacuated. We packed our stuff up and got out in 10 minutes. Tbilisi driving is horrifying as it is but our driver decided to go into "situation mode." I was much more scared in the car than in the hotel with the armed criminal! The main 2 crimes in all of Adjara are cow theft and family feud, so Tbilisi is a tad bit more dangerous! It was exciting to say the least.