Goodbye Marathon

My last two weeks of service have been very similar to the first two weeks: constant overwhelming hospitality and force-feeding! I have drunk with a toddler twice in Georgia: in my first week and last week at site.

The goodbye gift count:

2 pairs of underwear
2 pairs of earrings
A necklace
4 kanzis (a horn for drinking wine that looks like this)

2 wine bowls
Bottle of homemade vodka
Bottle of wine
Massive bag of acorns

It has been intense. Saying goodbye to so many people knowing you’re most likely never going to see them again is not easy. The 2 most common questions have been “Do you want to go home?” and “Are you ever going to come back??” I tell them I will come back if I have the money in 5 or 10 years, and they say of course you will have money, you are an American!! Luckily, two people in my village (that I know of) out of a couple thousand have email so we will be able to keep in touch and maybe I’ll maybe even remember some of my Georgian.

Considering all the complaining I’ve done over the past two years, everything has ended on a really positive note. In the next 2 weeks I’ll be hitting up some more sites in Georgia that I haven’t seen: Kazbegi, a famous mountain, and Svaneti, a mountainous region of the country that is really out there. Anthropologists go there to study the mountain people, the Svans, who are notoriously…a bit on the wild side. My friend’s host dad told us, “In Svaneti, time has stopped.” There are gorgeous stone towers along with the mountains. After a year of not having a camera in this country where I’m constantly seeing things I want to photograph and wanting to pull my hair out, I finally bought a fancy digital camera with my readjustment allowance. It’s the best thing to ever happen to me:

Can’t believe it’s finally over! Not before all the paperwork gets done though :(