Training for a Unique Life Experience

Life at my parents’ house is far from shabby in fact it’s very nice, but a five star hotel in any country is an upgrade.  Every morning we had 4 tables of scrumptious food spread before us, and a great view of the city. Dinner and lunch consisted of 3 courses of delicious and beautifully plated food.  The rooms were nice and the water pressure in the shower made it feel like you were standing under a waterfall.  If you are ever in Tbilisi and you don’t want to give up your western comforts, money isn’t an issue, and you don’t care about not being down town I would recommend the Sheraton, but that is a lot of ifs. 

(the hotel)

(typical dessert)

(view from breakfast)

            The days consisted of Georgian lesson’s in the morning and culture lessons in the afternoon. Language has always been hard for me; I had difficultly speaking English when I was little when it was all around me.  The Georgian langue has 36 letters, which sounds like it would be harder then English, but those 36 letters always make the same sound.  The thing that is hard about the 36 letters is I can’t hear the difference between some of them and others I can’t say, they have one letter that phonetically we would spell out QKH, it sounds like a hacking throat clearing sound to me.  I almost have the alphabet down, I just can’t speak and my vocabulary is limited, hopefully total submersion will help me distinguish the difference between sounds like a hard t and a soft t.

 Culture class was not exactly what I expected from a title like culture class we spent most the time learning about culture shock and being told not to reject things we don’t understand.  We did learn some interesting things in class, like not to smile with out a reason, and the word boy/girl friend doesn’t translate.  You can smile if you are happy and able to explain what is making you happy, if you smile at a stranger it is taken as an invitation to talk to you and girls are not suppose to smile at guys unless they want to date them. As I said girl/boy friend doesn’t translate, you are dating someone with the intention of marrying him or her in a pretty short time, or it’s not really culturally accepted.  

Overall training was a good experience but I didn’t feel like I left the U.S.. It was like joining a club about Georgia, with a higher then average number of people speaking with British and Australian accents.