Tbilisi, Georgia

These photos are from my recent trip to Tbilisi, Georgia for a Social Media for Social Change conference. The conference was very interesting. I had forgotten what is was like to be surrounded by like-minded journalists. It was refreshing, but also a wake-up call. Man, has technology changed in the last year! One woman asked me to describe what I thought Media 2.0 was. I said, honestly, I've never even HEARD of web 2.0 and for the first 10 months of my service here I didn't even have real reliable access to the internet!!

I had been in Tbilisi once before when Henni and I traveled through on our way to and from Turkey. I came this time with a fellow PCV, Chris. He had never been to Tbilisi before, so I was the semi-tour guide. I brought us back to a restaurant that I remembered and we gorged ourselves on Lobiani, a round bread with red bean past inside, sooooo good!

We walked around everywhere in the city and got a pretty good grasp of the metro system. All the signs in the metro stations are in the Georgian alphabet (see Armenian alphabet thrown against the wall) and neither of us bothered to learn it before we came. Luckily, Chris is really good a gesturing. You should have seen him tell the waitress he wanted water with gas!

This is me and Chris. He's quite a character and I laughed a lot on this trip. We also got soaking wet more than a few times while walking in torrential downpours.

This is the coolest church sitting on a cliff above the river that runs through the middle of the city. There are churches just about every block and all the Georgians cross themselves when they pass by, even the taxi drivers while speeding down the narrow streets full of pedestrians.

Along the Tbilisi skyline you can see Mother Georgia. She has a twin that lives in Yerevan, Mother Armenia. Mother Georgia is holding a sword and a goblet of wine. Ohhh.... is Georgian wine good!

This is Sayat Nova's grave outside of the Armenian church. Sayat Nova is a very famous Armenian writer. After taking a few photos we walked into the church and greeted those inside in Armenian. They didn't think much at first and then we started up a conversation with them in Armenian. They were so impressed that these Americans in Georgia were speaking their mother tongue. We stayed for a while, lit some candles and went on our way.