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WE ARRIVED!

Location: Georgia

Gamarjoba! Welcome to a new round of ISCR blogs.


I am Vibeke, a new volunteer from the Netherlands. A month ago, I arrived at Tbilisi airport together with the other Dutch volunteer Renée, and since then three more volunteers arrived: Krista from Latvia and Charlotte and Anias from Germany. For the coming months, we will organise activities at the Scout Centre in Rustavi, try to understand something of the Georgian language and discover the beautiful country! 😀 With this blog, we’ll try to keep you updated.


But how did I end up here? This summer, I applied for the volunteering program at ISCR with the European Solidarity Corps. I just finished high school and wanted to take a gap year before starting my studies. As I am always eager to explore new countries and cultures, I decided to apply for a long-term ESC program, in order to not only explore a country, but also contribute something to it. I started to search for countries that I knew nothing about. I wanted a country that will give me many cultural shocks, because that means there will be much to explore and learn about for me. Well, Georgia turns out to be the perfect country! I feel like Georgian culture is interesting enough to give me cultural shocks during the whole year. Also, it’s a pretty unknown country in the Netherlands. When I told people I would be going here, the most frequent response I got was ‘Georgia, where’s that? Next to Albania?’ 🙄


I will share the first cultural shocks I experienced upon arriving: First of all, I was surprised by the traffic. People seem to drive so fast, everyone is always honking at each other for no reason and when you want to cross the street, you have to walk really determined to urge the cars to actually stop for you. If you look unsure about crossing, they will just drive on. The second thing that grabbed my attention were the mountains. Although Georgians don’t consider the hills around Rustavi actual mountains, I come from the most flat country you can imagine, so for me they are. Every time I see the ‘mountains’ around Rustavi, I am amazed all over again, and I cannot wait to try to hike up there. 


Another interesting difference with my country is the little supermarkets you see everywhere. You never have to walk far to find a shop, there are even two or three in a row sometimes. Most of them are quite small and they sell different things every time, so grocery shopping is quite a challenge sometimes. I am used to just having a few big supermarkets, but where you can find everything you can think of. Also, shops here are open until quite late in my opinion. In the Netherlands, all shops close at six o’clock, the bigger supermarkets at nine or ten. Here, supermarkets are open until eleven and some are even 24/7. Furthermore, I was surprised by the amount of stray dogs and cats in the city, but maybe even more by the way people take care of them. They not only feed them, but also build some little dog houses on the street for them, and gave them tags in their ears to indicate whether a dog is nice or can be aggressive. A good system! 


After this first month, I feel more at home already in Rustavi. Georgian people are in general very nice and welcoming, or well, if they know that you’re not Russian. When Renée and I went to get a sim card, the staff was quite distant to us and did not want to talk English “because those Russians should just learn Georgian”. After our coördinator explained that we were Dutch, not Russian, they suddenly became super friendly and one joyfully started telling me about his visit to Amsterdam. 🙂


Now you know my first experiences, but meanwhile we’ve already made some trips and started the ISCR activities, so stay tuned! And follow our ISCR activities on instagram: @iscr.volunteers and facebook: …


See you soon!

Vibeke

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