Goodbye Georgia

Sadly, it is already time to write my last blog. Unfortunately I am leaving Georgia next saturday. In total I spent around 8.5 months in Georgia (2,5 months longer than I originally planned). And when I am looking back on those months, I can for sure say that I had a good time here. I discovered a new country and culture, met new people and organised a lot of activities. Rustavi, a city I did not know anything about, now feels like my second home. I will miss the city a lot. Mostly, I will miss the people (my fellow volunteers, our coordinator Lia and all the other nice people I met here), but also the places we always went to. Moreover, I will miss Georgia, the people, the food (especially Khinkali), the music, the language, and the beautiful landscapes. It will be weird not to walk to the scout center with my friends every morning. But I guess every good thing also has to come to an end. I hope me and my friends manage to plan a volunteer reunion in the future (and I know we will). Also, I am definitely planning to also visit Georgia again in the future, because I fell in love with the country.

Haven't I had some hard times here in Georgia? Of course I did. And it would be weird if everything I experienced was positive. In the beginning I really had to get used to the country and I had to get used to doing everything together with the same people. In hindsight, I think that those are the things that made the experience nice. All volunteers moved to Georgia around the same time, and experienced that Georgia was different from their home countries. We did not know a lot of people, because of this we were quite dependent on each other. This is not a negative thing. This experience made us spend a lot of time together and made us bond quite fast. I think that I can conclude that my positive experiences, by far, have outnumbered my negative experiences.

To not end on a negative note I want to share my favourite memories I made here. It is hard to pick one, because I made so many nice memories. So I guess I will pick three memories:

1. My birthday in the Truso Valley. I expected to not celebrate my birthday that extensively this year, because I was living abroad and did not know the others that well yet. On my birthday we ended up going on a trip together to the Truso Valley. We even celebrated my birthday multiple times.

2. Our trip to Mestia. Last month we did a trip with all the volunteers to Zugdidi, Mestia en Tskaltubo. It was our last trip all together, which was sad. But I am also very grateful for the memories we made there.

3. All the evenings we spent together. We spent so many evenings together: going to Cafune, chatting in the apartment or chilling on the bench outside the apartment.

Okay everyone, I will really stop writing now, or otherwise I will start to cry.

დიდი მადლობა საქართველო!

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