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May - a Memorable Marathon


You know these time periods in life when everything suddenly happens all at once? When time just decides to move at lightspeed and once something started it’s already over? Yeah, welcome to my May 2026 – that was a fever dream in the most beautiful way and while I cannot paint a full picture of this month for this blogpost, I will most certainly try my best! 

Don’t wanna sleep

Since May meant that the final month of our scout school program had started, we wanted to do something special for our participants. For some time now we have wanted to invite our kids to spend the night camping at the scout centre and learn about star-constellations as well as outdoor cooking. While the stargazing turned out to be quite difficult due to an abomination of clouds also showing up to our party – we did manage to almost bake through some of the stick breads and not burn all the potatoes. I call this an amazing success! 
An honourable mention is the fact that all kids found a shelter in stable tents that night. Against my expectations, they surprised me by doing really well with the tent building and none of the tents collapsed in the middle of the night. However, there was one important aspect of the sleepover missing: I am not sure if any of the kids managed to sleep that night – I am almost certain some never tried, but in the end, everybody was awake the next morning and that is what I call an absolute success. Also, who sleeps at sleepovers anyways - weird!

On Holiday!

Almost right after May started, I immediately went on vacation again. Which feels a bit unproductive, but I also was in desperate need to discover Georgia further. Logically, that meant going to Kazbegi – one of the only places I had already visited. Clever, right? But in all honestly, it was very interesting coming back after two months and seeing how much the landscape changes due to snow. It was as beautiful as I remembered and luckily this time the way up to the Gergeti Trinity Church was not completely frozen and we did not have to turn into improvisational penguins to trick fate into making it to the top.
While Kazbegi was amazing, I did make it to new places. One of happened instantly after my Kazbegi trip. I was part of a group tour through the semi-desert part of Georgia’s south and therefore went from chilling -5°C to 30°C in only one day. It would have been a well-made assumption to think, this is where my exhaustion and headaches originated from but I was absolutely ready to ignore any mortal signs of weakness because the area was really, really, really cool. 
We hiked in the red mountains and visited some monasteries on the way. I’m currently making it sound like these were unimportant events- that’s not true, they were really cool- but my highlight is still to come. Since I was a bit inattentive in my planning process I did not read the whole description of the tour and was surprised when we made one additional stop. I did not know this was one of the reasons this tour existed, but I found myself very surprised standing in front of the Davit Gareji Monastery. Just let me say- I have never seen a rock this cool. If you know, you know – and if you don’t, I seriously do not know how to describe it in an understandable way. It is simply a monastery and part of it is in a super cool, big rock. Yeah. Maybe I will include a picture after this horrible description. 
During this journey I made one more important stop but since it was my personal highlight, it deserves an own paragraph…

Mystery of Love

May is the month I discovered my favourite city in Georgia. (Currently my favourite city in the whole world is still Budapest, but we have a very strong contestant here and I cannot guarantee that in a couple week the tables will not have turned).
I first went to Kutaisi as a last stop during my vacation. I was incredibly exhausted from my previous travels and not actually looking forward to going to yet another place. However, that led me to walking through the city without informing myself beforehand on the internet or picking specific locations to go. I discovered Kutaisi on the run and very soon realised that this city holds a type of charme that absolutely gets to me. Just a couple days later, I took my fellow volunteers back to Kutaisi, they simply had to see! In super random places I sometimes end up feeling completely at peace- I cannot describe this feeling, but it is almost like breathing freely after having a cold for a very long time. Kutaisi gave me this feeling.
I fell in love with the mixture of old and new architecture, the way it feels like people just put new constructions on top of old ones but therefore accidently kept the legacy of the places alive. I love how you can walk a random street and suddenly out of some trees there is a house peaking out. I love standing on one side of the river and watching whatever is going on at the other side. I love seeing the whole city with mountains in the background from Bagrati Cathedral. I love the slight wind that was there when I visited. I love how it feels quieter and slower than Tbilisi but suddenly wakes up at night and offers the most random partying possibilities. And I simply really love how this city makes me feel. Just happy. That’s it. 
Ok enough with the gross love-talk – let’s move back to productivity here:

Never ending Kitchen Session

Since April all of us long-term volunteers are working on personal projects. While I could’ve literally chosen anything, I went with the idea of doing a vegan recipe book for Georgian and international dishes. While this technically is a cool idea, I did not pay attention to the logical consequences this brought for me. The amount of time I spent cooking in May is almost embarrassing. As a feminist, who does not like cooking – my home was the kitchen. However, I must say most of the dishes did turn out tasting pretty good and at least I can confidently flex my cooking skills now. That will surely come in handy when I am trying to make new social connections. Still, I am done with cooking for now. 

Running up that Hill (and out of time)

At some point in May I realized that June was approaching faster and faster and that also meant my departure was coming uncomfortably close to me. There were and still are many things I did not manage to do but due to the summer I gained a huge boost of motivation to simply “do”.
So, the logical consequence was to get a tattoo, a new piercing and a haircut all in the span of one week. While I absolutely feel amazing, this made me realise that against my anticipation I did change a lot during my voluntary service at the ISCR. While I now also have a slightly changed physical appearance (trust me hair does a lot with a person’s vibe) I also feel like I have changed in my way of thinking. I am not entirely sure what this means for returning to Germany and leaving Georgia behind, but since I still have two weeks – I will simply enjoy. I actually feel home, happy and whole right here and right now.
Well, there we go. I’m turning more sentimental each day and at the end it did get a very kitschy. But thank you for staying until the bitter end.

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