In Transit

I flew from Boston; to New York City; to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine; and finally to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. I was reviewing the Georgian alphabet at Logan Airport, and another TLG volunteer found me, so we stuck together. When we got to JFK, we found out that another group of young people was flying to Kiev. It turns out that they were a Taglit-Birthright group Israel, but we did finally meet up with a bunch of folks from our group at the airport. The longest leg was nine hours, but all in all, I really lucked out. I sat next to a wonderful Romanian woman, and I had the window seat. Random note, but I found it interesting that Aerosvit, the airline, had tomato juice as a beverage option. Other than noticing that Cimber Sterling, a Danish airline, has a Viking logo on its planes, nothing noteworthy happened. I arrived in Tbilisi with all of my luggage, which wasn't the case for everyone, TLG met us right after the baggage claim, and I exchanged some money.

View from my hotel room

Taking a mini-bus from the airport to the hotel was reminiscent of my first hour in Cairo. However, I soon discovered that Tbilisi was very different. One of the first things I noticed was that people drove in the lines; I hadn't expected this. I was genuinely excited about it. I also saw police cruisers pulling drivers over and patrolling, which was reassuring. The buildings in the city are a lot shorter than I had anticipated. Sure, there are plenty of Soviet-style apartment buildings, but there are lots of little houses and shacks too. Since it was evening and I hadn't really slept in 24 hours, I don't have any more observations yet, but I'll fill you in after I check out my surroundings.