Another New Chapter

A quick update on my life...this ends the travel bit for now as I embark upon learning a new culture:business.

This summer I started rereading “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller.  I read it the first time in that terrible period when I came home from Russia and felt like my awesome life had suddenly stopped and I didn’t know how to get it started again.  It really resonated, because the book’s about your life as a story, and in your life, to make a good life, like a good story, you need a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.  I’m not sure why I decided to reread it, but I brought it to Georgia.  At first, I read about a chapter a day (they’re short).  Then, after a few weeks, when the book was starting to tell me I had to stop reading and start living, I stopped reading. 

 

This encapsulates Georgia on so many levels

I wanted to ease into the comfortable routine of class, homework, watching the Turkish soap opera with my host family, reading some fiction, and then crashing before doing it all over again.  I mixed it up with some friends, but the workload was enough that I could easily ignore all the rest Tbilisi had to offer.

This summer, I really realized how beautiful Tbilisi really is.

The weeks went by too quickly.  I knew they would.  My bucket list is far from complete.  Time with friends was too short.  But, I realize, in those eight weeks, my story entered a new chapter.  I climbed a mountain with a friend after two other attempts went wrong.  I had conversations that stayed in Georgian.  I became part of a family in Tbilisi.  I finally made it Shatili, the place at the top of my bucket list.  I laughed with friends a lot.  I discovered new parts of Tbilisi I didn’t even know. I spent two months indulging my love of languages.  I fell more in love with Georgia and Tbilisi.

My host sister gave me a special tour of the Art Academy, with this gorgeous lobby.

It all ended too quickly and the next chapter began immediately, before I had a chance to recover from the jet lag.  Somehow, I managed to make friends even when I’m pretty sure every sentence didn’t make sense those first days.  In the last week, I’ve made a few friends that I think will see me through my MBA.  I’ve met a lot of fascinating people.  I’ve gotten to make friends with several international students.   

At the same time, watching all these people move and start over, I realize that I’ve done this for the last two years.  It gives me a leg up, but it also makes me a little tired.  As much as I love going and moving and trying something new, I miss having friends who know me enough to call me out when necessary, who really know me.  I’m starting to realize that while I’m making friends all over the globe, I need quality time in one location to develop those deep friendships.  I hope I make them in the next two years, since the sheer quantity of forced socialization means I’ll be doing a lot of “networking”.  

Even though I’ve lived in Bloomington for a year, it’s still an entirely new experience.  My program can consume my entire life.  But, after this, I’ve finally got to grow up and maybe even settle in one place, so for now, I’m going to try to enjoy it.  I see a lot of conflict (forcing myself out of my comfort zone is going to become a daily occurrence), so I’m hoping my character grows and gets whatever I’m seeking from the MBA.  For starters, a clarification of what exactly that is would be nice…

Bye America (A day in rainy DC)

Another airport, another blog post.  This time I’m in DC, waiting to fly out to Tbilisi by way of Munich.  It’s Friday night.  I’ll arrive in Tbilisi on Sunday morning.  I know you’re already jealous.

I flew into DC yesterday and had a short orientation with American Councils and the four other brave souls going on the Eurasian Intensive Language Program.  It was really interesting getting to know these people who will be experiencing similar and yet very different things over the course of the summer. We’re all going to our own chosen post-Soviet country: Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Georgia (clearly the best!), and we all come with vast but varied experience.  Our pursuit of graduate degrees and interest in these countries that fly below most people’s radar made it easy to connect for the brief period we were together.  It was a taste of what I hope is to come; in Georgia, befriending other expats was far easier than making friends ever is.  Seriously.  Where else does the line “Hey there, fellow native English speaker,” actually serve as a great introduction?

I had the afternoon off.  Everyone else had earlier flights so we were given lunch to go and they shipped off.  As DC has been enjoying a nice spate of rainstorms care of Andrea, I decided to forgo another venture up Old Abe’s steps and hit the Smithsonian.  Since I definitely did not pack an umbrella and shunned the multiple offers, I looked like a bedraggled rat by the time I got there.  It was not a problem, since I had left Foggy Bottom, where the hotel and GWU are, and far too many well-dressed young people milled around, all of them carrying umbrellas like sensible people.  Umbrellas and ponchos abounded on the National Mall, but here they were carried by tourists in flip flops, hats signifying their tour group, and t-shirts from high schools and colleges across the nation.  There were plenty of teenagers clearly trying to be cool but failing in a way they will only see when they look back on these photos in several years.  This made me appreciate that I have no idea where pictures of my 6^th grade trip to DC (basically just the Smithsonian) are hiding.

DC, and especially the National Mall, with tour buses waiting on all available streets and people milling around even in the rain, provided some excellent people watching.  As I’m gearing up my traveler’s skills of observation and analysis, it was fun to turn a critical eye on my fellow countrymen, to try to view Americans a little like I view Georgians.

I was actually left with a pleasant picture.  After seeing hundreds of benches to eat lunch, which promised a soaked dress for sure, I was very relieved to find an empty event tent with a few chairs where I could sit down after strolling the American History Museum and finally eat my lunch.  About halfway through, I thought my little piece of heaven was about to be destroyed when an event truck rolled up.  The man smiled and quickly brought out a table!  His friend teased him that he had never seen him work so fast before, to which he replied that I was cute and his friend was not.  A compliment and a dry table!  Between that and watching cute kids try to take pictures in front of the Capitol, I was quite pleased with my countrymen.

Obviously not the Capitol.  It makes me sad the Washington Monument is STILL encased in scaffolding.

I hurried through parts of the National Gallery, finding Van Dycks, Rembrandts, and Titans lurking just around the corner.  Wishing I could stay, I headed back to my fancy hotel in the swanky part of the city.  I’m not sure if it was cocktail hour, their normal MO, or what, but in the lobby they were giving away free mojitos, so I grabbed my bags and a drink and waited for my shuttle.

Since my program arranged for me to arrive 4 hours early, I had plenty of time to do everything I needed at Dulles, including eating Mexican as my last American meal in 2 months.  DC gets definite props for having free wifi in both airports, even if they do charge an extra dollar each way (each way!!) for paper tickets on the metro.

Goodbye America!  I’ll see you in August.  If you could improve the weather by then, I’d really appreciate it. 

Now that I'm done writing about Khrushchev and the Georgian economy...

And, it happened.  I knew the time would come when I would fail to keep up with the blog.  This semester somehow got away from me.  By the time winter was over, papers were calling my name.  I still managed to have a good semester.  Instead of working on papers for Spring Break, my mom, best friend, and I ventured to San Francisco.  Having never ventured to the West Coast, I loved it.  I don’t think I could handle the high prices and hills for any length of time, but the city was a blast to visit for a few days.  The weather also cooperated marvelously, so instead of gross Indiana weather, we got a week of relative sun and light jackets.   

Then I went back to school and found out I’d be writing more papers than I thought, so life became very narrow: read, write, and get your homework done.  I also decided not to go on the program I was set on this summer.  Instead of going to Russia, I decided to go to Georgia.  I leave in a few weeks and am looking forward to a summer in Tbilisi-getting to see old friends, being back in a beautiful country, and do some more exploring.

I finished year 1 of grad school well, but that was the easy year.  In August I start the MBA program and enter a different world.  Part of me can’t wait, the other part wonders how I’ll still be able to have conversations about Putin and Stalin and Misha on a regular basis.  At least I’ll have friends who won’t shudder when I talk about TFP or privatization.

A few weeks before school got out, the business school had an admit weekend, a teaser of how different life is about to become.  It was a bit jarring to realize that the two programs on the same campus could treat everything so differently.  It’s also a relief to be entering a program where people actually (and actively) care about me getting a great job I enjoy once I finish this degree.  As much as I love what I’ve learned this year, I won’t be sad to say goodbye to academia in 2 years.

But, I don’t have to grow up just yet.  In the weeks since school got over, I moved, again.  I’ve managed to stay in one place for longer than a year only once since I turned 18, so I really should be better at this moving thing than I am.  At least this time I got movers, so the process was much easier, and moving every year makes me consistently reevaluate if I need things or not.  After that, I went home to visit my parents and have ended up working at my mom’s work for more days than I anticipated.  It’s been a good break from the cerebral world of Bloomington.  Friendly smiles, happy small talk, and small town speech has been a breath of fresh air, as well as entertainment for the linguistic side of my brain.  The days I leave the bakery to be outside are reminders of why I’m in school to get a desk job so I don’t have to perform manual labor in the future.

In the midst of a month off that’s fleeing all too fast, I got a quick trip in to see my grandmother in Vero Beach.  I got to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in too long.  In thinking about B-school, I’ve thought about where I want to work when I graduate.  I’m pretty flexible, but the more I walked along that beach and swam in the waves, the more the Atlantic seaboard started appealing more and more.  The ocean is my happy place.  It’s just good for the soul.

Getting to visit with my grandmother was also wonderful.  It’s one more experience in a long line the last few years where I realize that my role is changing.  I’m no longer the child, tagging along while others make all the decisions, but a real adult.  This was the first time I had ever spent any real time just me and my grandmother.  It was quite lovely, and the trip was far too short. 

The visit was another instance of where I was hit by how places mean so much, even for one who sometimes feels like a vagrant.   As I drove to St. Louis, my first sight of the Arch brought a smile to my face, as it has every time I’ve seen it since I was a girl, driving to visit my grandparents, when the Arch signaled the journey was almost over.  I ended up needing to drive through my old neighborhood on Monday.  I hadn’t been by in a couple years, so I was pleased when I remembered where the street we needed was but also felt strange seeing our old house, now clearly inhabited by another family.  Even after two years away, many places in St. Louis still feel so familiar.  In the airport on my way to Florida, I caught a glimpse of one of the few restaurants before security and suddenly remembered drinking an overpriced chai tea latte there with my parents, waiting to start the journey that would take me to Tbilisi. Now I’m a few weeks away from making a similar journey.  I’m looking forward to going to Georgia for so many reasons, but I also am trying to temper my excitement.  Once again, I’ll be seeing an old familiar place with new experiences behind me.  Many of the friends who made my year in Georgia so wonderful are now far away, or will only be around for a brief period of time.  I’ll be with a new host family, spending lots of time studying, and living in Tbilisi instead of my lovely mountain village.

  I can go back to Georgia, but I can’t really go back, not to the year I had, the life I knew then.  It’s better for me, but I have so many magical memories of Georgia, that I know I’ll miss certain faces and places when I return.  While several things have changed, I’m so pleased that one of the things I’ve missed most will come true.  Within a week of arriving, I will get to sit in my favorite restaurant drinking cheap wine by the liter with two of my favorite people, chatting away the hours like we used to.  The experience was one I repeated many times and encompasses so many parts of why I loved my year in Georgia so much.  I’m hoping this summer it will be a kick-off to a new source of adventures, friends, experiences, and stories for the blog.

Reasons I Should Be Reconsidering This MA

1.       I actually asked to write a paper.  I don't have to write any other papers this semester and I'm hoping the topic will springboard into my master's thesis...but, still, in April, I"ll be writing 20 pages that I know I don't really have to write.

2.       My friends and I go to bars to do things like play board games and discuss Stalin.

3.       My Cold War history class is making me think this degree is good preparation for becoming dictator of a dystopia.

4.       My Soviet-type Economies in Transition class has inspired me to create a game where you try to create an effective centrally planned economy.  Think “Socialist Monopoly”.

5.       My friends and I hit upon a goldmine of an idea to open up a clothing shop of period English clothing, so we can dress like the characters in Jane Austen novels and the residents of Downton Abbey.

6.       Meeting people like the ambassador of Estonia only makes me want to travel even more.  Sadly, Bloomington lacks an international airport.

7.       Did I mention I have a new passport?  I got the big version so I have lots of pages that are crisp and new, just waiting to be filled.  Not that it's killing me.  Not that I've looked up prices for flights to Turkey for Spring Break.  Not that I'm applying for a summer program in Russia.

All in all, semester 2 is starting out just fine, all things considered.