Everything happens twice: Hiking and goodbyes.

SURPRISE!!!! Whoops, did I skeeer ya? Bet you weren't actually expecting to hear from me again, ever. Truth to be told, I'm no longer in the land of the Kartveli, but I am forever a White Crow, whether I like it or not. More on that later.
I never actually covered the trip to Svaneti, other than a meager post on Stalkernet with an urge for you to Wikipedia the place to see how beautiful it is. Now you can do the same, but with pictures from yours truly!
I'm also thinking about making this a more regular thing, although as I transition, I should probably create a new blog, and maybe even try to make a living blogging and choose a focus that will actually be interesting to a wide variety of people, not related to me.
But there's still some unfinished business from Georgia coupled with all my culture shock. So, instead of doing things purely chronologically (numbers are my wolfsbane [or, you know, this], and time's wicked hours are no exception), I'll completely ignore my post-service jaunt in the UAE and Thailand with the lovely Cara Bragg and do a rundown on my thoughts on two things: hiking and saying goodbyes.

Hiking/traveling in general.

Mestia, Svaneti vs. St. Mary, Glacier National Park, MT
Observations:

• Things don't always turn out as you plan them. Helicopter flights can be postponed and cancelled in a moment's notice, and the cheap, long way home may turn out to be the more reliable one.
• Certain old Megrelian women need to learn a) what a line/queue is, b) what people standing in front of her look like, and c) how not to mouth off to people when questioned about their blatant disregard for both a) and b).
• My dad is not the conversationalist on topics of my/PCV and guests' interests such as how cool glaciers look, stressing about landing a job, what love means, or bowel movements, but I did learn about how polyethelyne is made and what his favorite car he ever owned is (and how to revive failing pistons). The man also hiked 10 hours with me on 13+ miles of trail, over trees and glaciers and shit (literally-- there was bear scat). Not only did he keep up, he hiked about 3/4 of the way back with a toe the color of Barney blushing and a blister the size of South Dakota. He deserves heaps of street cred. Props to my pa.
• Hiking up to and on glaciers is sweet. It's a lot easier with proper gear. (Thanks, online shopping. But, by the same token, it's hard not to feel like a dork-in-snob's-clothing when you're wearing something with THE NORTH FACE promulgating its superiority from your chest.
• 1500 mL of water is not enough to take for oneself, when one's hiking companion has only brought 1/3 that amount. Thanks, Peace Corps issued potable water tablets.
• Waterfalls are pretty.

Conclusion:

• Even though I didn't grow up doing it, (Iowa?) hiking's rad.
• I'm going back to Glacier. Look out, Cracker Lake, there's a storm comin'.

Saying goodbyes

Observations:

• -Easier when you just don't let thoughts like, "I'll probably never see you again, and if I do it won't be the same," creep in.
• That said, leaving my host family was probably the hardest thing I've done. Some waterfalls are pretty, some are disconsolately sad.
• Drinking large quantities of alcohol and toasting one another can bring "closure", but it can also be dangerous territory for emotions of all kinds.
• When you have time to prepare for goodbyes, you have to deal with the whole impending thing for weeks/months where people get all passive aggressive toward one another to make parting easier, even though it's a dumb solution. When goodbye's unexpected, you have to deal with the whole pain-like-a-battle-axe-hack-at-your-heart thing.

Conclusion:

• Goodbyes hurt.
• If all else fails, take my bidzashvilishvili (first-cousin-once-removed) Paul's lead: Hug the people you think are nice, but refuse to speak to or look at the person you think is coolest in the hour of parting. Remember, if you don't say goodbye, they don't leave.

Bonus!  Blathering philosophical metaphor about life!!!!!!!!11111!!

The time, love, memories, life I've shared with those I met in Georgia can't be undone-- until I become senile or get hypnotherapy, of course. Part of them lives in me, and I live in part of them. It's like if I had been living in the same, clay-ridden soil my whole life, and I shoveled my sprouts into a pot and took them to Georgia, and the people I met had other things-- good peat moss, exotic sand used to growing different types of plants, apathetic rocks, and smelly but kinda useful manure, and it got all mixed up in my little mound. Some of them threw some seeds in there that I'd never seen before, some of them showed me alternative sources of light, some treated me more like a chamber pot. I tried my best to cultivate love, but sometimes I was just too tired and sick of the the scratchy plants and the sun beating down on me.

I know I need to get back to tending my little bit of earth, though. The time I spent in Georgia will nourish me in the future in ways I can't see, and most of all, I hope desperately that I've done something that's mattered, that's good to other people's garden's, too. I just hope it don't get raked away or burned up.