What do you mean 57? - January 17, 2007

Sitting in the O'hare airport, I look across to see a group of people chatting outside the gate to Warsaw, Poland. Strange. Surely not all of us could be on the same flight randomly. So, naturally, I eavesdropped until I felt quite certain that they, too, were through the Teach and Learn with Georgia program. Sure enough...9 of us met in the airport all the while I was thinking I would be the only one. My recruiter left some details out. Many people went through a recruitment agency named GreenHeart or FootPrints. I went through Reach to Teach. I missed out on a LOT of information as I would come to find out.

No worries. Adaptation and flexibility is the name of the game. About an hour into our flight toward Warsaw, I realized that the guys on either side of me were also TLGers! Ha! Sweet. We got to chatting. One of them had just finished a one year stint of teaching in Thailand and the other just finished an unsuccessful attempt at the Peace Corps.

The 9 original of us that met up in the O'Hare airport went out into Warsaw which was a bit of a gong show. We went out in the freezing cold, hopped on a bus, and went into the center of town. After walking into the Old Town, we found a nice warm place to sit down and have a bite to eat. All but 5 of us went back to the airport, but with a 13 hour layover, we had plenty of time to kill, so the rest of us set out to see if we could find the Warsaw Ghetto. Big mistake. Apparently it doesn't exist anymore... We walked around in the cold and snow to walk into a Radisson Hotel which responded to the question, "Where is the Warsaw Ghetto?" "You are in it." Haha. Very well. We headed back to the airport to meet up with other TLGers who were on the same flight to Georgia. After another 5 hours of lying around on the airport floor, we finally boarded the plane to Tbilisi.

We were met by a TLG representative, Tamara, who took care to get us all to the hotel. I was interviewed by a tv crew about why I was in Georgia. At the hotel, we were left to sleep or explore until our medical exams at noon. My roommate, Krissi, and I passed out and woke only to head to our exams. With all said and done, there were 57 of us in the program and we were to spend the next week getting to know each other and Georgian culture.