I'm On My Way!

I've been waiting for almost a year for this.

I am so fucking ecstatic I can hardly contain myself. 

So now the fun part begins - legitimately packing, and learning the language. I'm 27/33 for the letters, which is fairly disappointing given Georgians similar aesthetic to Elvish, which I'm pretty sure I learned in like 2 days (yeah, I was definitely one of those kids who spent her time in high school writing letters to her friends in Elvish - none of whom could actually read it, but that was besides the point). I'm thinking I should also try to get a Russian phrase book, since so many people there speak Russian still (In fact, Georgia is pretty awesome in the fact that most people are bi, if not tri, lingual, and a lot of the signs in the cities reflect this. How cool is that?).

The problem with all of this is that it is ridiculously difficult, and feels really counterintuitive, to learn a language strictly by reading it. I've found some videos on YouTube of Georgian, and I listen to those every day just so I can get used to hearing it a bit in a vain attempt of not being THAT awful American that comes to their country and completely butchers every single word. Although, from what I understand, Georgians are very accepting and helpful to foreigners, and any attempt of speaking their language is appreciated. Juxtapose this with Americans, who get irate at any hint of an accent from someone new. It's going to be interesting! I cannot wait to finally get a chance to actually speak it a bit!

It's all feeling very surreal still. Like it's hard to believe that in 26 days I'm going to be heading over there finally. Especially since it's been an emotional roller coaster for the last 11 months. I think the best feeling of all of it, other than the fact that it's going to be incredible and awesome and holy shit I cannot wait, is that leaving California, and everything there, wasn't in vain. It's felt like the last few months I've just been a transient zombie, kind of going about daily business for no real reason. I gave up a lot of stuff in LA, and while I might not have been the happiest with my job or whatever, at least I had health insurance, a car, income, and a smidge of independence still. And after pretty much walking from all of that for the chance to go to Georgia, just for it to not happen, was rough. Really rough. Probably a lot more rough than I ever let on.

This email was a very welcome sight.