A "Simple" Vacation

The past week as been amazing, if you exclude weather storms that causes planes not to land where they are supposed to, a flu bug that leaves me bed-ridden for five days, or your long-distance girlfriend leaving after a great trip. I just want you all to know that we stayed in places like this:

I lead a HARD Peace Corps life. Anyway, we spent her birthday here, which was AMAZING. Then we went to Tbilisi where I started running a fever, then took a train back to Batumi where I was still sick, and now Anastasiya's gone, I'm in Keda, and I'm STILL sick. Anastasiya had to run out and walk all over Batumi and get physically harassed by beggars (but saved by an old Georgian lady) to get me water and antibiotics while I ran a 104 degree fever. Joy. We went to Keda for a few days and played in the snow, and Tbilisi where I managed to walk around for 6 hours with a fever, pull weird hairs out of my beard, and have new girlfriend bought Soviet pins (sweeeettt).

Then of course there was the fun with her flying to Batumi. Basically the evil airlines (and weather) took a whole day and night away from us. To make a long story short, I woke up early on the 16th and saw her plane had a 70 minute delay. That's unfortunate, but not the end of the world. Then she gets to the airport and she spends the next 10 hours in the airport waiting for the plane to take off, because apparently the wheel is broken. It finally take off 12:30am Georgia Time, so I take a taxi to the airport to wait for her plane which should come in at 2:30am. I'm waiting, and then I find out their plane isn't going to land in Batumi because of snow, and is going straight to Tbilisi. I'M PISSED. Then I find out from Anastasiya that there's no representative from the airline to help them. Some people are getting buses and taxis to take out west. I tell her NOT to do that, because the snow and lateness would make it dangerous. I promptly go back to the apartment in Batumi, get online, find phone numbers for Airzena offices (and employees) and proceed to call every one of them--at 3:30am. I yelled at a guy in Georgian for the 10 minutes using the simple Georgian I knew and trying to Google Translate words I needed--I wished I had spent more time studying my Georgian). THEN, I wasn't able to get in touch with Anastasiya, because her phone was out of money. It's 5am at this point, my two host sisters, and their two roommates and trying to help, but employees stopped picking up their phones to my number.

I fell asleep about 5:30am.

I woke up to a text message from Anastasiya that said she was on a train and would be in Batumi by 1:30. Rejoice! So, she got to Batumi (with her own adventure story of even more epic proportions). They took a whole day away from us and ruined my original plans.

Oh, and then there was this whole thing of me getting sick on Thursday and running a fever every single day (and now) until the moment she left, which caused us not to take advantage of the great weather.

But you know what?

It was still an amazing visit and I'm so happy she came. Words cannot describe how happy I was/am. But, I won't be that bloggy-PDA person here, and instead keep all the happy memories comfortably in my own brain. Because, well, I hate sharing.