I know there has been a lot of interest in sending me things in the mail to Georgia. I have also got quite a few requests for postcards, letters, and such. A few weeks ago I decided to send a card to Ukraine to a friend. How hard could it be to post something from here, right?
First I asked one of my co-teachers if there was a post office in Lagodekhi (The closest big town to my village), you know to mail a letter? She looked at me like I had three heads and then asked, you want to send an e-mail? You can use the computer lab. I tried explaining over again a few times and she still had no idea what I was talking about. You see in Georgia, no one gets mail. There is no reason for them to get mail, no magazines, catalogs, credit cards offers. Chances are all of your family lives in the same village as you and no one ever really leaves Georgia, so why would you ever need to send anything?
A few days after I asked my co-teacher about mailing things, I went with my other co-teacher to Lagodekhi to pick something up at one of the Teach and Learn with Georgia offices. We got there early so we had nothing to do for about a half hour. I asked this co-teacher if she knew where the post office was here. She also looked at me like I was crazy, I was starting to think that I was. I didn’t have the time to play games and make her guess what I was talking about, so I dialed up my regional representative and asked her to explain. After a minuet or two the point had come across to my teacher and she understood what I was trying to do. She question why I would even send something physical to a person in the first place if they had e-mail or Facebook. I tried to explain the joy that friends get with receiving letters and cards from me and the fact that when you mail something now a days it shows that you put some thought into things and that you care and are trying to go above and beyond to show that. Anyone can spend 20 seconds writing on your Facebook wall I miss you.
We trudged through the snow covered town, stopping to ask people along the way, just where the post office was. Some people had no idea, but finally we got to what we were told was the building with the post office in it. We walked into a big room with a massive wood counter and some tables. Everything was empty and no one looked to be around. My teacher suggested that we try upstairs. We climbed to the second floor and went into a random office and they told us that we did indeed have the right room and we went back down.
When we went into the room again there was someone there this time. We explained that I needed to send my homemade card to Ukraine and were ushered into a smaller room that had a wood stove, desks, but still did not look like a post office. She pulled an envelope out of a random draw and I stuffed it in. I wrote my friends address on the front and then they instructed me to write my return address. This is where things got tricky. In Georgia, unless you are in a big city, people do not have actual addresses, everyone just knows where you live. My co-teacher and the post worker bantered back and forth about what I should write. At one point they wanted me to write my passport number on there. (What?!) I said I could just write my return address in the States on it, but this also would not do. It ended up coming out like this:
Emily
Tamariani Village
Lagodekhi
Georgia
It was one of the moments I just think Oh Georgia. The post person hand wrote my receipt, stamped it and I handed over my 5.20GEL (a little over $3) to send one card off to Ukraine. When I left the post office with my co-teacher she told me that it would take two to three weeks for my card to get to Ukraine. She then said I don’t understand what you didn’t just send an E-mail. It’s so much faster.
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