Beginnings and Ends

For both those that were directed to this blog and those who stumbled upon it, I welcome you to my blog. I created this blog primarily as a means for family, friends, acquaintances, and benefactors to keep track of my activities while I am abroad this summer.

Yesterday marked the end of my second year of college. It seemed not so long ago that I came to the University of Chicago from rural Tennessee with very low academic expectations for myself, having graduated from a rather incompetent high school. Since then, I have overcome any disadvantages I may have had and come to appreciate the rigorous education at the U of C. Next year, I will be taking the MCAT and begin the application process for Medical School.

Now that studies are done for the summer, I have an even more exciting adventure ahead of me. Next Tuesday, I will depart for a 11 week trip to Georgia (the former Soviet Republic, not the state!) where I'll attempt to learn Georgian, volunteer at a hospital for a month, and travel the (small) country.

I've already begun my Georgian education here in the States. For those who don't know, Georgian is a language isolate, having no other living languages in its family. As such, it has its own alphabet and sounds that are quite difficult for most of us to make (including consonant clusters up to 8 letters long--read more here) The Georgian professor on campus kindly agreed to tutor me and Derek (my fellow U of C traveler) for an hour a week this last quarter. As you may guess, an hour a week is not enough to learn much of any language, especially one as difficult as Georgian, but we've nonetheless managed to learn the alphabet and its associated sounds and basic phrases. In Georgia, we will have one-on-one tutoring for a minimum of 2 hours a day and I'm sure the little we've learned here will get us off to a running start.