Gamarjoba!

Sitting at Denver International Airport waiting to board my flight to Chicago, I’m already a mess. I have just emerged from the security line in tears after glancing over my shoulder and watching my good friend Evan make his way down the long bridge connecting the terminal to the concourse. It’s hits me now how alone I am having just said goodbye to the last familiar face I will see for months, with no phone, and no idea what the hell I was thinking signing up for something like this.

The flight to Chicago is crowded. I’m sitting next to a woman with a small child. She doesn’t speak much English but her sweet-faced little boy has made a game of pulling items out of the seatback pocket in front of him and handing them to me.

Once at O’Hare the first thing I do is ask directions to the check –in counter for Turkish Airlines.

 The O’Hare airport is actually reasonably pleasant. It is composed largely of wide windows, which let in a great deal of natural light. I’m feeling accomplished having already completed part of my journey and being able to move with relative ease through an airport famous for it’s confusing layout and misleading informational signs. The train I catch to reach the concourse, though, is packed with families and small groups traveling together. They lean close to one another and talk animatedly, as do most of my fellow travelers in the very long line in front of the Turkish Airlines desk.

After I get my boarding passes, I stop in to a small shop located right at the entrance of the security line. After waiting over an hour and a half to check in, I can’t bare the thought of jumping immediately in another line. I peruse the magazines, buy a Kitkat and a pack of gum, and resign myself to the mindless task of getting through security.

When I get in line there is a young women a few people ahead of me who I noticed early waiting to check. She looked, to me, like a possible comrade, another TLG volunteer, and as I’m waiting to have my boarding pass checked by an ever disgruntled TSA employee, I hear her mother mention something about a TLG shirt as this young women moves into the security area.

When I approach her at the gate she puts away her kindle to talk to me about the program. We are both excited to share stories and information we have received during the application process. Eteri is her name, and we begin to play a game trying to pick other program members (TLGers we call them) out of the crowd at the gate. I notice a spritely looking girl with sharp but delicate features and soft brown hair talking on her cell phone by the moving sidewalk as well a girl wearing a backpack, dressed all in black with the cutest pair of black Mary Jane flats.

On the Jet way, we meet up with a man named Brandon coming back for his second year in the program, and our discussion attracts a confident young woman in a bright orange shirt who introduces herself as Sara. By the time I reach my seat on my flight to Istanbul I’m surrounded, quite literally, by other volunteers. Sara sits directly behind me, the girl dressed in black (“Christine,” she says to me distractedly, trying to stow her luggage) sits diagonally behind me, and Natalie, who I spotted on the phone, shuffles in to the seat across from me.

By the time we are boarding the flight from Istanbul to Turkey there are seventeen of us gathered at the gate. There is an animated melody of introductions and somewhat tentative conversation. We are all tired but there are a few tried and true topics: “Where are you from?” “How long have you been flying?” “Excited to get to Tbilisi?”

During the flight into Tbilisi I converse congenially with a man from New Jersey traveling to Georgia to attend an analytical chemistry conference while Eteri, a seat ahead of me, is rewarded for her friendly nature by a plethora of information about the city from the talkative Russian sitting next to her. Though it is late (our flight is scheduled to land at 2:45 am) and many of us have been traveling for days, the small plane is buzzing with conversation. A few people have abandoned their seats and gather in a small clump around two rows toward the back of the plain.

Eteri turns around briefly and waves to me, “Just saying hi,” she says with a smile.