Do You Speak Georgian? is a narrative podcast and serial memoir set in the Republic of Georgia. Join your host, Alicia Michelle, on a whirlwind adventure in the South Caucasus, where you’ll hear about the dark side of international travel – the side mainstream travel bloggers don’t share on Instagram.

Do You Speak Georgian? reflects the author’s recollection of events. Some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of those depicted. Dialogue has been recreated from memory.

I don’t remember where I went on my first flight. What I do remember, however, was the first time I embarked on a great journey.

To travel means securing your precious belongings inside a bag and leaving home. Sometimes for a short period of time. Sometimes forever. The method you use to leave and the passenger class you paid for doesn’t matter. Nor does the number of miles traversed. What does matter is what happens when you arrive. What will you learn? Connect with someone who doesn’t speak your language? Find comfort in another culture’s comfort food?

I spent the first seven years of my life in Texas, sheltered in a new McMansion with a wood picket fence in suburban Dallas. Texas was everything for the 90s iteration of myself; before being taught how to read a map, I believed Texas, and Texas culture, expanded indefinitely across all land masses on earth.

52 million square miles and miles of infinite Texas was how my little mind tried to make sense of the world. I started by finding patterns, with one of the earliest being how I was the only black student at my school and part of the only black family in the neighborhood. I remembered thinking; why was I born different from the other children? And why was I sometimes treated badly because of this difference? Humans, being mean to each other just because of some concept called “race”? Illogical! Racism did not exist because humanity consisted of one race. Texan.

For I time, I believed travelling was just as illogical as disliking someone because of their skin. Why? Because everywhere was Texas. And who in their right mind would want to leave Texas?

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1996, I was informed my family would do the impossible.

Leave Texas.

Forever.

Upon receiving what was earth-shattering news, my mother presented me with a map. With a frosted red fingernail, she pointed to where our new home would be.

Say it wasn’t so! Word on the kindergarten streets was true! The world was not composed only of Texas. Texas was a state, one of 50 in a country called the United States of America. Virginia was the name of our new state to-be. And rather than a big city, we would settle in a little town called Lynchburg. This strange new state contained some very un-Texan things: blue mountains, deer, trees, red dirt, and snow – snow! – in the winter.

I didn’t know it at the time, but words existed to describe the tropical storm of sensations that swirled in my body as zero hour for the move crept closer.

A churning in my stomach. A fluttering in my chest. Anxiety. The world was big. Huge. Incomprehensible and therefore filled with unfamiliar, dangerous, things.

What would I do with this newfound, terrifying knowledge? My concerns were simple, but all-encompassing and debilitating for my little mind. What if the kids at my new school didn’t like me? What if the winter was too cold? Uprooting, traveling, meant the abolishment of safety and the disruption of routine, even if routine for my childhood self involved penciling in daily afternoon naps and play sessions with my adopted kitten.

Conversely, restlessness filled my limbs. Excitement. Anticipation. My neurons, alight with imagery of adventures to come. Of wading through snowbanks and walking amongst trails in those foretold blue mountains. Compared to Dallas’ then million-strong population, Lynchburg of the mid 90s possessed a cozy figure of less than 50,000. Stark differences withstanding, 50,000 meant at least 50,000 opportunities to make new friends. I could form new routines. I could collect new experiences. I could learn, about myself, about the big world, and perhaps learn that it was filled with magic instead of mayhem.

Just like with my first flight, the exact date of the move is forever lost. I was too small to assist in packing items like furniture and electronics, so I watched, in helpless curiosity, cardboard boxes fill up the McMansion, stacks of them growing taller and taller in emptying rooms like beige skyscrapers.

I woke up one morning to find the beige city being deconstructed and loaded onto a semi by giant men. I woke up on another to find how real estate fairies had magically changed the “For Sale” sign on the front lawn to “Sold”. The arbitrarily determined eleventh-hour rolled around and before I knew it, my family had a plane to catch…

The call of a great journey can be answered at any age, but some ages admittedly come with more benefits than others. Venturing out into the world always comes with a tinge of anxiety, but doing so as a child means some of that anxiety can be neutralized by a parent’s presence. Absent are worries about terrorists on the ground and hijackers in the air when one’s wellbeing is in the hands of someone bigger, stronger, and more experienced.

August 28th, 2014. 2:30 PM. The clock struck zero hour in the departure’s terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport, one of three major flight hubs serving Maryland, Virginia, and DC. Built in the mid-century and named after Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, Dulles grew from humble beginnings to accommodate 25 million passengers per year, with service to over 125 destinations around the globe.

I completed check-in at the Turkish Airlines desk and the emotional tropical storm that came to be my childhood companion had matured with me, into a full-blown category five hurricane.

Its winds didn’t start to batter me until after the desk attendant affixed the scanning labels – IAH checked through to TBS – onto my pair of rolling suitcases, of which came out to weigh 18 kilograms each, just shy of the airline’s 20 kilogram per checked bag limit. The storm surge, monstrous, puke-inducing tidal waves in my gut, didn’t roll in until after I had bid farewell to my chauffeurs, my parents.

Flights from North America to destinations in Europe typically depart in the evening, because the time zone difference makes for a next-day arrival across the pond, and also to allow for easier connections in airports abroad. The security line, filled with passengers for these overseas flights, snaked around rope barriers in a dusty, gloomy hall.

The hurricane’s eye, a period of calm between my known past and an unknown future, hovered over me while I waited for my turn with the TSA officers. A solo traveler ahead of me impatiently drummed her diplomatic passport on her thigh, a couple across from me cooed to each other, and a beach-ready family of four chattered and fumbled with their boarding papers behind me.

Clarity came with the eye of the storm. The clouds of anxiety briefly parted, but new, melancholic clouds quickly moved in. 17 years had passed since my first grand journey from Texas to Virginia, and on the eve of my second grand journey from Virginia to the other Georgia, I was the one who was bigger, stronger, and more experienced.

My wellbeing was mine and mine alone.

It was mine alone because I truly was alone.

My immediate family, Mother, Father, and baby sister, settled and remained in central Virginia while my extended family remained in Texas. Many family trees are robust and tall, with strong, verdant branches and deep, healthy roots. My family tree, or perhaps more aptly, family bush, was short, with shallow, willowy roots and leggy stems.

My sister and I were fifth generation Texans, but ties to our native Texan soil grew weaker with each passing year, by both blood and circumstance. Visits, of which took place yearly to my maternal grandparents in Dallas, Great Aunt in central Texas, and paternal grandmother in Corpus Christi, gradually dwindled until they stopped all together by the time I finished my bachelor’s degree. While my maternal grandparents were able to arrange annual visits to Virginia during the holidays, these visits eventually stopped as well, thanks to the inevitable progression of age.

Death is a funny thing; once one family member passes beyond the veil, others are guaranteed to follow. Shortly after starting graduate school, disease crept into the already sparse family foliage. It took my great aunt first, and both of my maternal grandparents within a year’s time.

One’s 20s are often filled to the brim with wedding invitations.

My 20s were filled with funerals.

One funeral is more than enough, but I attended three of them, taking place over the duration of my graduate studies. In July 2014, my immediate family flew out to Dallas for the last time. Grandmother’s pink casket lowered into the earth next to her husband, who had passed months prior, leaving the family dregs to scatter across geographic lines upon the funeral’s conclusion.

Being alone wouldn’t have been so bad if my family was a big, fat one instead of a small, skinny one. Mother was an only child. Father, adopted as an infant, had weak relationships with his living blood siblings, of whom came from different fathers and were adopted by different mothers throughout Texas and Louisiana.

The Turkish people are famous for their generosity, of which certainly showed with their flag carrier. Turkish Airlines permitted economy class passengers to bring one carry-on bag and two checked bags on international flights. My carry-on, a green weekender bag containing my laptop, tech chargers, and journals, carried the additional, existential weight of knowing how my younger sister and myself were the last of a family already on its last legs. The weight dug into both shoulders, sending aches radiating down my spine.

After 45 long minutes, my place in the security line shifted. The hurricane’s eye shifted with it. My future, and the start of my second grand journey, would begin once I crossed the thin yellow line before the TSA agent’s booths.

The solo traveler completed her TSA interrogation and stepped into the body scanner. The interrogating agent, an ex-Marine type whose biceps had biceps, beckoned me with a quick wave.

Without looking at me, he thumbed through my mostly blank passport.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Georgia.” The nearby conveyor belt shoved my bag into the x-ray machine’s jaws. Three watchful agents stopped conveyor and pointed at the display screen.

“Why are you going to Georgia?”

“To teach English.”

The agent’s brow furrowed in what looked like paternal concern as he moved to review my boarding passes. “How long will you be there?”

“One year.”

He endorsed my boarding pass and handed it off to me.

“Good luck on your travels. Stay safe.”

4. Bereavement Leave

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