Tbilisi, oh Tbilisi, my crumbling beauty

its raining here (as it has been for a month, it seems) but i'm feelin good. tbilisi was invogorating. i have to write an 8 page paper today, which sucks, for my final assignment for capstone, but thats alright. i'll crank it out. i'm feeling on top this morning.
well where do i start?
we got in friday afternoon and took a cab to where we THOUGHT UNHCR was but couldn't find it.
in the states, agencies and alot of non-profits etc have street-level space and a big sign out front. out here, alot of the places i have had meetings with had 3rd or fourth floor apartment space in run-down buildings and almost no signage. it gets very confusing and UNHCR Georgia was the same. but we eventually found it.
it was impressive. they have a big operation up there in comparison. something like 50 staff to our 15. so they have some big, big programs and they are getting an impressive amount done. it looks like they have some great leadership and i am jealous of any UT student next year that gets to work with them. but i suppose it would be easier to get lost in a big operation like that, so i'm sure there are some plusses to a small shop like the one i'm in (like being able to design and run with my little pet project). but they gave me a briefing on Livelihoods/ Income Generation projects out there and it was pretty awesome and now i will integrate some of their project successes into my recommendations for Armenia... which is good for me and will make my shit a lil' stronger.
got back to the hotel and went out to dinner at a good georgian restaurant with dude. the food was dope and we drank a bottle of the house red wine, which was great (especially compared to the rot-gut in Armenia). went out to some bars after and i got KEEEEE-RUNK!.. stayed up all night and spent 75% of saturday incapacitated with a hangover of epic proportions. got up in the late afternoon and tried to walk it off, exploring the city a little bit, venturing this way and that to try and get my bearings. it was kind of like yerevan at first, in that i can't read the street signs, so i will have to basically memorize the city. which worked for the most part. alot of wandering and kind of guessing which way to go. but thats cool.
yesterday we walked all over the city, which is kind of a crumbling beauty, a brokedown palace (i think thats a grateful dead song, but its still an apt description). there is an old castle on top of one of the hills that loom over the city. i can't really describe how gorgeous this was so i'll just have to post pictures. suffice to say that things like Hamlet and the Odyssey come to mind when trying to scramble up the side of castle walls to these parapets that looked out over the old city.
the old city itself is lined with winding, senseless roads, cracked and potted with broken asphalt and decaying buildings, as if the map of the city were the wrinkles of an old, old woman's face. there are grapevines everywhere, climbing across powerlines, up the sides of buildings, across the abandoned ones...there are about as many construction sites where new office buildings are going up as there are mouldering skeletons of old soviet apartments, most of which are still lived in.
the two churches that i went into were absolutely beautiful. Georgian Orthodox churchesbeing sacred, don't allow cameras inside, so i didn't get any pictures, but the insides are painted floor to ceiling in these vibrant murals of the saints and religious imagery in these strong, simple lines that are just mesmerizing. and they have an aura inside, different from Armenian churches. i don't know how to describe it, but it was amazing. both churches (Armenian and Georgian) are dimly lit, just candlelight. but Armenian churches have bare rock walls, while Georgian churches are painted. i'm not saying one is better than the other, but Armenian churches feel more ancient, like the ghosts of an old religion, which these Georgian churches feel alive with it. not better, but a stark difference.
thats about all there is to tell. it wasn't enough time, but i'm going to head back up there in a week and a half, after i tie up my loose ends here and i'm ready to go explore. alot of georgians asked "Have you been to Baku (Azerbaijan) yet? and when I told them No, they said "Oh, you've got to! Baku is nicer than Tbilisi!" so now I'm definitely curious. we'll see.