Hello! My name is Lasha Chkhartishvili, and in this article I want to share some information about who I am, where I come from and how I ended up at Mississippi State.
“Do not worry about my last name, you can just call me Lasha”-this is a sentence I use very, very often because of my last name, and you also do not have to worry about how to pronounce my last name. You can try, but without me I do not think you can get it right, so let’s just go with Lasha!
I am a 22-year-old international student currently studying at MSU. I am from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Now Georgia is considered to be part of Eastern Europe, but it is a former Soviet Union country. The size of the country is 69,700 square kilometers with a population of 5,066,499. The native name of Georgia is “Sakartvelo” and the Georgian language is completely different from all other languages in the world. The dominant religion in Georgia is Orthodox Christianity, and the country itself is very religious and conservative.
Georgia is a democratic republic with executive, legislative and judiciary branches. In November 2003 the so-called “Rose Revolution” caused the change of the whole government of the country, and after Eduard Shevardnadze, our new president is Mikhail Saakashvili. Georgia nowadays is considered to be a developing country but is fighting hard for a better and prosperous future.
And finally, as I already mentioned above, the capital of Georgia is Tbilisi with the population of 2,253,000. You can ask anyone who has visited Tbilisi, and I am 100 percent sure you will hear only the best impressions and memories about Tbilisi. Tbilisi is one of the most beautiful, welcoming and historical cities in the world, and I am very glad and proud that I am from Tbilisi.
Well, I tried to be as brief as possible about my country, but I do not know if I succeeded!
Now I’ll tell you in a few words how I ended up at MSU and about my experiences here.
In Tbilisi I am a junior student at Georgian Technical University at the faculty of law and economics. Last year I won a one-year non-degree scholarship to study in the United States. This scholarship is financed and organized by a non-governmental organization called IREX-International Research and Exchanges Board. Qualifying for that scholarship is very competitive and challenging, and I am very glad and happy I was chosen.
Under the program, students from almost 15 countries come to the United States for one academic year and study in different colleges and universities according to their majors. And it has to be mentioned that absolutely everything is financed by the program, which is a great relief for students.
I became part of MSU in August 2005, and now it is May 2006 and time to go back home. It is a strange feeling. It feels like “50/50.” I am homesick and miss my family, country and friends, but I do not want to leave MSU.
I experienced pretty much everything an average student can possibly experience, like campus life, assisting American professors during internship, living in a dorm with a roommate, being on the MSU table tennis team and taking part in many other different activities. I am also lucky to have my “patriotic photo” in the photo archive of MSU’s Web site: www.msstate.edu/web/phototemplate.php?Id=1251.
It is very hard to say “bye” to all of that at once, but I guess I’ll have to face the reality. It is also important to be ready for changes in life, too, because, whether you want them to or not, they will happen!
I want to thank you for your time and interest in my article, and I hope it was worth reading. I also would like to thank The Reflector for letting me publicize this article. And finally I want to use this chance to say a big thank you to all the people who made my stay at MSU interesting, diverse and unforgettable.