So I’ve now been living in the town of Gomi for 16
days, but it feels like it's been months.
We left our orientation center in Bazaleti Saturday, May 3 and drove to Khashuri, a decent sized town at the center of where we’ll all be training for the next 3 months. We went to the center of Khashuri where all of the host families were gathered. One by one the names of a volunteer and corresponding host family were called. Of course I was the first one to get called and had a somewhat awkward introduction to my host sister-in-law, who was the only representative of my family there. Beforehand we were told to go in for a cheek kiss on the right side, but when I saw her I thought she was someone else (someone much younger) and didn’t think that the cheek kiss was appropriate because of her age. This led to a weird handshake where we semi-made movements to go in for the cheek kiss but neither of us did. We got in a cab with all of my luggage and the cab driver turned around and started flicking his neck, which is a sign for “do you want to drink?” This would be the first of a myriad of these signs I have since received. After about a 10 minute drive we arrived at my host-family’s house in the village of Gomi. Gomi has about 500 families/~2,000 people and sits right off of the Mtkvari river, which starts in northeastern Turkey and runs through all of Georgia and then through Azerbaijan before reaching the Caspian Sea.
We left our orientation center in Bazaleti Saturday, May 3 and drove to Khashuri, a decent sized town at the center of where we’ll all be training for the next 3 months. We went to the center of Khashuri where all of the host families were gathered. One by one the names of a volunteer and corresponding host family were called. Of course I was the first one to get called and had a somewhat awkward introduction to my host sister-in-law, who was the only representative of my family there. Beforehand we were told to go in for a cheek kiss on the right side, but when I saw her I thought she was someone else (someone much younger) and didn’t think that the cheek kiss was appropriate because of her age. This led to a weird handshake where we semi-made movements to go in for the cheek kiss but neither of us did. We got in a cab with all of my luggage and the cab driver turned around and started flicking his neck, which is a sign for “do you want to drink?” This would be the first of a myriad of these signs I have since received. After about a 10 minute drive we arrived at my host-family’s house in the village of Gomi. Gomi has about 500 families/~2,000 people and sits right off of the Mtkvari river, which starts in northeastern Turkey and runs through all of Georgia and then through Azerbaijan before reaching the Caspian Sea.
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| My awesome surroundings |
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| Mtkvari River |
All of the Peace Corps Volunteers are within about a 15 minute drive from Khashuri, and we are separated into “clusters” by village. In my Gomi cluster are 2 other guys and 3 girls, and we met up the next day on Sunday to take a tour around Gomi. We found the local school, market (a couple general goods shops), vodka factory (Gomi Vodka), and community center. The community center has free wifi (whooo!) but we are super busy every day and aren’t really allowed to hang around there in the evenings because apparently it’s across the street from a somewhat sketchy area/brothel (booo). This past Thursday though I picked up an internet modem and now I should be able to connect to the internet on a daily basis (I think).
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| Home sweet home |
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| Front yard |
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| Gomi Public School - where I spend most of my time |
Here’s what a typical day for me looks like -
8-8:45am – wake up/morning routine and eat breakfast
8:45-9 – walk to school
9-1 – Georgian language class
1-2:30 – lunch
2:30-2:45 – take marshutka (taxi) to Khashuri
3-6 – technical training with the rest of the volunteers (trainings on teaching/lesson planning/working with Georgian teacher counterpart, cross-cultural training, safety/medical trainings, etc…)
I’m usually done for the day and back home around 6:15/6:30. Then I eat dinner, hang out with the family for a little, do Georgian homework, read a little, and go to bed. Hanging out involves watching various shows on TV (usually Turkish soap operas dubbed over in Georgian, Georgian Wheel of Fortune, or the American show Merlin dubbed over in Georgian) and trying to understand minor details of what's being said around me.
My Georgian language progression can be described as very slowly but maybe somewhat surely. There are a lot more types of cases in Georgian than there are in English, which makes it particularly difficult. One of the interesting things about the language though is its flexibility - there are a lot of ways to say any given sentence. If someone asks me how I am, I can reply “I am good,” “am good,” “good am,” or just “good.” With any given verb, each personal pronoun/subject corresponds to a unique conjugation, so there’s never a real need to say “I,” “you,” etc…, as they are self-contained within each conjugation. The object of a verb can also be self-contained in the verb conjugation, so you can have full sentences/thoughts expressed in a single word. In the “Love” section of my Georgian phrasebook, there’s literally a single word that translates into “I see you in my dreams.” I haven’t had too many opportunities to whip that one out yet, but I’m not giving up hope.
One thing I am definitely not lacking is food and wine. Breakfast is fairly minimal item-wise, but lunch and dinner can consist of up to like 10 different dishes and everything is delicious. Meat is not nearly as prevalent at meals here as in the US, so I’ve been eating mostly carbs and starches. And not exercising. Great combo. Bread is served at every meal and I can’t even begin to describe how much bread (with cheese inside or on top) I eat. Every morning on my walk to school I pass the little bakery where my host-mom bakes bread, and even though I’ve already had breakfast and tell her I’m full she’ll force me to take a giant fresh loaf (it’s not really a loaf but more of a big boomerang-like piece of bread). My host-mom and grandma constantly ask me if I’m hungry and tell me to eat, while my host dad constantly asks me if I want wine. Even after I've eaten and drunk my share, the process begins again with a new barrage of insistence to have more. By far the phrase I’ve used the most since arriving here is “Meti ar minda,” or “I don’t want more.”
8-8:45am – wake up/morning routine and eat breakfast
8:45-9 – walk to school
9-1 – Georgian language class
1-2:30 – lunch
2:30-2:45 – take marshutka (taxi) to Khashuri
3-6 – technical training with the rest of the volunteers (trainings on teaching/lesson planning/working with Georgian teacher counterpart, cross-cultural training, safety/medical trainings, etc…)
I’m usually done for the day and back home around 6:15/6:30. Then I eat dinner, hang out with the family for a little, do Georgian homework, read a little, and go to bed. Hanging out involves watching various shows on TV (usually Turkish soap operas dubbed over in Georgian, Georgian Wheel of Fortune, or the American show Merlin dubbed over in Georgian) and trying to understand minor details of what's being said around me.
My Georgian language progression can be described as very slowly but maybe somewhat surely. There are a lot more types of cases in Georgian than there are in English, which makes it particularly difficult. One of the interesting things about the language though is its flexibility - there are a lot of ways to say any given sentence. If someone asks me how I am, I can reply “I am good,” “am good,” “good am,” or just “good.” With any given verb, each personal pronoun/subject corresponds to a unique conjugation, so there’s never a real need to say “I,” “you,” etc…, as they are self-contained within each conjugation. The object of a verb can also be self-contained in the verb conjugation, so you can have full sentences/thoughts expressed in a single word. In the “Love” section of my Georgian phrasebook, there’s literally a single word that translates into “I see you in my dreams.” I haven’t had too many opportunities to whip that one out yet, but I’m not giving up hope.
One thing I am definitely not lacking is food and wine. Breakfast is fairly minimal item-wise, but lunch and dinner can consist of up to like 10 different dishes and everything is delicious. Meat is not nearly as prevalent at meals here as in the US, so I’ve been eating mostly carbs and starches. And not exercising. Great combo. Bread is served at every meal and I can’t even begin to describe how much bread (with cheese inside or on top) I eat. Every morning on my walk to school I pass the little bakery where my host-mom bakes bread, and even though I’ve already had breakfast and tell her I’m full she’ll force me to take a giant fresh loaf (it’s not really a loaf but more of a big boomerang-like piece of bread). My host-mom and grandma constantly ask me if I’m hungry and tell me to eat, while my host dad constantly asks me if I want wine. Even after I've eaten and drunk my share, the process begins again with a new barrage of insistence to have more. By far the phrase I’ve used the most since arriving here is “Meti ar minda,” or “I don’t want more.”
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| Typical lunch |
Two Sundays ago I went with my host dad and his friend
to the local cemetery, where we visited his family members' graves. All of
the tombstones are marble (I think) and have etchings of the deceased on them,
with some of the etchings being a little more characteristic than others (i.e.
one of them was an almost full-sized replica of the deceased in full army
fatigue shooting two guns in the air). From what I could tell, it seemed like a
lot of the people in the graveyard had died from car accidents, which isn't a
huge surprise considering how crazy people drive here. We sat down at a table
by the graves and the three of us finished a 2.5 liter wine bottle and had some
bread - standard for any occasion/outing. We then walked through the
graveyard to what my host dad called a church, although it was more of a
prayer/Jesus picture/Madonna and child picture/incense burning room.
At dinner last Monday I had my first khantsi experience, which is a type of large drinking horn popular in Georgia. My host-dad and I partook in vakhtanguri, or drinking with our arms intertwined. We drank the horns "belomde" ("to the bottom") and it took almost everything I had out of me. I hear all those antioxidants are good for you though, right? Right.
One thing I've had to deal with somewhat frequently is being asked if I like Georgian girls, if I'm married, if I want to marry a Georgian girl, etc… It's hard to balance not being offensive and not getting myself into a situation I'll regret later. At dinner the other night one of my young female host cousins was over, and one of our neighbors asked me if I liked Georgian girls and I said sure. My host sister-in-law then pointed at the cousin and said "Do you like this?" I made some vague hand motion and shoved a bunch of food in my mouth. My host-brother then pointed at her and then at me and then up in the air towards my bedroom. Very awkward. I was talking to her after dinner and found out that she's 16. I also happen to be reading Lolita at the moment so I guess it's a little more apropos now…?
Moving right along… Georgians have a habit of becoming very animated in conversations. Various members of my host-family will be engaged in a seemingly amiable conversation when all of sudden they will basically start screaming at each other, hitting tables, and otherwise giving the impression of intense anger. In reality though it's just natural for them to speak passionately. I still get pretty startled when these seemingly random outbursts occur throughout the course of a normal, pleasant dialogue, and then they go back to their regular tone as quickly as the outburst began. It's pretty wild.
This past Sunday we took a trip to Borjomi, which is a little more than an hour train ride from my village. Borjomi is famous for its mineral springs and mineral water, as well as being the location of the Russian Romanov’s vacation palace. About 30-40 of us went and it was a blast hiking around the mountains there. We hiked up a path to a small church where’s there’s also a special rock dedicated St. Seraphim of Sarov, a popular figured in the Eastern Orthodox Church. I think the rock was supposed to resemble or symbolize the rock that he may have been tortured on, but that could be completely wrong - the description was in Russian and Georgian and my Georgian is not nearly good enough to decipher what it said. We walked back down the mountain to the town of Borjomi, where there was a kind of very-mini-theme park/playground area for kids. There was also a really cool statue of Prometheus.
At dinner last Monday I had my first khantsi experience, which is a type of large drinking horn popular in Georgia. My host-dad and I partook in vakhtanguri, or drinking with our arms intertwined. We drank the horns "belomde" ("to the bottom") and it took almost everything I had out of me. I hear all those antioxidants are good for you though, right? Right.
One thing I've had to deal with somewhat frequently is being asked if I like Georgian girls, if I'm married, if I want to marry a Georgian girl, etc… It's hard to balance not being offensive and not getting myself into a situation I'll regret later. At dinner the other night one of my young female host cousins was over, and one of our neighbors asked me if I liked Georgian girls and I said sure. My host sister-in-law then pointed at the cousin and said "Do you like this?" I made some vague hand motion and shoved a bunch of food in my mouth. My host-brother then pointed at her and then at me and then up in the air towards my bedroom. Very awkward. I was talking to her after dinner and found out that she's 16. I also happen to be reading Lolita at the moment so I guess it's a little more apropos now…?
Moving right along… Georgians have a habit of becoming very animated in conversations. Various members of my host-family will be engaged in a seemingly amiable conversation when all of sudden they will basically start screaming at each other, hitting tables, and otherwise giving the impression of intense anger. In reality though it's just natural for them to speak passionately. I still get pretty startled when these seemingly random outbursts occur throughout the course of a normal, pleasant dialogue, and then they go back to their regular tone as quickly as the outburst began. It's pretty wild.
This past Sunday we took a trip to Borjomi, which is a little more than an hour train ride from my village. Borjomi is famous for its mineral springs and mineral water, as well as being the location of the Russian Romanov’s vacation palace. About 30-40 of us went and it was a blast hiking around the mountains there. We hiked up a path to a small church where’s there’s also a special rock dedicated St. Seraphim of Sarov, a popular figured in the Eastern Orthodox Church. I think the rock was supposed to resemble or symbolize the rock that he may have been tortured on, but that could be completely wrong - the description was in Russian and Georgian and my Georgian is not nearly good enough to decipher what it said. We walked back down the mountain to the town of Borjomi, where there was a kind of very-mini-theme park/playground area for kids. There was also a really cool statue of Prometheus.
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| View of Borjomi from the top of our hike |
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| Hangin' in front of the Prometheus statue. Three very Georgian things in this picture: the "do you want alcohol?" neck flick, the "what's up?" hand sign, and the ubiquitous Georgian male squat. |
My time in Gomi with my host family has been a
great experience so far. It's surprising how close we've
become despite the language barrier and it's going to be incredibly hard leaving them when I move to my permanent site in July. I've also become close with many of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and it'll be hard not seeing them regularly when we all move off to various parts of the country. But definitely enjoying everything for now.
