So it's been about 3 weeks since my last post, which means I'm just that much closer to being a lean, mean Georgian speaking machine (and yet I remain oh so far away).
Let's kick things off with an oldie but a
goodie - Saturday, May 24. I took my first trip over to Surami, a town about 20
minutes away from Gomi known for "nazuki," a bread that tastes like
cinnamon and pumpkin and all kinds of deliciousness. Surami is a
much larger town than Gomi and is home to two Peace Corps clusters. The
main attraction is an old fortress, at the top of which is an amazing view of
the town.
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| One of Surami's churches |
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| Top of Surami's fortress |
After exploring the fortress for a little while we took a marshutka
over to my friend Nick's house. Although he's technically part of the
Surami cluster, his house is in another town about 10 minutes away, and behind
his house is a mountain that we wanted to hike. After about 30-45 minutes on a
slightly treacherous pseudo-path, we realized it was getting late and that
there was no end in sight, so we just turned around and went back down.
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| Our hike's apex. Our only view was achieved by climbing that tree in the back right. |
The following day on Sunday, a few of my Gomi-homies and I walked over
to the neighboring town of Vaka for one of our fellow PCV's (Peace Corps
Volunteer) birthday. About 15-20 of us gathered in
an incredibly picturesque field with a 360 degree view of mountains.
We drank, ate, and played frisbee until the weather started taking a turn for
the worse. We could see massive rain clouds far off moving in and then starting
to rain - as in we could see the entire breadth of a particular rainstorm,
which was pretty cool.
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| Surrounded by mountains, as is the (awesome) case in most of Georgia |
During the following week we had a hub day and permanent site
placement interviews. Hub days are when both English Education volunteers
and Individual and Organizational Development volunteers have training
together. There are about 40 EE and 15 IOD volunteers in my group. These are
the only areas in which the Peace Corps serves in Georgia, while in other
countries volunteers can serve in other capacities, such as in agricultural,
health, or environmental roles (all of which I believe require more technical
backgrounds). I brought my external hard drive to hub day and thanks to
other generous volunteers I now have enough TV shows, movies, and books to last
beyond the duration of my service. As for my permanent site placement
interview, it was more of "What are your strengths?" and less of
"Where do you want to be placed?" The Peace Corps staff in Georgia is
excellent and I have no doubt I'll be placed at a site that is best suited for
me, although I did mention that it would kind of be nice to be near Tbilisi. In
any case, I'll find out where I'll be living for the next two years on June
19.
From Sunday, June 1 to Tuesday, June 3 all volunteers had job
shadowing. Two other volunteers and I were assigned to shadow Merissa, a G12
who lives in Tskaltubo, which is about 15 minutes outside of Kutaisi, the second
largest city in Georgia. (I'm a G14, which means I'm part of the 14th Peace Corps
group in Georgia - it just so happens that the first group was in 2001).
I took a marshutka with about 10 other volunteers to Kutaisi, as many
volunteers were catching a marshutka out of Kutaisi to go even farther west.
After a 2 hour ride we arrived at the McDonald's, which is right by the main
marshutka stop in the city. We were all thrilled to have some good ol'
American food, not to mention the wifi and bathrooms there were amazing.
My two double-cheesburgers and fries experience was probably more euphoric that
it should have been.
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| A glorious sight indeed |
We met four current volunteers at the McDonald's (two G12s and two
G13s) and headed off to the botanical gardens in Kutaisi to hang out before we
all went back to our job shadowees' houses.
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| A tree-church… because Georgians like to get their Christianity in all day, every day, in any and every way |
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| Yes, we did at one point hold hands in a circle around this redwood. Also, as you may have already discerned, there are no open container laws in Georgia... |
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| Chillaxin' |
I took a marshutka out of Kutaisi around 4/5pm with my two fellow G14s
to head back to Merissa's host-family's house is Tskaltubo. Tskaltubo is a
large town as far as Georgian towns go (about 15,000 people) and was a popular
vacation destination during the Soviet era due to its mineral springs
and bathhouses. Merissa's host-family consisted of an 18 year old sister,
a 17 year old brother, and a mom and dad. They were all super nice and we had a
great dinner that night, during which I proved to her host-dad I could drink
like a Georgian. The next morning we got up for school (I'm still learning
how to wake up and function like a Georgian the morning after
drinking like a Georgian…) and sat in on all four of Merissa's
classes that day. It was a great experience seeing what her classes were
like and how she worked with her two partner teachers. The last class of the
day was an 8th grade class and consisted of the students asking us a bunch of
questions, which is always fun. I was extremely close to going back to one
of the student's houses after school to play Playstation 3, but I think I did
the right thing in sticking around with my fellow volunteers and exploring the
large park around which the town was built. The park is also the location of
a bathhouse that Stalin used to frequent, and it's still in use. Most of
the park is (and has been for some years) under construction.
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| Entrance to the park |
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| Outside of Stalin's bathhouse - statue of The Knight in the Panther's Skin, from the 12th century Georgian epic poem of the same name written by Shota Rustaveli |
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| Stalin's favorite bathhouse |
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| Old, abandoned bathhouse |
The next day we went back into Kutaisi and hung out with some other volunteers for a while before catching a marshutka back home. We took a small gondola ride up to an amusement area with a great view of the city and relaxed with a few beers.
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| Top of the gondola |
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| Kutaisi |
Our marshutka got into a little bit of an accident on the ride home...
so that was interesting. Cars in Georgia constantly pass other cars by driving
in the middle/on the other side of the road to pass. Our marshutka was
attempting this maneuver, but as we were getting very close to a car coming at
us head-on, the car we were passing was not being very cooperative in letting
us back on the correct side of the road. Everything happened very quickly and I
think that's what was going on, but in any event we were rear-ended extremely
hard when we did manage make it back to our side of the road. The car that
rear-ended us was pretty crumpled and the back of our marshutka was messed up,
but nobody to my knowledge was injured. We ended up waiting 20-30 minutes for a
new marshutka to come, and then it was smooth sailing the rest of the journey…
except for one part where the new marshutka almost crashed. But didn't! Also,
here's a picture of a marshutka in case you were wondering (they're just
converted vans):
This past Sunday we all went on "cultural trips," which just means we got into groups of about 5 and picked spots in Georgia we wanted to go visit. I went with three friends to the city of Gori, which is 30-45 minutes east of Gomi. Gori has a population of about 50,000 and is famous for being the hometown of one Ioseb Jughashvili, aka Joseph Stalin.
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| Gori is very close to South Ossetia, one of the two regions (the other being Abkhazia) at the heart of the 2008 war with Russia. The Russians bombed Gori and controlled the city for over a week. |
We got off our marshutka at the foot of the Gori fortress (which dates back to the Middle Ages) and proceeded over to a nearby church. As it was a Sunday, the church was packed to the door so we walked around the grounds for a bit. Plus, I was wearing shorts so I wouldn't have been allowed in anyways.
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| Gori Fortress |
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| A smaller church right across the street from the other church |
After checking out the church we made our way over to the Stalin museum. Outside the museum is Stalin's childhood home, which has been preserved despite the neighborhood's demolition.
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| Stalin's childhood home |
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| Keith and I by the Stalin statue behind his house |
The Stalin museum was something I knew I wanted
to visit ever since learning I would serve in Georgia. As a history buff, I
found the whole experience to be fascinating. The museum traces
Stalin's life from his days at Gori's church school (even including his
certificate of graduation from 2nd to 3rd grade) to his death in 1953 and
everything in between. There are endless photographs, newspaper clippings,
paraphernalia, and memorabilia. A lot of things are labeled in English, but
nothing is really translated into English; however, Keith speaks Russian and
was able to translate a lot for us (Hi Keith, thanks for being good at
Russian). Stalin's very early revolutionary activities in Georgia were
especially interesting, as well as his involvement with Lenin and the 1917
Russian Revolution. One particularly intriguing display was a text written by
Lenin in 1922 two years before his death, detailing Stalin's thirst for
power and Lenin's recommendation that Stalin be removed from his position as
General Secretary of the Communist Party. After exiting the museum we were
led over to Stalin's personal train car and got to go inside and have a
look.
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| Emblems of the various Soviet states |
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| Stalin being named Generalissimo of the Soviet Union in 1945 |
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| Stalin's personal train car |
At this point we were all starving, so we made our way over to the Khinkali House. It only took us three direction-asking stops, which isn't too shabby. Khinkali is a type of Georgian dumpling, usually filled with meat, and they are awesome. We ordered 25 for the grand total of 15 lari, or about 10 bucks.
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| There's no such thing as too much khinkali |
After lunch we burned it all off by hiking up to the top of the fortress, where we had some amazing views of the city and surrounding countryside.
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| You can't really tell from this picture, but the highest mountains off in the distance were covered in snow |
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| View from above of the the two churches I mentioned earlier |
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| That crazy-looking building is some Ministry building |
We then took a 15 minute taxi ride to Uplistsikhe, a
cave city built in the 6th century BC. It was a major political and
religious center in pre-Christian times and later became the residence of the
Christian kings of Kartli, a powerful kingdom in the Southern Caucasus. The
city was destroyed by the Mongols in 1240 and what remains today is essentially
the Inner City. We had a great time climbing all around and on top of the caves.
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| 10th century church at the top of the city |
So that's the past 3 weeks… Now for a couple random tidbits…
A couple weeks ago I was eating dinner outside with my host-mom and
grandma. An older woman whose friends with my grandma came over with a jug of
wine and without saying a word promptly took my cup which I had been enjoying
water from, threw the water out, and filled the cup back up with wine. She then
proceeded to stare at me with a giant smile as if she was happy to have done
the biggest favor in the world for me. I mean, it was good wine, but come on,
at least let me have a single glass of water every now and then.
Adventures in Georgian language – "Bill wants to drink
water" in Georgian translates into "Bill wants water’s
drinking." None of that is as simple as it seems, though. First of all,
"Bill" has to be put in the Dative case. Verbs that deal with
feelings and such take Dative subjects and Nominative objects, while all the
other verbs take Nominative subjects and Dative objects. This can make things
highly confusing/annoying. Also, putting things in possessive is is a struggle in and of itself. All nouns end in a vowel - if the noun ends with an
"a" or "e," you drop those letters and add "is,"
while if the noun ends in an "o," "u," or "i," you
just add "s". Water in Georgian is "tskali," so you'd
think all you'd have to do is just add "s"… but wait! Since there’s an
"a" before an "l" at the end of the word, you have to drop
the "a" and the possessive form becomes "tsklis." "A,"
"e," and "o" get dropped before "m,"
"n," "r," and "l" when making words possessive,
plural, and a whole bunch of other cases. Fun stuff!
კარგად - "k'argad" - later!
