On Friday, July 18 I was effectively converted from a Peace Corps Trainee to a Peace Corps Volunteer. The ceremony took place in Tbilisi State Medical University's auditorium and lasted about 1.5-2 hours. The crowd was full of training site host family members, permanent site host family members, Georgian media, current volunteers, Peace Corps staff, and probably a few random Georgians who happened to wander by at the right moment. We heard from speakers such as the United States Ambassador to Georgia Richard Norland, the Georgian Deputy Minister of Education, Peace Corps Georgia's director Maura Fulton, and a few of my fellow volunteers. Each volunteer was introduced to the crowd and then as a group we took the official oath of United States government employees, led by Ambassador Norland.
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| Front and center. At least I wasn't the only one not looking at the camera... |
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| My Gomi cluster |
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| Ambassador Norland |
After the ceremony the university's dance team performed, and it was pretty awesome. If you've never watched any Georgian dancing, I highly recommend that you do. There's a ton of YouTube videos you can check out.
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We had a reception after the ceremony and my Gomi host mom got a chance to speak with my new Pasanauri host mom. I didn't catch everything, but a good portion of the conversation was definitely dedicated to what food I like to eat and what my new host mom should feed me. My Gomi host mom started crying when everything was wrapping up and I was about to head off to Pasanauri for 2 years, but I'll definitely be going back to Gomi to visit. One moment I was with my fellow volunteers who I'd spent every day with for 3 months and the next I was on a marshutka on my way to Pasanauri, not knowing who I'd see when.
Waking up in Pasanauri the next day was a little surreal. Despite having lived in Georgia for 3 months, it was the true start of my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer, which will last 24 months. Despite the heavy existential burden weighing upon me that morning, I managed to make it downstairs for breakfast and proceeded to watch TV for a little while. That afternoon I sauntered over to my school director's house. I played badminton with her grandchildren and took a walk around town with her daughter, during which I met a lot of people - future students, parents, grandparents, store owners, etc… For the first week or two at site I had this bad habit of mixing up the Georgian words for expensive and difficult, and as a result I told many people who I had just met that the Georgian language is very expensive. I think they got the gist, though. I really enjoy watching American movies dubbed over in Georgian to help me learn the language, and when we got back from our walk I was excited to see that the Wedding Planner was on. Personally I think it's JLo's second best work. First place obviously goes to Anaconda, wherein the complete repertoire of her thespian talents clearly shined.
All week I did pretty much what I've been doing every week since arriving in Pasanauri - eating, reading, and watching TV shows on my computer. School doesn't start until September 15, so I've essentially been on summer break. It's quite the change of pace going from 4 hours of Georgian classes 6 days a week on top of technical training sessions to, well, nothing much. I try to spend time integrating into my new community through various means, but in general I have lots of down time to just relax, which I'm not complaining about in the least.
The Saturday at the end of my first week I went into Tbilisi for the first time on business unrelated to the Peace Corps, i.e. personal fun business. I met up with some friends at Didube, the main marshutka station, and our first stop was Wendy's. The Wendy's in Tbilisi is quite impressive. I've heard that it's the biggest Wendy's in the world, but who knows if that's actually true. We met some G13s at Wendy's and ate and chatted there for a while. The wifi is just as good as the food. Also, in case you forgot, G13s are Peace Corps Georgia volunteers who came in the previous year's group, so they're about halfway done with their service. Naturally, I'm a G14. After Wendy's we went over to Carrefour, the Tbilisi mall. It's a pretty big mall with a lot of nice stores. Most of the stores were out of our volunteer stipend price range, but we did manage to find a few with decent prices. We were at the mall for most of the day before I went back to my hostel to shower prior meeting up with a bunch of G13s who were staying the night in town. We ended up at a karaoke bar, but by karaoke bar I mean there was a screen hooked up to a laptop and we played YouTube videos of songs with their lyrics. At least we had microphones. We had one large Peace Corps table and the only other people there was another large table of younger Georgians. We alternated turns with the Georgian table, sometimes combining turns as well. It was a lot of fun. We left around 1am and moseyed on over to a bar owned and run by a G10 and G11. There were a lot of other G13s at that bar with a large group of Georgians, as they had all just gotten back from a wedding. I was pretty beat and didn't stay for too long, but it was great to see some of the older volunteers who I hadn't seen in a while.
The following Tuesday I started to feel feverish, and I ended up being sick for a full week. It was a great excuse to watch all of The Sopranos. Another plus was that I got to try out an interesting Georgian mountain-people remedy. I had a special bandana tied around my head to help with any head pain, and then I had a large cabbage leaf smeared with honey wrapped around my neck to heal my sore throat. The efficacy of both treatments was negligible. I also happened to have had had somewhat of a neck beard at the time - let me just say, if you ever find yourself in a position where you're about to have a honey-coated cabbage leaf bound to your neck, do yourself a favor and shave first.
English Education volunteers are required to plan and run summer camps at their respective sites. I decided to split my camp up into two weeks, the first for grades 1-7 and the second for grades 8-12. We met for 2 hours each day and played a variety of games. During the first week about 25-30 students came each day. A typical day might have included frisbee, Simon Says, pictionary, soccer, and/or some kind of thinking exercise, such as what 5 items would you want on a deserted island and why. My director and one of my partner teachers were usually around to help me translate, and the kids had a great time all week. On the last day we had a mini concert where students played instruments, sang songs, recited poetry, and spoke about their camp experience.
The following week with the older kids wasn't as big a success numerically, but we still had a great time. Each day about 8 girls and 1-2 boys showed up. We played a lot of the same games, but we also did some more advanced exercises. For example, each student made a list of the 5 most important things to them within each of the following categories: material goods, people, places, memories, and goals. I then had them cross out 5 items, and then 5 more, and 5 more, and finally 5 more. Each round the kids groaned and voiced their opposition to having to eliminate more items off their lists, but at the end each student was left with 5 out of their original 25. Those last 5 items were supposed to represent the 5 values or things that were most important to each student. I think every student had a plurality and most had a majority of items in the people category, while the rest of the items were usually goals. It's an interesting exercise of introspection, as well as an interesting exercise to compare results cross-culturally. We did this exercise during training, and there were definitely more material goods left on our American lists. On the last day of camp we went hiking and had a picnic. I brought a mini speaker and we danced, sang, and ate for a couple hours in the woods.
English Education volunteers are required to plan and run summer camps at their respective sites. I decided to split my camp up into two weeks, the first for grades 1-7 and the second for grades 8-12. We met for 2 hours each day and played a variety of games. During the first week about 25-30 students came each day. A typical day might have included frisbee, Simon Says, pictionary, soccer, and/or some kind of thinking exercise, such as what 5 items would you want on a deserted island and why. My director and one of my partner teachers were usually around to help me translate, and the kids had a great time all week. On the last day we had a mini concert where students played instruments, sang songs, recited poetry, and spoke about their camp experience.
The following week with the older kids wasn't as big a success numerically, but we still had a great time. Each day about 8 girls and 1-2 boys showed up. We played a lot of the same games, but we also did some more advanced exercises. For example, each student made a list of the 5 most important things to them within each of the following categories: material goods, people, places, memories, and goals. I then had them cross out 5 items, and then 5 more, and 5 more, and finally 5 more. Each round the kids groaned and voiced their opposition to having to eliminate more items off their lists, but at the end each student was left with 5 out of their original 25. Those last 5 items were supposed to represent the 5 values or things that were most important to each student. I think every student had a plurality and most had a majority of items in the people category, while the rest of the items were usually goals. It's an interesting exercise of introspection, as well as an interesting exercise to compare results cross-culturally. We did this exercise during training, and there were definitely more material goods left on our American lists. On the last day of camp we went hiking and had a picnic. I brought a mini speaker and we danced, sang, and ate for a couple hours in the woods.
The weekend between my two weeks of camp I went on an amazing camping trip to the region of Khevsureti with about 15 other volunteers and a Peace Corps staff who acted as our tour guide. Khevsureti borders Chechnya and is an incredibly scenic area.
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| Khevsureti region |
Next up was Lebaiskari fortress, where we stopped to eat lunch.
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| Inside the tower |
After lunch we made our way to the old town of Shatili, but first we had to stop and take a picture at this cool mini cave -
Shatili is a fortress-town built between the 7th and 13th centuries.
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| Shatili |
We explored and climbed
around the town for a couple hours before heading straight for our campsite.
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| One side of our campsite |
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| The other side |
Everyone brought food and
alcohol, and after setting up our tents we had a big supra. We hung around the campfire all night and had a great time. The next day was centered around Mutso, the highlight of the trip. Mutso was a medieval village that has been abandoned for more than a century. There are a lot of fortifications still standing and fantastic views of the surrounding Mutso-Ardoti gorge.
Our final destination was the Anatori crypts. The town of Anatori was completely wiped out by the
Black Death, and the skeletons of all the villagers can be seen in the crypts.
Anatori is also the closest settlement to Russia, and we could see a Russian
flag planted on the mountain across the way.
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| One of the crypts |
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| Pretty eerie... |
So now we're pretty much up to date in my life. One last thing - this past weekend I went to the town of Tsalka with some friends to celebrate another volunteer's birthday. Here's a couple pics from that…
Next post will probably be towards the end of September and will cover the beginning of school. Please try to contain your excitement.
