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| The plaid gang |
The following weekend I
went to Telavi, the capital of the eastern province of Kakheti, for Telavoba,
which is a city-wide celebration for no apparent reason. There are two
volunteers who live in Telavi, and I met up with them and a couple other friends
who came into town for the festivities. There were concerts, fireworks, and a
motorcycle show. There was probably some other stuff going on all day, but
I didn’t get to Telavi until Friday evening. On Saturday we walked around and took in the sights. We saw a 900-year-old tree, got some lunch
as we looked out onto incredible views of the Caucasus Mountains, explored one
of the oldest churches in the city, walked around Old Telavi, and then stopped
at the bazaar on the way home to pick up some wine at the wonderful price of 4
lari (about $2.40) per liter. We cooked ourselves dinner, enjoyed the wine, and had a great time.
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| Telavi |
During the next week
at school, one of my 2nd graders had a birthday party in their
classroom after school. I drank brandy with my director and a couple other teachers while the kids toasted with soda in between their dance parties. It felt a
little odd to be taking shots with teachers in the 2nd
grade classroom surrounded by the 2nd graders, but such is life in
Georgia. Everyone was having a great time, and I think it was actually the best
cake I’ve ever tasted in my life.
The next day was my director’s late father’s birthday, and she invited me to join her at
her brother’s house for a big family gathering and supra (feast). Her brother lives
about 10 minutes away in one of the nicest houses I’ve seen in Georgia. There
were about 15 people there and the first thing we did after everyone arrived
was head over to the graveyard. We brought food and wine and toasted the
deceased before heading back to the house for an enormous supra. You know it’s a
serious supra when dishes have to be rested on top of other dishes because
there’s just no more room left on the table. The dinner was a blast and I chatted with my director’s other
brother for a while. He’s been living in America for a long time and speaks
perfect English. He was joking around with me and giving me a hard time,
especially about American politics, and my director had to jump in and tell him
to shut up and leave me alone. It was pretty funny.
From Monday, November 17
to that Friday, volunteers were in the town of Bazaleti for In-Service
Training and All Volunteer Conference. We stayed in a large hotel complex right
next to Bazaleti's famous lake, and we all had a great time hanging out together every night.
Training started Tuesday morning for me and my fellow new volunteers (G14s). We
had language and cultural training sessions Tuesday and Wednesday, and then the
rest of the volunteers (G13s) joined us for more training on Thursday and
Friday. Thursday evening we had a big Thanksgiving dinner, and we were joined by Ambassador Norland and his wife as well as Deputy
Chief of Mission Nicholas Berliner and his wife. A group of volunteers prepared all the food and everything was incredibly delicious.
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| Peace Corps Georgia volunteers |
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| Thanksgiving dinner |
A week later I had another
Thanksgiving dinner on actual Thanksgiving day with my host family in Pasanauri. I had told
my host mom earlier in the week about the holiday and she was more than happy to find a
large chicken to substitute for turkey. My host family kind of already knew about
Thanksgiving, but only to the extent that they knew Obama pardons a turkey for some
reason on this particular day in America. My director and neighbor also joined us
for dinner, and I got some much-needed toasting practice.
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| The fam - Nino, Nika, and Natela |
The next day I traveled to
Tbilisi en route to my third Thanksgiving dinner in the city of Gori. I stayed
the night in Tbilisi and on Saturday morning, before heading out to Gori, I
stopped by a large tradeshow at the Sheraton hotel. It was really crowded and
there were tons of people selling jewelry, art, clothes, and a variety of other
goods. There were even puppies for adoption as well as a food section where representatives
from the various embassies sold traditional food from their countries. The
Americans were selling Texas Chicken (the international branch of Church’s
Chicken), but I opted for some super tasty Lithuanian meat-pocket things. I
don’t know what they were called, but they were awesome. After exploring the
various vendors for a while I grabbed a shared taxi heading to Gori, which is
about 45 minutes west of Tbilisi (and also the city where Stalin grew up). There are four volunteers
living in Gori, and they (and their host families) were nice enough to host me
and about 20 other volunteers for the night. One of the volunteers who lives in
Gori works for a youth organization, and his organization let us use their
facilities to cook, eat dinner, and hang out all evening.
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| Thanksgiving dinner #3 |
The following weekend I
visited my original host family in Gomi with my former Gomi-mate Angela. We met in Tbilisi on Saturday morning and rode a marshutka 90 minutes west to
where our Peace Corps journey began. I had lunch with Angela’s host family and
hung out there for a while before heading over to my host family’s house.
Unbeknownst to me, my host brother and his wife had recently moved to Tbilisi
to live with my other host brother, and the oldest host brother was working in
Tbilisi for the weekend. I basically just hung out and drank wine with my
host dad all evening, but it was still really nice to see and chat with the rest of the family. On Sunday morning I had breakfast at Angela’s and then we
grabbed a marsh back to Tbilisi.
On Saturday, December 13,
I helped conduct the Mtskheta-Mtianeti regional spelling competition, which
was held at the Georgian-American School in Tbilisi. In case you forgot, the
local competition took place during the last week in October at participating
schools throughout the region. Each school had four winners (two from grades
8-9 and two from 10-12), and those winners then came to the regional round. Not
every winner was able to make it, though, and we ended up with about 12 kids
from 8-9th grade and 13 kids from 10-12th. The
students completed a written spelling test, and then the top half of each group
advanced to the second stage, which was an oral spelling test. It was a lot of
fun seeing how excited the kids got when we were announcing the winners of
the first round as well as when we let kids know that they had gotten a
particular word right in the oral round. Two of my students made it to the oral
round, but unfortunately they didn’t advance to the national competition. I was still
extremely proud of the work they had put in and of what they were able to
accomplish, and they’ll be even better next year.
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| Regional round participants |
The capital of the
district I live in is Dusheti, but I had never gotten the chance to visit until
last week. On Thursday I traveled there with my director and a few other
teachers to watch an award ceremony for a famous artist from my town, Ilia
Patashuri. Some of his artwork was on display at the culture center/theater,
and the ceremony included singers, dancers, poets, and other various forms of
tribute. I forgot to bring my camera, but as it turned out I went back to Dusheti to that same theater the following day. This time, though, about 15 teachers came, and it was for the 180th anniversary of Dusheti School #1 (there are two schools in town). There were probably about 500 people in attendance, including Georgia’s minister of science and education. It lasted about an hour and a half and was similar to the previous day’s events in terms of song and dance. There were a lot of speakers, including some famous scientists, but I didn’t really understand anyone (what else is new?) and by the end I was kind of ready to leave. The performances were pretty cool though.
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| Georgia's Minister of Science and Education |
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| A band of music teachers |
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| All one family |
Well, that's about it. This is my last week of
school before Christmas break. Saturday morning I’m flying out to Athens, where
I’ll meet up with my mom and brother, and after three days in Greece we’ll
be in Istanbul for about four days. I'm really looking forward to the trip, and hopefully I'll have some awesome pictures to post next time!
