Now for the week that was...
Monday-
Literally nothing to report, I'm not sure if I even left the house... I did read a lot though.
Tuesday-
Keeping up with my networking, today I met with some contacts at the municipality building. One of those people ended up being the deputy mayor, much to my surprise. Giorgi and Nana both work with a program called Access which works with underprivileged youth in the city. One of the major focuses of the program is teaching English, but along with language classes they also teach life skills and provide a place for students to get involved after school. The program will restart in September and I am excited to start collaborating with them.
I also decided to take advantage of the fact that I was with the dept. mayor and learn about Poti and more of the plans they have for the city. We discussed some of the more pressing issues and I offered my assistance in anyway I could. The plans they shared for the city's development were very exciting and included some nice development along the coast which could bring in some much needed tourism. I was also really excited for the beach cleaning machine which they showed me. This means that my cow beach should be all cleaned up sometime next month. Now I don't have to buy a rake and do it myself!
After my visit I decided to go and culture myself at the theater. The afternoon play (the festival was still going) was Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, which meant that I could read the summary and understand what was going on on stage. Translating Shakespeare unfortunately loses the iambic pentameter (thank you Jr. High English class), but it also means that the word usage is easier to understand. With my limited Georgian and understanding of the play's plot I was able to enjoy myself a lot more than last time. The best part was the mobster theme that they decided to use as well as the random English songs used to mark scene changes, you never knew what they were going to play next!
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| I forgot to take many pics this week... Here is a piano planter I found in town. |
Wednesday-
Wednesdays are the days that I've decided to dedicate to exploring my region more. My goal for this day was to visit Alex, the closest volunteer to Poti. I figured it couldn't be too difficult since she was only 30 min outside of town. The major problem was that no one really seemed to recognize the name of her village... and that is how I ended up near stranded in the middle of nowhere. I had told the driver where I wanted to get off and tried to pay attention along the way. Eventually the marshutka stopped at an intersection and the driver told me it was my stop, the problem was it looked nothing like what Alex had described to me. I obediently hopped off the marsh and immediately called Alex. Turns out we'd passed her village 3 miles ago. So I set off on another long walk.
Aside from that minor fiasco, the visit was great. I was excited to get back to a village. Everything was more calm and laid back, reminding me of my previous host family and life in Skra. There were plenty of animals and trees along with gardens galore. City life just can't compete. However, there are definitely trade offs. The resources and commodities of a city are really nice compared to the isolation of a village. I'm not sure which life I would prefer.
Thursday-
Thursday ended up being one of my favorite days of the week. Last week a fellow PCV had called me and mentioned that he was going to come out and visit for a few days. It turns out that his host mother works in Poti during the week and he wanted to spend some more time with her since he was alone with his older host brother all week.
We met up in the morning and started our tour of Poti. I have slowly developed a list of places to find in town and we took advantage of our free time to check a couple off. First up was a local museum. It was very basic but full of amazing pieces. There were some artifacts that were over 3,000 years old. I'm not sure if I will ever be able to wrap my head around how old this place is! Our tour guide was a great guy who spoke some English and when I told him that I would be living in Poti for two years, he immediately took down my number and stated that we would become friend- I've already received invites to various events from him. It's nice to start making more friends in my new home. I'm going to need some sort of social life.
After our museum visit we found the children's library where the staff was just as excited about the prospect of me living in Poti for two years. I promised to come back and visit them next week. Next we met up with Maka my potential new Georgian tutor. She was please to see that I had a guest with me and insisted on driving our the the beach- you have to show the guests how great the area is. To my surprise we ended up in Ureki which makes my third visit there since moving here. We walked around town and showed my fellow PCV a good time. Things are now almost all set for my tutoring which is exciting since self study is nowhere near as productive as lessons.
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| Apricot cheesecake aka Heaven for my taste buds |
Finally the day wrapped up with my favorite thing- food! We first went to the ship restaurant to sample a few things like- khatchapuri (Georgian cheese bread) on a stick- delicious! Next we were met by my friend's host mom and she insisted on taking us to a few of her favorite places in town. It was super helpful to have someone showing me the good places in town. First we stopped at a delicious pizza restaurant that was a complete surprise to me. I was not anticipating finding pizza in Poti, let alone good pizza (without mayo on it!). After our pizza meal we walked around some more and then found ourselves in a small cafe which was decked out like something out of pintrest (do Georgians look at pintrest? I have no idea.). All that mattered was that this place had CHEESECAKE! It wasn't exactly like back home but it was still delicious!
Aside from all the delicious food Vera was a fascinating person to get to know. She is not your traditional Georgian woman. She also spoke great English, which she learned from hosting a PCV 13 years ago. By working on her English, all through conversation, no classes, she was able to use it to get a better job and support a family all on her own. Needless to say, I had acquired another friend.
Friday-
Friday was the beginning of the weekend! Alex and Marshall met me in Poti and we then made the trip down to Batumi for the weekend. Another PCV had rented an apt near the beach and we were excited to meet up with a few other volunteers. Traveling to Batumi is like stepping into another world, something much more developed. It is easy to forget that Georgia is still developing while you are there, the problems are still present in Batumi- they just have a nice veneer to cover them up.
Anyways we had a great time getting some delicious food, taking a dip in the sea, and hanging out with friends. After being surrounded by volunteers for three months during training it is strange to not have them all near by. Trips like this are necessary for a smooth adjustment into our permanent sites.
Saturday-
Lest you forget how much I love food, I'll just tell you that the highlight of Saturday was being able to make our own breakfast- American style. We raided the local market and gathered all the ingredients for a nice huevos ranchero. I was in heaven! These are things that you could easily teach Georgians to make, however when it comes to trying new foods they can be surprisingly resistant and many prefer to stick to their traditional cuisine.
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| Late lunch in Batumi |
After breakfast came beach time, all I have to say is that I probably should of paid more attention to the amount of sunscreen I applied as I laid out reading. I have a nice read chest now... Unfortunately I had to cut my trip short to head back to Poti just as some other volunteers were coming into town. I had promised to meet with some locals to plan out clean up project for Sunday. It was probably for the best though, any longer in the sun and I would be hating life right now.
Sunday-
Given the heatwave currently strangling the city, I decided to spend the day inside near my fan. Once the sun had weakened its rays, I headed down to the National Park to meet up with everyone for our projects. I worked with the Poti Youth Council and they invited the local bicycle gang (yes that is a real thing, they are called "Shut up and ride"... clever) to assist in the project. We had about 30 youth show up to help, which is fantastic! My site mates also came out so we had a great group. We wandered all over the park picking up obscene amounts of trash, how people don't care about where they toss things is beyond me. In the end the project was a success and everyone was impressed with how great everything looked afterwords- this is just the beginning of what will be plenty of clean up projects around town. They city coordinated to have a trash truck come to take it all away and then we were able to kick back Georgian style and sing some Georgian tunes while several guys played the guitar. It was a great ending to the project and my week.
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| My sitemates at the clean up project |
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| Most of the clean up crew |
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| The best clean up projects involve picking up the trash- twice... |
Now I am home and wishing I could take a shower, but lucky me the house has no water. I can only hope that it will come back soon because I have a lot of clothes hoping to be washed sometime tomorrow.
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