Giving Thanks

Well it’s Saturday and I just realized that I have skipped a week of blogging. I’m actually feeling under the weather (a phrase that I have no idea where it comes from), so I am sitting in bed trying to pass the time. I can’t complain too much because I am on a bit of a holiday, you know Thanksgiving and all. Some other volunteers and I decided to have a weekend getaway in the mountains near Turkey. I found us a nice guest house and we bought everything we could find in hopes of creating a Thanksgiving feast here. (I don’t know how much I will be able to eat though which is quite depressing.) Luckily we recruited some of the best PCV chefs to spend the weekend with us, so I have no doubts about the feast we will have.




After such a long break from Poti, almost 10 days, it was nice to come home and relax for a bit. Getting back into teaching was a little rough since I didn’t have time to catch up with the teachers before jumping back into things. The first couple classes were rough because I had to spend a lot of time getting the students to behave for me again- it’s amazing what you lose just by missing a week! By the end of the week though, things looked like they were back on track.

We had our own mini Georgian Thanksgiving, and I taught them the phrase- I'm stuffed!

I also got to celebrate back to back Thanksgivings with my American club students on Tuesday and Wednesday. I shared the history of Thanksgiving, we practiced expressing gratitude, I taught some idioms like- I’m stuffed and blessing in disguise, and we even had our out Thanksgiving feast. I love being able to share some of the best parts of American culture with my students. They are exposed to so much “America” but it isn’t always the best. Thanksgiving is a great time to showcase some of the important American values and ideas in a very fun way.

Our view for the Thanksgiving weekend

Being away from home on Thanksgiving is never fun, but it is something that I have gotten used to since I have missed 6 of the last 10 (I don’t have a very good track record) and I am bound to miss more. Each of the Thanksgivings I have spent away from home have been memorable experiences. This Thanksgiving Thursday there was no actual celebration. I just went to school and had a regular day since we were taking off Friday for our weekend getaway. Despite the lack of celebration I still had plenty of time to reflect and be grateful.

The first moments of gratitude went to thinking about my life back home. Gratitude for indoor plumbing, western toilets, safe electrical wiring, heating, air conditioning, and many other luxuries of life back home. I was also able to be in touch with my family through the internet and modern technology which always makes home feel so much closer.

Juicing mandarins by hand, they are plentiful in the area now

I happened upon a gathering in town and watched a brief cultural song and dance presentation which made me reflect on my gratitude for being here in Georgia. Living in a different culture provides endless opportunity for comparing and contrasting with your own. By living here I have learned many wonderful new ideas and a greater appreciation for family and history.

I was able to meet up with my old host father from my first house in Poti, it was the first time we’d met up since I moved in October. I was instantly reminded and grateful for his kindness and open heart. We still can’t communicate very well, but I can tell that he cares and is there to support me. It was a great reminder of all the wonderful hospitality and kindness that I have received from the Georgian people.

Sharing what we are grateful for before we dig in.

I had friends come into town and my current host family accepted them in with open arms. We had a great time sitting and chatting. I spent some time reflecting on all of the new friends- American and Georgian; that I have made in the past 7 months, people that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to meet. These are people who have become family like so many others who I have spent Thanksgiving with in Brazil and back East.

My life since graduating High School has been an amazing journey. Literally in the sense of my physical journey away from home and around the world, but also more symbolically in the sense of the internal journey of growing up. During college one of my friends told me about some writer that started a project known as the 6 word memoir. One of her favorites was, “Not quite what I was expecting.” I think that if I had to write my own it would be something like, “Unexpected, but better than I dreamed.”

A successful weekend with this wonderful crew

P.S. In case you were worried, Thanksgiving went well. I rested all day and had reached a shaky truce with my insides by dinnertime. Rather than play it smart and pass on the potentially dangerous foods, I went all in and just had small portions of each. The food was AMAZING, everyone had worked all day and created some wonderful creations. I was in pain later that night, but it was well worth it. That's what Thanksgiving is all about isn't it?

Even PCVs Need a Break

When I last left off, we were heading out on a marshutka for a conference in Borjomi. Alex and I left on Sunday so we could visit our old teacher from our PST days in Skra. She happened to live on the way to Borjomi so it was a convenient detour. We spent the night at her place, met her family, and got to catch up. Naili is a dear friend since she was the one who really helped us to adjust to life in Georgia and start to better understand the Georgian language and culture. It was also terribly cold in her village, which reminded me to be grateful for where I live, even if it is unbearably hot and mosquito ridden in the summer. 

First signs of snow 

Monday morning we completed our trip to Borjomi (a Park City-esque town in Georgia) and checked into our hotel for training. When you are applying for the Peace Corps you try to imagine what your experience will be like and usually you just think about living in some mud hut in Africa. While some volunteers do live in mud huts without electricity, most don’t. Furthermore, they don’t tell you that for the sake of the volunteers’ sanity, they also plan conferences semi-regularly and try to have them at pretty nice resort places. Our Borjomi conference was at a really great hotel with a spa, hence Alex and I deciding to arrive as soon as possible so we could relax in the sauna, swim, and take a real shower with hot water on demand. 

Ready to get our spa on!

The rest of the volunteers from my arrival group arrived throughout the day. This was our first time getting together in a group since July when we had our swearing in ceremony. It was great to see everyone back together again. The conference went from Monday to Thursday and was focused on learning more about Georgian language and culture. Now that we have been living in our sites for 4 months we were ready to go more in depth with various topics and build on the knowledge we already have.

Verbs are the worst

Georgian culture is fascinating to me because it is so old and well preserved. The Golden Age of Georgia was in the 1200s yet people reference the works of that time like they were yesterday. The Georgian language is equally interesting, but it is also very difficult to master. I don’t think I have really gone into depth with how Georgian works yet, it is so different from English. Unlike Portuguese and other Latin based languages there aren’t many commonalities with English. The sounds are so foreign and difficult to make. Learning vocabulary is very difficult. Also the verbs and their conjugations are some of the most difficult in any language. In just one word you can express who is doing what to whom and when, as well as the mood of the action. Then throw in the fact that there usually consonant clusters of 3-5 letters which don’t roll off the tongue too easily. Needless to say, mastering this language will be a miracle in the least.

After four days of all you can eat (non-traditional Georgian) food, sauna relaxation, and classes; we all went our separate ways. A number of us ended up in Tbilisi for the long weekend because we had meeting in the Peace Corps office on Friday, so the fun kept coming. 

Trying to keep up with pop culture

I am a member of the Youth as Resources committee for our post and we had our first full committee meeting last Friday. There are three volunteers from my group and three from the previous. It’s a great group over all. Our focus is on promoting volunteerism and healthy lifestyles among the youth here in Georgia, so we organize activities and events and also provide resources for other volunteers to use in their sites. We had a great meeting and I’m excited for the work that we will be able to accomplish together as a team during my service.

The rest of my stay in Tbilisi was made up of wonderful foods- real hamburgers and Chinese! A trip to the movies- the Hunger Games (in English), and lots of wandering around the city. Tbilisi is a really great city and a nice escape from the day to day life of a volunteer.

Heading to the church for Giorgoba

The next stop on my extended vacation was a visit back to the village (Skra) with Alex. I never pass up an opportunity to stop in and visit my old host family, they are wonderful people. So much has changed in the village since we were there for training. Winter is setting in so there isn’t a bounty of fresh fruits to be picked, even the cow is giving less milk. It is a lot colder as well. The petchi (wood stove) is back in the house to warm up the common areas. There are also other people living in the house. My family has taken in several men as boarders while they work on the local school (which was in serious need of a facelift). 

One of many sheep

Monday was a holiday, St. George day or Giorgoba/გიორგობა, we celebrated a similar holiday 6 months earlier in May. This meant that I was able to go back to the little church on the top of the mountain. There were so many people up there! I’m not entirely sure what the traditions for the day are, but many people were brining roosters and sheep up to the church with them. I am pretty sure they were all eaten later, I saw some people slaughtering the animals up at the top. We made our way up to the church, walked around it three times then entered and light a few candles. After that we were free to take some pics and look around before heading back down.



After we made it back to the village it was time to back the cross country trek back to Poti, and to warmer weather. Traveling around Georgia is always a treat you just never know what you are going to get. This time is was 4 marshutkas and 6.5 hours of speeding and swerving. Somedays I think that getting out of Georgia without any serious traffic incident will be another miracle.

Such a serious look

Don't Rain on My Parade

(More pictures are coming, I just need better internet for uploading.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm back!

That past week was another exciting one in the small seaport town of Poti. It was a non stop show of rain and wind, that I can only assume is a preview of what is to come this winter (everyone hold onto your hats!). A lot went on this week, and even though I am writing this on Thursday instead of Sunday, I'm going to try to remember the best highlights for ya'll.

Poti Youth Leadership Conference group pic

Besides the ever present rainclouds, the one thing hovering over me all week was the youth leadership conference I was planning for Saturday. This was going to be my first real project designed, managed, and delivered in town with the help of my counterparts and other partners. I wanted it to be a success so that I could use it as a springboard for future projects and work (spoiler alert- I think it worked!). I'll get back to that in a minute though.

Meet my 5th grade class, half of the class was absent becuase of the weather

This week was also my first site visit from my program manager, Teo. I don't think I have really explained much about the organizational make of of Peace Corps in Georgia before, so I probably haven't mentioned Teo yet. The first thing you need to know is that she is awesome. The whole organization of Peace Corps in Georgia (and other countries) is mostly made up of host country nationals aka Georgians here in Georgia. To be exact there are only 3 Americans who work in the Peace Corps office here- the Country Director (CD), the Director of Programing and Training (DPT), and the fincial office manager person whose title I can't remember. The rest of the staff are all Georgians and they are great. Anyway, back to Teo, she is the program manager over the volunteers in Eastern Georgia working in Education. She is very accomplished, super competent, and very attentive; and she came to visit me on Tuesday.

We had a great sit down meeting where we discussed my experience in my school and how my work was going with my counterpart teachers. She understood where I was feeling some frustrations and we worked out some key issues and made some great plans for the coming months. It is great to have the amount of support that I have, without it I would definitely be drowning in confusion.

After our meeting she met with my counterparts and director and then we all met together again. She was able to translate my desires and needs to them and their opinions to me in a very effective way. Language barriers definitely are a thing but they are easy to get around, cultural barriers are a completely different issue and since she is a native Georgian and has a lot of experience with Americans, she makes for a great mediator.

Following Teo's visit my school work went very smoothly and some of the small stresses were alleviated which made it a lot easier to focus on everything that I needed to do to get ready for the leadership conference. (This is where I give a shout out to Randi my fellow Poti volunteer and Maka my Georgian Tutor, who both did a lot to help me get things ready- thanks guys!) Before I knew it, it was Friday and time to really set my plans into motion.

Before I go on with the play-by-play I should give you the rundown of my vision for the project. At the beginning of the school year I found out that each school in Poti had a student council (something that obviously peaked my interest). When I pursued the point a little more I found out that the council then elects a president each year as well. This got the wheels turning in my head and I thought that it would be great to bring all of the leaders together to get to know each other and get trained on how to be better leaders for their schools. There really isn't a whole lot that goes into soft skills training in the schools, so this seemed like a great opportunity.

The girls who came out to help me

After coming up with the idea I wrote up a project proposal and and sent my idea to a contact at the port who manages their corporate social responsibility endeavors. The plan was to have all the leaders meet me at a hotel in town and we'd spend the day in trainings, next we'd have a nice dinner at a restaurant with some guest speakers, and then come back to the hotel and play games and spend the night, then wrap up in the morning. It sound like a perfect plan. Later in the week I got my response from the port and they fully funded my project (score!). From that point I just further refined my plan and got more people on board for helping out. We decided to have sessions on leadership, project design and management, goal setting, and public speaking. I also got 6 fellow volunteers and 2 Georgians to come into to help run the sessions.

The guys (summer camp veterans) that came out to help me

Friday afternoon we finished buying everything, and there was a lot since I had to coordinate all of the sessions and all of the meals for the conference. After running errands the other volunteers started to arrive as well. My host family was ecstatic. Once again Georgians love guests. My host mom made cake and various other foods and Randi's host mom also made a small feast. We had a great time. People slowly trickled in and we ate for hours and chatted with each other and our families. We pow-wowed a bit (a phrase I had to teach our Georgian translators) and then headed to bed.

Saturday morning I woke up to the news of the Paris attacks which was very upsetting. Aside from the shock of those attacks we spent our time pulling things together and headed out to the hotel. There were plenty of bumps all morning as we got things ready, but in the end it all worked out. I was also amazed at the fact that all of the students showed up on time and that all but two actually showed up. This was a huge surprise, due to the weather (and the unpredictability of Georgians, mostly due to my lack of understanding) Fazisoba (Poti Days) celebration was moved from Sunday to Saturday and put in direct competition with my conference. I had been afraid that between the weather and these changes no one was going to show up, but they proved me wrong. The rest of the conference went off without a hitch. The sessions were fantastic, the students were great participants, the food worked out, and we basically threw the best high school party in Poti that evening.

Overall, I couldn't have been happier. Sunday morning came and the students were suddenly fast friends. We had a wrap up session and sent them on their way. The plan from here on is for them to now head back to their schools and implement a project with the help of their directors and councils. Hopefully this will help spur more community involvement and volunteerism in the community.



Once we had cleaned everything up the volunteers headed to the beach and took a little tour of Poti. We did the traditional pirate ship meal, and then headed out to the marshutka station to head out to our next adventure. 8 days away from site in various parts of Georgia for trainings, meetings, and holidays. Stay tuned!

Alex and I at the beach, excited for the upcoming week of travel

Riding in Cars with Roosters

Before I start talking about my week I thought I would share two brief anecdotes with you:

Leaving Kutaisi yesterday I began to receive frantic calls from a fellow PCV who had arrived at the bus station before me. She told me the bus was leaving sooner than expected and that it was the last one of the day. I asked her to buy my ticket so that the driver would save my place and I'd be there as soon as possible- problem solved, or so I thought. Over the next 5 phone calls she slowly described to me the mutinous scene that was unfolding on the marshutka. It started with a an angry woman trying to take the seats being saved for us. Next the marsh filled up and people began to whisper about the American trying to save spots for missing people. Soon there was a revolt of people wanting to leave without us. Luckily a nice bebia (grandmother) came to our aide and started to petition for the driver to wait for us.

On the other end of the phone I was glued to the action and trying to plan my move. The marshutka pulled out from the station and began to approach the main road as my bus turned the corner. I waited for the driver to pull to a stop and open the doors and then immediately darted out into traffic. There were marshutkas everywhere. I looked (and acted like) a crazy person until I found the green marsh coming at me with the ფოთი (poti) sign in the window. I ran head on in front of it waving my arms and the driver finally pulled over to let me on. As the door opened men came pouring out, they left a gap inside and motioned me aboard. There I saw my friend and took the seat that she had risked her life to save. I was glad I'd made it, but the next two hours were no walk in the park. There were nearly 40 people in that marshutka as well as one rooster being retrained by one frail hand around its neck our hero bebia... Never a dull moment on the marsh.

Family dinner, a rare occurrence. Meet the family!

The next story took place Friday night. My sitemate and I decided to go to the theater together, I recently learned that there is some sort of performance every Friday night. This week's performance was a visiting group from Portugal who were here as part of a EU culture week going on across Georgia. Our seats were right in the middle of the army, coast guard, and local priests and bishop. At some point during the introduction the bishop went up on stage to say a few words which turned into a 15 min speech. I didn't catch most of it but I heard, "Under the protection of Russia" and judging from the face of the EU representative on stage, it wasn't a rousing pro-West speech.

The performance ended up being really great, but the audience experience was very different. There was a lot of flash photography going on. I'm almost certain several men in the auditorium were smoking. I counted at least three phone calls which were answered in the audience. Then during a couple of numbers the audience even joined together to do the whole uptempo group clapping thing (might I add this this concert was of a more formal variety). It was very different from the performances I am used to attending, but not out of the ordinary for Georgia. I'm not sure if theater etiquette transfers across cultures or if it changes in each one, but I would love to know what the dos and don't of the theater are here because next time I want to be prepared.

Georgian singers sharing the stage with the Portuguese performers

For the most part this week was pretty uneventful. Teaching ebbed and flowed, I wanted to strangle some students while others seemed to make some good progress. Overall it was just another week.

One thing that I have been working on for the past month has been a leadership retreat which is set to take place this upcoming weekend. Near the beginning of the school year I learned that each school has a student council and each council elects a president. Seeing the opportunity to do some good I immediately began brainstorming a way to bring all of these students together to get to know one another and participate in some trainings to help them be more successful in their new positions.

I've pulled together an awesome team of 6 PCVs and 2 alumni of a Georgian foreign exchange program to run the training. We have prepared sessions on leadership, goal setting, project design and management, as well as communication and planning for a successful future. These are simple topics but aren't generally taught all too often in school, little time seems to be devoted to anything other than the general academic studies. After the retreat students will be tasked with creating a project to benefit their school community and will receive a certificate of completion after they have completed said project (Georgians love certificates).

This is a filler picture because I didn't take any pics this week...

Additionally the project has been fully funded by a generous donation from the company which manages the port. Early on in the planning process I wrote up a project proposal and asked for funding, the port has been more than gracious in their assistance and support of this project. Because of this funding we are able to hold the retreat at a hotel where food will be provided and students will spend the night in order to allow more time to get to know each other and build friendships after sitting in training sessions all day long.

The whole planning and implementation process has been full of bumps and obstacles, but overall has been a great learning processes for me. Hopefully this will also be a great start for future projects which I hope to launch within the community.

Now we are on the homestretch and I have my fingers crossed that nothing will arise and derail our plans. I've done enough bureaucratic navigation that it is time to buckle down and finish off the last of the logistical preparations. I've got supplies to buy, meals to organize, and so much more. Stay tuned for next week's update, I'm sure there will be a lot to report on!

Halloween Haunts and Hilarity

This week was all about Halloween, a holiday not celebrated in Georgia (and probably frowned upon by the Orthodox church), but beloved by many curious children and American-philes (what's the real word for an American lover?). I am fairly certain that I celebrated Halloween more this week than I have in previous years.

A flat tire- my first Halloween costume

First, the Peace Corps volunteers in Poti all run a weekly English conversation club together and we promised the students that we would celebrate Halloween. In anticipation some students brought candy and masks for the past two weeks because they thought that each week was supposed supposed to be Halloween, they were very disappointed each time. However, this Tuesday did not disappoint for them.


We played some traditional Halloween games- cake walk, bobbing for apples, and eating something off of a dangling string (which was hilarious). We don't have donuts here in Poti and I wasn't about to figure out how to make them, so I bought various sweets and then threaded them with string so we could hang them in the room. There was one major difference between a glazed donut and the pastries we used namely, a donut is light and fluffy and the sweets I chose were incredibly dense and took a lot longer to eat. I got a good laugh out of watching the kids.

They had no idea what they were in for

In addition to the games we had a table full of treats from the students, a few carved pumpkins, several dressed up, and to end thing off we watched the old Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow- a Halloween classic. By the end of the party students left with stomach aches and a better understanding of how weird this holiday and we Americans really are.

Mummy wrappers extraordinaire 

The next celebration came on Wednesday with my 9/10th grade American club. This one is held after school every other week and was meant to be more educational. First we watched a Nat Geo clip on the history of Halloween, which surprised many kids. After that we played a classic game of "who am I?" ala the Office episode, Diversity Days, anything to make the kids practice speaking in English- no matter how ridiculous. The last game was a question answer game in which the a correct answer meant you got to wrap your mummy and the winner was the first team to finish. It was as if the idea of playing with TP had never occurred to these kids because they couldn't stop laughing. They were pretty talented too!

The task was double- grab and apple and don't ingest any nasty water

For the grand finale on actual Halloween day, a group of us PCVs went to Kutaisi and had a party in a restaurant there. Some of my friends and I decided to go as khinkali, the famous Georgian dumping, and we had a great time. We bought everything for our costumes at the bazar when we arrived. It was hard to explain what we wanted without confusing the locals. Why would anyone want to dress us as a khinkali? After the purchases had been made I suggested paying a seamstress to make them for us, but the others denied me and we spent the afternoon creating then at our friends apt. The creative juices were really flowing. The first couple attempts were pretty bad, but the final products were definitely admirable representations of Georgian cuisine.

We three khinkali took the world by storm

The actual party was also a great time. We had about 25 PCVs, several other expat volunteers, and a few Georgians. We convinced a restaurant to close for the night for use and were able to celebrate without weirding out too many people. The party was great and my little dumpling self was all over that dance floor from beginning to end. I had a great time and loved seeing so many volunteers that I haven't seen for months. Halloween success!

A perfect start to the Halloween week!

Finally, a huge shout out to everyone who put together this package, and the one I got last week. There is nothing better than getting mail. The treats were fantastic, but all of the noted and messages made me happier than anyone could probably imagine. I wish handwritten correspondence weren't such a lost pastime (I don't do it very well so I can't complain). With modern technology I can call/text/skype anyone that I am missing, but the sentiment that comes with actual correspondence is something that can't be replicated. If anyone else wants to try their hand at it let me know, I'll send you my actual address :)