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