As many of you may have heard, there was an out break of violence in Bolivia a couple of weeks ago which escalated very quickly and many people were killed and injured. As a result of this violence and the expulsion of the American and Bolivian ambassadors, Peace Corps has been suspended in Bolivia. All of the PCVs have been accounted for and evacuated. Luckily this all occurred before we were there so we did not have to be evacuated again.

But this does put us in a bit of a difficult situation. We were given the option of taking another transfer to another country leaving in the next month or so or we could call it a day and close our service. We have chosen to do the latter. This was a very difficult decision for us to make and we are very disappointed not to have been able to complete our service under such circumstances.

We are very sad for the people of Georgia and the people of Bolivia, that their everyday lives are now ones of such struggle and uncertainty.

Some former Georgian Peace Corps volunteers have put together a non-profit organization to fund raise and gather supplies for the victims of the Georgian/Russian conflict. If you would like to see how you can help please follow the link below.

www.themegobariproject.blogspot.com

Again thanks for reading the blog and for all of the support that you all have given us over the last 16 months. We will let you know as soon as possible where we decide to go and what we decide to do with ourselves. For now everything is a little bit up in the air, but I am sure that we will figure it out eventually.

Talk to you soon,

Martha

PS I would like to draw your attention to the slideshow in the upper left corner. These pictures are from our "best day in Georgia, ever" which coincidentally occurred just three days before we evacuated Georgia when Russia invaded the country.

As you have seen from our blog title, Martha and I have slowly drifted out of the limbo we have found ourselves in over the last few weeks here in Armenia, and have decided to transfer to Peace Corps Bolivia. This is a result of the hard work of the Bolivia, Georgia, and D.C. staff, and I’d like to thank all of them for making this work.

This is a very exciting but a rather sad time for us, as we feel as though we are leaving behind friends, family, and incomplete projects in Georgia, and do not know when we will be able to return. Though I did attempt to look for work in Tbilisi, to try to help the humanitarian and rebuilding effort that is going on there, I decided that the situation was just not stable enough to risk going back. Perhaps Martha or I will be lucky enough to find ourselves with the opportunity to return to Georgia in the future, but as for now, we had to look elsewhere.

Our previous Country Director, Kathleen Sifer, transferred to Bolivia a few months ago, and reached out to the Peace Corps Georgia family immediately when the situation began, expressing her concern for us and Georgia. Since then, she has opened a few spots in Bolivia for her old group (G7’s), and we gladly accepted to finish out our last year with her in Bolivia. While details remain to be fleshed out, it is looking like Martha will be working as an Integrated Education/Youth Development volunteer, working on a wide range of issues, and I will be working as a Natural Resource/Environmental Education volunteer, focusing on the dramatic environmental deterioration facing Bolivia. We will start in a few weeks time, as soon as we can get our vaccines and visas in D.C.

We will keep you posted on our plans as we get more information, and we will also be posting pictures from the last few months in Georgia, as soon as we get to a more reliable internet connection in the good old USA sometime next week.

Thank you again for all your support and concern for us over the last few weeks.

Just a quick note to tell everyone out there that we (being Peace Corps Volunteers) are well taken care of and are currently in a hotel outside of Yerevan. That, unfortunately, cannot be said for our friends and family back in Georgia. We have not been able to gather the latest news, but we have heard reports that the Russian military are pushing into Georgia from the West. We hope that the violence ends soon, and that - possibly - we may go back to Georgia in the next few weeks, but that is looking increasingly unlikely.

We will keep you updated with the latest information. Thank you for all your emails and your concern for us.

Hi All-

Here are some pictures from our trip to Kobuleti in June. We visited James' school (The Kobuleti Tourism School or something like that) and stayed with the school director Dato. It was a very lovely weekend and if you ever need some guides in Georgia I know where to find them. The school was really amazing and the staff was all very nice and they showed us a really good time and then we were shown around the Botanical Gardens in Batumi by one of the schools graduates. All and all it was a very nice weekend.

Julien, Dato, Josh, Me, Kelsey, Jeesun, Travis, Brian and some of the staff from Kobuleti's Tourism School

Julien pretending that he might consider playing basketball (with Dato the school's Director and Irma James' counterpart in the school gym)

Me at the botanical gardens (see previous post) It was quite hot

Water lilies They were accompanied by many frogs

Some Persian graffiti on one of the Giant Bamboo stalks

All Pictures courtesy of James Douglas

Hi All,

I am sitting here in my room on the first Monday after the last day of school wondering what I will do for the summer. Today is not a good start as it 12:30 and I am still in my pajamas, but in my defense it is raining and has been for two days and that only means one thing, mud and lots of it. Mud is one of the true constants in my life in Georgia and since the 16th was our one year anniversary in country I have had a year to truly study mud in all of its variety. Sticky, sticky mud that somehow migrates halfway up my pant leg on the way to school making me look like I have come in from the fields, but making me wonder why I am the only dirty one.

Does everyone else have a magical teleporter that I don't know about? Is there some sort of secret locker room in the school where everyone changes their clothes and shoes and I am left with mud all over my pants and shoes? I think maybe it is just the incredibly slow paced walking that Georgians have taken to creates a negative entropy thereby turning the mud particles to ice and makes it impossible for them, the mud particles, to leap up all over their clothes. Who knows? I am not going to spend a whole blog entry telling you about the different kinds of mud, but let’s just say I am going to avoid going out today as long as possible and I will not be visiting my garden anytime soon. I would like to instead muse on our year in country.

We have had several visitors to Peace Corps Georgia and some new additions lately in the form of the G8s, so I have had the opportunity to tell people about Georgia, but with the intention of not trying to scare them off. I have been honest, but guarded in some of the grittier details, like the toilet situation, and the cold. We want them to make it through the summer.It has also been nice to see Georgia again with a fresh perspective.

Luckily I have also spent some time in the Autonomous Republic of Adjara lately, which is on par I believe with any of the most beautiful places on earth with its turquoise waters and jungle like citrus-grove covered mountains leading into snow covered peaks. Last weekend we went to the Batumi Botanical gardens which is the 2nd largest Botanical garden in the world. It was just amazing to wind our way down toward the sea through paths of all kinds of wonderfully exotic plants including Giant Sequoias and huge Eucalyptus trees. The only section that looked a little worse for wear was the desert section, but they can be excused, because I am pretty sure no desert plant is accustomed to over 4 meters of rain a year. Luckily it was not raining when we were there, but it was humid and hot, but it felt right for the jungle atmosphere.

We plan on going to Batumi again next weekend, to fully kill any sympathy for us as lowly Peace Corps volunteers. It's a rocky beach, does that count as roughing it? And sometimes people have sexual relations on the beach in front of you which can be a bit traumatizing, especially when boys and girls can barely look at each other in other parts of the country, unless it is to hit each other over the head with their notebooks, ahh 3rd-9th grade such lovely children.

On the Terjola front this summer, it is camp, camp, camp. Though there will be no real camping due to security concerns from a certain unnamed organization that we currently are associated with. There will be a lot of English spoken and the coups de grace will be SPACE camp at the end of the summer. SPACE used in the previous sentence is not an acronym, this will be actual space camp minus space exploration of course but with all of the cool things like egg drops and spaghetti bridge building and hopefully a well attended rocket launch that does not create any international security issues. So if anyone out there has any cool space things, like posters, movies or books that they would like to donate to Terjola's space camp please send it to us at the following address:

PCV Katchinoff

110b Burdzgla

Box 66

0194 Tbilisi

Republic of Georgia

Congratulations to Julien on a successful grant written for mapping software. Soon Terjola's region will be well mapped and labeled. Yippee! This will actually help us a lot on future grant writing because we will be able to explain what we want to do and where with a visual representation. Many maps to come I promise. We will get more pictures up soon as well.

Well I think that will be all. Thank you to all of you who have been so supportive us this past year and we only have 14 months left, See you soon (relatively).

-Martha

I have heard that some of you are reading our blogs, so I thought that I would use this forum to let you know that it is not too late to turn in your MEGOBARI surveys. Please email them to me as soon as possible.

If you are a G8 and do not know what I am talking about please send me an email martha.wawro@gmail.com and I will let you know.

Thank you and see you in two weeks.

Martha

So we were able to upload a ton of pictures to our Picasa account, so check them out!

http://picasaweb.google.com/Julien.Katchinoff

Also, for those of you who haven't seen this yet, I've included a widget that shows you all my shared articles from my Google Reader account, and those are here:

Julien's Google Reader's Shared Items

Nervously scanning the street, and tilting an ear towards the darkness, we wait for a sign. They must be moving the gear soon. It’s been months since Martha and I have seen a fresh shipment arrive, and users and suppliers alike are getting restless. I just don’t know how much longer we’ll last. Martha’s already started experimenting with alternatives, but they just don’t cut it. We need fresh cheese. Let me tell you a little about the commodity we’re discussing. When it comes to traditional Georgian cheese, at least in our region of Imereti, there’s one type, and one type only. Any variety is accidental, due to quality of milk and its freshness. Let me issue a diplomatic disclaimer by mentioning that there is nothing wrong with only one style of cheese. This uniformity does, however, force a gourmand to search for those small variations in taste and texture which set apart an average batch of Georgian cheese from that which is simply delicious. Martha and I have had them all. Cheese that is so fresh, you have trouble calling it ‘cheese’, and would rather call it ‘viscous curds.’ We’ve also had cheese so old, it approaches something closer to a pecorino romano in its dense, dry saltiness. (Supposedly, this second variety is specially aged, and is worth twice as much as the regular stuff you find in the bazaars. Where and in what conditions it spends it’s ageing process developing its special funk, I’d rather not imagine.) This might seem as though we are betraying our Peace Corps heartiness by delving into cheese snobbery, but we are merely doing our part in our cultural assimilation into the Georgian cheesescape. You see, Georgians take cheese very seriously. Though this may not be apparent at first – you begin to pick up the signs after a while. In Sakartvelo, it’s all about who you know. A few months ago, our host mother Zoia nonchalantly brought in a black cellophane baggie filled with what could only be described as “the-greatest-Georgian-cheese-we’ve-ever-tasted.” It was firm, fresh, and light, with the right mix of creamy, tangy overtones and slightly dry, feta-like finish. We chewed in silence, only opening our eyes to exchange quick knowing glances which acknowledged the immensity of our find. “Zoia!” We proclaimed, “Where did you get this marvel?”1She cryptically told us that she had a woman, a neighbor, who makes it fresh, with milk from her cows. Our mission was set. Every evening since, while our fellow volunteers scan the Georgian airwaves for news about recent Russian incursions or Eurovision song contest results, Martha and I sit on our porch, intently watching the procession of cows returning from the fields, trying to deduce which house on Lesilidze Street harbors the cows with the award-winning, gold-plated teats. We’ve tried asking around, trying to find the source. Medea, our host cousin, when asked about it, told us that she’d help us to “score some freshie.” (That’s how we speak in the cheese underworld.) She walked a few feet, and out of earshot, placed a few phone calls, only to return with the answer we didn’t want. No one had any fresh cheese. The suppliers had nothing to offer. I tried asking one of my counterparts (the one who played goalie on the Soviet national handball team), and though she also pledged to help me in my situation, did nothing, but stared me down for the rest of the break period between classes, with a look that said “the only cheese you’ll find is the one called ‘hurt’.” Everyday, the cows go out, and then return, their swinging udders veiny and swollen, taunting Martha and I from the street with their incessant bovine bellows. The milk must be going somewhere. The cow with the Midas udder must exist. Perhaps we are not as integrated into Terjola as we thought. Perhaps we’re not using the lingo correctly. Perhaps, when I ask for names, numbers, or locations, I come off as a complete dairy rube. Perhaps – and this is my current theory – there’s a secret society which manages the allocation and production of this mysterious magical cheese, and, as foreign nationals, we’ll never be allowed in. In my imagination, this society, this confederation of cheese-heads if you will, must meet in some pretty swanky digs to discuss their production targets. That billionaire’s garish house/airport/mini-mall on the hill in Tbilisi comes to mind, or maybe a secret armored crypt in the basement of Sameba cathedral. In any case, this cheese OPEC is running a tight ship. Who knows the number of investigative journalists, curious foodies, or starving Peace Corps volunteers that have met their end trying to break into this tasty secret? 1 (Actually, I probably said: “zoia, es pantastikuri yveli, saidan modis?” --> “Zoia, this fantastic cheese, from where it comes?)

Sorry we've been so mute these last few weeks, but we haven't had much time to blog, or to get to the internet. With great sadness, we lost our host father Gio a few weeks ago, and joined our host family for the funeral. His laugh, bear hugs/neck kisses, and overall generosity and love will be greatly missed.

We also hosted Martha's sister Libby and her friend Emily for a few days and travelled with them from Tbilisi to Ateni, Terjola and finally Batumi. It was a rapid trip, but hopefully one which they enjoyed as much as we did. We were able to introduce them to our friends, our host families, and "our" lovely Georgia, which played a great host by allowing us the benefit of beautiful weather, warm hospitality, and full-to-the-brim marshutkas. We will be posting a gigabyte or so of pictures to our Picasa site as soon as we can get to Tbilisi, which (as can be read by our newsbar and my shared articles) may not be for some time, due to Parliamentary elections and geopolitical scuffles. Hopefully, by the first week of June, we should be able to flood your inboxes with more pictures and stories from the last month, but until then, droebit!

I would like to say hello to my parents, on this their 34th wedding anniversary. I hope all is well and I wish I could be there with you to celebrate and discuss the Derby results from yesterday.

All is well enough here; I will draw your attention to the news links at right for further discussion on a very political topic affecting Georgia at this time that I am not at liberty to discuss in open forum. Let us just say that in case you haven’t looked at a map recently, Georgia’s neighbor to the North is Russia. That is all I can say at this time. I am only getting one side of the story, but this side seems really mad, so I am sure that the other side seems mildly annoyed at least.

In other NATO news I just returned from beautiful Ukraine (definite article not needed or wanted; greatly insulting to Ukrainian people, who speak English, mostly Peace Corps Volunteers in Ukraine, news to me). I spent four days in a former Soviet resort outside of Kiev (also known as Kyiv pronounced Keev, please see above note about insulting Ukrainian people) , which except for the Soviet kitsch could have been in the middle of Nebraska. Luckily due to the glories of Georgian Airways (aka Airzenia for those on the inside like me) and their extraordinarily sparse flight schedule we were “forced” to stay an extra two days in Kiev and instead of leaving us in Soviet Nebraska they moved us to an even more Soviet downtown Kiev. Our quite overstaffed hotel (including a reception desk on every floor, but it is a job) was right on the main square of Kiev next to the McDonalds. We overlooked the statue of Lady Victory on a giant column that was put in after the Orange Revolution, which looks eerily similar to Tbilisi’s statue of Saint George which was put in after the Rose Revolution. So I have come to the conclusion that there is a man, or a woman, who follows revolutions around and sells the new government a giant column statue. Just a thought I will have to do some research on revolutions and their architectural aftermaths.

Kiev was really nice; I would recommend it to anyone for a visit. It is easy to get around in and the cool things are pretty obvious because they are gilded. Everyplace you look there is a gorgeous church which is covered in gold, there have obviously been a lot of work done recently on these churches, because they are beautiful on both the inside and outside. We were there for the Saturday afternoon, Sunday and Monday morning of Easter, so it was really nice to see all of the people with their Easter baskets going to church to get them blessed. We also went to a Church complex which had “caves”, (in quotes because they were more like deep underground hallways) but they are the tombs for former monks and patriarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and people go down there to pray. Since many people go to the cemetery for Orthodox Easter these tiny areas were packed with people, paying their respects to these men who are housed in glass coffins in little nooks along the hallways. I thought in would be kind of gross, but they were mostly covered with only an occasional hand or foot sticking out from under their gilded blankets and they seemed to be pretty well mummified.

After the Church complex we decided to take in some anti-religion, by going to what, in my opinion, is one of the greatest World War II museums in all of the world. It was put in by the Soviets in the late 60’s or early 70’s and all of the information was in Ukrainian, so as for information about WWII it is probably both quite biased and I did not get any factual information from it, but visually it was stunning. Firstly as you walk into the complex you are met a long row of tanks. Then you are met with a giant concrete Cubo-futurism underpass from which you can hear Soviet hymns being played from a long distance and in this underpass are about five Friezes of Socialist-Realism style scenes, androgynous men and women fighting the good fight for Freedom. Then you come upon the main building which appears to be built mostly into the side of a hill with a giant statue of Mother Nation on top with a sword and a shield ( as opposed to Mother Georgia who has a Sword and a glass of wine, but the Ukrainian Mother vs. Georgian Mother is for another time). Inside the building is made completely of red granite and as the woman who takes your ticket tells you many times you must follow the arrows. These arrows lead you through room after room of amazing pictures, letters, wreckage, and thousands of WWII artifacts. It was an amazing experience and well worth the 5 Griven ($1) entrance fee, oh did I mention that Kiev is super cheap.

Julien mentioned the TGIFridays in his last post and there is in fact this delicious American fast casual chain however, Ian, my American sidekick and I did not eat their because unlike the rest of Kiev it was not cheap, but we did have a close approximation of American food at another restaurant for half the price. Julien was a little disappointed in me because when we found a TGIFridays in the Riga airport we went not once but twice in the same day. He is convinced that TGIFridays has figured out a way to bottle the essence of America and dump it all over their burgers, so he was shocked that I would give up a chance to taste a little bit of home in Kiev, but he almost died when I showed him pictures of the Belgian Beer Café that also exists in Kiev. I think his actual exclamation was “And this is Peace Corps?”. I softened the blow a little by telling him that one of the volunteers I was with at training was going to be on a train for 20 hours just to get back to site, so she probably doesn’t get to Kiev, but once every six months or something like that.

I will get more pictures up next weekend when I am in Tbilisi to pick up my dear sister who is coming to visit. I even have some shaky video for you to watch, so there is a lot to look forward to in your inboxes.

I hope all is well with you all.

Best wishes-

Martha

Seen at local internet cafe: 50 year old owner playing "Civilization", (an online strategy game where one builds and commands large 'sort-of-historically-accurate' armies) and defeating the virtual Russians with relish, and being congratulated by his friends: Maladetz!

So last time, I mentioned I knew that it was "adgoma" (Easter) and I told everyone the definition of said word like I knew what I was talking about. Well, I was wrong. "Adgoma" does mean "to rise, stand," and I did think that that was what everyone was saying when describing our Easter. However, it was "Ardgoma" (french "r") which refers to "spiritual rising." My mistake. Apologies to all the Georgians out there who read this blog and were offended.

On another note, Martha is back from her FLEX training in Kiev, and will soon regale all of you with tales and pictures from a Peace Corps country with a TGIFridays. Hope all is well.

It is “Adgoma” in Georgia. “Adgoma,” of course, the verb meaning “to rise, rising, to stand” which – in turn- means that we (Georgians) are celebrating Orthodox Easter. Though I’m not exactly sure what to expect on the big day (Friday), I have learned that Wednesday night, in my corner of Terjola, is the night of the pig. For the last several hours (it’s about 8:30PM) I have been serenaded by several dozen strident porcine death moans. What started out as a strange, unsettling and creepy soundscape has slowly evolved in my ears to become strange, unsettling, and very much creepy. From a scientific viewpoint, this is a simple experiment in the non-communicative abilities of Suidae Budodontia. Elephants, as a counter-example, are able to communicate precise locations of predators and waterholes many miles away to other members of their pack, or herd, or what-have-you. Pigs, on the other hand, seem unable – betraying their best efforts- to convey a pretty simple message over a couple hundred yards. “I appear to be dying over here!” or “Watch out for the guy with the knife!” Peace Corps strives to have its volunteers set realistic expectations. “Start slow and taper off” is a favorite saying in Pre-Service Training. In our Project Design and Management seminar, we are instructed to set “SMART” project goals (The acronym contains both the words “Attainable” and “Realistic.”) It is in this vigilant vein that I’ve decided to engage in a complete renovation of Terjola’s municipal water supply. 45 years ago, (which was no longer “Stalini’s Dro” but now “Khrushchev’s Dro”) the powers that were decided to create the current municipal water system in Terjola. As can be seen from my lovely “still-haven’t-written-my-GIS-grant-yet” diagram, it is a fairly simple system, drawing water from a neighboring villages’ pump station, theoretically filtering it, sending it up to our local “young-pioneers-camp/IDP-refuge” hilltop, before storing it, and dispersing it among the Terjolelli. What happens in “Julieni’s Dro” is another matter entirely. You may recall in an earlier blog that we mentioned the power situation in Georgia. Remember the movie Power Trip you were all supposed to go out and watch? Well, as a refresher, it was the story of Georgia’s transition from a Soviet-style electrical power grid and fee-non-collection system, to the current “modern” system.[SPOILER WARNING] What was most difficult for the people involved in the project was convincing Georgians to pay for something that had, since the beginning, been free. Yesterday, I found out that this paradigm applies to water as well. While I can’t vouch for the major metropolitan areas (as has been advertised in The Economist, the government of Georgia has been privatizing like crazy, and utilities were the first to go), water, in Terjola, when you can get it, it still free. This not only translates into a complete and utter lack of water conservation, but also obviously detracts heavily from infrastructure investments. 45 years on, the system is in a poor state. After meetings with the local mayor (Gamgebeli), it was decided that water was the number 1 priority for Terjola, and that my quaint idea for a landfill-that-is-not-the-river will have to wait. (As a side note, the German development agency GTZ is building a two-story sports center in ‘down-town’ Terjola, but I will reserve my comments on this fact for a less public arena.) Though the final financing source may only appear after I am back in the states (hopefully in grad school with my own financing problems), I know that the first step for this project is analyzing the scope of the problem. Thus, armed with my notebook, chacos, camera, and very amateurish knowledge of gravity-fed water systems, I went with Kaxa, (my director’s husband) and his Lada on a driving tour of the “facilities.” What I found in the sand was something out of Shelley, though instead of two vast and trunkless legs of stone, were rusting pipes, caved-in storage tanks and historical relics posing as pumps. “Despair” indeed. For a couple hours, I took notes, sketched out the system as best I could, and listened to the ancient pump station operator’s lament about how things were, back when he was paid. The system today is operating at a fraction of its previous levels, only turning on for two hours a day, and only serving the lower half of town, leaving the other half and the small surrounding villages to rely on well water and dubious springs. I don’t have much faith in the supposed “filtration” stage of the system, nor do I believe that the source is that clean to begin with. As can be ascertained by the business end of the candles in our Peace Corps water filter, there’s some pretty gross stuff in there, and its not “vitamins.” As I said previously, I’m not sure how this project will proceed, because from my estimation, this project will fall right in the middle of the global financing gap between small $100,000. Though, to be fair to the development community, this gap has merit: who wants to fund a project that will cost the equivalent of several small projects, but not tip the scales enough to attract the major players in infrastructure development? Hopefully, by next blog, I’ll have a better idea.

Reading Ethan Sklom's first few posts about his Peace Corps service in Malawi (see link on right) has brought up a discussion that Martha and I have often had about Peace Corps - Georgia: Why is service here hard? I mean, let's ask a simple question: How long/far will Ethan have to travel to purchase a 500g jar of Nutella? The answer to that is probably more than a 40-minute Georgian marshutka ride and 30km. So, in the realm of Nutella access, Georgia 1, Malawi 0. However, the interesting and frustrating thing about service in Georgia is that very proximity to the familiar, while at the same time being so far from it. I hate to generalize about a country that I've never visited, but I'd venture to guess that Ethan doesn't wake up in his site, and instantly see something familiar to his previous life in the States. This, in turn, makes Ethan (and I'd love to get his comments on this the next time he's near a computer with internet) not expect anything familiar. I - conversely - constantly find myself being snapped back to the reality of life/work in Georgia, because I've let my guard drop due to being exposed to said Nutella, or some other very 'Western" thing that makes me think that I'm living in a place much more familiar than it actually is. Additionally, Martha and I live about 3 hours' marsh ride (see how I used PCV slang? "Marsh = Marshutka) from Tbilisi, and our various secondary projects often require us to travel there on our weekends to conduct meetings and work in the Peace Corps office. Sometimes, we're lucky enough to be invited to spend the weekend with a member of the expatriate community and then our departure from our "Village Reality" really gets intense, as we are able to take hot showers and experience an almost-America/Europe for a couple days. About 2 years ago, when Peace Corps service was a distant pipe-dream-that-might-not-happen, Martha and I spoke to a returned PCV who had served in the Caribbean, on some impoverished island (Haiti?) He mentioned that the hardest thing for him were the 'shifts,' or times when he could see the luxury resorts from an impoverished slum, or when he realized that he was less than an hour from Miami-Dade Airport. Now that I find myself in Peace Corps, I find myself agreeing with this notion, that most of my difficulties lie in forgetting where I am, and letting my expectations grow beyond what is possible. Rapidly shifting from Tbilisi's progress and big city mentality to that of "The Regions," and, in turn, trying to figure out how best to communicate new project details with reluctant community members still operating in a Soviet-Style mentality, all the while quietly noshing on Nutella, takes some getting used to. -JK

I will say it is a lot easier to like a place when you aren’t freezing and it is reinventing itself into the gorgeous Eden that I remember from last summer. As already mentioned several times to many people, spring is in full swing here in Georgia and while that does make for some uncomfortable times on the street with the turkeys in their full mating dance ritual (did you know they go deaf for the event?)it does make for some warm days and some beautiful flowers. For those gardeners out there, we are past daffodil season and well into tulip season and past plum blossom and into apple blossom and the forsythias are at the end of their bloom. We have some trees in full leaf and some and some just starting to bud. And most importantly we are sleeping with the window open and the last frost (though I am not totally convinced we had a first frost) has past, as is evident from the petchi (woodstove) removal from the kitchen this weekend. On the work front we have had some guest this weekend, in for our first monthly (more or less) English Camp. It was great fun and I think that kids liked it, but most importantly I think that it allowed some of the students who are really good at English to stretch their skills. We actually had three camps in one day for; one for each skill level. We played games like animal charades and Simon says… with the youngest group. We had the intermediate group do things like play Pictionary and create their own English comics (luckily the only examples that we had were in French so no copying was possible). And with the advanced group we had them debate damming projects and write their own plays. All and all I think it was very successful and very tiring. I think that it may take me the full month until the next one to recover. One thing that I noticed about having a bunch of Americans together in one place with a bunch of Georgians is that though we are teaching Georgians English and I think many of our students are benefiting from the presence of a native English speaker in the classroom, Georgian English is rubbing off one us. The most obvious change is the unnecessary use of the definite article. The most ubiquitous Georgian English phrase is, “The Nature, it is very beautiful”. I have caught myself saying things like “the Nature”. I can’t stop myself. After another year and a half some of my students may be close to fluent, but I will not be. It is very disturbing. One final note. I would like to make a shout out to my father, who has saved me from a summer of feed corn consumption and contributed to the legacy of “the Americans” in Terjola by sending me some seeds. Julien and I have decided that 100 pound pumpkin that we are going to grow will be remembered long after our classroom magic has been forgotten. “Remember the Americans? They taught English…No? They also grew that giant pumpkin. Yeah, them”. So Dad, thank you. I hope that with some general farming principles and some luck I can coax life (in the form of tomatoes, peppers and giant pumpkins) from the soil. I’ll send you photo updates of the progress.

Hey, we're in Tbilisi this weekend, so I was able to upload a gallery from a language competition we attended in Ryan Nickum and Jeff Haack's site last weekend. Martha's writing up a storm, so expect some gold from her later this afternoon.

- Hope all is well.

About 6 months ago, Martha and I congratulated ourselves heartily on avoiding a Peace Corps hardship post – like Mauritania or the like, and thus limiting our exposure to hairy insects, the ravages of quaint tropical diseases, or worse; the bat fly.

“But those posts don’t have to deal with 2 feet of snow, do they, Martha?!”

Yes, dear friends, the Imereti region of Georgia has been getting ‘dumped on’ for the past few days, and our equivalent to the Eisenhower tunnel has been closed, hereby dissecting the country in 2, and forcing the cancellation of planned trips to Tbilisi and meetings at the Peace Corps office. We’ve gotten reports of hundreds of people getting stuck on the main road, trains becoming snowdrifts due to power outages, and certain Adjaran PCV’s getting molested and chased by several mini-avalanches while attempting to walk to the nearest regional center.

This has also brought about the usual bevy of questions at school (before we closed up shop due to lack of heat): “Do you have snow in Colorado?” or “Have you ever seen so much snow?” My usual answers to these questions posed by my co-workers are “Yes,” and “Yes.” It just so happens that Martha’s sister Libby has been stuck in Durango due to massive snowfall (Pow-Pow, to use the parlance of our time), and Crested Butte has received over 400 inches of snow in February. Again, America 1, Georgia 0.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Martha and I have been coping well with the continued winterization of Terjola, thanks to the combination of our wonderful host mother, and our petchi, both of which are pictured herein. We’ve spent our time away from school frantically feeding our stove with as much wood as it can consume, eating food with enough calorie content to warm a small town or power a medium-sized battleship, reading, and doing research for our secondary projects.

A couple of quick notes from the sleeping bag:

1. I’ve just finished up “The Making of the Georgian Nation” by Ronald Suny, and have found some interesting and rather frustrating information. First, the fact that many of the very challenges and obstacles I find in my daily work and interactions at school have been previously documented by various travelers to Georgia over 200 years ago means deep frustration for yours truly. Additionally, Georgia has been, along with Armenia and parts of Azerbaijan, a contested no-man’s land between great powers for much of its history. Romans, Persians, Greeks, Turks, Mongols, and the Russians, have all pushed and pulled their armies across this region, in a never ending game of “let’s-play-geopolitical-chess-and-sack-Tbilisi-while-we’re-at-it.”

2. If you find that you have some free time, I strongly recommend perusing the following report: “Environment and Security: Transforming Risks into Cooperation” by an initiative from the UNEP, the UNDP, and OSCE. (ENVSEC.ORG) This initiative equates environmental problems and natural resources mismanagement with political instability, and strives to eliminate any environmental drivers from possible future conflicts. As they put it: “vulnerability assessment, early warning, and risk monitoring.”

It’s a really well written report, and provides a nice survey of what the Southern Caucuses are dealing with environmentally. Incidentally, its maps are kick-ass. I can say this because I’m O.K. with being both the world’s largest nerd, and a Geography major. The map I’ve included is from the chapter on Georgia, and though you’ll have to download the report to access the full legend, Martha and I are currently living equidistant from the large red circles of Kutaisi, Tkibuli, and Zestaponi, near the banks of the purple-lined Rioni river, inside some dotted line corridor, on some orangy-yellow stuff.

Visit Us!

Good news folks; our dulcet days spent watching entire seasons of awful (but splendid) American shows from the “now-starting-to-smell-a-bit” sleeping bags are over! Martha and I have begun our Secondary Projects, which, by definition, are not our primary project. I’m working hard not to disappoint my community (and the American taxpayer) by helping Martha with our English For Teachers class and English Club for Students, as well as being actively engaged in on-going Peace Corps Georgia programs, ECO-Project, and the Small Project Advisory Committee (SPA). The ECO-project is under a “project design” (as G6’s have called it) and review phase, which basically means that we are currently reevaluating everything about this very successful – and needed – program. You see, Georgia is a very beautiful place (dzalian lamazi) But, and I think I can say this without being censored by PC Washington about this, the post-soviet environmental landscape in Georgia is in dire straights. Just in the area of water (for those MWH’ers reading) there is relatively no waste water treatment to speak of, and no drinking water testing going on in Georgia. This same sort-of-scary situation also applies to waste management, illegal forestry, etc. Add to that little to no environmental or conservation education and you’ve got your work cut out for you if you happen to like “the nature” and live in Georgia. Well, some Volunteers back in 2003 decided to do something about this and started ECO-Project, which focuses on ECO clubs and camps for secondary school children throughout Georgia, and teaches them the basics, while encouraging conservation and clean-up projects. We G7’s are looking to build on the successes of the program, while perhaps expanding our visibility and our impact, perhaps by starting cross-border projects with Armenia and Azerbaijan. In any case, we’ve got allot of work to do in very little time. The small project advisory committee (or SPA) is a committee run by Peace Corps to manage an arrangement with USAID concerning micro-development run through PCV’s. It allows PCV’s to write small grants (under $10,000) for development projects ranging from education resources to business infrastructure grants, and – with 25% community contribution – get funding through PC/USAID. My first meeting is coming up, and with the G6’s looking at 5 months to go in their service, we will probably be looking at a deluge of projects to evaluate and critique before approval and funding disbursement. On a lighter note, a week or so ago, (as I’m sure you’ve all heard) was King David the Builder’s birthday! While most of the world celebrated with the usual parades, and ecstatic throngs filling the streets, Terjola celebrated by sending the third grade to David’s gravesite; the Gelati cathedral (which he coincidentally built. Thus the moniker “the builder.” Makes sense.) I normally don’t associate with the third graders, aside from giving the odd high-five or fist pound in the hallway, but in this case I was invited to go along, and happily accepted. We rented a private limo (in the form of an aging converted Mercedes moving van) and sped up the tortuous road to the Gelati complex (ahead of the President, I was told) while the third grade regaled me with traditional songs, and the passages they had memorized from the history book chapter on David. All things considered, a great field trip, and a nice Georgian moment. We’re going to continue to be busy the next few weeks, but keep in touch for more on doings in Georgia, and perhaps you’ll get a nice tidbit on what Georgian pundits are saying about primaries in the states! - JK

I am in Tbilisi again this weekend working on a project for the incoming volunteers. It is weird to think that in less than six months our beloved G6s will leave us and we will be the experienced and all knowing G7s to the new, un-jaded and freshly scrubbed G8s. I hope that we can pretend to have as much useful information to give them as the G6s gave us.

Julien and I are busy, which is a good thing because as some of you know we lost our souls to a little known TV show called "Lost" or "Losti" in Georgian. I don't think that it is healthy to care so much about narcissitic people who crashed on a beautiful tropical island only to be chased by man eating polar bears, equally dangerous black smoke and "the others". I know that this description has piqued you interest, so maybe you can understand how so much of our January was lost to Seasons 1,2, and 3. But the good news is I am using it as a teaching tool, killing two birds with one stone, rewatching episodes I have already watched hoping to better understand the "secrets" of the island through a second viewing and teaching the kiddos very useful phrases such as, "Duck!", "What was that?", "Is that a polar bear?", "Quick hide in here", "When 'the others' come we'll be waiting for them with this dynamite we found in the old pirate ship wreckage." and so on.

Julien and I have also unveiled the much requested "English for adults" class. We have been asked to teach a class like this since before we even started to live in Terjola, and we had put it off for long enough, so it began two weeks ago. After a slow start with only one teacher from the First school attending the 1st week we had a bumper crop of new students last week, with about 30 attending. I think that this will be a good activity for us after school and in the summer when things are sure to slow down becuase we won't be busy with our 15 hours a week slaving away teaching at school.

Hi all.

Julien was able to update the slide show, so check out our pictures from France. They are to the bottom right in the sidebar. You may notice that many of the pictures that Julien took are of food. I am pretty sure that Julien, Josh and I gained quite a bit of weight while we were away. I believe the 10 kilos of foie gras may have been the thing that did us in, but it was all amazing. When something exciting happens here in Georgia we will let you know, for now we are just teaching and keeping warm, working on our secondary projects.

-Martha

A quick note to readers: I'm trying to upload a photo gallery of our Christmas vacation, and "imbed" it into the blog as a slideshow, but I'm not sure if my internet cafe connection will allow me to do it. If not, you'll have to wait until I can get to the Peace Corps office in Tbilisi in a couple weeks. (I've got a few pictures up, but it keeps crashing, so bear with us.)

Apologies for not posting earlier, (Martha and I have been back for about a week now) but due to weather/sleeping bags/travel restrictions/school starting/secondary projects, we have'nt been able to get outta town.

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Terjola, 15th of January, 2008

Firstly, I’d like to wish you and yours a hearty Georgian “Gilotsavt Axal Tzels!” (happy new year), since Monday (1.14) was the Georgian Orthodox New Year, which is not when the Georgian Santa (“Father Snow”) comes down the chimney (or petchi flue), because that would be the other new year that is celebrated in Georgia, or the 31st of December. Yes, that New Year is also celebrated replete with a “new year’s tree,” which looks eerily like a Christmas tree, so go figure. Confused? So are we.

Second, and more importantly, I’d like to join my family in wishing our very own Joachim Alexandre Roman Katchinoff a fantastic 16th birthday. With a name like that, you know DMV is going to enjoy seeing his mug in line. I’m not sure of what legal hurdles one clears when hitting the big “one-six” these days, but I think driving is still one of them. Congratulations Jo, and I hope you had a good time on Monday, eating all that varied food, in your warm house, with broadband internet, television, and my dog.

Great thanks are also in order for my mother and everyone in Europe for our recent Christmas vacation. My mom, who is currently on a NGO site visit of her own in “hot-hot-hot-Honduras!” is gathering her own charming stories of developing world transportation. (How strange it is to read emails from ones’ mother describing almost identical stomach parasites as your own! Giardia: it brings a family together.) I’m only kidding, obviously I would never publicize that my own mother has Giardia. She probably only contracted an amoeba of some sort.

Anyhow, thanks to Grazyna, and my family in Europe, Martha and I were able to spend a very lovely 21 days in Belgium and France. We went with another Peace Corps Volunteer, Josh, who didn’t mind sleeping under staircases, or sharing a room with a married couple, as long as we kept feeding his face with kilo after kilo of foie gras. Thanks Josh, for a great 3 weeks. It was nice to get a change of scenery, and, though we missed out on all of the Georgian holiday festivities, we really appreciated everything Belgium and France had to offer. We also had a chance to spend a few days with G6 PCVs Ryan and Paige (of http://www.whereisnickum.blogspot.com/ fame) in Paris. They had somehow finagled an apartment near the Bastille for two weeks, and we rang in the new year with them at the place de la Concorde (along with half-a-million people/French riot police). We also got to spend a few hours at the beach, taking in the lovely North Sea air, and the brisk Belgian coastal weather at Oostende. Remarkably, our prude Georgian eyes also took in our fair share of Belgian skin, as we happened upon the same Polar Bear club that we saw 3 years ago, and watched 1500 of them sprint into the churning frigid waters of the Chunnel. (I really should just replace “Polar Bear Club” with “Fat Naked Men,” since young Baywatch-esque women seem to have a better sense than to take a winter dip in the sea.)

A couple days ago, stuffed to the gills with great food, beer, wine, and hot new Sarko-Bruni relationship gossip, we returned to the land of the Kartvelli, ready to start an exciting and action-packed new year. Our current cold snap may have forced us to hide in the petchi-room and in our sleeping bags, but we’ve got tons of work waiting for us if we can only brave the cold. School starts up in a couple days, and deadlines for our Secondary projects are going to keep us (well, Martha mostly) busy for the next couple weeks.

Tune in next time to find out everything you ever wanted to know about new PC Georgia winter work innovations in our next post: “Julien and Martha Work-From-Home: lessons in sleeping bag texting.”

The end of the calendar year is a good time as any to recap, well, the past year. In that same spirit of reflection, I'd like to take a moment and fix something that Martha and I should have included on this blog from the get-go: information. "Where are Martha and Julien, and where do I find information about this place?" Good question dear reader. Well, Martha and I are in Georgia. (Not the state, I hasten to add.) The Republic of Georgia is in "The Caucuses", which is a lovely place found NE of Turkey, N of Iraq, NW of Iran, and - of course - S of Russia. Here are some quick links for those too lazy to Google: The Republic of Georgia on WikipediaRepublic of Georgia from the CIA FactbookCool Map Collection from Texas Relief Web Maps: Republic of Georgia (Great Site)Radio Free Europe/Radio LibertyCivil.ge NewspaperThe Financial (Georgian Paper)Economist's View of Kosovo/Georgia [OUR MOVING VAN: A 1970's LADA] On another note; Martha and I have moved! Without delving into the details or reasons for this change, we've been quite stressed out about this move for a while, and its good to be done with it. We're still in our same village (pronounced "Willadge") in Georgian, and teaching in the same schools. In the move, we realized how much stuff we've amassed: keeping in mind that we left Peace Corps staging in D.C. with only 2 big bags, now we've got 4 more. Like Martha said in a previous post, we're going to be spending the holidays in Europe with my family, so you might have to wait until January to see any updates from Georgia. To everyone reading out there, from our friends and family in the States and Europe, to Ryan in Central America, Jen in Japan, and Peter, well, wherever the hell he is in South America these days, have a happy and safe holiday season!

Hello All- I know that it has been a while since we have let you into the Peace Corps Georgia world, but we have been busy, no really, we have been. Since Julien last updated you on the events in Terjola, we have been to two conferences and celebrated Thanksgiving, Peace Corps style, we had out first Georgian snow storm which unfortunately coincided with the first conference, and as always we have remained diligent in our primary goal to convince Georgian children that any form of entertainment, even swatting each other with notebooks during class is superior to listening to Russian Pop (a close second on my personal list is Georgian Traditional music set to a Russian pop beat). I know you may be thinking that we should be teaching children English not pushing our own personal music tastes on them, but Russian pop is bad for the world. It removes brain cells in the process of driving one into fits of madness. These are children who are as unfamiliar with The Beatles as I am of sailing and they listen to a man “sing” (in quotes because mostly what he does is growl in a three pack-a-day smokers voice with a cheerful pop beat behind him) or a girl giggle her way through a song that lasts for no less then fifteen minutes with the chorus that is repeated a minimum of 10 times.But enough about that.I bet you did not have a United States ambassador come to your Thanksgiving dinner. Well, we did. We celebrated Thanksgiving a little late on December 2nd in order to coincide with our Safety and Security All Volunteer Conference, which is as it sounds is a conference where we talk about safety and security (which this time meant several very smart people, including the ambassador, telling us what is going on in the 20 way race for president and that nobody is really sure what is going to happen) and all of the volunteers go. Mostly we go to see each other and the G6 volunteers pass the ongoing projects to us the G7s. I got some good ideas and Julien got elected to the committee that he wanted to be on, so all and all it was a very fruitful conference. The capstone of the conference is the Thanksgiving dinner for about a 100 people where the food is prepared by the volunteers and enjoyed by all. It is probably not a good indication to the Georgian Peace Corps staff of what Thanksgiving in America is like because the turkeys and stuffing were prepared by the Marriott’s chef and the meal included fried and Spanish rice, peanut butter soup (made by Peter our Peace Corps lifer who joined Peace Corps Georgia from Peace Corps Mali where this particular soup is made all of the time), mixed vegetables with peanut sauce, falafel, scalloped potatoes, super spicy corn niblets, etc. But it was very, very good and a lot of fun.

We are coming into the Christmas season, as many of you know Julien and I will be heading to regular Europe as opposed to way, way Eastern Europe as I think Georgia would like to be known instead of it’s more appropriate moniker Eurasia/Middle East. I am really looking forward to the indoor heating and more varied foods. I plan on supplementing my holy trinity of Carbs (potatoes, pasta and white bread most of the time served all together) with waffles, chocolate and beer. Healthy! Have a great Holiday Season. Thank you to all of our loyal readers we love you all. Mom, thank you for the boots and the warm socks they have come in handy.

A NOTE TO READERS: The following was a post that was created one day prior to the violence which occurred on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, the subsequent start of emergency rule in Georgia, and – coincidentally – the start of a two-week mandatory site isolation period for Martha and me. If any of you have been trying to reach us via email during that time, well, we’ve been incommunicado, and we apologize. Now that we’re out of the emergency rule, (and its associated news blackout) I wish I could regale you all with tales of political swashbuckling or international intrigue that only someone on the ground in Georgia could know, however, the reality is quite the opposite. Without access to the internet, the fuzzy black-and-white Georgian TV news, or the ability to congregate, we were reliant on texts from PC staff to update us on the situation (EMRGNC RUL EN4CED...), and were left to listen to the BBC World Service to see if the situation had gone “top of the pops” by becoming their lead story. Things are back to normal now, and village life as it is, the news that I wanted to communicate over two weeks ago is still relevant. Nevertheless, Martha and I have an action-packed couple of weeks coming up with conferences and travel all over this wonderful land, so keep checking for updates!

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Terjola, November 7th, 2007

Good tidings from Central Asia! Or is it Eastern Europe? Wait, Mosul is 400 miles away. Does that make this “Northern Middle East?” Well, in any case, hello again friends. As I write to you, the “Position” and “Opposition” are continuing their “conversation” in the streets of Tbilisi, and this is fueling great debate and passion in the Second School’s teacher’s lounge. While I won’t go into the details of our local politics, suffice to say mud-slinging, power politics, political demonstrations and television station shut-downs aren’t a solely American phenomenon. Also, as an quick aside to my close friends and family: I’ll take the total SMS and phone call silence to mean that you’re quite worried about my safety situation. Well, you mustn’t be. Peace Corps - though a completely independent agency of the American government in the day-to-day - is in continual contact with people “in the know” during emergencies, and we Volunteers are well looked after. I’ll keep you posted on developments as they arise, but, to be honest, most of you with an internet connection (or sweet, sweet WiFi) have more access to timely information than I do.

Not much of a post today, as Martha and I have been working hard to bring the language of Shakespeare to Georgian minds, and we haven’t been doing much else. We have, however, had some exciting, and not-so-exciting developments that I thought I should share with all of you.

Prior to our arrival in Georgia, Martha and I rented the DVD “Power Trip.” (or is it Power Trip? Or Power Trip? Seriously; how does one work with a movie title? Is it treated like a play? Or a newspaper? And to say that I teach this language!) Basically, the plot of the movie is based upon the fact that the electrical power situation over the last 10 years in Georgia has been…tenuous at best. With deference to the G1’s through G6’s who really had power issues, it is improving, but we got a lovely dose of “Georgian Reality” for a couple days or so last weekend when the “Shouki” went out and - combined with falling temperatures and non-stop rain - Martha and I were able to feel rather Peace Corps-like (Candles, Shortwave Radio, Sleeping Bags at noon for warmth…) for a while.* The power has since returned, but it has continued raining for about a week, the temps have been in the low 40’s here in Terjola, and I think my “Ahh…It’s just like Belgium!” comments are wearing thin on Martha’s bundled ears.

[MARTHA WORKING BY HEADLAMP]

Lessons, by the way, are going swimmingly, if you discount the “hidden dropouts.” There’s a new UNICEF report out on Post-Soviet education challenges, and one of the most prevalent and egregious problems listed in the survey were children who regularly attend school, but refuse to participate in any class, thus “hidden dropouts.” [Link to UNICEF REPORT] [MY 6th GRADE CLASS]

Many of these children have been exhibiting this behavior, unchecked, for years, since the teacher would rather have them silent than unruly, resulting in 10th and 11th graders who don’t know anything. In English class, this translates into a handful of students who can read “International Newsweek” (Oh, Fareed Zakaria, you dreamboat, you) and a handful who can’t tell you their name. Some of you might say: “Come on Julien; that happens over here in the States as well. All it takes is a qualified and determined teacher to reach out to them (perhaps through the power of rap music or ballroom dance) and turn these delinquents into scholars!” Well, that may be, but I have yet to find my pedagogical muse, and the 40% of students in my classes that sit and pick their noses instead of reading along to “Keti’s Tea Party” in the text book will just have to wait for my innovative breakthrough. Any cutting edge teaching ideas are welcome (I’m talking to you, Ryan Sitzman/Jason Brady): julien.katchinoff@gmail.com

[MORE OF THE 6th GRADE]

*Keep in mind that unlike the United States, falling temperatures are not a weather phenomenon that are contentedly enjoyed from behind double-paned gas-injected glass, in temperature-controlled environs holding a mug of cocoa. No; here it is experienced first-hand, since there isn’t any heat in the schools, stores, or houses, (aside from wood-burning stoves called “petchis.”) At work, for example, the second school has had hot-water radiators recently installed; however, the school has no funding to run the boilers, which run about 2,000 GEL for a month of use (a ridiculously large sum, when compared to a teacher’s salary of about 120 GEL/month, or about $70.) This fact, combined with bunker-like concrete walls, and semi-permeable window panes that leave to be desired, make for a character-building time at work. Not that I’m complaining for my own sake, but you’ll notice in the photos that the kiddos stay bundled indoors, and that my student count is slated to decrease dramatically as the mercury falls…