Whoa, posts on back to back days. That's a first. Actually, this won't be much of an update. I recently submitted 2 small proposals related to improving my school's sports hall (a separate building from the school). The first project is through the water/sanitation charity, Appropriate Projects, and aims to bring running water to the sports hall, install sinks for drinking water and washing hands, and repair broken toilets. The second project is through the Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP) and will purchase various sports equipment and materials for gym classes and after-school sports teams. At the end of the school year, my school will also organize city-wide basketball and volleyball tournaments as a way to conclude the project and to advertise my school's after-school sports program. You can check out more detailed descriptions of each project by clicking on the links below. My school is contributing to each project but both mainly rely on outside funding so if any of you would like to contribute, I would really appreciate it! Thanks!

PCPP Project:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=242-068

Appropriate Projects:

http://appropriateprojects.com/taxonomy/term/43

Although Peter and I are in the education program here, my main feelings of accomplishment have come from the community projects I’ve been able to do with some Georgian colleagues and other volunteers. It’s not that I dislike teaching--it’s just that I haven’t had much to report. I go to school every day and through co-teaching, I try to encourage the use of different methodologies and approaches to teaching. Unlike community projects, which seem easier to evaluate, it’s never that clear to me whether or not anything I do is helpful or impactful.

In Georgian schools, and probably in American ones as well, it’s easy to fall into the trap of blaming the students themselves for their lack of progress. Many of the teachers here do this, and it’s not uncommon for them to tell students outright that they’re lazy and that’s why they’re making poor marks (wow, you can tell the influence of British English here has had an effect on me). Maybe sometimes that’s true but these are kids and I can’t imagine telling someone they’re lazy is going to result in a sudden surge of productivity. In any case, I do understand where the teachers are coming from. They don’t have many resources or support while working with unmanageably large classes that have huge disparities in English level. Learning disabilities go undiagnosed or ignored, because what can the school do about it anyway? And the students who succeed also seem to be those who have parents that recognize the value of education and push them at home, or whose families have enough money to secure private tutors.

The popularity of private tutors has surprised me because I wouldn’t expect a large private education sector to evolve in a country in which most people don’t have much disposable income. Just goes to show that most people understand the value of education. Any family here that perceives education as the ticket to success, and also has some extra money, will enlist the services of a tutor (usually a local school teacher) for, at the very at least, the child’s twelfth grade year (so that s/he can pass university entrance exams). My Georgian coworker has started a pretty successful NGO by providing supplementary education services to families who can’t afford the higher fees charged by tutors. (A typical private tutor in my town charges an average of 50 GEL, or around $30, per month for twice weekly lessons, a significant portion of a family's income, particularly when they send a child to tutors for multiple subjects.)

What this means is that the most successful students are usually also the most privileged. And these confident, active students are also the ones who determine the pace of the classes. The students who fall behind are usually those from the most vulnerable families. This isn’t surprising, of course. But it’s pretty heartbreaking to watch because the students at my school who attend private tutors are certainly in the minority. Therefore, the majority of a class is usually behind while a small minority pushes forward into increasingly advanced material as they get older, until, by around the 8th grade, a good part of the class may not be that aware of what’s going on.

During most of my time here, I’ve been working with the younger children so this disparity hasn’t been as obvious to me. However, this semester I started working with a 9th grade class and was frustrated to find about half of the class unwilling to participate or even take out a pen during our lessons. My co-teacher seemed resigned to this fact, explaining that these boys (most of the students falling behind in this class are also male) are orphans, or from bad families, or have moved from remote villages, so what can I expect? Attempts at forcing participation through threats didn’t work, as the boys refused to stay after school as a consequence for failing to lift their heads from the desks. Fortunately, my lovely counterpart came to the rescue and agreed to help me work with these boys separately and start from the basics: the alphabet. Now, I meet with them twice a week, once alone and once with this Georgian colleague.

The results? Well, given that this experiment is only a few weeks old, it’s hard to say. But thus far, working with this group of 6 boys, who are generally ignored and labeled beyond help, has become the highlight of my week. During our regular lessons, they were sullen, angry and disruptive. Now, they’re excited, eager to participate and actually smile. It’s like working with completely different people. I actually caught two of them taking notes unprompted yesterday.

Maybe I’m speaking too soon. I realize that not all “bad kids,” as they’re categorized, react this way to some attention and extra help. But so far, it’s pretty exciting. It’s amazing what a dramatic impact you can have just by treating someone like they’re worth it. It’s also a testament to the power of positive reinforcement as a teaching technique. And, most importantly, it’s been a reminder to me. Although I definitely subscribe to the belief no kid is predetermined to be lazy, bad (whatever that means), or hopeless, as a teacher, it’s easy to see the challenge as so overwhelming that you just give up trying.

Anyway, wish me luck! Let’s hope this continues!

Here in Sakartvelo, the month of January feels like one long party. It starts off with regular New Year’s on January 1st. Then comes Christmas on January 7th. Next there is the Orthodox or “Old” New Year on January 14th. Finally, you have Epiphany Day on January 19th. It’s no wonder winter break is a full month long. Last year, we were back in the US for New Years, though we were back in time to celebrate Old New Years and the Epiphany. But they were nothing compared to the January 1st New Year’s Day that we experienced this year.

On the night of the 31st, we were invited to Alene’s school director’s apartment. Getting to the apartment was a bit terrifying, as everyone was setting off fireworks and throwing them off their balconies onto the street. We had to take cover a few times but eventually made it to Nana and Kakha’s apartment with all our limbs intact. I have no idea if Georgia keeps track of firework-related injuries but based on the number of close calls I had throughout the month of December (as a pedestrian!), it can’t be pretty. Once at Nana’s, we sat down to an impressive supra. People go all out for New Year’s here. There were only 6 of us there, including 2 children, but there were about 20 different dishes stacked on top of one another. The holiday is also the time to bring out extra special drinking paraphernalia. At their house, we drank toasts out of usual wine glasses, bowls, and ram horns. We even drank a toast to the Georgian military out of Kakha’s old soldier helmet from his days in the Soviet army.

At midnight, we set off some fireworks from the balcony and watched the President’s New Year’s greeting to the nation. It was pretty fun and we stayed up until about 4am eating and drinking. I remember having a long conversation about whether or not Alene and I would give our future children Georgian names. I think we finally promised at least a middle name for someone. I really like the old Georgian name lomguli because it literally means lion heart. We’ll see. It probably won’t be any of the more unfortunate sounding names though, such as Dodo, Nazi, or Taco.

We ended up staying the night at Nana and Kakha’s, and awoke the next morning hoping to catch a marshutka home and get some rest before going over to Ia’s (Alene’s counterpart) house for a supra. This would’ve been fine, but first we had to stop by Nana’s mother’s house with everyone to congratulate her on the New Year. We weren’t there long when Nana’s brother, Vazha (also my Georgian tutor), showed up with a bunch of friends, all of them overflowing with New Year’s spirit. Before we knew it, another supra had broken out, and the only difference from the night before was that now we were toasting with white wine instead of red.

After several calls from Ia asking where we were, we managed to leave and headed to her place. Ia’s was nice because it was much more relaxed and informal. Besides myself, it was a women’s only affair and, while we weren’t forced to drink so much wine, the same can’t be said about the food. Feeling stuffed and exhausted, we were hoping to go home and crash, but found ourselves dragged to yet another supra. Nato, who works at Alene’s school, and is Ia’s best friend, and asked us to come by her house for a bit as she lives in Ia’s building. When we got arrived, we got right into the action and gave our, by now, well-rehearsed New Year’s toasts and wishes. Nato’s family’s home was packed, and the guests filtered in and out the whole time we were there, with the party picking up steam and the toasts growing more poetic as the night went on.

The next morning, January 2nd, was rough. A day of lazing around would have been ideal but we had more supras to attend. January 2nd is bedoba, which literally means “day of fate.” People believe how you act on that day and what you do will influence what happens for the rest of the year. First we were invited to our landlord Gia’s house. It was a pretty small supra with good food but it lasted forever. Gia had invited his friend, Kakha, who I had previously met when he came over to fix a leak at our apartment. During that first meeting with him, he was shocked to see that we used matches to light our gas stove and went on for about 10 minutes on the advantages lighters have over matches. I’m sure there are less interesting topics, but I can’t think of any at the moment. Anyway, the guy can talk, and talk he did. After we had been there for a couple of hours we told our hosts we had to get going (we had promised my counterpart Gvantsa we stop by her house) but Gia and Kakha got really angry. They started saying overly-dramatic things like: “Only the host can give a guest permission to leave”, and “But it’s bedoba! My year will be ruined!” We apologized profusely (even though it wasn’t necessary since they were being pretty unreasonable), said a few final toasts, and made our way to Gvantsa’s. Gvantsa is the English teacher I work with most closely at school, and her family is our adopted Georgian family. Needless to say, we were relieved to have escaped Gia’s supra, and be in a place where we felt more comfortable. At this point, we were both beyond exhausted, but so was everyone else around us but the endless food and wine kept us all going.

All in all, it was a pretty exhausting but fascinating couple of days. And it was a nice reminder of how many friends we’ve made and families that we’ve gotten to know while over here. Though afterwards, we shied away from all human interaction for about a full week.

Preparing ourselves for the daily mud baths we experienced last year, we were pleasantly surprised by 2010's dry, relatively warm end. Leaving for Belgium for Christmas, we thought to ourselves that we were in the clear. Maybe it was that week abroad luxuriating in a hotel with a central heating system or having access to hot showers whenever we wanted, but January in Georgia has hit us hard. I’m currently writing this blog while wearing three layers and my winter coat…and I’m inside. A special thanks to Stephie and Devon who sent us snuggies (yes, as advertised on those infamous infomercials). They are an integral part of our around-the-house wardrobe.

Winter so far has been pretty eventful. December was filled with school festivities. Peter and fellow English teachers organized a Christmas event at his school, complete with a jeopardy-style game, presentations by students on holiday traditions around the world and other activities. Given that most students and teachers are Georgian Orthodox and religion is inseparable from public life (every Georgian school I’ve visited has a special room set aside for displays of Georgian saints, an altar, and candles), Christmas-themed events are not prohibited but rather encouraged. My school held what they called a carnival. It involved each class (from 7th up to 12th) competing in categories such as the best table decorations (and food displays), dancing, singing and even a fashion show with the 11th grade winner dressed up as Santa Claus. With 10 groups (multiple classes in each grade level) competing in 5 categories with each performance requiring about 5-10 minutes, I had to leave the carnival after 3 hours with still no winner in sight.

Peter's students A few days before we left for Belgium, friends were leaving our apartment around midnight when a giant rat (Peter initially thought it was a cat) tried to run into our open door. We closed it just in time to shut the poor rat’s head in our door. Keep in mind we live on the 7th floor, not usually rat territory. We weren’t sure what had happened to it until a few days later when I was having coffee with a neighbor. With dismay, she told me that her son-in-law Irakli had cleaned up a dead rat outside their door earlier that week. Ugh.

What other exciting adventures have we had lately? Well, Belgium was nice. We’re lucky that we’ve been able to travel as much as we have while in the Peace Corps. Initially, we wanted to go to one of the neighboring Caucasus countries, but decided that in order to stave off homesickness around the holidays, we should go someplace more familiar and less Soviet. Belgium was a good pick, full of Christmas markets, beautiful architecture and good waffles, chocolate and beer. We returned just in time to attend traditional Georgian surpas aplenty and ring in the New Year. Peter will be writing the next post about the holiday-filled month of January.

One of the many Georgian New Year's Day supras we attended Recently, we got back in touch with friends we had made last summer in the mountains near Kazbegi (during Mark's visit). One friend is a Georgian living and working here while he makes arrangements to move to Sweden. His Swedish girlfriend was visiting for the holidays. Hiking around nearby hills, we met only a herd of cows and their friendly owner. Feeling far removed from the city, we climbed another hill and a spectacular view was before us. We built a fire (well, to be honest, our friends built the fire) and we roasted lobiani and xachapuri over the flames as night fell and the lights of the city lit up.

Peter and I also have been exploring Rustavi a bit more through long walks and short runs. Recently, we walked from the edge of the old part of the city back to the new part, where we live. We passed what appeared to be completely deserted neighborhoods and crumbling buildings. Laundry hanging outside a few windows and pechi smoke (wood burning stoves they use for heat here) were the only indications that people still lived in these buildings that appeared on the verge of collapse with broken or completely missing windows and cracked foundations. The depressing sight was topped off by a hungry kitten meowing from the top of a pile of trash, too weak to move. When I start to complain about our apartment and its lack of heat, I think of these neighborhoods.

Hungry kitten meowing

A half-empty building near the edge of Rustavi Rustavi grew to its present size in the mid- to late- half of the twentieth century. After most of the factories shut down, many were unemployed. I'm sure the city's population has decreased in size since then. During the chaos of the 1990s, many families removed their radiators and pipes to sell for scrap metal to make ends meet. At the top of the hill overlooking Rustavi, two abandoned buildings stand. When we first climbed the hill, we thought they were abandoned before they were finished. Later, we learned that the buildings were formerly fully-functioning sanitoriums connected to Rustavi by a funicular. The funicular is completely gone and the buildings have been torn apart. On the topic of Rustavi history, we recently learned that New Rustavi, where we live, was built in the 1980s. Take a look at the pictures below and see if you can believe that. It's unbelievable what havoc 2 decades of instability can wreak upon a place.

A little parade past our neighboring building on Georgian Orthodox Christmas (January 7th) What else? School begins again next Thursday. We will have a busy couple months. Ia and I applied for funding to start a computer training program at her NGO. This also means her NGO will finally have computers! Students at my school took part in a training program to begin their audio news program using the intercom system equipment PCPP funded. Thank you to all who donated. Peter also has projects in the works which I’ll let him share in another blog post. In addition, we have several conferences coming up, including our close-of-service conference, in which we learn how to readjust to life back home and make post-Peace Corps plans. Apparently, a staple of this conference is relearning what conversation topics are inappropriate back in the U.S. (a perfect example being Peace Corps volunteers’ favored topic: our bodily responses to the food we’re eating and the water we’re drinking). With that lovely ending…happy 2011 to you all! We’re happy to be here but looking forward to returning home to see all of you late this summer!

Hey everyone. Sorry for the long delay in posts. We were trying to average 3 posts a month starting from last summer but clearly have failed miserably. Oh well, we’ve been busy!

Besides my 9th grade class, where the students have turned into wretched little harpies, things are going well at school. I’m working mainly with 5 classes: two 6th grade classes, one 7th grade, one 8th grade, and one 9th grade. For these classes, I’m splitting the hours among 3 English counterpart teachers at my school. I’m also doing celebrity appearances in 10th and 11th grade classes, so I teach one lesson a week with those students. I don’t think the Peace Corps encourages celebrity appearances (and probably doesn’t encourage calling them celebrity appearances) but it seems to be working out. For the one lesson per week I teach with these classes, we focus mostly on speaking activities and sometimes do cultural lessons.

Our new English Resource Room is all set up now and it looks really nice. Our school provided all the labor to refurbish the room and also contributed comfortable new desks and chairs. From our grant money, we bought a computer, printer/scanner/copier, white board, bulletin board, office supplies, bookshelves, a lot of books, and some other misc. things. I’m happy to say the room is being used all the time! Many teachers (including myself) are using the classroom for normal lessons, and I’ve also been having my after school clubs in this room. We’ve been able to do a lot of listening activities and power point presentations with the new computer (and hopefully some videos soon). And teachers and students are checking out books from our small collection quite often (thank you so much to everyone who has sent materials or is planning to, we really appreciate it!) We’ve also held a few trainings in the room. A teacher training fellow from the US Embassy has visited us twice to hold interesting trainings for Rustavi teachers’ on using picture books to teach to young learners. As an added bonus, each time she came, it felt like Christmas morning as she brought different ESL activities and games for the school.

Earlier this month, we visited our old Rustavi host family, the Kusikashvilis, for the first time in 7 months. When we first left, we had said we would come over and visit often but that’s not what happened and the more time that passed, the worse we felt. Even though we had good reasons for moving out, they were a pretty nice family and we wanted to keep in touch. I see Megi, our old host mom, almost every day at school and after a few awkward conversations we finally settled on a good day for us to visit. One problem that caused the delay is that I still don’t completely understand the social etiquette of invitations here. We’ve been “invited” endlessly by people to visit them or to come over for dinner but they never specify a date...and then they’ll be upset with us because we haven’t come over yet. So I’m not sure if it’s people just being polite or the fact that we’re supposed to say “Hey, how about we come over to your house and you can make dinner for us this Friday?” Another peculiarity of invitations here is that if you invite someone to go somewhere, you’re expected to pay. When we first arrived and would try to pay part of the bill at a café or restaurant, some people would become upset and offended. Another example is birthday parties. Instead of people buying you dinner or drinks, you pick up the whole tab for everyone because you invited them. Sorry, long tangent.

Ok, back to the host family. It was a surprisingly good visit. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see us and there were no hard feelings. Luka, the baby, can walk and can make a few sounds resembling words now and he’s still really cute. It ended as most social visits here do: with me signing the whole family up for the green card lottery.

Happy Thanksgiving! We miss you all!

I recently attended a training on health education in Georgia. We discussed topics most Americans encounter during their required health classes in school: STIs, HIV/AIDS, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. The trainers also added a session on gender given that strict roles for men and women can influence sexual norms and substance use habits. Both American volunteers and their Georgian counterparts (primary coworkers) attended this training and most attendees were from the more rural parts of Georgia (which is essentially everything outside of Tbilisi and 2 other larger cities, Kutaisi and Batumi). While I live in a relatively big city that is situated quite close to the capital, I still find that most people I meet at my site do not view these topics as appropriate for public discourse.

One of the most interesting parts of the training involved a discussion focusing on Peace Corps Volunteers and other American development workers, and our cultural sensitivity. One Tbilisi Georgian, who was involved in organizing the training, shared that she is often frustrated by American ex-pats’ over-sensitivity to culture. It seems to her that we’re trying to shed our image as aggressive and overbearing by accepting everything we observe as “part of the culture.” She argued that we are too cautious, often mislabeling problems as traditions or cultural norms that must therefore, be off-limits for any sort of intervention. We miss opportunities to offer Georgians alternatives or even just plant the idea that something that seems normal to them might be considered unfair or problematic elsewhere.

For example, some of the men who frequent birzhas (term not easily translatable to English—it’s essentially an outdoor hang out spot for men, usually along roads near benches or picnic tables) drink from morning ‘til night day after day; they are not engaging in any behavior that might be considered traditional or cultural or qualifying for protection due to a special status as a historic relic. This birzha subculture is distinct from the “traditional Georgian culture” of which Georgians are so proud, which encompasses folk music, dance, religion, supra, wine-making, food, etc. Though she didn’t say so, I think this Georgian woman might argue that if we feel uncomfortable criticizing birzha because it’s “cultural”, we essentially condone it and therefore miss discouraging a practice that masks alcoholism, preventing it from being recognized as medical problem. On the other hand, if we just criticize it, we might fail to identify the reasons for its existence. The last few decades’ political and economic instability, and the high unemployment rate, are likely major factors contributing to these public, and seemingly accepted, displays of alcoholism. If we just say birzhas disguise alcoholism, what have we accomplished? That doesn’t address the underlying causes of alcoholism.

So I understand this woman’s frustration with many Americans in the development world who feel they have to tiptoe around topics such as gender, seemingly unfair and unhealthy sex behavior (i.e., many men visit prostitutes and fathers often take their sons to brothels as an unofficial initiation into adulthood; women, on the other hand, should be virgins when they marry) and alcohol/tobacco/drug use. Rather than leaving these problems untouched, she believes that Peace Corps Volunteers can be the strongest advocates for change in our communities. This woman suggested that, because we’re Americans, our opinions carry more weight. People will listen to us, especially children. However, given my experience as a volunteer, I think it’s much more complicated than that.

Some of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers have experienced solicitations for information on touchy subjects (i.e., woman-to-woman talks regarding sex and reproductive health). I have not. And generally, I don’t get the sense that the knowledge I have about health (or even education—which is my primary assignment) is considered that reliable primarily because I’m American (and don’t understand the complexities of life here—a valid point) and because of my age. Children, the target group this Georgian woman was focused on, also don’t seem all that impressed by me, despite my being American. My host siblings in Rustavi often seemed skeptical of information Peter and I shared or opinions we expressed (not always about health) while we were living with them. And some of the children at the school where I work actually verify my answers regarding English grammar or vocabulary questions with the Georgian English teacher just to be sure, even though I’m the native speaker. But that’s fine. I don’t think development workers or volunteers should expect that swooping in with new, modern information will persuade communities to toss everything they’ve ever known out the window. That’s one of the reasons Peace Corps focuses so much on integration. We can’t attempt to tackle problems until we understand the place, identify community members who also view certain practices as problematic (and chances are, there are a few, even though it might not be apparent at first) and then get their feedback on what might be the most feasible solutions.

I recently finished reading Sarah Erdman’s Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, which describes her Peace Corps experience in Cote D’Ivoire. At one point in the book, she suggests that if health workers had incorporated sorcery as part of a health promotion strategy, rather than dismissing these beliefs as irrelevant or counterproductive, they might’ve lessened the blow of the HIV/AIDS crisis. In a society in which every ailment or tragedy has sorcery as its root cause, what’s the point of taking silly precautions, like using a condom? However, health workers might instead have spread the word that condoms work as a defense against sorcery, thus encouraging their use.

While I understand the viewpoint that foreigners who are overly cautious about expressing disagreement or dismay risk condoning and then reinforcing destructive systems or behavior, I think that Peace Corps Volunteers have to be somewhat cautious given our roles not just as development workers, but also as cultural bridges. First of all, we don’t fully understand what we’re seeing or experiencing, particularly during the first year (and even into our second, as I'm learning). Secondly, if we avoid alienating people during our first year, we have a greater chance of being taken seriously and actually promoting change during our second year.

Paying bills in Rustavi has become my personal hell. Given that the postal system is not very well developed and there is no online bill pay (ha!), you have to go to the companies’ offices to pay the bills in person. This is especially a problem with the despised “Energo Pro” company that has a monopoly on power in Rustavi. They operate out of a nondescript little office near our apartment and usually have one person working at a time with lines of 100+ people throughout the day. I went the other day before my lessons and wound up spending the whole morning there. What follows is a post about this eventful September day.

When you arrive at an office to pay bills, the first thing you have to do is ask “Bolo, vin aris?” which means “Who is last?” Presumably, that way you know your place in line and just have to wait behind the person in front of you. Only that’s not how it works. Once people find out who the person is directly in front of them, they immediately go stand in a random place in the shade, leave to buy something at the store, or go wait directly next to the entrance. It’s actually the complete opposite of forming a line. And although the “bolo, vin aris?” question process seems to imply an organized, yet flexible, alternative to forming a line, that’s not how it works. It’s totally disorganized, everyone is cranky and yelling at each other, and there’s at least one 60+ person preaching to the whole group about the good old days when Georgia was part of the USSR and you didn’t have to pay bills. Every 5 minutes or so, the crowd at the entrance gets so packed that the people inside the office are unable to get out. When this happens, the police officer on duty has to come out to clear a path and will shout something along the lines of “Back, savages!”

One sure way to speed up the bill paying process is to bring a baby with you. Women who are carrying children (like one would carry a football—this seems to be en vogue at the moment here) are ushered to the front. When I roll my eyes or look around the formerly miserable crowd for a similar reaction, all I see is pure happiness. A child has come! How small, how lovely! They usually are pretty cute but….come on! I wonder how offended our neighbors would be if I asked to borrow their baby for a few hours the next time I go to pay the bill. Probably pretty offended.

After my most recent long morning at the Energo Pro office, I went to school. I arrived for my 6th grade class, which was in the midst of the equivalent of their parent-teacher conference, so the halls were filled with parents. Here, the parent-teacher meetings seem to happen during the day, either after the lesson during the 5 minute break before the next class, or during the lessons, as was the case for us. Baduri, one the shiest students in the class, came to class with his grandmother. For almost 10 minutes, my co-teacher and the grandmother talked about Baduri never doing his homework, how bad he is at English, and what a lazy boy he is. And this was all in front of the whole class. I felt badly for the kid. But the concept of privacy doesn’t really exist in the same way that it does back home. After Baduri was publicly berated, we continued on with the textbook unit entitled “We all look great.” This text included gems like “Lika was fatter now than she was last year. She was the fattest girl in class. Her waist was so big she could not wear a belt. Tatia whispered in Lika’s ear, ‘You need to diet’.” This was followed later on by “Nino looked a little thinner because of her suntan and she liked it. She knew she was beautiful and thought to herself, ‘What a lovely girl I am!’.” Needless to say, we try to work outside of the textbooks as much as possible.

On my way home from school, I was just about to walk up the stairs to our apartment when I heard a “Modi aq, bitcho!”, or “Come here, boy!” The call came from two of my neighbors who always sit at a shady picnic table in front our building, drinking and playing backgammon. Now, I’ve been here long enough to know how to decline invitations to drink from random men, but I’d walked by these guys almost every single day and never had a conversation with them. So, I sat down at the table with them and spent a bizarre 2 hours in their company. They were pretty friendly but the conversation focused almost exclusively on me proving to them that I was not a Jehovah’s Witness. Apparently there are a lot of them in Georgia nowadays and they have not been received well. There was also an uncomfortable moment when they asked me how I felt about my wife’s inability to have children. Apparently, they assumed Alene was infertile (of course it’s never the guy’s problem) because we don’t have kids at the ripe old age of 25 and 26.

The conversation took a positive turn when I told them I was half-Irish on my mother’s side. For some reason, that always goes over really well here and a lot of Georgian’s I’ve met feel kinship towards the Irish. Maybe it has to do with a shared history of being oppressed by a larger and more powerful neighboring country. Or maybe having a cool form of traditional dance. Then again, it could be that both cultures share a love for and tradition surrounding alcoholic beverages. I’m not really sure. Regardless of the reason, if given the opportunity, I usually try to work it into the conversation. The fact that I have 3 brothers is also another crowd pleaser, given that boys are highly prized here. Anyway, when the wine ran out and the conversation stalled, one of the men challenged me to a wrestling match. He was being pretty aggressive so his friend stepped in and scolded him. This resulted in a short wrestling bout between them which, unfortunately, ended in tears. At this point, it was about time for me to get going, so I said my goodbyes. They invited me to hang out with them whenever I had time and repeated how glad they were that I was not a Jehovah’s Witness. Nice guys.

Only 4 days ago, I posted the below blog entry about a project conceived by students at my school to increase extracurricular activity options and involvement. Today, I checked the Peace Corps website and discovered that we have received enough donations to begin work! Unfortunately, I don't have access to information on who has donated to the project, so I am using the blog again to thank all of you! I'll post pictures when the project begins and keep you updated on the intercom program's progression via this blog. Thank you again, anonymous, kind people, for making life at this Rustavi school more interesting and engaging for students. If you aren't too shy and want to let me know that you donated, I know that the children would love to send thank-you cards.

Thank you again!!

Unfortunately, this is not a blog update but a request. My school has applied for funding through the Peace Corps Partnership Program and the project information is available here: www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=242-062

The catch with this program is that it's reliant on donations from family, friends and anyone who might have an interest in seeing the project to completion. We are still a good $600 away from what my school needs to complete the project.

It might seem silly for a school with few books, broken tables and chairs, and no lights in the classrooms to want an intercom system. On the other hand, my school also has zero extracurricular activities. Any concert or play they put on at the end of the year requires parents and teachers to pay out of pocket for costumes, props and music. Few families have books, and organized sports and other activities do not exist. To increase student enthusiasm and involvement in the school, members of the student council came up with the idea to build and operate an intercom system. They're very excited about planning news and entertainment programs and have a number of ideas for how to use this new technology. Students will gain skills in running a project, learn how to gather news and organize this information coherently, plan audio segments and gain pride in their accomplishments. Sure, it's not a necessity. But it's a good way to help kids spend their time in a worthwhile way when they're not at school. So, with that pitch, please consider donating to our project! Thank you!

Outside of my school:

My 7th grade class:

This past weekend we visited the Black Sea for the first time to celebrate our 2 year anniversary. We stayed in Batumi, an impressive and quickly developing resort town that is the summer capital of Georgia. The place was packed with Georgians and other tourists mostly from Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The city center is beautiful, especially at night, when the buildings and squares are floodlit with lights. Although the beach is stony rather than sandy, the water was a gorgeous turqoise blue and was that perfect late August temperature. Along the sea, there is a wide, palm-tree lined boardwalk (Bulvari) that stretches on for 5km. There are tons of cafes and beach clubs along the way and at least a couple grandmothers selling sunflower seeds. And there’s not one trashy store selling Big Johnson tee shirts! On the other side of the boardwalk, there is a leafy park with fountains, outdoor cafes, and tons of outdoor ping pong tables which we of course took advantage of. Sorry if that all sounded like it was from a guidebook or some timeshare presentation but what can I say, we really liked Batumi!

So, most of you have already heard via email about this project or saw pictures on facebook. Nevertheless, it's the project I've been most excited about during my PC service and since neither Peter or I have posted for two months, I figured a blog entry was in order.

Georgia is a country that has, in its very recent history, experienced the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the move to a market-based economy, civil war resulting in hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the loss of beloved Abkhazia, changes in government and the most recent 2008 war solidifying Georgia’s lack of control over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Only recently has the capital Tbilisi had consistent electricity, following years without; rural regions' electrical situation is less consistent, as is its water supply. The nation's health care budget is also as low as in many sub-Saharan African countries. Add to this a medical education curriculum that hasn't been updated significantly for decades, and a general population which views the scientific method and concept of germ theory with suspicion. Not surprisingly, the Georgian health care system is in dismal state. All told, it's a frustrating place to be for someone who studied medical anthropology and doesn't want to shove biomedicine down anyone's throats, yet has a co-worker with advanced breast cancer who won't go to a doctor and neighbors who regularly burn plastic bottles and other carcinogens with the rest of their trash out in our building's yard. What's a Peace Corps Volunteer to do?

In 2008, two female Peace Corps Volunteers organized a women's health day event in West Georgia. It was a huge success and women travelled from around the region to attend. This year, two Peace Corps committees, the Life Skills Committee (a health and HIV-focused committee, which I'm a member of) and the WID/GAD (Women/Gender in Development) Committee joined forces to try to replicate the success of 2008 here in Rustavi. We were lucky because we had a very dedicated community partner, my Georgian counterpart Ia and her NGO. On the other hand, we were at a bit of a disadvantage because we had no connection to a Georgian health NGO, most of which are concentrated in Tbilisi or in the next largest cities, Kutaisi and Batumi. Nevertheless, with recommendations from some contacts we had made during our first year of service, our team began to build a list of organizations willing to provide preventive information in the format of a health fair, with experts at booths distributing brochures, posters, oral advice and other information. In addition, several organizations agreed to do presentations and private consultations for health fair attendees. The project ballooned, with the local governor offering his assistance in advertising the event, and Rustavi's neighboring Azeri community Gardabani contributing 5 physicians from their local hospital.

After 3 1/2 months of work, the day of the fair arrived on a hot Saturday in mid-June. We had spent the previous couple weeks plastering the city with posters and handing out postcard advertisements to every woman we passed in the street. All 16 organizations we had invited were coming. An hour before our event was scheduled to begin, we already had nearly 40 women waiting in the lobby of the school where the fair was taking place. Several of the other volunteers, in town to help, had to act as guards, fending the crowds off until all organizations had set up their booths. By 11:30am, the event was at its peak. The main room, where all the organizations had set up their informational displays, was packed. The six organizations providing private consultations were completely overwhelmed with requests and two others were preparing for their presentations, one a training on self-breast exams, the other on sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS.

However, twenty minutes later, as the presentations were about to begin, the main room was empty save one or two women, and the presentation room in a similar state. Ia and her NGO colleagues heroically scoured the halls, essentially dragging the women they knew into the presentation room. The cause for the women’s disappearance? Many of the attendees were reluctant to give up their place in the massive lines waiting upstairs for private consultations with physicians. Health professionals were offering mammograms, blood tests, eye tests, and consultations with ob-gyns, pharmacists and other doctors—all for free. Walking down the second floor hallway, where the consultation rooms were located, we encountered women fighting ferociously as they clutched the small appointment time slips we had prepared the week before, confident that these little pieces of paper would ensure order. The rest of the day was filled with panic as we tried to lure women back into the main booth room. Some obliged, whereas others ignored us completely or confusingly exclaimed, "I don't want any games" (perhaps because the main information room was in the school gym?) or requested free eyeglasses and assistance in finding an apartment.

Yet by the end of the day…

• Our people-counter estimated nearly 300 women attending.

• A local clinic's physicians conducted 60 private consultations that included blood tests and dispensing pharmaceutical and medical advice.

• 21 women received mammograms and breast exams from the National Screening Center

• Ophthalmologists screened 40 women for rare eye diseases

• 24 women received private reproductive health consultations

• 135 women received pregnancy tests;

• 5 women received oral contraceptive pills, 3 emergency contraception

• 562 condoms disappeared into the hands of eager women, yelling "It's not for me—it’s for my son!”; and

• Health information distributed by experts at booths and during the presentations focused on the following topics: breast health, heart health, reproductive health, family planning, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, rare diseases, eye health, incorporating health lifestyles lessons into school (for teachers), domestic violence and trafficking, and micro-finance options for potential future businesswomen.

Now that I'm done spouting out these numbers, I will say that our team made some serious mistakes and not all attendees had rave reviews. The lack of attendee interest in virtually everything apart from the private consultations was the most disappointing part of the day. It was also a let-down for the Georgian organizations and health experts who had volunteered their Saturday to participate in the event. This was probably due to a variety of factors. My impression is that most people in most of the world (including the US) aren't particularly interested in taking substantial action to prevent illness--they want to continue living as they see have been and then receive help when something breaks. In Georgia, this attitude is combined with economic limitations and little to no access to quality, affordable medical care. So it's irrelevant whether people want regular preventive care or treatment--both are difficult to obtain for a majority of the population. Faced with the choice of seeing a physician and receiving screenings and medical advice for free, or picking up pamphlets about how to prevent tuberculosis, most women opted for the consultation. When else do they have this type of opportunity? It's a reflection of the state of this country's health care system.

However, I think we could've avoided this imbalance at the fair if we'd structured the event differently, possibly chosen another venue for women's health education (maybe a fair isn't even the right approach here?), altered our advertising techniques, and made the event more kid-friendly so young mothers could attend. Our number one mistake, however (or I should say, my number one mistake), was not involving our fantastic Georgian counterparts as much as we should have. Part of this was my believing they were too busy to be bothered with the details. However, they know their neighbors and fellow Rustavians best so seemingly insignificant details could've had a big impact. If anyone was in a position to tell us what would work and what wouldn't, it would’ve been them. This is Peace Corps 101 and unfortunately, I forgot that our role as volunteers is serving more in an assistant/support person capacity and letting the community lead the show.

Since this getting far too long, let me end by saying that despite the mistakes, being involved in this type of project made me grateful to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. I know of few other jobs where you have the freedom to get involved so deeply in all aspects of planning and implementing a complex community project at such a young age. The lessons learned from this event were incredibly valuable to me personally and I think the rest of our team. Also, our work this year will ensure that the 2011 Celebrating Healthy Women project, whether it's a fair, training or something entirely new, has a solid two-year foundation now on which to build.

Peter and I are going to be better about posting this month so stay tuned for blogs about our trips to Turkey with my parents and Croatia/Budapest with “Brother Mark.”

Before I dive into this guest blog post, I think a brief introduction is in order: My name is Mark Hendricks and I am a younger brother of Peter’s. I just graduated from George Mason University with a degree in English, and, as a graduation present, I was able to travel around the Eastern European region with Peter and Alene for fifteen days. Our travels took us to Croatia, Hungary, and, of course, Georgia. Now, because I don’t want to write a saga of a blog post, I’m going to focus on only the Georgian leg of the trip. Though our escapades in Dubrovnik, Split, Zagreb, and Budapest would undoubtedly make for great stories, you didn’t come to this blog to read about encounters with porn photographers or sickening public displays of affection involving Australians and very powerful drunk goggles. No, you’re classy. What I do have is my impression of Georgia, the people, the culture, and the way in which our favorite Peace Corps Volunteers live on a day to day basis (though remember, I was only in Georgia for six days, and six days is hardly enough time to get a true sense of any of those things).

So, let's get to it, shall we?

We flew in to Tbilisi from Kiev on July 20th. Our flight landed, we went through customs, walked out the door, and hailed a cab. Now, forget any story you have ever heard about the driving in Georgia because I can guarantee that it fell short in describing it accurately—it is anarchy on wheels. Blinkers, seat belts, and brake pedals be damned. We weaved in and out of lanes and past cars (heading in both directions) at speeds previously only reached by NASA. The not-so-scenic country side flew by as Madonna sang “Give it 2 Me” over the car’s stereo. I remember thinking that not only was I going to die; I was going to die while listening to crappy music. But the crash never came. We parked, they paid the driver, and I kissed the soil. We were in Rustavi, or as Peter and Alene have called it for over a year, home.

Their Rustavi apartment drastically exceeded my expectations. Pictures, blog articles, and awkward Skype conversations did not do it justice. It is bigger than their old place in DC, which for me meant better sleeping arrangements. While their old pad in DC offered me a sofa to crash on, Rustavi gave me a futon (though I was never awoken by roosters in DC). It was also a home. There were pictures of family members and friends on the dressers, there were magnets on the refrigerator, and there was a caps pennant hanging on the wall. Even though the toilet didn’t flush and it was a seven story hike up poorly maintained stairs to get to the front door, it was a place I felt comfortable in, and the base camp we stayed at before taking on the elements for a taste of city life.

Rustavi and nearby Tbilisi are uncomfortable places during the summer. The heat at times is unbearable and in the daytime they resemble ghost towns. The locals only come out at night when the sun has moved away to bother another part of the world. But we were up and about in the daytime to do things, and to get around places, we took the fabled marshrutka (or as I like to think of it, the thing I will miss the least about the entire eastern hemisphere). Imagine that you are sitting in a van with a high ceiling and enough seats to fit about nine or ten people. It’s not comfortable, but even with everyone aboard you still have a seat to yourself and you have some semblance of personal space. Now imagine five or six more people climbing into that very same van. It’s crowded. Did I mention it is over 100 degrees outside? Oh, and for one reason or another, whether it is a lack of running water or just not as much importance placed on personal hygiene, it smells like the most recent shower taken by anyone in the van was taken in 1974. That is what a marshutka is. It is an oven on wheels that transports you from A to B for the price of only one lari and two pacific-sized pit stains. Of course it isn’t all bad. It is a very reliable, efficient, and cost efficient means of traveling, and, as I was reminded several times during my stay, Georgia is a developing country—there are going to be stark differences between Georgian life and American life, including methods of transportation. So if you go to Georgia, by all means, take a marshutka. Just know that on the list of all things comfortable it ranks directly below riding shotgun in a bobsled.

A lot of the sights we saw were churches. Georgians love churches, especially if they are on a hill. Seriously, if you are ever scrambling for a last minute Christmas present for a Georgian, get them a church on a hill. It’s a hit every single time. The churches themselves weren’t impressive feats of architecture, but I did admire their humble appearances that had upheld over several hundreds of years. Most were small domed structures made from bricks or clay. Inside was not your typical Catholic church either. There were no celibate teens singing or collection baskets. There wasn’t even a cross with Jesus on it. No, inside of these churches were lots of candles and paintings of icons. Saints and martyrs waited patiently inside of their frames to be prayed in front of. The differences between Roman Catholicism and Georgian Orthodoxy (which is an autocephalous part of the Eastern Orthodox Church) were striking. There was nary a pool of holy water to be found or a pew to sit in. I didn’t see any confessionals and there certainly was no organ. It was a dark room with darker artwork. I would venture a guess that five out of every six canvasses I saw had at least one headless person in it. It was different than the churches back home, and going to these churches certainly didn’t put me in the cheery, big-day-of-football-watching-ahead-of-me mood that I associate my religion with, but that’s how they do things over there, and in no way am I trying to say that it is wrong, I'm just saying it's much, much different.

Whether it was touring churches, shopping, or looking for places to eat, we walked around a lot of different parts of Tbilisi, and if I had to choose one word to describe that capital city, it would be “inconsistent”. Pockets of wealth are spread throughout the city like rogue warm spots in the ocean. One street will have a restaurant with chic furniture outside and a beautiful waitress serving Tequila Sunrises to four friends. The very next street over isn’t even paved. The amazing disparity that occurred in such close proximity was something I’ve never seen before. We have it in the States to a much lesser degree. “The other side of the tracks” or “the bad part of town” exists, but we don’t have neighborhoods where one side of the street is mansions and the opposite side is projects. It doesn’t make sense, and quite frankly, it looks weird. I don’t want to misquote Alene, but the way I understood her description of the contrasting adjacent streets was that the government had some funding, spent it, and then simply ran out. It makes sense, just not to the eyes.

Speaking of Alene, I can’t say enough good things about the job she did filling in the blanks for me this trip. So many times when complete strangers were offering us beers because we were American and Georgia is the greatest place on Earth (their words, not mine), she would turn to me and translate while Peter did his job to compliment the country in its native tongue. She was also quick to provide historical and cultural context and explain the reasons that things were they way they were, rather than just saying that they were. While Rick Steves may have Eastern Europe, Alene Kennedy Hendricks has Western Asia (and you think you can’t teach, Alene?). I also have a new found respect for my Sis-in-law: the amount of patience she demonstrates on a day-to-day basis is unworldly. In Georgia, women don’t have as many rights, it is common knowledge that they have smaller brains, and they aren’t involved in the decision making process as much as men. I view myself as a patient person, but not that patient. I’ll never be able to fully understand the frustration that must come from living in an environment like that, and really, I don’t want to.

As for a paragraph devoted to complimenting Peter (you knew it was coming,) I must say that I was very impressed with his language skills. Even Georgians would comment on his speaking skills and how impressive they were. On top of that, when someone mistook him for a Russian speaker, Peter would begin explaining the situation in Russian! Now I’m not sure how much Russian he knows exactly (getting Peter to admit he is good at anything is harder than resisting the urge to sing along to Katy Perry’s "California Girls" rolling a perfect game of skee-ball) but I never once saw him look confused or heard him say “Wait, I don’t understand”. His skills in foreign languages are supreme and he carries himself well.

I saw things in Georgia that I will never understand. There are parts of the culture that I just cannot wrap my head around. Why the men drink so much (and so early in the mornings), why the work ethic is poor, why the driving is so crazy, and why so many people smoke are a few questions that come to mind. Perhaps people who visit America ask themselves similar questions (why are people always in a rush, why is everyone overweight, etc). For me, it was a traveling experience unlike any other. I learned a lot, I operated well outside of my comfort zone, and most importantly, I got to visit with my brother and sister-in-law for fifteen days.

So I'd say it was a pretty damn good trip.

Officially, there are two more days of classes left at Rustavi School # 5. However, in the past 2 weeks I’ve only taught 2 or 3 actual lessons. There are many reasons for this: students are taking their final exams, making the lesson schedule inconsistent; older students are skipping because it is so close to the end of the year; it’s been almost 100 degrees throughout June and there is no AC or fans at school; and finally, and most importantly, it is excursion season. Excursions are a big deal here. Our equivalent would be a field trip but they’re more highly anticipated by students, teachers and parents alike. Almost every class goes on one to celebrate the end of the year. On Sunday, Alene went to Mtskheta, the ancient Georgian capital with her 4th grade class. Yesterday, I went on an excursion with my 6th graders. And on Friday, we’re both invited to a teachers’ excursion to Tsinandali in East Georgia.

The excursion I went on yesterday was to Kavtiskhevi, a monastery about an hour and a half northwest of Rustavi. There were 25 students, and each one of them brought along one or two family members, so all together there were about 60 of us. We squeezed onto a small bus that seated 30 along with an obscene amount of khatchapuri, meat, fruit, cake, and wine. I tried often to give up my seat to one of the many older women forced to stand but was unsuccessful. Because we are “guests” here, and Georgians go crazy over guests, things like this often happen, in addition to never being allowed to pay for anything. Anyway, after a stuffy and bumpy ride that included several throw-up stops, we arrived at our destination.

The monastery was beautiful and was set against a backdrop of lush green hills. After going inside, we hiked in the woods around the monastery for about a quarter mile though it took over an hour because we stopped literally every 30 seconds to take pictures. When I first arrived here I often thought to myself “Are you kidding? Again?” But now I’m well aware of Georgians’ passion for photography and their pursuit to capture images from every angle and with every combination of people. My favorite example of this is when I was playing ping pong a few months ago, and my opponent stopped the game every 5-10 points to take group shots, action shots, and artistic through the net shots.

After visiting the monastery, we found a nice spot in the forest next to a small river and had a supra. One of the parents brought a pandori to play so there was some Georgian folk songs and dancing to enjoy while the kids splashed around in the water. I often hear of how unbearably hot Rustavi is in the summertime compared to other places in Georgia. I understand this a bit more now, as it was easily 20 degrees cooler down by the river. Here, I spent a lot of time with an 11th grader from my school named Leqso. His sister, Gvantsa, is one of my 6th grade students. He wasn’t in any of my classes but I usually talk to him in the halls and play soccer or volleyball with him and his friends after school sometimes.

After eating, we played some tsreshi boorti (Georgia’s version of dodgeball), and threw a Frisbee around. Frisbees can be a pretty big hit here, as many kids have never seen them before and they don’t sell them in stores. Next, we played a massive game of capture the flag which brought back good memories of our days as counselors at Frying Pan Park. The game was incredibly disorganized and the cheating was rampant, but it was a lot of fun especially because of the constant screams of “Moghalate! Moghalate!” which means traitor and sounds exactly like “Mocha latte!” when shouted. Once it got dark, we crowded back onto the bus and made the return trip to Rustavi with slightly fewer throw-up stops than on the way there.

Last week a bunch of volunteers ran and volunteered at Race for the Cure in Tbilisi. This is the band Mgzavrebi playing at the after concert

Borjomi, a city in Western Georgia

Nice Eurasian sunset

Brian-Peteroba birthday dinner

Me, Lasha, and one of the few remaining Joseph Stalin statues. Gori

Telavi, a city in East Georgia, with the snow-capped Caucasus in the background

Alene and Jeff at the ruins of the Ikalto Academy (8-12th centuries)

Alene helping students design hand-washing posters as part of her bathroom sanitation project at her school

Alene put coffee grounds on a few students hands and had them go around and shake hands with others to demonstrate how quickly germs can spread

The dangers of hang drying laundry

Incredibly, there is only one month of school left until summer vacation. I cannot wait. I actually like teaching a lot, but it’s difficult and draining and I’m really looking forward to a little time off.

For the past month or so, things have been a little different at my school. This is because my counterpart, Gvantsa, got a new job with the Peace Corps as a Georgian Language Teacher for the new group of volunteers that arrived in late April. She will be working with them throughout their training until the beginning of July. I encouraged her to apply for the job and Alene and I both helped her with her application and prepare for the interview. It pays pretty well, will be great experience, and Peace Corps has a good reputation in this country, so I’m really happy for her.

What this means is that I’m out a counterpart for the time being. But it’s a good opportunity to work with some other teachers and other students. I’m now working with three different English Teachers: Megi, Lali, and Khatuna. I’ve been able to keep some of my same classes and I’m now teaching a 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grade class. Gvantsa and I had developed a good relationship, we traded off leading activities, put aside time for lesson planning, and it was comfortable. Now, it kind of feels like the beginning of the year all over again and I’m trying to figure out and define my role in these new classes. With Khatuna, it’s hard to get involved in the lesson and I feel like a spectator a lot of the time. Megi usually insists I take the lead, and sometimes sits in the corner while I’m teaching or leaves the classroom altogether for most of the lesson. There’s a more equal division of responsibilities with Lali, though we teach 5th graders together, so most of the instruction must be done in Georgian.

Now that Gvantsa is gone, I’ve started speaking much more to other non-English teachers at my school. Until about a month ago, I think some of them didn’t know I knew any Georgian besides basic greetings. It’s not that I was ignoring them before, but I was usually with Gvantsa for the whole day. One of my best friends at school is the 52 year old gym teacher, Cartlosi. He’s a really nice guy and has a great sense of humor. He’s teaching me how to play backgammon, and I’m giving him informal English lessons whenever I can. I’ve also been playing volleyball with some of his classes during my breaks. It’s the most exercise I’ve gotten since we arrived in Georgia.

A few weeks ago, all of the men who work at our school were invited to a small supra to celebrate Cartlosi buying a new car. Any small success in life is cause for a supra, they explained to me, and we set the table in the nurse’s office after lessons. It was an all male event so there was a lot of man love going on. Let me explain. Compared to the U.S., men here are typically more affectionate with each other. Some frequent examples of this are men walking down the street with their arms around each other, holding hands, and the typical greeting of kissing on the cheek. At supras, it can take on a whole new level. There is a lot of physical contact such as arm draping, cheek and forehead kissing and tousling of hair. I’ve gotten used to all these except for that last one. It’s a strange juxtaposition given that the culture is very homophobic.

I also have a better relationship with my school director now. Earlier, Gela and I would exchange a “rogora khart?” (How are you?) every now and then but nothing more. I would talk to him about once a month but usually the conversations were short and uncomfortable. Once, when I told him that our students had been begun corresponding with a partner school in the US, he became annoyed and demanded why I was only able to find one partner school. Anyway, since the new car supra took place, we’ve become closer and he’s taken more of an interest in me and the work I’m doing. I talk to him a few times a week now and he’s always offering his help with any problems I might have. He pulled me out of one of my classes last week to talk to me about U.S. geography and culture for almost an hour. Before he became school director, he taught geography and is very interested in the subject. He had some strange conceptions about the U.S. though which I hopefully clarified. For example, he thought that: there were 40 states; only Irish people lived in New York; Louisiana was all French speaking; and most big cities plagued with constant race riots and violence. Of course, there are still huge racial problems in the U.S. but not to the extent that Gela was suggesting.

In other news, the grant I wrote to fund a small English Resource Center / Library at my school was recently approved. I’m really excited about this because our school has zero English language resources and there are over 1,000 students, most of whom study English. We will receive the money from USAID, which provides Peace Corps with funds each year so that volunteers can apply for small grants of up to $2,000. We will probably start working on this over the summer and will hopefully have the resource room ready to go by the time school starts up again next September. If anyone reading this is feeling charitable and would like to send any books or materials over here, I (and especially my students) would really appreciate it. Our mailing address is on the right side of the blog. Thanks!!

When we first arrived in Rustavi, we were in a private marshutka, rented for Peter, Brian and me by our new Georgian supervisors after they had taken a look at the size of our suitcases. In the luxury of a private marshutka, we each were able to sit by a window where we could gaze across the parched landscape leading to the abrupt rising of row after row of gray buildings. There was silence. “This couldn’t be where we were living for the next two years" was the thought running through my mind. Although I can’t speak for Peter and Brian, I assumed the uncomfortable silence, as our new Georgian friends eagerly asked what we thought of Rustavi, spoke for itself. We dropped Brian off at a building right off what is, during the summer, a desolate, deserted main road (Megobrobis Kucha, Friendship Street). I breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that the city would prove more attractive once we were entangled in its maze of identical Soviet apartment blocks. And well, I was right. We arrived on hopping Todria, filled with what I later realized was an incredible number of family-owned shops for a relatively small city. This street even included some trees. Our apartment building wasn’t newly painted, like Brian’s, but it was shorter (a plus in my mind) and the neighborhood seemed closer and friendlier. The interior of the host family’s apartment ended up being nicer than once would expect, given its crumbling exterior.

The next morning, we visited Peter’s and my schools, our working base, in the isolated 17th and 19th Micro-districts on the city’s edge. From the cool concrete interior of my school, I was treated to a tour, as they pointed out the new floors and the dirt zen-like garden in the middle. A big building originally intended to be a hospital, many of the rooms went unoccupied. My soon-to-be counterpart and director took me to their sparkling new Foreign Languages Cabinet (cabinet is the word they use to describe special classrooms), paid for by British Petroleum after they built a pipeline underneath the 19th Micro-district to the dismay of its residents. From the windows, I could see the crumbling remains of concrete buildings that were either torn apart and eventually abandoned, or never completed to begin with…I still can’t tell the difference, despite the numerous identical sites littering the local landscape.

We first arrived in August. In this hottest of summer months, the streets are empty by day. Everyone has either escaped to the cool of their mountain villages for the month or hides inside until the sun sets, at which point they emerge on the newly constructed promenade along Megobroba to amble along, eating sunflower seeds, talking with friends and seeing who else was crazy enough to stay in town. August is brown and dull as all grass has withered in the long, rainless summer and the ground blends together with the concrete buildings. Now that it’s spring, I look over at the looming hill that frames Rustavi and feel almost like I’m in a jungle. It has rained the last 6 out of 7 days and the city is beaming green from every surface. Cows graze behind our school and in that formerly parched field that leads up to Rustavi, I see white sheep grazing with their adorable little lambs. Idyllic.

Rustavi is composed of two parts: old and new. Old Rustavi is a quieter part of town with tree-lined streets and smaller, more attractive buildings, many painted in pleasant pastels. It also houses the Mayor’s grand office building (which still displays a hammer and sickle on a relief below the roof), the theatre, Giorgi’s pizzeria (famous among Peace Corps Volunteers) and on its end…the factories that brought everyone here 60 years ago. Established in the late 1940s to support the mammoth Soviet Union, the city churned out steel, other metals and chemical products. In the last several decades, Rustavi’s suffered a huge economic downturn as the factories went out of business and a good portion of the population became unemployed, even those with college degrees.

It’s been interesting listening to the generations arguing now versus then. If our former host family is any example, the older generation views the comunistis dros, the term Georgians use to describe when they were part of the Soviet Union, with nostalgia. If you ask our bebia or her son Giorgi, in the decades before independence, jobs were plentiful, apartments provided free by the factories, and utilities, such as gas and water, cost no more than a few tetris (cents in the local currency) a month. When Giorgi was young, he, his brother Zaza and their mother Tina (aforementioned bebia) toured the Soviet Union, which, given their isolation, was equivalent to touring the world. Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus and the big city of Moscow welcomed their Georgian folk dance ensemble. At this point in the conversation, Tina might pull out or reference the fading poster advertisements she keeps that picture Zaza and Giorgi in full Georgian costume dancing one of the notoriously difficult folk dances. Tina and Giorgi miss Zaza, who joins 25% of Georgia's population working abroad, given the limited options at home.

At this point in the reminiscing, Mishiko, the young 17 year-old representative of the new generation, will typically jump in, pointing out that religion was repressed during the supposed heyday of the past. Like the majority of Georgian families, the Kusikashvilis are Georgian Orthodox, standing from 10pm to 5am at their church (with no pews) for important holidays such as Easter and Christmas, lighting incense, devoting a section of their living room to display icons, their Bible and the framed certificate demonstrating that the Georgian Patriarch Ilya Mayore blessed their third child, Luka. They cross themselves 3 times when passing, entering or exiting a church, even if passing within the confines of a marshutka or bus. Freedom to practice their religion is important in a country in which the head of church is the most trusted public figure.

But so is Giorgi’s dignity, pulled down, from his perspective, by the current economic climate. A man with a graduate degree in law, who used to work for the police force (a highly respected profession here in Georgian) until Saakashvili wiped the force clean to eliminate corruption, now stocks the family store (although at least he has a job, even if he considers this so far beneath him that he still refers to himself as unemployed). Religion and exposure to the outside world via television and more frequent access to internet (our host sister Mari is quite familiar with Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and the computer game Counterstrike) are small comfort when the older generation remembers a life of security, supras aplenty and jobs and salaries more in line with what they expected from life.

We recently met one of the major government officials in our region who, like many of his colleagues, is young and views capitalistic reforms as the just the medicine for Georgia’s current woes; during our meeting, he implies that the type of thinking characterized by Tina and Giorgi is inaccurate, fogged with nostalgia. It’s hard to tell from our perspective. Maybe it’s a mixture of the two. But the younger generation of Mishikos and Maris certainly seem to embrace the present, and the increased access they have to the outside world, with optimism and positivity. (Despite admiring American pop culture, they were horrified when learning that certain Russian chocolate brands aren’t available where we're from. What kind of country is the U.S.?!)

Despite what seems to us the perfectly abundant supras and hospitality of the present, we often hear about the far superior supras and hospitality of the past from friends such as Peter’s counterpart Gvantsa. She describes Georgia’s turbulent 1990s (which included independence from the Soviet Union but also a civil war that lost Georgians their beloved Abkhazia) as when “all was ruined.” However, Peter and I don’t see everything ruined, at least here in Rustavi. A number of changes, even during the short time we’ve been here, seem to suggest hope for the Mari-Mishiko generation. Recently, a car bazaar opened on the outskirts of town, providing a new source of jobs. Some of the old factories also have reopened (one by an Indian company which led to the opening of an Indian restaurant HERE…in Rustavi! Yes, we’re in the Peace Corps with access to Indian food 20 minutes away.) As a result of recent city beautification projects, there is a nice walking bath (and bike path, although I have yet to see anyone running or biking on it) along Megobroba. The city has blanketed the buildings on the edge of town with neon lights that glimmer at night with questionable beauty. But they’re trying, right? Many of the schools here have, by now, benefitted from the government’s agreement to install windows (although I know many of our friends in rural parts of Georgia have not seen the same improvements). And most days, we have running water and electricity, a huge improvement from only several years ago (the documentary Power Trip is worth seeing to get a sense of the chaos of this period).

Not knowing how to end this long-winded blog post, I’ll just say that being in this part of the world has made me come to terms with my own ignorance, even as I claim people here are isolated after their long period as a part of the Soviet Union. Several months ago, in a shop, I was asked a question in Russian by a young Azeri boy. When I wasn’t able to answer, he asked where I was from and looked at me with incredulity as the following conversation took place in broken Georgian, as neither of us are native speakers:

“You don’t know Russian?”

“No.”

“You don’t know Turkish?” (Turkish and Azeri are very close.)

“No.”

“You don’t know Georgian?”

“Well, yes, I know Georgian. I’m studying Georgian.” (I was especially embarrassed when asked this question given that we were speaking Georgian. What was he implying?)

“What are you thinking, being in this part of the world, not knowing Russian or Turkish?”

Silence on my part, as my face reddened. My students may mistakenly identify Africa on a map as the United States, but my sense of geography and familiarity with the cultures, histories and languages of this part of the world isn’t much better. But at least it’s improving.

Georgian Easter was two weeks ago and we went to Sagarejo to celebrate with our training host family for a few days. It was nice they invited us to come because we hadn’t seen them since before Christmas. Also, now that we’re living on our own we don’t get to experience these types of cultural events and holidays as often anymore.

Easter in Georgia is called “Aghdgoma” and is one of the most important religious holiday of the year. Many people fast during the 40 days leading up to Easter. Fasting here can be pretty strict and you cannot eat any meat (including fish) or dairy products the entire fasting period. The Friday before Easter is called Tsiteli Paraskevs (Red Friday) and is a somber day. People die eggs red on this day, the color red representing the blood of Christ. The hard shell of the egg represents the sealed tomb of Christ, and the cracking of the egg on Easter morning symbolizes his resurrection. The cracking of the egg becomes a sort of game on Easter and two people tap their eggs against one another to see whose will crack. Whoever’s egg does not crack will have good luck for the coming year. Another essential part of Easter is baking and eating a special Easter cake called Paska. During the first meal on Easter Sunday, a candle is lit on the Paska cake. The typical greeting this day is qriste aghsdga (Christ has risen) and the response to this is cheshmaritad (truly). Finally, on Easter Sunday or Monday, it is a tradition to visit the cemeteries where one’s family members are buried and have a supra. You bring the dyed eggs and Paska to the graves and toast to the dead.

The weekend with the host family was fun. There were 2 big supras, which I enjoyed and Alene tolerated. One of them was a birthday supra on the night of Easter Sunday, and the next was an Easter Monday supra mainly held to remember and honor those who have died. The tamada at this supra was a poet who gave really passionate and expressive toasts, and occasionally broke into song. He insisted we sing a song for the whole table and we (along with our friend Lauren who was also invited) awkwardly sang “America the Beautiful.” Not one of my finer moments. What else. Ketino, the host mom, showed us how to die eggs red by putting them in a pot of boiled onion skins, which was cool and much more natural than using store bought dye (which they don’t have here anyway). Etuna, the host sister, showed us around her Farmville farm on facebook and we watched her play and I still don’t understand how that game is popular. We also ate a ton of Paska and took lots of walks around our old stomping grounds. Well that’s all for now. Sorry for the 3 week long lapse. It will probably happen again.

I was terrible at this game

Paska

Dyeing the eggs

Earlier this month, a videographer and photographer from the Peace Corps HQ in DC spent the day with us. Peace Corps is in the process of making new recruitment and advertisement materials and videos and apparently they need more footage from this corner of the world.

Eddie and Lee (the photographer and videographer) spent the first part of the day filming Alene’s 3rd and 4th grade classes. Her classes sang songs, played games and practiced dialogues in English with puppets. The cameras ate it up. Next, the guys came to see my 7th and 8th grade classes. In my 7th graders, we practiced English using an American song. With my 8th graders, they requested to see a World Wise Schools activity. World Wise Schools is a great program within Peace Corps that matches volunteers with classrooms in the US so they can correspond and help students in the US learn about other cultures. I’m matched up with a 9th grade class in New Bern, NC and for a few months my 8th grade students have been writing letters back and forth with the students in NC. So we spent this lesson working on our letters while Eddie and Lee roamed the class and zoomed in on a bunch of student’s letters. I’m really hoping they managed to get my student Avto’s sentence “Rustavi is a lovely city with beautiful factories” on film.

In the afternoon, we all went back to Alene’s school to film our music club and Alene’s dance class. Maia, the music teacher at Alene’s school, has been teaching us Georgian folk songs for the past few months. We sang a couple songs, one of which includes a haunting solo by Alene that always brings the teachers at her school to tears. Next they filmed Alene’s Georgian dance class. She has been taking lessons for about two months now with co-workers and everyone was pretty excited to be filmed. Eddie, the photographer, really enjoyed this part of the day as he told us he majored in Eastern European music in college (most obscure major ever?)

At the end of the day it was time for a sit-down interview, which we did at our apartment. It lasted an hour and a half and I was very relieved when it was over. I was exhausted from the hectic day and don’t think any of my answers were too insightful but Alene sounded great! I’m not exactly sure how the footage or photos of us will be used (I’m assuming on flashy billboards in major metropolitan areas) but they spent the whole day with us so hopefully they got some good stuff.

In related news, Alene and I were both on Georgian TV recently. To explain, the Georgian Ministry of Education recently announced a new program called “Teach and Learn with Georgia” (http://www.tlg.gov.ge/ in case any of you want to join us over here). They are trying to model it somewhat after the Peace Corps, and they will place volunteer English teachers in schools throughout Georgia. Anyway, one day I got a call from my program manager at 3 pm (an hour after lessons ended) asking if a popular Georgian TV station could film a lesson and interview me in the next half hour. There were no students left at school but my counterpart and I rounded some up and did a staged lesson for the cameras. It was pretty exciting. My interview that followed was half in English with my counterpart translating, and half in Georgian. The Georgian language interview featured hard-hitting questions like “khatchapuri gik’vars?” (Do you like khatchapuri?). Unfortunately, that question didn’t make the final cut but if you’re interested in seeing some of my students (and what the Georgian language sounds like!) check out the segment here. It comes on right before the 5 minute mark:

The next day, Alene got a similar call from our project manager and a different TV station came during the day to film one of her lessons. She was also interviewed and we'll post that video that we took from our digital camera the next time we get a fast internet connection. Okay. Hope everyone is doing well and we miss you all a lot! Happy Easter!

This past week, one of my 5th grade students bounded up to me after our lesson, clearly very pleased with herself. Out of her bag appeared a little black book in English, titled Twenty-Four Hours a Day. I'm not sure where she found it, but realizing the book was in English, she decided to give it to me as a present. It was sweet. When I looked inside later, I discovered it was a book for Alcoholics Anonymous. Who knew there would come a day that I would think it nice to receive an AA book as a present! But that day has come.

More exciting news is that a project my counterpart and I applied for has been approved and my school is receiving funds to renovate its bathrooms, which are currently nonfunctional. Here is the link to our project description: http://appropriateprojects.com/node/133 Although the organization, Appropriate Projects, is providing us with the funds to start work immediately, if you're feeling charitable, you can donate to our project. This will offset the costs to Appropriate Projects so that they can continue funding Peace Corps Volunteer projects. Thank you Heather for recommending that we apply!

That's it for now. But don't worry--Peter will be updating you soon with a more lengthy blog post.

Today, we spent the afternoon with our friendly neighbor, Leila. We’d met her previously but this was the first time we’d actually been invited as guests to her apartment. She lives alone because, like a fourth of the Georgian population, her husband works abroad. He seems to be one of the luckier ones though: he must work legally because he’s able to visit every year (he’s been abroad 7 years). Leila is going to live with him in Barcelona (where he works) at the end of March. One of her two children, Sopo, will be moving into her apartment with a husband and 2 children. Sopo and her husband, Irakli, are the same age as Peter and me but already have a 7 year old daughter and 3 year old son. Their children also have great-grandparents because Leila , their grandmother, is only in her 40s and mentioned a mother living in Kutaisi.

In addition to learning more about Leila’s family, we also engaged in a discussion about transgendered people. In a country where gay Peace Corps Volunteers are warned to keep their sexuality under wraps because they could face violent repercussions from the locals, Leila spoke calmly and casually about a Georgian who had had a sex change operation. If I understood correctly, the Georgian was born a hermaphrodite, had an operation to be male and then changed her mind when older and is now female. This conversation was followed by a not unusual question here: are there many gay people in the U.S.? When we answered yes, Leila said there weren’t in Georgia, despite the fact that Mr. Gay Europe this last year was Georgian. Just as a sidenote, the common term for homosexual in the Georgian language translates literally as sky blue-colored (tsisperi). All in all though, it was a conversation that surprised us by its openness and general lack of judgmentalism (besides the no Georgians are gay comment).

While visiting, we were treated to cookies and coffee, as is typical of a Georgian social call. After the cookies and coffee came compote, which is a homemade juice consisting of water that has been boiled with an unfathomable amount of sugar and whole fruit (not squeezed or blended, just big pieces of fruit). It’s basically like drinking fruit cocktail. Apparently, I’d forgotten all the skills I learned to cope with Georgians’ incredible generosity. So I finished my juice quickly (I was thirsty). This was a mistake. Leila rushed in with another cup of juice. All in all, I ended up eating the equivalent of 4 peaches while in her apartment in addition to several full cups of dissolved sugar. Needless to say, I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish my dinner. After we left Leila’s apartment, Peter reminded me that you’re never supposed to finish what they give you without expecting it to be followed by another heaping serving. This is Coping in Georgian 101. Pretty embarrassing I haven’t mastered that yet.

About 2 weeks ago, I arrive at school early to have an interesting conversation with the husband of our school caretaker, Danya. Every school in Georgia has a caretaker who also lives in the school. Our school’s caretaker is a Russian woman who is married to a musician. Unfortunately, he doesn’t work currently as a musician but I’ve heard him play the school piano and he clearly is talented. In any case, I’d only seen him once before and it was during my first visit to the school, when he briefly performed for me. Every morning, I chat with Danya, who guards the doors (so the older children don’t escape from school before their classes end). On this particular morning, he also is hanging out around the heater by the door and the instant I open the door, he becomes very excited, as though he had been waiting for this moment for a long time. He proceeds to ask me if I can do him a favor and look up Elton John’s address and phone number on the internet. Pretty sure I understand him correctly, I assure him that famous people typically do not post their address and phone number on the internet so I don’t think I’ll be able to get that information. He waves his hand dismissively, mentioning a friend of his in Tbilisi who contacted Elton John. Then, he goes on to explain that he wants me to ask Sir Elton to give him instruments. When I respond with skepticism to this scheme, he explains to me that Elton John has a lot of money…what else is he going to do with all of it? While I agree, I still am not convinced that Elton John would a) be so available that I could contact him; and b) give a man in Georgia instruments. The man keeps talking about his idea and seems confused as to why I won’t help him. I know English. Elton knows English. What is the problem? Not sure how to respond, I just nod my head. Eventually, his wife intercedes so I can go upstairs and begin the day.

By the end of this conversation, I am having serious doubts about my Georgian skills. I must have misunderstood him. As I make my way up to meet my counterpart, I decide Ia will need to talk to him to figure out what exactly he wants. Before even saying hello, I launch into my tale of the confusing encounter with Danya’s husband. Ia starts shaking her head and says that he had asked her if I could do this before but Ia had refused to tell me about his request. While at first, I am relieved that I picked up enough Georgian to piece together our conversation correctly, I also feel sad. Here is an unemployed, frustrated man living in a school who doesn’t understand why a man with money beyond most Georgians’ comprehension can’t spare a few instruments. I understand his logic but am not in any position to serve as go-between a superstar and struggling musician. So, here's my attempt to help: if you’re reading this Elton John (which I’m sure you are), please send Rustavi some instruments.

After almost 8 months of living with host families, we are now on our own and have some degree of control over our lives! In mid January, we began looking for an apartment and it turned out to be an easier process than we imagined. On just about every corner in Rustavi there is an apartment agency, which is not surprising in a city of sprawling Soviet-style block apartment buildings. Some of these apartment agencies were actual offices, but most of them were flower shops or shoe stores in which the owner ran this side business and had a notebook with a couple of vacancies listed. Our friend and site mate Brian told us about a woman named Marina who had helped him find his apartment. She turned out to be really helpful and found us a nice, cheap, place close to our school. Our new landlord, Gia, is also friendly and very responsive though I only understand about 25% of what he says.

We were both pretty nervous, or should I say terrified, about telling our host family the news and unsure of what the reaction might be. We had told them a month earlier that it was possible we would be moving out. Still, they seemed to talk all the time about taking us places during the summer and would spontaneously announce in supra toasts that we were their guests for 2 years. Awkward. Anyway, Alene told them by herself a few days after Luca’s baptism (I was in Tbilisi for the day and am forever in her debt). Alene talked about how we really liked them all and were thankful for how they had opened up their home to us, but that it was more normal for us, as a married couple, to live alone. She said that married couples in America almost always live on their own, but that she realizes this is not always the case in Georgia. They took it pretty well at first, were cold to us for the next few days, then warmed up to us again on the day we moved out. Megi, our host mom, told us we could come back and visit whenever we wanted and told us we could move into their Grandmother’s vacant apartment if things didn’t work out in our new place.

Overall, our host family ended up being a nice group of people and I will probably miss them at some point. They may have fought and yelled at each other sometimes but I think it was more of a cultural thing. Georgians are--stereotype coming up—pretty loud and passionate people. Also, it had to be tough for them opening their home to strangers, who struggled to speak their language and had bizarre ideas on most topics, like women and men having equal brain sizes, and evolution. I hope to stay in contact with them and it shouldn’t be hard as we only moved 5 minutes away and Megi is a teacher at my school.

Back to our new place. It’s on the 7th floor of an 8 floor building. Since we’re high up, we’ve have a pretty good view of the hills and cross that overlook Rustavi. Our other windows look out upon a kindergarten, and a Natakhtari beer factory (Natakhtari is Georgia’s most popular domestic beer, and has a 12% alcohol content!). Everything in the apartment is good condition, besides a strange window that attracts huge numbers of flies (in freezing temperatures bizarrely) and the fact that it’s so cold (landlords don’t invest in radiators for apartments they’re going to rent). The best part about our new place is that the area between the building and the ezo (yard where they have a few dilapidated tables and benches for men to play backgammon on) isn’t as pot hole-ridden and muddy as our old neighborhood. We can sort of manage to walk to work most days without looking like we’ve struggled through a swamp, while our Georgian friends, with some secret talent we have yet to uncover, show up with perfectly shining dress shoes.

Alene cooking an awesome soup. The place didn't feel like home until we put up the Caps pennant.

Our building and the much improved mud situation

View from our apartment over snowy Rustavi

Luka with his grandmothers, Mediko and Tina

About 2 weeks ago, we were invited to the baptism of Luka, the 7 month old baby in our host family. Luka was baptized on January 19, Epiphany or Baptism Day in Georgia. This day is a national, religious holiday here. Although most national holidays in Georgia are also religious in nature. Epiphany Day is one of the most popular days for baptisms in Georgia; also today, it is common for godparents to visit their godsons and goddaughters. Luka was baptized at the chapel near our host family’s apartment, a chapel no bigger than an ordinary school classroom. Dozens of babies and family members packed tightly into this small area and it seemed to be first come first serve. Naturally, there was a lot of crying, but Luka, as always, remained cheerful and oblivious to what was happening around him. He is probably the happiest and most good-natured baby I’ve ever known (and definitely the chubbiest).

As it became increasingly crowded in the chapel, we had to go outside to wait and unfortunately, weren’t able to witness the actual baptism. We passed the time in Megi’s cousin’s car listening to Afroman hits like “Because I got high” and trying to translate them into Georgian for Irakli (the cousin). Luka had two godfathers present at his baptism, and his third is Ilia II, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ilia II recently offered to personally baptize and become the godfather of any third child born to a family as a way to encourage families to have more children as Georgia has a very low birth rate. The host family could not make it to Tbilisi on the 19th to have Luka personally baptized by the Patriarch, but they did go later in the week and Luka received a special blessing.

After the baptism came, of course, the baptism supra. Our host family, despite their money woes, held the supra at the fanciest restaurant in town. (Megi only works a few hours at week at school and Giorgi has no job. We're not sure but we think they survive on funds sent from their sister and brother living in Austria. A fourth of the Georgian population lives abroad and sends money home because there are so few jobs available in country.) For those who don’t know, a supra is the traditional Georgian feast and center of social life. Every supra must have a tamada, the person who proposes all the toasts. After the tamada speaks, other people can share their toasts as well but they must be related to the original toast. Toasts can be on any topic, but almost all supras follow a traditional order and must involve toasts honoring the occasion (in this case, Luka’s baptism), peace, parents, those who have passed before us, among others. Another necessity at a supra is plenty of wine and food. You’re only allowed to drink when a toast has been proposed, and the concept of sipping on wine is foreign here. You often hear the phrase “bolomde!” which means “til the end” or more simply, “chug!” As for the food, it keeps coming, beginning with cold dishes, then transitioning to hot dishes and meat dishes, and finally cake and coffee. The arrival of cake and coffee doesn't always signal the end of a supra though. In Luka's baptism supra's case, the supra extended four hours beyond the cake and coffee course. Usually, there is also some traditional Georgian folk and dance involved, interspersed between the different toasts.

I like supras because we don’t go to them very often, and you usually are able to eat some pretty good food. Also, by this point, I know a few toasts and I’m sort of able to follow along with what is happening. I’m also a guy though, so I’m actually encouraged to participate. Alene can’t stand the more traditional supras (like this baptism supra) in which the men do all the toasting and drinking and the women get to watch. The baptism supra went from about 5 PM until 3 AM but we were lucky enough to leave by midnight as we had school the next day. All in all it was a pretty typical supra: We ate way too much, were pulled out onto the dance floor by people trying to teach us Georgian dance moves, were reminded countless times of Georgia’s greatness during the 12th century, and were invited over to people’s houses whom we will never see again.

So Peter and I (to be honest, the blame lies more with me) have been accused of focusing too much on the negatives of our experience here, so I am devoting this blog post entirely to what we enjoy about living in Georgia. Ready?

• First and foremost, Peter and I have fantastic Georgian counterparts and both of us realize that we really lucked out in that respect, particularly when we hear stories from the other volunteers in our group. They’re smart, motivated and interested in new ideas. Outside of work, both women have made incredible efforts to make us feel welcome and loved in this country. Ia, for example, threw me the fanciest birthday bash I’ve ever had…which amazed me, given that I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer. I’m not supposed to be feasting at a fancy restaurant or dancing to a band hired just for us in the middle of flashing colored lights and mist produced by a fog machine. It’s almost too embarrassing to admit. And Peter’s counterpart Gvantsa has repeatedly invited us over to her home, out to cafes and took Peter last night to the live filming of GeoStar (the Georgian version of American Idol) in Tbilisi. Meanwhile, both are fun to talk to and accepting of our differences (of which there are, of course, many).

• We live in Rustavi, not the most attractive city in Georgia, but certainly an interesting one…and less than an hour from the capital, Tbilisi. Also here, we have access to luxuries not always available in other parts of the countries such as well-stocked stores, a degree of anonymity, an actual movie theater and restaurants/cafes.

• Georgia is a small country and current volunteer posts are limited to only the eastern region of the country (although the next group coming in April will be out West). This means that we get to see other Americans on a regular basis. Plus, we like our volunteer group. Double bonus.

• Along those same lines, Georgia is not only small but diverse. We have mountains, deserts, the seashore and subtropical regions all in one country. Not bad for a nation a bit smaller than South Carolina. The region also stretches back about as far as you can get in human history: anthropologists found the oldest hominids outside Africa in Dmanisi, a town only an hour away from our site.

• Although they’re heavy-handed with oil, butter, salt and mayonnaise here, they also value freshness, which means that, apart from the winter months, we eat whatever produce is in season. Seasonal food is pretty flavorful, unlike the imported or genetically engineered vegetables and fruit we often eat back home. Plus, I’m learning what food grows when and how to tell when fruits and vegetables are ripe for the picking. This is the type of information I would never have picked up in DC.

• We have pretty cool jobs while the world is suffering an economic crisis that makes interesting work hard to come by. While we spend half our time at our schools, we also have the freedom to pursue any ideas that seem doable. For me, that means I’ve been able to get involved in health-related projects. For example, on Friday, one of the other Kvemo Kartli volunteers and I are meeting with UNICEF about a water and sanitation project in this region for internally-displaced persons. After working in front of a computer for the past 3 years, being out here interacting with people constantly definitely isn’t easy but it also can be rewarding and challenging in a good way.

• We’re learning a difficult language (just check out our alphabet…and that doesn’t even approach the complexity of Georgian verbs and cases) And we’re actually doing pretty well. There are plenty of moments when I feel like I’m making no progress, i.e., like last week when the internet café manager tried to tell me a joke about a man in Chicago who tried to shoot an apple off another man’s head, and as he paused, waiting for me to laugh, I realize I clearly had missed some key information or punch line. But then there are those other moments when I realize that, wow, we are getting by. For example, while at the pharmacy yesterday (yes, I’m sick again; my immune system doesn’t make this list of positives), I negotiated the purchase of an antibiotic and later declined a Populi club card (Populi is the closest thing Georgia comes to a grocery store) all while feeling like my lungs were being eaten alive by whatever is currently infecting me. Moments like these make me proud to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.

So it’s not all bad here in Georgia. And although Peter and I are unbearably excited to be heading back to the U.S. next week to visit, we also are happy to be coming back here for another year and a half. So see, I’m not full of only complaints.

Hello!! We are doing well--just trying to survive the cold. The temperature hasn’t even dipped that low yet (I think it’s been in the 30’s the past 2 weeks), but the lack of heating has been tough. They finally turned the heaters on at my school this past week but they’re so weak, it hardly makes a difference. It doesn’t help that the heater in my classroom isn’t working right now. Earlier in the year, the main social activity for teachers was to drink coffee together. Now, equally popular is huddling next to portable heaters and warming your hands. Also, in our apartment, we haven’t been able to use the portable heater the Peace Corps gave us because it sets our stabilizer on fire or causes power outages. That’s our only option for heating our room (there are no built-in radiators) so it’s been a little cold lately. Anyway, I’m really, really glad we brought heavy down jackets because I’ve been wearing mine all day (Thanks Dane!)

Besides the cold, things are going okay at my school. Just recently kids have started setting off fireworks inside the school so that’s been fun and terrifying. Last week wasn’t so great because it was the end of the first semester and we announced the nishnebi (grades). The grading system is organized on a 10 point scale, with 10 being the highest and 1 the lowest. Gvantsa (my counterpart) and I graded according to Ministry of Education requirements. The grades ranged from 4’s up to 10’s, but apparently were lower than last year. So when Gvantsa read everyone’s grades aloud it caused quite a stir. Yep, that’s right: it’s common to read everyone’s grades to the whole class. I explained to Gvantsa that we typically think of grades as personal information and asked if next time we could tell students privately. She agreed for the future, but said that this time it might shock them into studying more. Anyway, our 11th grade class took it the worst. Many of them reacted by not showing up for the next two classes and by shooting me dirty looks in the hallway. They deserved the grades they received (you can’t expect a 10 if you come to class half the time and never do your homework) but I am somewhat sympathetic to their surprise. Many other teachers don’t grade this way (aka, fairly), and this is the first year that Gvantsa has used this method, so it will take some getting used to on the part of the students. On Friday, they finally started filtering back into the classroom and we did a lesson on slang and everyday speech. I think this won some of them back over though they kept asking for curse words but had to settle for phrases like “what’s up?”, “that’s lame,” and “It’s the tops!” (haha, not that last one.)

Okay, enough about grades. We visited our PST (Pre Service Training) host family in Sagarejo last weekend. They’re awesome, and it was good to see them again and hang out. They have a pechi in their main room, which is a wood burning heater--it works really well, gives off a nice smell, and I felt warm for the first time in a month. My fingers thawed, my cheeks were rosy, and I was on the verge of sweating--it was great. So we spent most of our time next to the pechi, watching TV, chatting and drinking strawberry and peach compote. Compote is similar to juice; it’s boiled fruit mixed with water and sugar, and everyone makes their unique versions. It sort of tastes like drinking the leftover juice from a can of fruit cocktail--it’s delicious.

What else. Alene’s birthday was on November 29. Her co-workers are really cool and they invited her out to a restaurant to celebrate. At first we were worried about how it would work out because the birthday tradition here is for the birthday person to invite their friends out and pay the whole bill. And since we don’t have a salary here, that could have been a problem. But we eventually figured out that, as a rule, the person who extends the invitation is the one who pays. Anyway, the birthday party was a lot of fun and we spent the night toasting to Alene’s happiness, success, and future children (of course).

Alene’s school also held a Rustavi-wide spelling bee in the beginning of December. Her counterpart Ia also runs an youth development/education NGO, with which Alene has been working. The NGO invited all Rustavi schools to send their most promising 10th grade English student to participate. Eleven schools showed and all of the Rustavi Peace Corps Volunteers were guest judges. The competition lasted 22 rounds and the top finishers received certificates (Georgians love certificates) and nice English dictionaries and verb books. Overall, it was a success and Ia’s NGO hopes to make it an annual or semi-annual event. Okay that’s all for now.

Paka!

Peter and Alene

Alene at her birthday supra

Gvantsa and Ia, our counterpart English teachers

Mamuka and Mzia in their garden

This sign translates as "Chinese Store." We walk by it everyday on the way to school. There are a lot of these shops in Rustavi owned by Chinese immigrants, who face constant discrimination Alene awarding the winner of the Spelling Bee held by her counterpart Ia's NGO. All of the volunteers in Rustavi were guest judges. It went 22 rounds and was very exciting The eventual winner spelling 'foreigner' without any hesitationVasiko, Mari, and Nika from my favorite class, 7B Alene's 5th grade class Alene with one of her student's, Dato. He supposedly looks like my brother Neal in real life, but she claims this picture doesn't capture itAt the unveiling of the Shota Rustaveli statue in New Rustavi. Shota Rustaveli was a famous Georgian poet from the 12th century. All of the schools ended early this day so everyone could attend Alene and I making churchkela at my tutor's house. It's a type of candy made from grape jam and walnuts, and is shaped like sausage A performance in Old Tbilisi during Tbilisoba. Tbilisoba happens every year at the end of October and there are a lot of cultural events and concerts to celebrate the city.Davit Gareja, a cave monastery complex from the 6th century that is on the Azerbaijan borderThe desert and hills near Davit Gareja are gorgeous

My Georgian language tutor, Vazha, invited Alene and me to see the Rustavi ensemble, one of the most famous Georgian folk music and dance groups. This is a video of some pretty impressive and dangerous sword fighting. They use real swords and you can see the sparks flying

So, as many of you know, we have been living with a host family that we aren’t totally comfortable with and who, in turn, don’t seem very comfortable with us. Rather than going into detail, I will say that it reached a breaking point about 2 weeks ago at which point our savior conveniently arrived in the form of IST. IST is one of the Peace Corps’ many acronyms and it stands for in-service training. After 3 months at site, the Peace Corps (PC for Peace Corps and PCV for Peace Corps Volunteer) gathers all the volunteers together for a week in a swank mountain resort far removed from our daily life at site. In addition to reveling in the luxuries of constant electricity and hot water, we also had daily meals that included all the food groups and quality time lazily speaking English with other Americans. It was heaven. If you’re interested in seeing where we stayed, here is the website: http://www.bazaletilake.ge/ I’m posting this so you can read the fantastic leisure section description which advertises a mini strip tease at the disco, medical apparatuses, among other other resort specialities. Enjoy. Oh, and if I sound like a jerk making fun of the website’s English, don’t worry—I realize that I sound way more ridiculous when I speak Georgian.

At the training, we also had two days of intensive Georgian classes to move us along the road to using all the verb tenses, preverbs, cases and other confusing aspects of Georgian grammar correctly. We also learned some useful, inappropriate slang from our former PST (pre-service training) teacher. Maybe I’ll better understand what kids are saying in our classes. Can’t wait to surprise them! The next two days included a visit from the new US Ambassador to Georgia (John Bass, who the volunteers all thought was pretty great), a disturbing briefing on the locations of various land mine fields in Georgia (don’t worry—they’re nowhere near our site), technical sessions on how we can improve our work at site and information on committees.

Committees are a way for volunteers to get more involved in their community through different projects. At the moment, I work exclusively at a school but I’m eager to move into the “community development” part of our program. The two committees I’m now on deal with health issues (yay!) and an event called Writing Olympics. A PCV in Georgia began Writing Olympics several years ago and it became so popular, it spread to Armenia and Azerbaijan, so the final product currently is an annual trans-Caucuses compilation of writings by Georgian, Armenian and Azeri children. We’ve noticed in our classes that Georgians like sticking to the traditional way of doing things. This is probably one of the reasons they’ve preserved their culture so well through centuries of invasions and warfare. But it also means that the idea of creative writing or writing for fun as a way to practice a foreign language is a pretty foreign concept to Georgian children and teachers. In the Writing Olympics, volunteers organize competitions across the country in which children write for an hour about topics pre-selected by committee members. We then read and judge all the essays (on their creativity and originality, not quality of English) and pick regional and national winners, who receive prizes and get to attend a party at the US Embassy in Tbilisi. In the past, the Embassy has been a big supporter of this event and hopefully will be again as we restart this initiative. Many Peace Corps programs in Georgia went on a hiatus after the volunteer evacuation last year so our group has had to get the ball rolling again for programs that were successful in the past. Hopefully, we’re up to the challenge. The other committee I’m working on is called LifeSkills. Funded by PEPFAR, it seeks to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS prevention among Georgians. Unfortunately, sex is a very taboo topic here so we have to be sneaky about the way we integrate “healthy messages” into the conferences and awareness events we’ll be organizing, hence the committee name, LifeSkills.

Peter is also on two committees, one of which is the decision-making body that allocates money to volunteers for secondary projects. Volunteers can prepare proposals applications for projects they want to implement at their sites. These projects must be sustainable and the community has to contribute 25% of the funding. Peter and a couple other volunteers in our group decide who gets this money. I better be on my best behavior from this point forward if I want any of my projects funded. He also is on a committee organizing activities to celebrate the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary. The concept of “volunteering” is incredibly bizarre here in Georgia where everyone struggles to make ends meet. Most of the people we talk to are baffled as to why Peter and I aren’t marketing our services as native English speakers and rolling in the dough as we take on private students. People pay a lot of money here for private tutors. If only they could put that money into the school system, I would like to think our classrooms would have books, chairs with backs, blackboards from which the students could actually read and more desks that don’t collapse every time you move them. Then again, the teachers earn such terrible salaries that private lessons are the only way they can survive, particularly if they are the bread winners in the household. So the 50th Anniversary activities will give the Peace Corps an opportunity to explain again why we’re here and what it means to volunteer.

Finally, on the last night of IST, we had a big Thanksgiving dinner. Most of the volunteers prepared a dish and a Tbilisi hotel donated two turkeys, mashed potatoes, gravy and stuffing. We also had apple and pumpkin pies, and pumpkin rum, for dessert. It was delicious and thank you to any volunteers who are reading this for helping to make such a tasty meal.

We know tomorrow is the real Thanksgiving in the US and we miss all of you a lot. We wish we could be there and hope you have a great holiday!

Love,

Alene

When we were researching the Peace Corps and talking to former volunteers, we heard that one of the most common problems was loneliness. You would have a lot of free time and would need to find ways to keep yourself busy, maybe by developing new hobbies, etc. We both brought a bunch of books, some DVD’s, a roll-up piano even though neither of us knows how to play yet. I even brought the 1500 page unabridged version of Les Miserables, thinking if I was ever going to read it, now would be the time. But so far we’ve had just the opposite problem. People will not leave us alone.

Last week was particularly busy. We were invited to make churchkhela (a walnut and grape jam type of candy) at my Georgian tutor’s house one night, were invited to a concert the next night, and then went to a “bean party” thrown in Alene’s honor the next night. When asked, Alene has said that her favorite Georgian food is lobiani, which is like a bean pie. It’s pretty tasty, but somehow this developed into Alene having a great appreciation and interest in Georgian beans and bean dishes. It’s great that we are getting to know people, learning about Georgia, practicing our Georgian, and we had a good time at all of these events. But because it seems to happen frequently and because we’re both so bad at saying no, it’s becoming a problem. Almost every time Alene goes into a store, she will get invited over to someone’s house for dinner (There are now several places we don’t shop at anymore because of this). And when we get home late from all these social events, we still have to go in and hang out with our host family, prepare lessons for the next day, study for our Georgian lessons, etc. I wasn’t looking forward to being a hermit over here, but a balance would be nice.

Life with the host family is going okay. We live in a noisy apartment building and the family is no different. It’s not that I mind waking up to the sound of people screaming at each other every once in a while, but sometimes it gets out of control. It’s usually the host dad Giorgi arguing with the host mom Megi, or the kids arguing with their grandmother, Tina. Mishiko and Mari are so mean to their grandmother, and now that we can understand more of what’s being said, it’s pretty shocking. Recently, Tina (who does all the cooking and cleaning for everyone in the house) dropped a bowl on the floor and it woke up the baby, Luca. Mari had a fit and started screaming at her grandmother, calling her an idiot, among other things. After this episode, Alene and I both shot her a glare that basically said “Seriously, kid?” But it didn’t make a difference.

School is going pretty well. It’s starting to feel routine and I know most of my student’s Georgian (and English classroom) names by this point. My counterpart Gvantsa and I asked the students to pick English names so that they got used to recognizing the difference between names and English words, which was a problem for Alene and me when we were first learning Georgian. Every other girl chose the name Jessica, for some reason. Whenever a Jessica participates in class, she will inevitably be called Jessica Alba by some boy, and this will be followed by uproarious laughter. It should have gotten old after 2 days but this is a different world I’m living in now. Alene is teaching 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th graders at her school. She wanted to teach younger students because the English program is new at her school and the older kids hardly know any English. Despite that, the teachers try to teach them at an advanced level, even using textbooks designed for students who have been studying the language for 6 or 7 years. She has also started a music club and reading club after school for some of her students. I am teaching two 7th grade classes, two 8th grade classes, and one 11th grade class. I also just started an American culture club/presentation club. Right now we are both only working with one English teacher as we are still getting used to the Georgian classroom and teaching, but in the future we both plan to work with multiple teachers. One of the main goals of the Peace Corps education program, aside from helping students improve their English and be involved in their community, is to transfer communicative teaching methodologies to our counterparts, so I think it would be good to work with as many different teachers as we can during the 2 years.

Well that’s all for now. We have the weekend to ourselves for the first time in a while, and Alene was just dancing around the apartment, she was so excited. We will write again soon and hope everyone is doing well.

One of the Peace Corps three main goals is the exchange of cultural knowledge and promotion of understanding. Part 1 of this goal requires us to share information about American culture. Prior to arriving here, I would’ve felt wholly unprepared for such a task, given that, in a country as diverse as the United States, any description of cultural customs would inevitably be embarrassingly superficial. However, when interacting with people who have a good number of ideas contrasting to those of most of the Americans I know back home, it becomes a bit easier to make generalizations about the U.S.

Part 2 of the cultural exchange goal asks the volunteers themselves to soak up information about Georgian culture and bring it back to the U.S. to share. Despite feeling as though, at this point, I actually do know a bit about Georgian music, dance, religion, medicine and, of course, food, what I have to remember is that, although Georgia is a small country, like the U.S., it also packs in a lot of variation. Much of Georgian humor actually revolves around regional stereotypes. Western Georgian hosts must ask a seemingly endless number of times before their guests feel they can politely fill their plates whereas Kakhetians have a reputation for being more direct; if you say no the first time, you’re out of luck. The Svaneti people, living in the Caucuses between South Ossetia and Abkhazia, are supposedly pretty vengeful and follow the philosophy of an eye for an eye. Food also varies from region to region, as does the language, music and dance. So, anything Peter and I talk about in our blog, is coming from pretty limited viewpoints, given that we’ve only lived in Kakheti and Kvemo Kartli.

So rather than try to describe aspects of Georgian culture, maybe the best approach to fulfilling Part 2 of the Peace Corps goal is by providing a few stories of the experiences we’ve had the last couple months.

This past weekend, the teachers at my school went on an excursion. Peter, unfortunately, wasn’t able to come because he had a bad virus, so this was one of my first treks out alone. Excursions are essentially weekend field-trips that the teachers fund themselves. There are also student excursions, although I haven’t yet been on one of these. This teacher excursion began in the heart of Kakheti, Georgia’s wine-growing region, where we picked grapes for a couple hours to help out my school director Nana’s friend. Rtveli is the Georgian word for grape harvesting and in October, you hear about it constantly. October is generally a month for cognac and beer, because people have consumed all their wine for the year. Now is the time to bring in the grapes to ensure that this wine drought doesn’t last for long. Picking grapes is a sticky, dirty process but it also means you get to eat as many delicious grapes straight off the vine that you can handle. Pausing partway through our rtveli for lunch, we sat around a blanket between two stretches of vines for a spread of bread (of course), lamb, sausage, tomatoes and cucumbers, lobiani, and of course, tchatcha, homemade vodka. Ia, my counterpart, and her two musically-inclined friends (although most Georgians seem musically inclined), brought out a pandori (traditional Georgian folk music instrument) and Ia and our school psychologist, Nana, began dancing around in the middle of the vineyard. After this brief rest, we went back to work.

When the sun became too hot and we were all tired, we piled back into the marshutka and headed for the Caucuses. Our destination was a monastery, Nekresi, founded by one of the 13 Assyrian Fathers in the 4th century. Georgia has a number of monasteries founded by these Assyrian monks, who arrived in Georgian in the 4th century to spread Christianity. Davit Garegi is probably the most famous, but all seem to be pretty spectacular. Nekresi’s legend involves an attack from southern Muslim invaders. According to the story, Nekresi’s inhabitants killed pigs and surrounded their town with the pig carcasses. Appalled by the pork, the Muslim invaders retreated and Nekresi was saved. In honor of this story, my travel mates decided to roast a pig once we finished our hike up to the monastery. They were all shocked to hear that I had never eaten roasted pig before and picked an extra special piece for me. Whereas everyone else at the table devoured everything but the bone, I was digging around with my fork trying to find the little meat and I think my hosts were disappointed I didn’t get more excited about this delicacy. I’ve been acting pretty well for the past 4 months, even when served unidentifiable cow organs, but I’m getting to the point where pretending I like something I don’t is becoming increasingly difficult. I’m also finding myself to be a picky eater, which I had always proudly claimed not to be….sad.

At the end of the night, I arrived home with too many pictures, a bottle of homemade wine, grapes, lobiani, bread and….the roasted pig’s head. Apparently, they give the pig’s head to the most honored guest. Disappointed that Peter couldn’t be there and hoping this might lure him out for the next excursion no matter how high his fever, my hosts decided that he deserved the pig’s head most of all. Peter naturally was delighted. It was quite the day.

On another topic, given how often Peter and I have been sick lately, we’ve received a condensed course in Georgian Perceptions of Illness and Healing 101. Most Georgians are both genuinely concerned when they learn you have been sick and eager to provide help. While my dad has reminded me to be patient and keep in mind that my host family, co-workers and acquaintances all provide their advice with good intentions, I have been increasingly irritated by these encounters. The fact that I continue having stomach problems here cannot possibly be related to the fact that they don’t refrigerate their dairy and meat (neither raw nor cooked leftovers), allowing who knows what kind of bacteria to grow to its heart’s content upon its surface. No, certainly not. And does smoking have negative health consequences? All lies, I am told by my Georgian tutor, who once had pneumonia because she kept going to work when she had an upper respiratory infection and high fever. Stephie, sound familiar? Georgians are big opponents of disrupting your daily routine on account of a health issue. In fact, during last weekend’s excursion, my hosts were genuinely miffed that Peter opted to nurse his fever and deep chest cough at home, rather than out picking grapes, downing wine and hiking up a mountain with the rest of them. But, true to their generous natures, they sent him the pig head nonetheless.

Anyway, all this free health advice would be fine if I did not feel my own health being adversely affected by aggressive attempts to change my points of view. I’m not here to change everyone’s perception of illness. Georgians do a lot right, in my opinion, eating mountains of fresh vegetables and fruits every day, cooking meat fresh from animals that actually graze rather than never see the sun, and enjoying the company of their family and friends. Georgia is an organic food enthusiast’s dream. And the American medical system certainly does not have it all figured out. But concepts I’m pretty convinced of, such as a virus being the cause of my sore throat, and not the fact that I didn’t wear a scarf in 70-degree weather or ate ice cream, are met with scoffs, dismissive waves of the hand or frustration that I have these weird ideas about bacteria and viruses. I’m from halfway around the world! Of course I have some different opinions, even if they seem too crazy to contemplate. Our host family, for instance, begs Peter and me not to shower when we have colds, despite our trying to explain that this makes us really uncomfortable because we believe it to be good for our health. And, although we haven’t yet tried, showering and immediately leaving the house with wet hair would cause another scandal. And although all their advice derives from kindness, I am defensive when I field repeated complaints that I am not taking care of myself and therefore, am responsible for my frequent illnesses.

As someone who studied cultural anthropology for four years, I should probably be more understanding and open-minded. Our host family and some of my coworkers are surprised by my divergent opinions because they haven’t interacted with many people different than themselves. I am lucky because I have had that opportunity. And although I may feel that if I refrain from asking them to refrigerate their meat, for example, that they should reciprocate by not commanding me to follow their advice on the dangers of heat and cold, the fact is that I am a guest in their country. Georgians like exchanging ideas and advice and debate. And part of my role here is to be different and to introduce new ideas and to respond to their reactions of dismay and anger or interest and enthusiasm with respect and patience.

Looking down on Rustavi

Hey everybody,

We’re doing pretty well here in Georgia’s version of Pittsburgh. There was a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in the northwest of the country last night which is about 100 miles away from Rustavi. There were no casualties and just some minor damage thankfully. Both of us slept through it, though many of our neighbors were woken up by it at 3 in the morning. We’re on a mini break right now before school starts and it’s nice not having days as jam packed as they were during training. We’re taking a lot of walks around Rustavi, reading, watching TV programs we can’t understand, and trying to adjust to this new host family. In our last entry we described the family as fantastic. Decent is probably a more appropriate adjective. Some days it seems like they’re interested in us and happy to have us here; other days, we feel more like an inconvenience and it can be awkward. They always seem to have family or neighbor crises going on, but they do have a 3 month old baby to take care of so we probably shouldn’t take it personally. And the 11 year old host daughter Mari is consistently cool and friendly so we spend a lot of time with her, even if that means watching the Disney channel in Russian.

The longer we’re here, the more I like Rustavi. The city government is actually doing a lot to spruce up the city and there are a lot of nice parts. All of the apartment buildings on the main road in New Rustavi have been repainted in bright colors, though if you peek behind them you’ll still see rows upon rows of the crumbling brown and gray variety (where we live!). The new part of the city also recently created a sort of promenade along the main road with a nice wide sidewalk, bike path, and new streetlights. It’s cooler at night, so we stroll along, snacking on the sunflower seeds that are sold on every corner by bebias. Georgians love sunflower seeds. Also we found a café/bar, on the main commercial stretch, that isn’t filled only by men! Alene was very pleased with this discovery.

I went to my school the other day, Rustavi Public School # 5 (come on, Georgia, be more creative), to meet with my director and a few of the English teachers I will be working with this year. The school is kind of an eyesore from the street, but is fairly nice and modern on the inside. The school has about 1,000 students, is 4 stories tall, and has an attached sports hall, though a teacher told me it is closed for now because a student was recently electrocuted in the pool… School starts on September 14th for both of us but we will be doing a summer camp during this upcoming week to get to know some of the students at our school. Alene is working at Rustavi Public School # 10, which is only a 10 minute walk from my school so we’ll be able to meet up easily for lunch.

The English teachers I met earlier this week are really nice and enthusiastic. They are all women, as are almost all of the 82 teachers at my school, the 2 male physical education teachers being the exceptions. I received a lot of the same questions you inevitably get every time you meet someone in this country: “How do you like Georgia? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” “How do you like Georgian people?” or “Aren’t Georgian people friendly and hospitable?” Since I don’t know how to say “Now there’s a leading question!” yet, I always respond that I love the country and the people are very friendly. And this is true. Some other common questions are “Why don’t you have children yet?” “What was your salary in America?” and “Who did you prefer, John McCain or Barack Obama?” That last question is a tricky one. We’ve answered Obama each time but a frequent response is “But did you know that John McCain loves Georgia?” Rather than saying “Why would anyone in the U.S. ever base their vote on that?”, we just nod and smile.

We'll try to write more again in a week or so. Hope everyone is doing well!

Love,

Peter and Alene

Sorry our blog posts have become nonexistent the last month or so. It has been a crazy time involving me getting pretty sick and missing 2 weeks of training, the end of pre-service training, and our visit and move to our permanent site, a city called Rustavi. When we initially visited Rustavi a couple weeks ago for a weekend site visit, we were sort of taken aback. Sagarejo, where we had our pre-service training, is a dry town but its residents have amazing gardens, leafy trees line the streets and the town’s backdrops are large, lush green hills. So it was with some shock that we approached New Rustavi (one of its two sections), a small Soviet-era city with crumbling, cement, homogenous apartment buildings that seem to rise in unison from the surrounding desert-like landscape. During our visit, we toured both the schools where we’ll be working and they appeared indistinguishable from the surrounding buildings and brown, dusty soccer fields. In a country renowned for its natural beauty, Rustavi didn’t seem to fit the bill.

However, despite our initial impressions, Rustavi has grown on us quite a bit and we’re both really excited to be spending our next two years here.

For starters, our family seems fantastic. The host father works in Tbilisi (only 20-25 minutes away) where he runs a café-bar, aptly named “Ludi Bar” (ludi is beer in Georgian). Although only 38, when Georgia was still a part of the Soviet Union, Giorgi (host dad’s name) served in the army and was stationed in Siberia. Our host mother is a geography teacher at the school where Peter will be teaching. She married Giorgi at the age of 18 and had her first child the following year, which isn’t atypical here. Mishiko is our 16-year-old host brother; he speaks some English and loves FC Barcelona and rap, so much so that he spray-painted both words in English on the cement stairwell of our apartment building. At least this helps us remember which building is ours. His younger sister, Mari, is 11 and loves to sing, dance, play dominoes, clean non glass items with glass plus, and explain things to Peter and me in Georgian that we mostly don’t understand. Finally, the big surprise during our site visit was the 2-month-old baby, Luka. I got the sense, from the long explanation our host mother gave us, that he was unplanned. Our host family coordinator with the Peace Corps actually didn’t know he existed when they decided to place us here. When Peter and I arrived for our site visit, one of the first questions I asked the family was whose baby he was. I think we were both equally confused. Anyway, he’s really cute and good-natured and we enjoy having him around to fawn over.

Our Rustavi family is very verbal and when we don’t understand what they’re trying to say, they rephrase it 20 different ways. They don’t give up on us and have been amazingly patient. In the few days we’ve been living here, we can already feel our Georgian listening comprehension improve and hopefully, once we get back to studying, our speaking skills will catch up.

From what we’ve picked up on, Rustavi itself seems to be an interesting city with a lot of ongoing renovations, projects and resources. Old Rustavi and New Rustavi are separated by a river and are pretty different in appearance. Old Rustavi has more houses, rather than just apartment buildings, and the facades of many of its central buildings are much less utilitarian than those in New Rustavi. This part of the city also has a zoo (with no animals…we’ll explain once we solve this mystery ourselves), a historical museum our site mates have raved about but we have yet to visit, an old fortress and archaeological site where apparently unearthed treasures are hauled off to Tbilisi, a theater and a good number of cafes and restaurants. Although the current version of Rustavi is relatively new (it was built in the 1940s to support a metallurgy factory that produced items for the Soviet Union), the site upon which Rustavi was built was inhabited previously centuries ago. (Disclaimer: much of my information comes from confusing conversations I have in Georgian, so for now, take this blog and the things Peter and I say with a grain of salt.) New Rustavi, where we’re living, has a movie theater, an Educational Resource Center and American Corners (two resources we’re told will be very useful during in our work as education PCVs) and the largest bazaar I’ve been to yet in Georgia (although the biggest one, which apparently Armenians and Azeris travel across the border to visit, is Lilo City, near Tbilisi). Peter and I have been there twice to haggle over goods (unsuccessfully) and gawk at the rows upon rows of meat, fish, cheese and other dairy products that sit out in heat all day and that people later eat without refrigerating (no wonder I’ve been sick so often here…).

Rustavi has a diverse population, with significant numbers of people who only speak Russian, Azeri or Armenian. In fact, when Peter and I have asked questions at local shops, the shopkeepers often respond in Russian because they pick up on our accents and assume that Russian is our native language. There are also Abkhazian IDPs living here, as in a number of other Georgian cities, as well as some Turks and Chinese. Most Georgians seem pretty accepting of these non-Georgian groups, but the Chinese experience here has been an exception. From what we’ve heard, Chinese immigrants opened up a number of successful shops and as the Georgian economy has struggled, resentment has risen against these people.

In terms of the city’s economic situation, we’re under the impression that Rustavi is struggling now, as is most of Georgia. The huge metallurgy factory on the edge of Old Rustavi used to pollute the air in Old Rustavi pretty badly. I think the factory is still used for something but we’re not clear on what its current purpose is. Fortunately, the air pollution doesn’t seem to be much of a problem now. But Rustavi definitely was/is an industrial town.

Anyway, I’ll wrap this up for now. We should be able to write more often, now that we’re in a town with internet cafes. Hope all of you are healthy and happy. We miss you.

Love,

Alene and Peter

PS: Here is a video one of the other volunteers, Miles, made during training. Didi Chailuri was one of our education training sites. Watch it!

walking through Tokhliauri, nearby town

doing homework with our host family

Ketino, our host mom, and Mhzia, our host grandmother

Mamuka, Ketino's brother, and his daughter Salome

Etuna, our host sister, her friend Tamuna and volunteer Ashlie

the kids in one of our classes during practicum

JB charming alene

Hey everyone! Things are going pretty well here. We’re getting stared at a bit less, developing a taste for mineral water, getting used to using outhouses, etc. We’ve both been a little sick the past few days but are feeling better now. It’s really frustrating being sick here. Our host mom was really concerned and kept saying “ratom, ratom!?’ which means “why, why!?” as if we knew the reason. When Alene explained that her legs and feet were aching, our host family asked if she had washed her feet with cold water that morning. When she said that she had, they all started shaking their heads as if that was the obvious reason she was hurting. Some people here have a much different concept of what causes sickness. For example, our host sister Etuna was sick 2 weeks ago with what sounded like bronchitis. She said that she had gotten sick because she was out in the sun all day and then went swimming in a cold water pool. I’ve also heard someone justify a sore throat with “I ate ice cream.” And it’s never ever ok to leave the house with wet hair, even when it’s already 90 degrees at 8:30 AM. At this point, we don’t have the language skills to dispute any of this but soon hopefully.

Yes, language skills: I want them badly. So far we’ve been studying Georgian for 5 weeks and can actually say a lot. It helps that our host family doesn’t know much English so we get a lot of practice. We can have basic (grammatically incorrect) conversations and express our needs. So when we wanted to ask if we could do our laundry today we said “When permitted we will do clothe?” So poetic. The grammar is difficult and very different from English and romance languages. Georgian uses a case system so you have to conjugate nouns along with verbs in the sentence. The good part about this is that some words sound really funny when conjugated. For example book is tsiggins, boy is bitches, and dog is dzoggles. Another complicated part is the length of the words and the clusters of consonants. I need to hear something about 10 times before it will stick. It’s also really difficult to distinguish between the ‘ts and ‘tz, the ‘tch and ‘ch, among others. I still don’t know how to spell my name because there are two letters for P and two letters for T which sound exactly the same to me. Oh yeah, for names and many English products, just add an i (pronounce like ee) to make it Georgian. So my name here is Peteri, Alene is Aleni, the axe effect is the axe effecti, etc.

Along with Georgian language class, we have also been teaching English classes at a summer school for the past 3 weeks. It is called practicum and is meant to get us ready for when we start teaching in September and to introduce us to the Georgian classroom. There are 5 PC volunteers and 2 Georgian English language teachers (counterparts) at our school so most of the time we are co-teaching either with another volunteer or with a counterpart. It’s been interesting. The kids that come all signed up on their own initiative so many of them are motivated and interested which is good. Most of the students in the advanced class speak English well and pay attention in class. Same for the intermediate class, which contains all girls except for one boy (who wears a Phoenix Coyotes hat to class!) Then there is the beginner class. It’s almost impossible to teach a lesson to them and has ended up being more like babysitting. Anytime you ask a question they’ll all jump out of their seats and raise their hands and shout “teacher, me! teacher, me!” Plus, when Georgians (mostly kids, I think) really want something they’ll pinch and pull on their neck right around the adams apple area. It’s really strange looking. So imagine about 40-50 kids jumping up and down, shouting, and pulling on their necks, and that’s what our afternoons have been like so far this month. Thankfully, we’ve introduced them to the graveyard game where you pretend to be dead and this can be utilized multiple times in a class. I know, it’s not directly related to learning English, but for the beginner class it’s more about surviving until the end of the period than teaching a lesson. The kids are really cute though. Here are examples of 2 poems we received from students in the beginner class:

To Heleny:

Look at my dolly. Her name is Polly. Her cheeks are rosy. Her lips are red. Her eyes are blue. And they look ot you!

To Piter:

Chees and butter. Bread and jam. Is the breakfast. I always heve.

Oh yeah, we got to meet Joe Biden this past Tuesday! He was in Georgia for 2 days, and all of the Peace Corps volunteers were invited (along with Foreign Service and USAID staff) to a meet and greet at the Tbilisi Marriott. There was air conditioning! We ate donuts! And Joe Biden gave a really nice talk and was personable, funny, and very down to earth. We got to shake his hand and have a picture taken with him and he called me buddy. I think I stammered out something like “Nice to meet you Mr. Vice President.” Miles, a volunteer from New Jersey, said that VP Biden said “Oh, my wife is a Jersey girl” when he met him, and Miles responded “Yeah, me too!” It was all pretty exciting and he gave a nice mention about the Peace Corps and the work we were doing right before he left.

We’ll try to write more again in a week or so. Hope everyone is doing well!

Love,

Peter and Alene

Gamarjoba,

We’ve been at our training site for 3 weeks now. Our access to internet has been basically nonexistent, and when we have had the opportunity to get online, the connection either hasn’t worked for more than a couple minutes or has been so slow that we haven’t been able to do much of anything. So we apologize for not communicating really at all. We’re actually writing this blog entry in advance so that we can post it quickly when we next have internet access. Also, just so you all know, we may not be able to read all our emails until September when we go to our permanent placements and officially become volunteers…which also means the freedom to travel to Tbilisi and other cities that have internet cafes. But please please send emails anyway because we miss you and will be able to read them eventually!

Training has been exhausting and…exhilarating? We were told PST (pre-service training) would be pretty draining but I don’t think either one of us was fully prepared—or at least not prepared for the right challenges. The physical adjustments to peeing in a hole, showering infrequently and our bodies’ occasional negative reactions to food have actually not been that difficult. Instead, not having the language capabilities to communicate with our host family, cultural misunderstanding and our difficulty finding time to be alone have been most frustrating. But each day gets easier as we get used to our busy schedule and learn the language little by little.

Our host family is fantastic. We live with Ketino, and her 16-year old daughter, Etunna. The husband/father is in Europe working, which is fairly typical here in Georgia where jobs are scarce. Ketino’s mother, Mzhia, is here often also. They all were born and raised here in Sagarejo, and from what we’ve gathered through our limited Georgian, have been here for generations. Mzhia met her husband when she was 10. He was her dance instructor. Ketino’s brothers, Miriani and Mamuka, live nearby—Mamuka has taken Peter under his wing, making sure he’s not constantly surrounded by girls and has sufficient opportunity to engage in manly activities, like downing shots of tchatcha (homemade vodka) by the side of Sagarejo’s river. He’s also taken us to play tennis, see Ninosminda (a beautiful nearby monastery and church, dating back to the 6th century) and on other excursions.

Our host sister Etunna is an accomplished traditional Georgian dancer. Try to find a youtube video of traditional Kartveli/Georgian dance. Eirisioni (I think…not sure about spelling) is the name of famous Georgian dance group (almost Riverdance-like) and I’m sure that videos of their shows are on youtube. The hand and foot movements in Georgian dances are pretty incredible. Etunna has tried to teach Peter and me, but so far, we’ve failed pretty miserably. Before we leave in August for our permanent sites though, we do plan to get at least a couple dance moves down. I also really like the Georgian music I’ve heard (the type that accompanies the dances)…the melodies are pretty haunting and they play pretty interesting-looking instruments.

The Peace Corps has been keeping us busy. We have four hours of language and cross-cultural instruction in the morning, followed by alternating lunches at the homes of our clustermates. The past two weeks, we’ve had technical training in the afternoon, but starting on Monday, we’ll be teaching summer school with Georgian English teacher counterparts. Today, we met with them for the first time to prepare lesson plans. The Georgian language classes have been hard and we have to keep reminding ourselves that we’ve only been here 2 weeks. Peter and I have class with 3 other volunteers (volunteers are divided into clusters) who are awesome. After class, we’ll sometimes go to the one cafe in town for a beer or we’ll walk around with our host sisters. All our host families have teenage girls who also happen to be close friends or, in some cases, are related. For example, Ashlie’s host mother was married to the brother of our host grandmother, Mzhia. So, Peter and I wander around town with our clustermates (all girls) and a posse of teenage girls. Peter has been taking it in stride. The first week, we felt pretty popular but things have calmed down and shouts of Amerikeli, Amerikeli as we pass on the street have subsided.

As promised, the food here is fresh and flavorful. There is a garden right outside the steps of our house and I’ve picked raspberries right off the bushes and popped them in my mouth. We also have had fresh strawberries, peaches, cherries and other fruits from their garden. Mzhia has an enormous garden at her house near the center of town and Ketino has another larger garden, sort of a small orchard, near the edge of town. They can a lot of the produce because there is no way to eat everything that’s flowing from the ground right now. Besides meat, bread and cheese, our family produces most of its own food. Other families have chickens and pigs that they eat and make their own cheese. There is plenty of food but neither of us feels as thought we’re constantly having food forced upon us. Kakhetians apparently are less aggressive than Georgians in the West so I guess we’ve lucked out.

All in all, the more we learn, the more interesting Georgia has become. The few cultural norms I have had trouble with as a new member of this society relate to gender roles and safety. Apparently, they say here that if you can drive in Georgia, you can drive anywhere. I think they should amend it to if you can drive in Georgia, you will be arrested anywhere. Sober, Georgians seem to drive like maniacs, frequently tailgating and passing one another on the road when other cars are coming in the opposite direction. We ride in marshruktas to our afternoon technical training sessions and I’ve had multiple mini heart attacks. In addition, drunk driving carries no real penalty here. Drivers might be pulled over, and issued a citation but then they’re allowed to continue on their way. Given the importance of wine in Georgian culture, that’s a pretty deadly combination. Finally, they don’t seem to like seatbelts. Our host uncle, Mamuka, initially attempted to convince us that seatbelts weren’t necessary in town. Due to the language barrier, we thought he was telling us that the seatbelts didn’t work. Then, when we discovered they did function, he seemed to be offended (as in our wearing seatbelts indicated that we didn’t trust him as a driver). Finally, he resigned himself to us being crazy Americans as we continued to insist on wearing our seatbelts.

In terms of gender roles, I don’t think that Peter and I have really been able to see how families function given that our host father is abroad. Life in Tbilisi and life in the regions (rural parts of the country) is, from what we’ve heard, vastly different. Yet, our native Tbilisian language instructor told our class of almost all females that she feels bearing children is the purpose of women’s lives. Additionally, women here must be virgins when married whereas men absolutely must have experience. From what we’ve heard, fathers often take their sons to prostitutes to initiate them into the world of sex. And men will visit prostitutes multiple times before they are married. I guess STIs aren’t a huge concern?

Also, we learned last week that Georgian law contains some disconcerting language. Rape victims have a very difficult time prosecuting their rapists here without a large amount of physical evidence that convincingly demonstrates that the sex was not consensual. Also, apparently, if one acts in self defense and hurts the attacker, the victim might be held accountable for any injuries the attacker sustains.

Not wanting to end on such a somber note, let me assure you that these negatives are vastly outnumbered by the friendly, loving people, beautiful country, delicious food and rich history and traditions.

Love and miss you

So right now we're being spoiled, as you can tell by the fact that we have internet access at what is almost 11pm our time. We arrived at the Tbilisi International Airport late yesterday after 16 hours of travel. There, we were greeted by the Peace Corps staff, US ambassador to Georgia, the Georgian Minister of Economic Development, the Georgian Deputy Minister of Education and the country's press. Our arrival at the Istanbul airport wasn't quite so exciting. Rather than diplomats, health officials with face masks were waiting as we left the plane. Initially, we all found this a bit disconcerting particularly given that on the plane, the staff requested we fill out public health forms. Wondering what infectious disease had been floating through our plane and now through us, we soon discovered a number of people wandering around the Istanbul airport in face masks and realized that they're just a bit more worried about swine flu (and maybe avian flu) than we are in the US.

Anyway, after participating in a mini press conference and feeling like local celebrities, we broaded a bus that took us directly to a restaurant where we had a feast. We finally tried khatchapuri, a cheese bread we'd heard much about (and that lived up to its reputation), and other dishes. The tomatoes were incredible, bright red and so much more flavorful than anything I ever buy at the grocery store at home. There were also plates filled with fish, various vegetables (including mushrooms), beans, pork, chicken, bread, potatoes, all topped with sauces and spices. Besides the thick slices of cheese, which was salty as promised, there wasn't anything I felt might take growing used to so I think I'll be eating well these next 2 years.

Currently, we're staying a hotel a bit outside Tbilisi, where we have hot showers which we've been told to enjoy while we can. We've spent most of today in information sessions where the PC staff gave us enormous first aid kids and mosquito nets so my luggage is growing. We also had our first language session this afternoon so that was exciting. Mastering the gutteral kh and gh sounds will be a challenge but the teachers are really great and I think I'll learn some techniques from them that I can use later when we're the teachers. Tomorrow, we continue with information sessions, language and...oh, yes, rabies and other shots. SATURDAY is the big day. We move in with our training (temporary) host families and learn which volunteers we'll be living near the next couple months of training. PC places us in what they call "clusters" of 4 or 5 based on our program (education versus business). The next two and a half months, we spend 6 days a week in intensive language and technical classes. All volunteers will be within 40 minutes one another (40 minutes traveling by marshruktas...not sure about spelling...but these are essentially the public buses people use to get around) in a region that should be the complete opposite of what we're experiencing now outside Tbilisi. We will be living in houses without bathrooms and will be using outhouses. Additionally, the region apparently is having water problems so we may need to get water from wells. Internet access is unlikely. So, I guess the "real" PC experience begins Saturday.

I'm attaching the pictures we took earlier today of the area surrounding the hotel. Despite being right outside the capital city, cows, sheep and horses regularly wander by our windows but we didn't capture any of them in these pictures. Also, we have a view of Tbilisi on one side of the hotel but none of those pictures turned out well so I posted a quick, kind of blurry picture we took from the bus on our ride from the restaurant to the hotel. Love,

alene

Hey everyone--

Peter and I made it to Istanbul! It's about 4:30am ET right now and amazingly, we're both semi-awake. The food court has wireless so we're squeezing in a quick post before we get on our flight to Tbilisi. In Tbilisi, the US ambassador, the Georgian news media and the PC in-country staff will be greeting us at the airport, so that's pretty exciting. We've heard that they're very happy to have PC back in the country. The ride into Istanbul was absolutely gorgeous. We had seats next to the window, the sun was shining and the pilot took us on an especially scenic ride from the Black Sea around into the city. From the plane, we could see buildings stretching off into the distance--it's clear Istanbul is enormous. We're looking forward to coming back for a longer visit.

Miss you all!

Love,

Alene

So much for all that French and Spanish we took in school…In Georgia, they speak Georgian and we’re going to have to learn as much of this bizarre and fascinating looking language as possible in order to get by. Georgian is not related to any other widely spoken language and is a member of the South Caucasian language family. The alphabet has 33 letters and looks, well, strange. The language book we ordered describes it as a curly looking language and that’s pretty spot-on. Former volunteers have described it as 'Elvish'. Here is a chart with all 33 letters:

Well at least the top row looks somewhat straightforward...Anyway, hopefully we can get the alphabet and some basic phrases down by the time we leave. Once we arrive in Georgia, we will have 10 weeks of intensive language training; we also will be living with a host family so will be fully immersed. The goal is for all the volunteers to achieve at least a low intermediate level in the language by the time we begin our jobs.

I haven’t learned that many words yet but I know that ‘mama’ is father and ‘deda’ is mother. Ha! There are also several words with consecutive strings of consonants such as these words/phrases that have 8 consonants in a row!

გვფრცქვნი (gvprtskvni), "you peel us"

გვბრდღვნი (gvbrdgvni), "you tear us"

I can’t really envision any situations in which I (or anyone) would need to say gvprtsvni or gvbrdgvni so that’s good. Maybe if I’m pretending to be a vegetable?

Many people also understand Russian as Georgia was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. Some of the volunteers in our group who know the language will be placed in regions with large Armenian or Azeri minority populations. In these areas, Russian is still a main language used by different ethnic groups. We both took an introductory Russian class after we found out we would likely be going to a former Soviet country. So we know the alphabet along with a little vocab and basic grammar which may come in handy. It certainly came in handy when we went to Caps games and could read the names of the players written in Cyrillic on all the Russian league jerseys that people wear to the arena. And that’s really all I ever wanted. Okay, that’s it for now.

-Peter

- Georgia is slightly smaller than the state of South Carolina. Borders Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkey, and the Black Sea.

- Formerly part of the Soviet Union. Known as Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1921 until 1991

- 2/3 of the country is mountainous and the highest peak is Mt Shkara (17,060 feet)

- Located in Eastern Europe/Southwestern Asia/The Caucasus region

- The Georgian name for the country is Sak’art’velo

- Birthplace of Joseph Stalin!

- One of the most popular names for men is Giorgi, which is George in English (of course it is). Some popular girls' names are Nino and Ana.

- Second state to adopt Christianity as an official state religion

- Possible birthplace of winemaking!

- There is a George W Bush avenue in Tbilisi.....

- The time zone is GMT + 3 so Georgia is 8 hours ahead of D.C.

Now that the Caps have broken my heart and were eliminated from the playoffs, I can turn my attention fully to Georgia. We have now both put in our 2 weeks’ notice at our jobs and it’s starting to feel like it’s actually happening. I was a little worried about the response from my office since I haven’t been there too long, but luckily, everyone seemed happy and excited about the idea, so that was a relief. It all gets started in Philadelphia on June 15th, where we'll have staging (PC term for orientation). There, we will meet the other volunteers, learn more about Georgia and the PC, and participate in many ice-breakers. There are 30 volunteers going in total, and it seems like it will be a good mix of ages. Also, we know for sure that there are at least 2 other married couples going, which is cool.

June 16th-17th will be a 4 city whirlwind tour. At 8 AM we get on a bus to go from Philadelphia to JFK in NY. Our flight leaves NY at 4:30 PM and we arrive in Istanbul, Turkey at 10 AM. Then, we take a 1:00 PM flight from Istanbul and arrive in Tbilisi, Georgia at 4:30 PM, most likely feeling like zombies. I wish we had a longer layover in Istanbul so we could check out the city a bit but I’m sure we can at least find some good baklava in the airport. Well, that’s it for now.

-Peter

So, this will be our Georgia blog for the next two years. The title is pretty basic, although Mark provided us with some stellar options (By Georgia! Ballin' with Stalin; Eastern Europe is Georgeous; Confusing Alphabets and Bath Houses; among others). Hopefully, whatever we write will make up for the mundane title.

We're getting started with various preparations. In early April, we submitted our visa applications and won't see our passports again until orientation. Fairly soon, we'll both be officially resigning from our jobs, which is a little nerve-wracking in this economy. In the meantime, we're trying to learn what we can about the country via the Internet, people we've met (who were Volunteers in Georgia) and the few books we can lay our hands on. The news this past week has been a little disconcerting. Some Georgians are not too pleased with Saakashvili, the president. They argue that he is responsible for the territories they lost to Russia last August (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and feel oppressed, charging that he has censored and imposed restrictions on those who oppose him. They are asking him to step down but Saakashvili plans to serve out his term...which doesn't end until 2013. Needless to say, it'll be an interesting time to be in this country.

Ok, that's it for our first entry.