*it has continued to snow since my last post. Massively. it has been hard to even get in and out of my village because the roads are so bad, and school has been cancelled for the rest of this week. The temperature has also been way below normal for here, and when you don't have indoor heating except for a wood stove at nights, it gets cold! At least I know I'll be one of those people who claim to have had to walk to school in the snow uphill both ways, you know, the one whose story always seems to trump other people's cold stories and turns them into an epic bad-ass? At least that's what I tell myself as I slip along the icy road to school: Alright, Kelsey, you may be from Arizona, you may have been teased a lot by your family for wearing a jacket in Minnesota in November, but you don't have heating and your outdoor shower and toilet are currently covered by two feet of snow. Everyone else is a wimp. Though really it's more of a chant like this: When will it be warm when will it be warm when will it be warm?

*To rub it in, people around here have been asking me what the weather is like in Arizona. (Well actually what the weather is like in America...) Warm and sunny I grumble. They ask more questions and then tell me how great it is, but really I feel like it's just a cruel conversation that I have on a daily basis.

*Last weekend, we barbecued some pork Mtsvadi out in the yard and then set up a table and sat in the snow eating and drinking wine. A nice lunch! I wish I had taken more pictures, and I seem to be saying that a lot more lately because my time here is almost done.

view from my balcony

our back garden

they're too chicken to walk in the snow. ha, get it?

*I was in Tbilisi one weekend to help out with the same IDP center where some other PCVs and I organized a camp at last summer. We were asked to come back and conduct a training on the history of Peace Corps, volunteerism, and how to design some volunteer projects. Besides GLOW this has been one of my favorite projects/organizations to work with. This center has everything so well put together, and when most of life here is frustrating beyond belief, having something be organized, easy, and productive is a welcome opportunity for us.

*Here are some pictures from the English cabinet we renovated last semester. The problem with how Georgian schols are set up is that each group of kids stays in the same group and same room all day, while teachers rotate in and out to see them. This means that resources are never used because teachers have no where to store them or have to carry the around all day. My counterparts and I thought creating an English cabinet (room) where we had all the English books and a nice environment with a new laptop would make teaching easier, and then the classes could come to us. It didn't work out that way though, since the school apparently didn't have enough rooms to go around, so the 5th grade was put there permanently. This meant that everytime we wanted to have a class in there, we'd have to kick 5th grade out. 5th grade has also been dubbed by the teachers as the heathens, which didn't mean good things for the room. The door was broken immediately and there was trash everywhere, as well as sunflower seeds (I really really really hate sunflower seeds). We finally lobbied our director put 11th grade in there, and they take really good care of the room, but we still rarely use the room itself because shuffling of students just takes too much effort. Luckily we bought a laptop that is portable, though throughout all of last semester it was broken and I was constantly going back and forth to Tbilisi to get it fixed, and now it seems to be becoming the personal computer of the director. I'm trying to break that trend at the moment though. Anyways, pictures!

my awesome counterparts and I carried all the tables and chairs in. then they were replaced with real desks. boo.

*I'm in super hibernating mode since its so cold. There's really no where warm during the day except in my sleeping bag, and that limits my activities to watching TV on my computer with my head poking out, or sleeping. Really, trading our hard drives with each other to get new shows or movies is a bit of a social event for volunteers. I've managed to watch so much TV the past two years though I almost feel proud of myself. 6 seasons of House, 6.5 seasons of How I Met Your Mother, 6 seasons of Sex and The City (twice!) 5 seasons of Big Love, 4 seasons of Mad Men, and a lot of movies. Now I'm finally starting on The Wire. Almost proud of myself except that I had absolutely no interest in ever watching these shows in the first place. I've also gone through almost every interesting book in the volunteer lounge at the office here (there are a lot of non interesting books) and I think the same goes for books as it does for TV and movies here....people will read anything just to not be totally bored. Maybe that's why the office has 5 versions of Beowulf.

*My counterpart and I were teaching 5th grade the other day. I really don't like 5th grade (they are the heathens after all) and they especially like to set off fireworks during class. I thought this was going to be a really bad day, but it turned out alright. My counterpart did nothing to take the fireworks away, but she soon had gathered up all their sunflower seeds and thrown them into the petchi. Then in retaliation one of the boys proceeded to make fun of my Peace Corps issued phone (it is pretty lame I have to admit) but he had to stop once I noticed he had a pink tinkerbell backpack and took the opportunity to point it out to the class. Please don't judge me for making fun of a ten year old.

*And the final story of this post. Georgians have a thing against being out in the cold, without slippers in the house, or with wet hair because they say that is how you catch colds. When I got home today after traipsing though nearly a foot in snow, I asked my host grandmother if Georgians make snow angels. She said yes but that I shouldn't do it because I'll catch a cold. Taking that as a semi-dare, I went outside and started on my snow angel. She and my host sister followed (who was brimming with glee that someone besides her was being rebellious) and I stood up defiantly, but one minute later as my back was turned a horse cart with wood went through the yard, perfectly decapitating my snow angel. She told me that's what I get for not listening to her. (and before any parental units ask, there was never any danger of any Kelseys being harmed during the snow angel adventure. I do know not to lay down in front of horse carts)

*also.....have you seen my post to the right of the page about donating to GLOW? We have over half of what we requested!

Friday was the first day back to school. Friday was also the day it snowed. A lot. I am fortunate in that I live in one of the warmest regions of Georgia, so last year we maybe got one or two days with snow, and it didn't really stick. Friday, however, was different. And since people here aren't used to snow like the rest of the country, no one went to school. I trekked my way there around 8:30 am because I knew the teachers would show up, and one or two students, and then after a brief snowball fight (it seemed like it was Georgians against Americans...yeah, there is only one American in my village) I headed back home to drink some tea.

Have you missed me?

I was completely ready to go through all of my pictures (and Kyle's....he took about 2000) to post them on here, but then I realized I needed to do my grad school applications. Then a big grant for GLOW, then some meetings in Tbilisi. So before heading back to site after arriving back in Georgia, I stashed away my camera in the office back in Tbilisi so I wouldn't even be tempted to look through them. Good plan, because I literally did not leave my house for 8 days straight while I was being productive. And now I'm hoping its pretty smooth sailing for my last 6 (!!!) months in Georgia.

So on to Spain. As you recall from an earlier post, we were incredibly excited to have tapas. They were quite a disappointment though. Basically all the bars at night serve them. They are small (which we expected) but after walking around for 10 hours all day like the tourists we were, small was not what we were looking for. We did end up having some really amazing meals in Spain (us Peace Corps Volunteers are really into our food when we're not in Georgia....cheers to no khatchapuri for a week!) as well as some really good beer and wine at each meal.

Valencia mandarins, paella, Estrella Inedit!, olives, Iberian ham, hummus, and spinach gnochi. mmmmmm

Our trip started in Madrid. The first thing I noticed when we all met at the hostel was just how much the guys had changed since I had left Arizona a year and a half ago. yep, my two roommates who never wore anything but t-shirts and khaki shorts were now standing in front of me, wearing jeans and jackets. yes, Steve actually can get cold, weird, right?

jeans!?!?

We spent three days in Madrid, wandering around some of their old town, wandering around looking for real restaurants, and visiting some of the museums to see Picasso, Goya, and Dali. Two of these artists I really like, the third was on some major creepster drugs and I guess that's just not my thing.

We also took a day trip to Toleda, the old Spanish capital, where we saw the house of El Greco and some of his paintings.

bored, hungry, and waiting for Steve.

a fountain in Madrid's huge park

all of the panorama's are from Kyle's new crack phone.as are the self pictures of the 3 of us

After wandering around forever on the first day trying to find real food. this also was ironically the only place to have the beer Steve found for me, Estrella Inedit, it's better than Blue Moon!

and it's beer served in a wine glass. classy.the palace

a tapas bar.

some fun architecture

For Christmas Spain had really creepy Jesus baby pictures hanging everywhere. They looked like a cross between a doll and a robot.

these were people who took garlands and made it into a costume, then added a snapping deer head. They tried to bite you.

plaza mayor, complete with Sponge Bobwaiting for cars to pass by in Toledo

a synagogue in Toledo

El Greco's house, or what someone thought it looked like. Kyle had a funny story to tell us. For those of you who know Kyle and his laughing fits, you can imagine how it took him ten minutes to squeak it out between tears and laughter. it's about Koala's, you should ask him about it.

We moved on to Granada for our Christmas weekend. We stayed in a really nice hostel where we got our own apartment, and where on Xmas Eve they served a free vegetarian meal for all of the guests. Christmas Eve Day was spent at the Alhambra, which was my favorite place in Spain. It was an old Moorish Palace grounds that the Spanish kinds added to over time, so the grounds are huge and the gardens are gorgeous. We spent the whole day there, ad then headed over to the Old Town cathedral for a nice lunch. Granada itself has a pretty center that is fun to wander around as well as on old Muslim quarter called Albaycin that is full of twisting roads and white houses. We spent the next two days exploring these parts.

a beautiful cathedral in the center of Granada

flamenco dresses. They only had them for little girls though, biggest disappointment of the trip!

the boys were not willing subjects of my photography

buildings however, had no choice.

an old market

another part of the cathedral

Christmas!

eating paella, a rice dish with saffron

churros with brandy chocolate

some kids playing, they probably had way too much chocolate.

people drinking Christmas Evein Charles' incomplete palaceit was square on the outside, circular on the inside.

it was sunny, this is the best picture we got.

they know how to do courtyards

view of Albaycin from the Alhambra

palace of relaxation

i got them churchkhela (Georgian candy turd thing), balloons, butterfly stickers, and a keychain. presents! I got ritz, reese's, and tea.

we may have had some wine by now....

We took the train from Granada to Valencia, where we were separated into boys and girls for the sleeper car. I was alone with a woman who knew no English, and after a few attempts to speak Spanish to me, she gave up talking to me to sit in silence. A few minutes later, she managed "where you from?" I answered and then asked her. To my surprise, she was from Russia. We started talking in Russian, and laughed at the randomness of being in the same cabin. We arrived in Valencia at 4am. Our apartment wouldn't be ready until 1 or 2, so we took the metro out to the Mediterranean, where we watched the sunrise. And it was so pretty we decided it wasn't even worth taking pictures! (no, not really, Kyle spent about an hour trying to do a time lapse only to have his phone erase it). After finding a Starbucks to crash in for another few hours, we checked in and then took a nap. Valencia had a really bohemian feel to its Old town, and we found a really amazing art cafe/restaurant for dinner. They also have a really modern looking science/conference center/museum area that we checked out. The next day we had to catch a bus to Barcelona, so there wasn't a lot of time to explore, but we did manage to get some of the best oranges and mandarins I've ever had in my life, which made the entire stop in Valencia worth it.

the bohemia area had some really fun murals

this was the center, all white buildings

We didn't have much time in Barcelona, just one day really, but we had enough time to criss cross the town looking at Gaudi's buildings and parks. Unfortunately his work doesn't lend itself well to photographing.

spain likes its outdoor escalators. So do I.

part of the Cathedral

door

meant to look like a forest

the columns had an interesting geometric construction

yeah, it wasn't any easier to look at in person. We decided to spend the last night in Spain on the mountain where the Olympics were held and where the guidebook said "you could spend a good few days on exploring." We took the funicular, excited to do something not Gaudi related. It started, went up the hill for literally one minute, and then stopped. That was it. The lamest funicular ever. We got out and there was really nothing at all to do but look at the stadium. We gave up and went back down the 'hill' to find a bar. So ended our trip to Spain.

waiting on the way back from the finicular.

Oh yeah, Matt Damon.

I have a life long love for Matt Damon, so I was enthralled with these posters all over Spain. It would have worked better if it had been smaller, oh well. A good ten day break from Georgia!

I have a blog post half written about my newly renovated English room project, but it will have to wait. why? Because I'm packing to go to SPAIN!! and in typical Kelsey fashion, I am packing way ahead of time. ..... Not. I still haven't started, but I leave tomorrow early morning to spend the weekend with my training host family in the mountains and then go from there to the airport and I'll be in Madrid by Tuesday!

Have a great Christmas and New Years!

Ok, I have found two articles in the past week which I think are incredibly relevant to my Peace Corps experience which I highly encourage you to read.

The first one is a little more thoughtful, so read that one first:

"Maybe everyone needs a period in their lives when they barely recognize themselves."

What the Peace Corps taught me about failure.

And now that you are depressed/introspective, here is the second one. It's what I have often found myself thinking due to my many experiences with Ceiling Creatures (click here for the backstory if you don't know it) :

"I’m going to scurry over to this side of the crawlspace. Now, I’m going to scurry to the other side. What should I do now? I think I’ll scurry back to the other side of the crawlspace. I may not even be a rat. I might be a bear cub. From the volume of noise I produce, the thump of my paws on the ceiling, you’re becoming increasingly certain I’m a bear cub who somehow became trapped in this crawlspace."

The Inner Monologue of the Rat in my Ceiling

That is one of the first phrases I learned here - Shutki ar aris! (There's no power!) and one which I use constantly. Power here just seems to work in strange ways, and it's put together haphazardly. You often see electrical appliances with cords that have been cut, rewired to a new plug, and duct taped together. One of the plugs in my kitchen used to spark behind the wall when we used it...but we kept on using it until it stopped working altogether. I will never be afraid to overload a socket in the US now though. (or here for that matter)

my plugs are old European, which means double pronged but small. all new things have larger plugs that don't fit. so I have to use a converter even for things I buy here, which I then have to use another convertor for when I use American bought things.

My house in particular has horrible power. Anytime you turn on too many lights, it blows the fuse, and we have to reset it. Recently though, the entire system has gone kaput so even on the occasions when our village has power, we don't, and we have to get creative with how to turn it back on:

the power works!...at my house.My host sister and I had to stick this screwdriver in yesterday to keep it going. When our power came on, the street's went out....win or fail?

This is our friend's turkey....cooked upside down...if you notice our google searches below, we thought that one out ahead of time!So since the last post, I've been going pretty much nonstop. With grad school applications due a couple weeks ago, a last minute trip to Minnesota, some committee stuff, and Thanksgiving, I've barely had any time to do anything, let alone tell you about it. Luckily, I have decided to spend this Sunday in bed recovering from a whole day of cooking, next to my petchi, with nothing to do but eat Ritz crackers that I bought at Target (oh man, while back home I remembered how amazing Target is) and watch movies. Oh, and tell you about my Thanksgiving.

This weekend my friends Alison and Ian and some other Americans in Tbilisi were planning a big Thanksgiving dinner. Now, when it comes to the turkey, a normal person would designate as chef someone who was experienced wtih cooking turkey, right? Right! But no, instead they thought it would be a good idea to make me (I don't know how to cook meat at all...well, I don't cook in general either) and Alison (a vegetarian) in charge of one of the turkeys. Oh, and in charge of green bean casserole, pumpkin pies, stuffing (it had 6 different directions, confusing!), and potatoes au gratin.

trying to be optimistic

The day started off with this:

Alison: "well, it should be ok...we follow the directions for basting, etc"

Me: "Basting?"

Alison: "You don't know what basting is?"

Me: "....nope. "



We arrive at the apartment to get started. Two turkeys were already done with the brining process and we had to dump it out, but this being Georgia we had to do it in the toilet. "Pressure from beneath" was the key to the first one, but Ian left to take care of another turkey at someone else's house, so Alison and I had to dump out the brine for our turkey ourselves. "Pressure from beneath" didn't work this time, and brine went everywhere but down the toilet. So then we smelled like turkey brine all day. We also managed to forget to wash off the brine before putting the turkey in the oven, which we were told was a big mistake, but somehow our turkey ended up being awesome, along with the rest of our food!

we had to dump the brine in the toiletAlison accidentally broke the glass that the flavor rub was in...oopscuttin' potatoes

getting some pie crusts madesoaking onions in milk, then in batter, then frying them for the casseroleI took some videos of the beginning parts (notice it meant I didn't have to do any of the 'rub downs' joke's on you Alison!) but I totally forgot to take even pictures after that because we got so busy trying to get everything else made. And then at dinner itself I was way too busy eating. All in all we were cooking by 11am, and weren't done until 6:30.

Google searches from the day included:

How to cook a turkey

Which way does the turkey go in the pan?

When do you put stuffing in?

How do you do a turkey foil tent? (that one sounded a lot more intricate than it was)

Does it matter if you didn't wash the brine off the turkey and now it's already cooking?

How do you tell if a turkey is done?

How do you tell if a turkey is done without a thermometer?

carving our Turkey. it rocked.

Here is the video:

It's Autumn here! Which is pretty fun for an Arizona girl who grew up still wearing shorts well into December sometimes. In Georgian, to say "in" you add the endings -shi or -ze to the end of words. Like Amerikashi, means in America, or consertze means at the concert. You use -shi more often, but -ze is more for events. So the fact that Georgian requires -ze for the use of Autumn and Spring, versus -shi like with Winter and Summer, shows just how much of an event Autumn is. My neighbors and family have been hard at work harvesting the corn, pumpkins, squash, eggplant, and most importantly here, the grapes! My students have been absent from school, helping out to pick the grapes. Trucks and donkey-carts go by on the street full of grapes, and supras end each day as a reward for a hard day's work of picking.

Tina trying to sneak up on us. She does this a lot, she's not very good. ha

walking back through the rows of grapes

Not only is it harvest, but the trees are starting to turn colors too. My friends Sam and Melissa came out for the weekend, and we decided to go for a hike up to a nearby waterfall. The trail was beautiful - huge trees, a river, and golden leaves falling. Unfortunately there were floods a little while ago, and we got to a point where we couldn't make it across the river or forge our way ahead anymore. We spent maybe an hour trying different ways, but decided if it was possible we wouldn't be able to find it. So we turned back, still happy with our "walk in the nature" and came back for some deserved beer and khinkali.

there were some river crossings we were able to manage, like this one

then there were others that left us pondering

you can't really see it, but its lots of rocks and 4 fast running areas of the river

Sam's attempt

Melissa's attempt

It's getting colder here already. Last year it stayed pretty mild up until December, so I'm hoping this year is no different, but it quickly went from scorching hot to sweats and sweater weather in only a few weeks. So besides breaking out my sleeping bag, here are few random updates from the past few weeks.

*Me and my two students made it successfully to the school for the second round of testing, not without frustrations though. I had told some people that night that I needed a taxi for the next day or some way to get to Telavi by 10am, and said that the public marshrutka would not get us there in time. They promised we'd figure it out the next morning, but after being late still said we should take the marshrutka, because they knew a taxi would be expensive (and since it was Georgia they could be late for the test and it would be fine). After some insisting on my part, including that I didn't care how much it cost, I would pay, and that we did indeed need to be there on time, we finally got another teacher to spend his day driving us there if I paid for gas since it was too late to call a taxi. We got there 15 minutes late after zooming there at about 100mph, and they were allowed to take the test anyways, but it was a frustrating day for me, knowing that had I not been there to put my foot down, the combination of prohibitive costs and misperceptions from the adults in my community could have squandered away a great opportunity for these girls. We find out in November though if they made it to the next round.

*I'm slowly getting my English room together. When it's finally done I'll do a big post on what we did and plan to do with it, but for now its just a slow process now that school is in session and my counterparts schedules don't mesh well with mine

*My host sister knows that I am afraid of birds. She thinks its funny because she loves them (we have one that luckily my host grandmother forbids her to let out loose flying around for my sake). One afternoon I was reading in the living room, and look over to see a chicken next to me. I tell my host sister and hope that she will quickly shoo it out like a normal adult would, but I forget that she is 7 years old and not an adult. I realized my mistake when she suddenly squealed in delight at the prospect of the situation. I can completely picture her thinking "ooo, there is a bird next to Kelsey, she doesn't like birds, this might be fun!" so she hurried over and jumped down on the chicken to tackle it, resulting in it trying to fly away and a bunch of gobble cluck gobbles. I usually like to keep my cool, but a panicking chicken running away (and thus towards me) is not a good thing for me so I started yelling and jumping up onto higher furniture. She finally grabbed it, and flung it outside, but then squealed at the thought of telling others, so she ran off to tell the neighbors about my reaction. Yes, I did hear about it the next day at school, too.

*This Saturday I was all excited to do absolutely nothing. But then my director called and started off with the question "Kelsey, are you in the village?" I should know by now that the answer to this question is always "NO" because by saying yes you are basically agreeing to do whatever they are calling you to do. well, for some reason I said yes. "oh good, there is a wedding, we'll pick you up in half an hour" Damnit, there goes my day, but to save myself from a very long supra I said I had a phone interview with a university (yes...on a Saturday) which was a white lie because I really did have to call a friend that night. Anyways. The ceremony itself was interesting. We drove to a nearby town and the bride, groom, and one friend each stood in front of the church (parents and family generally didn't come, they are back home making food) and they do a lot of chanting, incense, and a few gestures, like wearing crowns. At one point the priest ties their hands together, and their attendants hold the crowns above their heads as they all walk around the podium together (and all four are holding candles too). I wish I had taken pictures because it looked a bit tricky, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Ceremony over, the caravan of cars drove at high speeds back to the village honking their horns, where almost 100 people had amassed for the supra. I didn't stay long cuz I had my "interview" and I was surprised that they actually got me home in time for it. Though whether they got me home in time sober for my "very important interview" is another story. Apparently they thought wine would make it go better for me.

* I spent the past week in Tbilisi, in for mid-service medical exams (yikes! ...I only have 8 months left!!!) and for some meetings with organizations to get next year's GLOW camp started. The meetings were all really encouraging, and hopefully we can make next year even better than last. It was a good week filled with tasty food and daily showers, plus some weekend excitement. Sarkozy was in town for a speech so on Friday the whole center was full of crowds. My friend and I had meant to go for a walk since it was such beautiful weather, but we ended up stuck in the crowds, and literally stuck on the metro squished in with hundreds of other people. Then Saturday was Tbilisoba, a yearly festival in honor of Tbilisi (just add -oba to the end of things....like my birthday could be Kelsey-oba). I met up with my director's daughter and we walked around, and found our inner 5 year olds and got our faces painted. A nice week overall!

face paintwalking across the "peace bridge" to a new park near the festival.

on the bridge, Lika, me and Anilooking down on part of the park with Old Tbilisi in the background

The FLEX program is a great opportunity for Georgian students to go live in America and attend highschool there for one year. I hands down think it is one of the best there is because it means Georgians come back to their country, seeing what a developed one is like, and make changes themselves. It isn't strangers coming over and telling them how things are, its Georgians changing Georgia. And its great. This week was the preliminary rounds of testing for it, so I tried to muster up a group of my own students to take the test. Since school in the first few weeks is chaotic, it was hard for me to find time where both me and my counterparts had free time to go around and speak with the students. Which meant I pretty much just chased kids down the hall reminding them in my bad Georgian to bring their birth certificates and a passport photo. Except that there is nowhere to take a passport photo in my village, and that would have to be left until the morning of the test. Fun. I could sense this would not go well. or rather, go typically Georgian village style.

As of Monday I had 13 students wanting to come. One marshrutka hired to take us all there the next day at 8:15 am. I also spent a lot of time chasing down kids through the halls making sure they would not be late.

7:00 am I receive a few texts from students saying they don't have passport photos. I groan because my alarm was set for 7:05 but assure them it is ok, Telavi will have many places to do it, just bring their birth certificates.

8:00 I receive more texts from two students asking where I am because they are at school waiting. I only respond with "its not 815"

8:05 I leave the house to walk to school and it starts misting. In a few minutes it is raining.

8:15 I arrive at school to find 4 students there waiting, plus the mashrutka. 3 students have told others they are not coming which is not very considerate because it just makes the rest of us have to pay more money. 4 students there, 4 supposedly coming. current rate of success: 50% I ask them once more if they have their birth certificates, they all say yes and look at me like I am the most annoying person in the world.

8:20 The last 4 students arrive. One remembers though that another girl (we will call her A) wanted to come too. We call and she says she is on the way, so we all pile in and tell her we will come get her in the mashrutka. Now some back story is that my village is the center of a lot of smaller ones, and the roads are set up like a sort of N grid, so we start winding our way out to where she lives

8:22 We get to where A says she is but she is not there

8:25 We turn around and go back to school and a little past, but then decide to go back the other way. I am quickly losing my patience because my students for some reason don't want to tell the driver where to go, and want me to instead, despite the fact that I don't know Georgian well, or the names of the villages. there is a lot of "I dont speak Georgian!!" being yelled. They all look at me like I am the most annoying person in the world.

8: 26. We find student A. She piles in and I quickly calculate that had she walked the entire way she would have gotten to our meeting point in front of school at 8:45. fail for being on time, but plus because my other students are now thinking she is the most annoying person in the world and not me.

8:27 We are on our way and I am thinking that it was rather successful. Go me.

8:28 Student A realizes she doesn't have her birth certificate nor a passport, one is at school which is much closer but possible still locked, and the other is at home, much farther away. I make the executuive decision to go to school.

8:30 Because it is raining, we manage to pass the Deputy Director of the school and give her a ride in. This is important because she has the keys. She does not have the keys to the room with the certificates though.

8:35 We are heading back to school, for the 4th time. another quite funny student remarks that if she wanted a field trip of the villages she could do it without taking a test or paying for a ride.

8:40 We are back at school, having picked up about 10 students on the way wanting a free ride and escape from the rain. The deputy and my student jump out and race into school.

8:45 They manage to get the certificate, and we are really on our way.

i have been taking photos to put on the walls in my new English Cabinet. My students think it's annoying though...

8:50 The driver randomly picks up people he knows on his way out of the villages, giving them rides to their houses. I silently fume because we are paying for the ride, not them, but I've found this is a usual occurrence in Georgia so I just live with it.

9:30 We get to Telavi in record time, life flashing before my eyes time, or probably more like life flashing before the poor old villagers' eyes time, many of whom were riding on horse carts as we careened past them . We lost our time to take photos though, so during the break times the girls have to run across town to get the photos taken. Which somehow they managed to do successfully. The testing is taking place at a school, and registration starts at 10am, so all the volunteers there are supposed to help keep the kids in lines and moving through the process, especially because there aren't two entrances, just a winding staircase where kids have to go up, register, and then come back down. Now Georgia's strong point is not lines. I don't really think it is possible to stress this point enough. They like to group, push, cut, and stampede, and trample.

10:00 We decide to make a 'human American chain" to keep the staircase separated between going up and going down. We decide to let in only 20 students at a time. I am near the mass group though and get nearly stampeded by shoving kids when we start letting the first ones through.

10:30 Still registering, and another volunteer and I have become FLEX bouncers, pushing kids back, using sandbags, and linking arms. It's really ridiculous how they can't just wait in line. I'm pretty sure out of the 270 students who tested, at least half of them accidentally felt us up somehow. The other half were caught suffocating in the middle. Some were even jumping over the staircase to go in early. Registration was just to get a testing time. Everyone just rushes to wait here! Really that was the worst part of the day though, and everything else was really smooth.

over my shoulder

the fellow bouncer. this was towards the end when we had less kids to deal with

5 people in one taxi with 7 pizzas. And they say Peace Corps doesn't teach you anything useful

After registration our jobs were pretty much done. We went to get lunch for everyone and then had to manage 7 pizzas without boxes in a taxi ride, and then some waiting around until 4 o clock for our students to finish.

So anyways, two of mine passed to the next round, and now I have to get them back tomorrow morning to take the second round. I texted them to bring their birth certificates, and one's response was "yes I already know that" We'll see tomorrow... =)

It was a busy last month of summer, with the highlight being my mom's visit to Georgia, and even better our trip to Turkey!

mom with the host familyOur time in Georgia was pretty similar to what I did with my friend Jessie. We spent some time in Tbilisi, I ate the food brought to me from America and then we were in my village and my training village with a day trip to Vardzia. It was fun seeing how excited my two families were to meet my mom, and they went all out with the food, including a supra in Kortaneti with all the neighbors and family.

Christopher was nice enough to come and help out with translation and socializing. It's amazing how much less pressure there is when there are extra Americans at the supra table.

Sapara Monastery

Ananuri

Where we sat for a few hours at Ananuri, waiting for a taxi to come because all the marshrutkas coming by were full

And now....Turkey!

We flew out of Tbilisi around 4am and landed in Izmir around 11am, rented a car, and got on our way. Except that since it was Eid, the last day of Ramadan, the place at the airport that usually carries the regional map was closed. So we were left in our sleepy haze with a general map of the entire country, a lonely planet guide book map, a city map of Izmir (where we were not going) and a small regional map marked with all the shopping centers. None of these maps really had what we needed, but luckily I am an amazing multi-tasker of 4 maps and we managed to get ourselves on the right road, passing all the correctly marked malls and shopping centers. Note the pasing and not stopping, sigh.

Our first stop was Cesme, and we had pretty bad directions to our hotel and really had no idea waht to expect from it, so when we found it through some stroke of luck and drove up the hill, our jaws dropped and all tiredness vanished. It was a beautiful hotel with cabanas, pools, beach, and the beautiful turquoise Aegean Sea stretching out before it. We had wanted to go exploring some nearby villages, but opted to stick around and spend the day drinking beers under an umbrella lounging on pillows and taking periodic dips in the water. AMAZING!

at our hotelthe village of Cesme

mom liked these bowls

never wanted to leave this place!

houses in Sirince

Next stop was Selcuk, a small town further south. We spent the first day at a nearby village called Sirince, which is really now just a huge tourist trap and full of well, tourists, and people selling things to tourists. It was fun to walk around though, and we ended up finding soem more hidden walkways away from the crowds, as well as a beautiful winery to have dinner at overlooking the valley and village.

I like taking pictures of windows....This region has a superstition and you see eyes everywhere. It's mostly with trinkets that are shades of blue, but the story is that it is meant to ward off the evil eye and any harm wished upon you by others.

The next day was probably one of the highlights. Ephesus! This is one of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world, and this city was once of the largest, second only to Rome. Nearby is one of the sites of the Seven Wonders of the World, Artemis' Temple, though only a few pieces of column remain from that. Walking around Ephesus was really interesting though, the library was beautiful, they had sit down toilets way back in the day and walking into the huge theater and hearing a small clap echo across the huge arena was really impressive. A lot of history happened there too, and nearby is the supposed home of the Mother Mary as well as a cathedral built in honor of the apostle John, who lived there on various occasions. I definitely recommend reading more about it on your own though.

at Ephesus there were so many columns just laid out haphazardly

the librarywalking down one of the main roads

the nice sit down public toilets...I should show you pictures of the public toilets I have to deal with here, ugh. We spent the rest of the day with a short lunch trip to Kusadasi, a port town nearby, and then the evening we spent wandering around Selcuk itself, and walking over the ruins of Artemis and the temple for the apostle John. And having an interesting traditional Aegean dish in the middle of a random garden.

Basilica of Johnour hotel courtyard...it was super cute

Basilica again

the only 'column' left from the Temple of Artemis has been taken over by storks

scratch that...only two columns...

chicken in a spicy sauce, potatoes, and Turkish yogurt

next stop was Istanbul! Our hotel was amazing! We also had a rooftop terrace that overlooked the Bosphorus, and had views of the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. A few times a day we heard the calls to prayer loud and clear (we heard them at all of our stops actually, and it is quite beautiful) but in Istanbul it seems like there is a small mosque on every block, with its minarets sticking out amongst the apartment buildings and dotting the landscape.

not only did I get a shower but a nice little window perch and a comfy robe! what more can a Peace Corps volunteer ask for?

a street near the hotel

this kitty was a bit bold and tried to take our food from the table

view from our hotel terrace...Blue Mosque

bazaar near the hotel

our hotel terrace at sunset...Hagia Sophia in the background

The Blue Mosque was beautiful inside, covered completely with Iznik tiles, a tradional Turkish tile often with blue floral decoration. I almost felt bad being there though since it was still an operational mosque, and basically has a 24/7 herd of tourists going through. The Hagia Sophia was also amazing, though a lot of the original Byzantine art is gone, it is still beautiful and has quite the atmosphere.

Blue Mosque at night....a lot of people (and cats) congregate on a group of benches here

the courtyard of the Blue Mosque

the ceiling

one of my new scarves!

and one of mom's new scarves! Hagia Sophia in the background

hagia sophia...buttresses

one of the Byzantine mosaics in Hagia Sophia...they were way up there and you had to really crane your neck...which resulted in a sort of tourist bumper car area

so many people!

this was all inlaid stone. super cool.

a wishing...thing. if you could spin your hand all the way around your wish came true. I managed it, but forgot to make a wish with all the pressure of tourists watching and commenting

from the upper gallery

a side courtyard

yeah yeah yeah me and my windows again

We then went to the Topkapi Palace, and it was so big that we really only went into the Harem (the royal family's quarters). We learned a lot about the concubines, wives, and eunuchs of the court, and it was fun to just walk around and explore a bit. We also visited the Cistern, which was an underground water source built back in the Byzantine times and later forgotten about for hundreds of years.

Iznik tiles

Harem courtyard

cabinet

cistern

The rest of our time was spent on a boat trip up the Bosphorus, eating at restaurants, most of which have terrace tops overlooking the city and water, and taking photos of cats, which seem to make cute appearances everywhere in Turkey. Oh, and at one said restaurant the waiter made an offer to my mom. 25 camels, 75 cattle, and and 100 sheep for me. ha.

Istanbul has an amazing transport system, including light rail

we're on a boat!

boats...though i guess that was obvious

me and the guy next to me were getting a little seasick. I'm an Arizona girl, I don't do boats well.

our boat

view from our restaurant one night

moon!

this cat made himself at home in a store

fountain outside of Hagia Sophia

Oh, and the bazaars. Mom sent me off to the Grand Bazaar alone, which meant that I was left to my own devices amongst all the shiny and colorful things to buy. lanterns, scarves, tea, plates, jewelry, and more!

the structure of the Grand Bazaar is mostly the original. But shopkeepers don't like when you take pictures so I didn't get many, just at places where I bought stuff

rose tea

so much tea! mmmm

spice and coffee grinders

If you click on this link I have uploaded more pictures of the various places we were. All in all a trip of a lifetime! Thanks Mom!!!

perfect ending to the trip

In between the traveling I've been doing a couple other projects this summer.

First is renovating a new English Cabinet for school. (i.e. English room). The way Georgian schools are set up is that each class stays together throughout the whole day, they have the same schedules and the same room, and teachers come to them to teach. this makes it hard to use resources and to plan out some activities, so my counterparts and I put together a grant last spring to make an English room where the classes come to us and we have everything in one spot. We are repainting, having a bookshelf made (all the school's English books are locked up in the library where no one ever goes), putting in round tables for group projects, and getting a computer to do videos, listening, and other activities with a projector. We have most of everything bought now, so hopefully I'll get some pictures as the project commences.

I also helped out with a kid's camp at an IDP camp near Tbilisi for one week in July. Another volunteer and I had been interested in working with refugees and got in touch with an amazing coordinator at a local community center to take part in their summer camp. This place is really amazing - they provide classes of all kinds, computers, shoe making, English, etc, for the local population who were all forced from their homes in South Ossettia during the war two years ago. So four of us ended up doing two sessions a day, one with older kids and one with younger kids, and came away from it hoping to be involved more in the future because it was so well run.

(Thanks to Erin for sending me these pictures)

My mom is coming to visit in six days. As a result I thought I would come up with an Marshrtuka for Dummies post so she can be prepared. Keep in mind that the following is all grossly exaggerated for your entertainment purposes (not really, its all totally true, all of these scenarios have actually happened to me and they are actually downplayed, but I can't risk two weeks of mom time and Air conditioned hotels by scaring her off, so shhhh, keep the secret)

To sum it all up, there is no group of people I dislike more than the 15 poor souls with whom I find myself trapped in a cramped marshrutka, listening to Modern Talking's Cheri Cheri Lady while hurtling down a Georgian one lane highway. It's really not personal towards them at all, I just don't understand how they all end up exemplifying my pet peeves to the tee while on the marshrutka and then seem perfectly normal while off of it.

Your best friend is your Ipod. Georgian marshrutka drivers seem to have only been sold one cd or tape ever made, and it all has the same music on it, often bad European pop or overplayed Georgian hits.

Windows. When it is 110 degrees outside, windows and a breeze make a huge difference in your two hours. (ps don't even ask me why they don't use air conditioning, it only proves to me your ignorance about this place!). Anyways, the biggest question is to sit by a window or not to sit by a window? Sitting by the window means you have control. We all like our power don't we? Control means that you are not stuck at the back of the marshrutka, suffocating and smelling all the body odor with no 90 degree breeze to cool you off. Because if you choose to not sit by a window, that is what you are stuck with since the windows inevitably all end up closed, and you not only spend the next two hours smelling your neighbor, but staring daggers and wishing torture upon the person sitting next to the closed window. But, while sitting next to the window means control, it also means that the Laws of Marshrutka Aerodynamics have made it so that you spend the whole two hours much like a dog with his head out the window, but much unhappier about it. Sometimes you have a curtain to provide some refuge from the hurricane force winds, but this can turn on you too, becoming a whip like feature that you have to attempt to hold away from your face and body. So what to do? Well, you close the window, and brave all the people behind you who are now wishing you torture.

Beware sleeping neighbors. This is especially bad when they start to slump towards you. Which is made even worse when you have chosen the window seat, maneuvering a perilous balance of head posture to avoid being whipped in the face by the curtain and getting too close to the snoring man encroaching upon your shoulder.

Drunk men: They really like to talk to you, and ask if you know Georgian "qartuli isit?" But then they like to try out the little bit of English they know on you, but pretty much fail to make coherent sentences. "I...sistah....Canada....one, two, three.....beautiful girls...." and then when he grows frustrated with his English attempts continue to ask "qartuli isit," perplexed by your lack of comprehension of what he thinks he is saying in Georgian and annoyed by you laughing at the situation. I also find that drunk men like to tell you all the random words they know in English, some of my favorites - twelve (no other numbers just twelve), donkey, yoga, and Murphy.

People who ask questions: really, this isn't a pet peeve, but when you want to zone out, answering the same questions over and over again is not what I want to do, especially when they can clearly see that you have headphones in. What I do like though, is when marshrtuka drivers who know me decide to answer for me. She lives in Kakheti, she is from Arizona, she is not married, she knows Georgian, aba ra!, she does not like to drink wine, she likes Mexican food. Yeah, somehow one of the marshrutka drivers in my village knows of my love for Mexican food and has mentioned it twice to people so far. I love this. Another one was asking my sitemate Kamran (the other volunteer in my village) how my American friend Jessie was. Kamran hadn't really met Jessie, so this driver decided he was smarter than the CIA (he told both me and Kamran this), since he knew more about the Americans than an American.

People who want your phone number: We really shouldn't give our numbers out - we get random enough phone calls as it is. (I have gotten some texts from a girl I have never met who wants me to live with her and teach her English....I have no idea how she got my number and my lack of response led to "you pane my heart, i has tears rannin daun my cheaks." and so on) Georgians can be persuasive though and its hard to say no when you know they have the best intentions. so what to do? I have on occasion given out a fake number, hoping to continue a nice conversation but avoid the "you pane my heart" texts to follow later on. The downside to this approach though is that on two occasions, the people have decided to give me a quick call so that I have their numbers in my phone. When the phone on my lap didn't ring...well, it got awkward. oops.

So really, I don't hate marshrutkas. Only when I'm on one, because these sorts of things have turned out to be my favorite stories. Otherwise they are a valuable resource for getting around the country. And they go everywhere - it's not the best way to travel, but you see the country through their windows.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have Jessie come visit me. I have often found Peace Corps life hard here because of two things, my friends back home who know me well can't really understand waht this experience is like as hard as they may try, but my friends here who know this experience don't know me like my friends back home. So to have Jessie come and make the effort to see what life was like here (though she says it was selfishly motivated, I don't care!) meant a hell of a lot to me (plus she brought me beer!!!) , and here are her following insights about her trip:

Guest blog by Jessie!!!

When Kelsey told me a year and a half ago that her Peace Corps assignment was Georgia, I was thrilled. I knew that she would be a phenomenal asset to the program and looked forward to hearing about all the adventures that would unfold throughout her two years in living as an integrated member of an international community. But, much more selfishly, I was excited to visit her. Having a friend in Peace Corps offers a tourist like me the unique experience of being able to travel to a less developed region of the world while having the benefits of traveling companion, translator, and guide all rolled into the same person.

As the logistical details of my visit slowly fell into place over the course of this spring, I began to research the country and peruse my Lonely Planet guidebook to learn some of the history and attractions that Georgia has to offer. In retrospect, the attractions, as amazing as they were, were only the icing on the cake of my experience. The best and most memorable parts were what happened between our destinations—the food, the travel, and most of all, the time with Kelsey! For the benefit of future visitors, I’ve put together my own “guidance” on visiting a Peace Corps volunteer in Georgia.

What to PackRemarkably, I managed to fit everything I needed for the week into my carry-on bag. However, I still checked a second bag, this one nearly tipping the scale at 39 pounds. I filled it with what Kelsey referred to as “Peace Corps volunteer survival needs:” Ritz crackers, ranch dressing and alfredo mix packets, sunscreen, Blue Moon, and more.

Lugging that unwieldy treasure chest of a rolly bag around the uneven streets of Tbilisi put into perspective the simple American pleasures that simply aren’t available in Georgia. I had to travel 29 hours and thousands of miles to deliver the comfort foods it took me a brief afternoon in the Denver King Soopers buy. And the biggest suitcase in the world couldn’t bring Kelsey what volunteers seem to miss most: a fresh salads and sandwiches

Where to GoKelsey and I covered some serious ground over the course of a week, making her village the launch pad for excursions to the northern, eastern, and southwestern portions of the country. After a night of birthday revelry and delicious Georgian food with the Peace Corps folks in Tbilisi, Kelsey and I took a 3hr mashrutka ride to our first destination, the beautiful mountain town of Kazbegi. I learned very quickly that Georgians have a penchant for building churches on top of hills, and Kazbegi showcases that union of spiritual and physical high place as well as anywhere in the country. The Tsminda Sameba church perches about 5km uphill from the town, and even it is dwarfed by Mt Kazbek, the 16,512ft giant that remained hidden behind the clouds for nearly our entire stay.

Kazbegi, Tsminda Sameba, and Mt Kazbek

Kelsey and I walked those 5 kilometers to Tsminda Sameba in the rain, joined by literally hundreds of Georgians who chose to spend their Day of Love in the same way. Despite their impractical footware and preference for steep, slippery “shortcuts” over the main road, they still beat us to the top. (Georgians make trails go straight up the mountain…no matter how impractical the route may be)

Kelsey and I in front of Kazbegi’s Tsminda Sameba

Next, we traveled to Kelsey’s two homes in Georgia, the first in her current village near Apeni in eastern Georgia, and the second in her training village in Kortaneti, near the center of the country. One of the best things about having a Peace Corps volunteer as a travel companion is that I got to catch a brief glimpse of what it’s like to actually live in Georgia, something most tourists don’t have the opportunity to see. Kelsey’s host families were incredibly welcoming, feeding me homemade meals, wine, and even chacha, the Georgian equivalent of vodka. Relaxing in the villages was a true highlight for me. We enjoyed Spanish soap operas (dubbed in Georgian), received a dance lesson from some of Kelsey’s students (we proffered the Macarena and Electric Slide in return), and spent one morning watching ferule chickens fight over scraps of bread.

Casa de Kelsita (in Apeni)

Freshly distilled chacha in KortanetiFrom Kortaneti the next weekend, we took a day-trip to Vardzia, a 13-floor cave city built into a cliff almost at the almost at the Turkish border. Fighting both claustrophobia and vertigo, we wandered through the caves, marveling that we were allowed to walk almost without restriction all over an 12th century archeological gold mine.

Vardzia

For the remainder of the day, we explored the tight streets and ornate buildings of Old Town Tbilisi. On my last day, we bought a bag of the last of this year’s cherry harvest and took it to Ananuri, another perfectly situated church on the Zhinvali Reservoir. We spent a relaxing morning exploring the fortress and then sat by the edge of the reservoir. It was one of my favorite places of the entire trip, and a perfect end to my time in Georgia.

Christopher, Kelsey, and me in front of Ananuri

How to Get There

Marshrutkas: Georgian travel mode of choice?

In total, we spent over 24 hours on mashrutkas during the time I was in Georgia. Despite their lack of air-conditioning and the often erratic behavior of their drivers, I appreciated mashrutkas because I saw most of Georgia through their windows. The Georgian Military Highway between Tblisi and Kazbegi afforded stunning views of the Caucasus mountains as well as beautiful green fields full of wild flowers. That drive may have been topped only by our taxi ride to Vardzia, which took us through a cliff-lined river valley that (surprisingly) reminded me of the southwestern U.S.

Kelsey hit the nail on the head in her blog post detailing the myriad and colorful meanings of the Georgian honk. I would only add the following two instructions:

If you approach a herd of cows crossing the road, honk your horn to encourage said cows to move to the sidewalk/shoulder/ditch.

If, however, you are a cow, maintain your current speed and direction regardless of honking because you are the only thing in Georgia to which a mashrutka driver will yield.

Georgian roadblocks

What to SayThe Georgian language, both written and spoken, is unique, full of squiggles and strange k sounds and lots of consonants written in sequence. To my stubbornly American ear, it is incomprehensible. Thank goodness, I had Kelsey, who spoke both Georgian and Russian for the two of us, while I stretched the Georgian words for “hello” (gamarjoba) and “thank you” (madloba) to their absolute limit. I was so proud of her as she carried on long conversations with random marshrutka drivers and passengers who were astonished to hear a blonde American woman speaking village Georgian!

At the end of the week, I didn’t want to leave. I can’t thank Kelsey enough for hosting my visit to a new (for me) region of the world and to see, even briefly, what her life is like there. The best part was getting to spend a much-needed week with one of my favorite people in the world!

More pictures (by Jessie...with colorful captions)

and the link to the pictures on my site (these are also mostly her pics...some are the same but I put in a few extra/different...but without captions)

Apologies for the lack of writing on this recently....I'm gotten out of any introspective moods, and I'm not a fan that this has to be somewhat censored and positive so instead you get lots of pictures. Maybe one of these days they'll get balanced out =)

This month has been a busy one though, where I even find myself with no time to facebook stalk, let alone update this thing. But here is a rundown of my recent four day trip to Armenia's capital Yerevan.

Lacey and I decided semi-last minute to head to Yerevan for a couple of days, coinciding with my birthday. We started out on a 6 hour mashrutka ride straight out of the circus. We had a crazy driver with his equally crazy woman sidekick who yelled and threw things at each other the entire way, all while his cell phone (with the most annoying circus sounding ring ever..I really wish I could find it online and have it on repeat for the purpose of this blog post, but my search of "annoying ring tone" only amounted to....well, you try it and figure it out yourself) Anyways, this phone was ringing off the hook, things were being thrown, insults being tossed, and as we drove the country through villages, we weren't sure what to expect, it looked a lot less developed than Georgia.

When we got to Yerevan though, we found it quite pleasant. After a short mishap of accidentally hitting on an Armenian guy while I was trying to ask which metro stop we were at, we had no problems getting around after that. The city itself was a nice break from our usual Tbilisi. It was completely full of parks, which in turn were completely full of cute outdoor cafes and statues. (I was told by my family in Georgia that we can't have outdoor cafes because men drink there and get in fist fights). It was fun to just wander around, and in typical Peace Corps style Lacey and I had our meals planned out (Chinese, Mexican, etc) way before any of the tourist locations were planned out. One day we wandered, and the second day we took a bus tour to a nearby Pagan temple and a monastery. Then we headed back to Tbilisi, where my friend was flying in (soon to be the next blog post).



And more picture's here!

The biggest project I've worked on this past year went off last week without a hitch! For four days we held a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camp in my village. This is a great project geared towards young girls, with the hope that hey can overcome some of the gender obstacles they face (most women do all the housework, cleaning, cooking, and husbands rarely help) and that there are more opportunities for them if they want more than just to stay at home and raise a family. Moreover, an intrinsic part of the project is the idea that they bring what they learn back to their communities and other girls.

GLOW was a long work in progress though. It is actually a world wide camp run by Peace Corps Volunteers, and it was quite active back in Georgia. But after the 2008 war, Heather and Lauren from the G9 group (the group of volunteers before me ) had no information on how it was run before, funding, contacts, places, etc. So with help from Armenian volunteers they started from scratch. Samantha and I came on board in November, and we had a great plan in the works for a huge camp to be held in the mountains this summer. But with budget crises our funding didn't come through as planned. which meant lots of scrambling and scaling down. But what we ended up with was GREAT. We had four days of sessions and held it in my village of Apeni. There were 30 girls total with 10 of my students hosting 2 girls each from other villages in the Kakheti region at their homes, coming to school from basically 9am to 10pm. We organized lunches, guest speakers, and best of all, we had some great Georgian ladies who studied in America come help us run the sessions as co-counselors, and Melissa to help us out as a Peace Corps counselor. Every morning we started with an hour of exercises (circuit training, yoga, or running - things they could do easily at home) and then covered topics such as HIV/AIDS, self-esteem, character traits, gender roles, future goals, nutrition, hygiene, teamwork, volunteerism, and leadership.

Best of all, the hard work over the past two years was worth it. I don't even know that I could describe how great it was to watch these girls over the course of 4 days. I was originally going to post a run down of activities and funny stories, but I feel like it almost takes away from what really happened there. I was astounded at how open and honest these girls were, and moved at how they treated each other with care and respect. Even when they were tired and drained from long, hot days, they were enthusiastic about every topic and everything we did.



And just one week after it ended, we are already in the works to make it bigger and better for next year and more to come!

Here's more pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/102380905860192738104/GLOW

This past week I was in Tbilisi because of fun with GRE scheduling. I was supposed to take it a couple of weeks ago, and was prepared to the max, but then it was canceled and rescheduled last minute on me and a friend here on multiple occasions since then. Finally Thursday was the big day, but just as the test started the power went out, and since it is a computer based test, it made it difficult to complete. Nonetheless after two power outages during the test (luckily it gets saved on their system each time) we finally finished...woo hoo.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Old Town with Alison taking pictures...here is the link to all of them - Click here

The other day during one of my breaks at school, another teacher started asking me some questions.

1. Do you like Georgia?

2. Do you like Georgians?

3. Are you married?

4. Do you like Georgian food?

5. How much money do you make?

After about the fourth or fifth one, another teacher chimed in that Americans don't like questions and he should stop. I laughed and decided to explain this cultural misunderstanding to them. It's not that I mind answering questions, it's more that I get tired of the same questions, each and every time, because I do not kid when I say that these are the standard questions I get on a nearly everyday basis, and it can get really tiring. Especially the ones about money, which is not taboo here, but leaves me struggling to explain that while Americans make more money, everything there costs a lot more money too.

Over the past year or so, I've been compiling a list of my favorite questions. There are some that highlight the stereotypes about Americans, and others that highlight my cultural differences. Then there are the ones that strike me for being as simple and straightforward as you can imagine, but which leave me with the realization that my reality is so different from theirs.

The more common questions:

Where are you from?

No, I know you are American, I asked where you are from. ( they know America is all immigrants)

Why do say you are American if your family is from Norway, doesn't that make you Norwegian? (a good example of the stress on ethnicity as opposed to nationality in this region)

What is the weather like in America?

How much is a phone call in the United States?

Do you know Georgian? (Me: Haven't I been talking to you for the past five minutes in Georgian?!?)

Do you have (insert fruit/vegetable/animal name here) in America?

How often does electricity go out in America?

How much does a kilo of __ cost in America?

Why doesn't English spell words correctly? (as in phonetically like almost every other language)

And my least favorite/semi frequently asked question: Is it better here or in America?

I really hate this one, especially when asked by a complete stranger. I tend to liken it to Does this dress make me look fat? Because really, they are expecting one answer and I feel like its a really unfair thing to ask of me, especially when they sometimes get offended with my answer "I like America better but I'm American, but I also like it here." But ususally Georgians are just happy to talk to me about anything, as you can see from some of the random questions I've gotten below:

Do you need a visa to get from state to state?

How do you get food if your mother doesn't work in the garden all day?

Why don't you have children yet? You're getting old.

Have you ever seen a rabbit before?

What is an Arizona, I haven't heard of that fruit before. (no joke)

Have you ever cooked before in your life? (this was as I was trying to cook something on a wood stove...which of course I had no idea how to do)

Your dad lives alone? Who cooks?

If you speak American, how can you understand British?

Are you a vegetarian? (a common American stereotype in one of the villages I was in)

Do you know how to drive?

Excuse me, but are you Latvians? (this one left me and a friend completely confused)

Are all the blonde Americans from the south and all the dark haired ones in the north?

How big is your village in America?

Have you met Michael Jackson? (or any other popstar....the Georgian population is only 4 million, and some of my students don't realize that in America I really don't mingle with celebrities on a daily basis, despite how awesomely cool I am)

Some friends and I tried to go to a nearby lake but couldn't make it there because the president was relaxing there for the weekend. So instead, we walked up to the Necresi monastery on a hill that was a little further away.

I uploaded some more pictures, along with pictures from another trip I took a while back, so click here.

I've been here over one year already! It's hard to believe, and despite all the hardships of being here and missing people and my life back home, I can say that the picture below is one of the many reasons I am so glad I'm still here:

This country is beautiful!!!

I've been here over one year already! It's hard to believe, and despite all the hardships of being here and missing people back home, I can say that the picture below is one of the many reasons I am so glad I'm still here:

This country is beautiful everywhere you go!

my walking buddy who always makes me laugh because of how much she talks

main village road

outside of my house

my front yard

soccer stadium across from school

my host sister and her friend sitting on a bench. All houses here have benches outside the gate on the main road - ideal for people watching, gossiping, and hanging out in nice weather

Ok, so I finally have pictures of my village. I will keep taking more of random parts of my life here and uploading them to this album here.

Today I have some photos from my school and classes

I don't know why they were taking photos...

but then they wanted me in them too. This is Giorgi and Giorgi.

some of my 10th graders

9th grade class. no one came this day because it was bazar day in the village

9th grade class. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" They were doing direct and indirect speech with famous movie quotes...they didn't understand this one at all...

my school from the main road

the teacher's room

looking out a second story window to the mudpit below

My school has a hallway filled with windows, this is towards the mountains (and the bathrooms)

I had an amazingly relaxing Easter weekend. With 6 days off of school and nothing to do but cook American food and watch movies with my friends it was a welcome break in my super busy mode.

I was really surprised at how quiet my Easter was actually, because Georgians seem to treat it as their most important holiday, which means a lot of church and a lot of supras and food. My family though kept it low key, and I agreed to go to church until I found out it was from 11pm to 6am, and I somehow found myself with no social obligations apart from hanging out with friends.

Georgians also have eggs here which they decorate in a red color to symbolize the blood of Christ. They either smash them against another person's to see whose is the strongest, or they seem to leave them at the gravesites of family members.

My host sister Tiniko after doing an Easter egg hunt that I did using eggs my grandma sent me (thank you!!!) They don't have the candy, peeps, colors, bunnies, egg activities like they do in America, so I thought it would be fun for her to do an egg hunt at least! She enjoyed it but was pretty impatient about finding the eggs. (She was happier than she looks in the picture....Georgians don't smile in photos....)

My friend Krisanne came out to my village for the Easter weekend. It had been rainy all week, so when the sun finally came out we headed out on a walk. We ended up sitting on a slab of concrete near where some cow roads divided, and found ourselves doing what any normal American girls would do: betting on which road the cows would take. My village has a lot of cows that come in from who knows where on the main road, apparently my village has more than normal for Georgia according to friends who have visited. The result? Krisanne and I ended up tied at 3 and 3 but we got some sun in the process =).

This is a group going down Krisanne's road....

and mine...

I have gotten a lot of questions about why I haven't posted in a while. It's because I'm busy. super busy. Yeah, right, you point out, your last blog post was about how much you did nothing at all. Well that changed once the weather did. Spring looks to finally be here. The sun even came out for a few days last week. And with all the new growing things, my list of projects and items on my to-do list seems to be growing too. Looking at my calendar I have no free time until mid may, and it already seems like my summer is getting jam-packed.

Back in the middle of March my counterpart and I went to a Peace Corps project design and management training for all of the education volunteers here. It was really helpful for us to have time to sit down and go through the steps of our first project together, an English cabinet for our school. The grant is due soon though, so we are hitting the ground running. ( I tried to teach my counterpart that phrase and its meaning but it didn't work out so well....kind of like how today I tried to teach "its raining cats and dogs" and only got questions about why it would rain cats or dogs.) It also helped that the conference was at a 5 star hotel with a balcony overlooking the Black Sea, and with a spa facility offering a 50% discount. The weather was beautiful too so after the sessions each day we went out and walked along the boardwalk.

Last weekend a group of volunteers went out to a village south of Kutaisi to help out with a really great English language competition. Over 100 students participated and were judged by interviews and writing essays. It was really inspiring to see that a village where a volunteer used to be had so many motivated people, but it was also disheartening a bit because I barely convinced 8 of my own students to come for an essay contest the week before.

And this weekend was another birthday weekend. We saw a really great puppet show followed by drinks and bowling. I think it would have done us girls better to have done the drinks after the bowling rather than before, but we still had fun even if the boys did beat us

My remaining time in the village has been spent learning some Georgian dances from some of my 12th grade students, which are fun but the arms seem to go against what I would naturally do which made them ask me if there was anything like it in America where you have to train your arms. As a result, I thought it appropriate to teach the girls to tap your head and rub your belly. I think they thought I was being strange, but it gave me some sort of satisfaction to know I could do it and they couldn't.

My everyday schedule seems to be filling up too. I teach the other teachers English twice a week after school and I do a club with the older students. I also teach various people from my village who have come in to the school and asked me to help them learn or improve their English. I also have a lot of weekends planned in the coming months to help out with various projects across the country, I have to study it up for the GRE test in June, and I'm going to go see my training host family next weekend before the new group of volunteers comes in for 3 months. I can't believe a new group is coming in already! It will be interesting to see them in training and be able to compare to what I was thinking at the same time last year.

I mentioned in a previous post that to make hummus is a 24 hour long process that I have to do by hand, and it is no exception, everything here is done by hand when it comes to food. I watched my host grandmother the other day sort through kernels of grain, which she would then grind to make something of some sort ( I don't really know what it was for). As I watched her do this, I couldn't help but calculate that bread was 60 tetri (40 cents) and was sold at the store 5 houses away. Definitely not something that would be worth my time, I would rather pay the money than spend hours making bread. But then I got to thinking about the post that I had sitting on my blog as a draft. And while this was originally going to be a "300 things to do when you are bored," I realized there weren't 300 things to do here. And since drinking beer and reading philosophy are 2 of the non-existent 300 things to do when you are bored, I seem to have gotten in touch with my deeper side and taken this in a new direction, all inspired by the grain sorting.

Because after I watched her sort all of that, I thought what else is there really to do here? If you have 5 hours to kill, why not make hummus by hand, or sort kernals of grain? I generally spend my evenings watching tv shows on my computer, knitting hat after hat that I will probably not wear, but it's something to do. And when the power goes out, well that's where the beer and philosophy books by candlelight come in. As a volunteer in the village, there can be so much free time on the weeknights and I've definitely gotten used to it. There are only so many times where you can constantly refresh your email browser or check out the latest gossip blogs before you realize you need something else to do... or that you really have nothing else to do. But, I've come to enjoy it. Not only to enjoy the free time, but the time where I am doing absolutely nothing, just enjoying being. I think that as Americans we spend a lot of our time hurrying around so that we can do what we enjoy, but I also think that there is a fine line between what we do for enjoyment and what we do for amusement to kill all that free time we spent hurrying around all day trying to gain.

As an only child, I have always treasured my alone time. I have frustrated people in the past when planning things because I would always plan on time to do nothing instead of hang out with them, to just have "me" time. Here, it is a whole 'nother ball game. There is so much of it, and I have had to learn how to spend all that time with my thoughts, to enjoy it, to find things for amusement (6 season of House is a good start) and that there is a difference between all of them. Now when I think about going back and starting grad school, I cringe at the thought of being so busy. I will love going out on a Wednesday night for dinner, or to see a movie whenever I want, but I think I will miss the opportunity to just do nothing, and to do it well.

This last weekend was a jam packed one in Tbilisi. I had two meetings on Friday, and a weekend planned with my friends for Lacey's birthday.

The meetings were for the girls camp I am working on for June, and the other for the women's committee I am on for Peace Corps. This week is Mother's Day (March 3) and International Women's Day (March 8) here, so we have an essay contest planned and a website 'launch' for our committee.

After the meetings on Friday about 10 of us went to the Turkish baths. We had rented out a private room which had a sauna, a hot pool, cold pool, and leather couch sitting lounge. There was also a bed in a curtained area....none of us were even really interested in touching that part of the room. All in all it was a good experience and really nice when it was so cold outside. Saturday we got some manicures (my nails are currently silver, bright shiny metallic silver....I feel like a one year old because I can't stop staring at them sometimes...oo shiny) and then all the girls got dressed up and we took some 'photo booth' style pictures. We had a good dinner, then drinks on the top floor of a hotel, and then off to some other bars. A great weekend, and it was full of cold and snow too!

(all of these pics are from someone else's camera)

Alison and I fighting over Kamran

Lacey, Alison, and I

Erin and Lacey

The group's "funny" photo

At the Radisson bar...$2o margaritas yikes!

Snowing in Old Tbilisi...yes we're all in dresses.

You would be proud to know we all managed to climb over a slippery snowy fence in these too.

Hello, sorry for being MIA on the blog. I ended up buying the "economy" internet package last month and was watching my gig limit. But I also haven't been up to much worthy of an entire blog post, so here are a few stories:

*The first week in February, Peace Corps had a Healthy Lifestyles training followed by an Education training, where the volunteers brought their counterparts and we had some projects, informational seminars, and guest speakers. It was held up in Bazaleti, which was ridiculously freezing! I managed to get out one afternoon to take some picturse, but it turned out the ones I took from the hotel window while I was dethawing turned out much better:

*My host family got a puppy! They sometimes call him "Lessie" (Georgian doesn't have that obnoxious aeh sound in Lassie). He is really adorable, but I can tell he is getting into his destructive and annoying biting phase. For now though, he is content to sleep under the petchi or in my lap:

*Last weekend, my friend Krisanne came to visit, and Kamran hopped villages to help us make tacos. I had found some tortillas in Tbilisi, and brought some taco seasoning, while Krisanne had Spanish rice, so it turned out to be an amazing meal and a good time cooking it. My host family is really awesome and just let us be American for the day without bothering us or giving us cooking advice. Although when Krisanne and I headed for the store and left Kamran to do the dishes, the family refused to let him do it (its not a man's job, so we had to do it when we came back).

*Right before I came back to Arizona in December, a little 2nd grader made my acquaintance one day walking to school. When school started up again, she made it a habit of walking with me to and from whenever she saw me. Her name is Natia and since she hasn't started learning English yet, we stick to Georgian. Though she doesn't quite get that I don't understand it. It doesn't phase her at all though, and she just keeps on talking non-stop, content that I am listening and occasionally nodding my head to what she says. My schedule has me staying after school for various teacher's English classes and English clubs now, so we might not be walking companions for much longer, but its still nice to have a new friend!

* I feel like I've really been in touch with my village side recently. Every day I have to go and scrummage for scrap wood to start my fire. The bigger wood is brought to our house by a donkey pulled cart and then I have to lug it across the yard and up the stairs to my room so I can use it to keep warm. I've also been trying to make some healthy snacks, but it takes forever without the convenience of modern technology. I made hummus, but it means mashing with a fork for an hour or so, after you soak the beans for 8 hours and cook them for 2. I'm looking into making sun dried tomatoes too, but I can't use an oven for 24 hours straight and might just do the sun method for a few weeks. I'll keep you updated on that project...haha. I might just give in and ask for those to be mailed one of these days since it might take the same amount of time.

* One day before school started a group of volunteers went to a winery nearby where another volunteer works as a business volunteer. We took a tour and got to do some tasting, and I got to explore my new region a bit more:

*oh, I have also made it one of my missions to make my students be more creative. For pictionary, they can't or refuse to draw something simple like a church or a dog. and when we were doing conditional sentences, I got the following responses to 'If you were invisible, what would you do?' 'I would go to school' or 'I would sleep.' my reaction: If you were invisible you would go to SCHOOL?!?! you don't even come to school on a normal day, come on!

Today's vocabulary word of the day : petchi; a metal square with legs used to burn wood in.

I seem to talk about petchis a lot recently because people back home keep asking me what these are. so, there you go. In my new digs, I have not one but two rooms, and in my "living room" I have a petchi. Now, after living here for 9 months, keeping a petchi going seems easy enough, but I promise you it is not, at least for me (especially with damp wood). I often get it started only to forget to add wood, or to add wood and smoulder what little fire was going. So, after some late night consultations with my friend Lacey, (Poke, prod, and....) I am now becoming master of my very own petchi. So now that I am advancing beyond where humans were thousands of years ago, my next stop just may be how to use tools?!

(just kidding, to defend myself against girly accusations, I will point out that I totally already mastered that skill due to an architect dad and shop class)

I just got back from two weeks back home in Arizona, and it's going to be a real adjustment to life again here. It was strange being back in my old life, or the place of my old life. I was asked billions of questions, but mainly the one "How is it over there?" And I really have no idea how to answer that. So here goes a little bit of an attempt to answer, or maybe an attempt to answer why I can't answer it. One day during a long car ride, a friend and I were talking about personal statements for graduate school applications. I started thinking, how does Peace Corps really fit into my life story? I don't really know, because I feel like all of the things I can say about it right now sound too cliché, but even if they are cliché, they are true. During my studies in Russia, I took the time each day to write down everything I did in a travel journal, and so I brought one with me here, but it remains blank except for the first few pages. I stopped writing in it because I had way too many thoughts and observations and it was taking too much time to write them all down in a way that meant something. But maybe that is how I would describe this experience, something that I can't write down because I don't really understand it right now, I need some perspective in order to do that. Right now, it is miserable and lonely, humbling and inspiring, and also a lot of fun. But even those aren’t the right words to describe it.

As the days wound down to when I had to go back, I was getting really anxious and was definitely not ready to leave. But then one morning while standing in line at a store, I was amazed that everyone was stopped where they were, talking on their phones and exchanging information about something. It was the shooting in Tucson, one that not only affected my community, but a few of my friends themselves. It was shocking, but it was also really moving to see Tucson come together like it has. And suddenly leaving didn't feel so bad. There was some more perspective - that any bad day I have in Georgia is not going to compare to how bad of a day other people are having. It is important to keep that perspective in mind, so that when I get even more and can look back on this experience, maybe I would have learned something from all my bad days as well as my good ones. And maybe then I can find some better words to explain just “how it is” over here.

Today as I was observing a class take a test, I was amazed as usual by how brazen kids are here about cheating, and how helpless the teachers often are. Some just think the students are lazy and don't do anything, some actually tell students answers, and others give up trying to stop it since zeros mean nothing here.

What surprises me the most though, is that students even care enough to cheat, because some don't care about anything else. My main problem here is that grades don't matter, so there is nothing to threaten students with (a low grade for example) if they are not working or to motivate them. Often grades are arbitrary, and it is rare for a student to get a low one, and unheard of for one to be held back, even if they do and learn nothing in class. and by nothing I mean literally NOTHING. It is also a systematic problem, not merely a teacher/school one. For kids who don't plan on attending university, why do they care about grades. And grades don't actually have an effect on where you are accepted if you DO want to attend a university. Everyone takes a national test in the summer that determines acceptances, and so students often hire private tutors to study and don't need to worry about grades. It's a bad cycle, and I am thankful that many students want to learn anyways, and are excited to do their work.

But today made me think back on some of the funny times I have caught students cheating: For homework I often gave a vague "write 5 sentences about anything you want"

In one of my classes I had 7 students who SWORE they didn't copy. They all wrote "There are many dicks in my room"I also had 5 boys copy the best girl student. They wrote "I am wearing a skirt and pink sweater" I definitely used that opportunity to embarrass them, and they then copied off of boys from then on.My favorite comes from a girl who could not even answer "what is your name?" She wrote some lyrics from a Jay z rap song: "You trippin' when you ain't sippin'. We give a damn about the drama that your dude bring. I'm just tryin' to change the color on your mood ring"

I have been going through mountain withdrawal. Growing up in Tucson, I am so used to them. Without them or large buildings around, I feel really unsettled. And I can't decide if its because they make me feel protected from the world that would otherwise go on forever, or if it's the total opposite, that they remind me that the world is much bigger than what is right in front of me. Either way, I like my mountains.

And the mountains are one of the many reasons why I love my new site. Yep, I moved. I'm in a village much further east now, right in a valley near the Caucasus Mountains, in Kakheti which is the wine making region of Georgia.

Ethnic identity is an interesting thing here in Georgia. The Caucusus are not known for their peaceful dealings with each other, and there is a history of clashes and genocides, and there is also a great number of elasticities that cross the borders. Ethnicity is part of life here, and it isn't a bad thing all the time. Georgians are proud of their culture and history, and their language, which has somehow survived intact despite all outside influences. So, here are just a few of my experiences involving it.

One of the questions I get asked most is where are you from? I always start out with I am from America, and about half of the time this leads down other tangents like how much things cost there. The other half of the time it leads to the follow up question of no, really, where are you from? Because me being American is not a good enough answer for them. We know you are American, but what is your ethnicity? After a few times of trying to explain that I don't really identify myself by that and nor do most Americans, I learned that that is not the answer they want to hear so I answer "well, I am Norwegian." It is an interesting conversation to have, and it has taught me that one of the number one things people know about America is that is a country of immigrants; but it has also taught me that it is almost an incomprehensible thing to a lot of people in the world that Americans don't identify themselves by ethnicity. (yes, its a generalization that race doesn't matter there, but overall I think most of us would answer I am American to the question before we answered our ethnicity.)

The next step in the conversation is what has become my biggest pet peeve here. No, you must be Russian, you speak it, and you look Russian. Believe me, I lived in Russia and I do not think I look like the typical Russian, and even if i did I definitely look more like the typical Scandinavian. No, I learned Russian for fun, I am really only Norwegian. It is not being called Russian that makes me angry, it's the insinuation that I don't know what I'm talking about and it happens all the time. No, you must just be mistaken, you have Russian blood and no one in your family knows it.

I have also had some other interesting conversations about race here. One weekend I was at another volunteers site and the topic of blacks in America came up with her family. She pulled out pictures of her friends from home and her family was surprised that she had such diverse friends. We were then told that Georgia is just as ethnically diverse, they have Megrelians, and Kakhetians, and Gurians after all! (these are the different regions of Georgia) But all of these people are Georgians, and it is interesting to see that their ethnic diversity is something that we wouldn't even distinguish in the States. (those Wisconsinites are so crazy compared to Minnesotans!)

I was also asked once by a student what Americans look like. He knew that I was from the Southwestern portion, and he had met two other volunteers who were both dark haired and from the Northeast, so he had assumed that those in the south were blonde, and those in the north were darker haired. I told him not at all, and that I was really the only blonde I was even friends with in Arizona (except you Trisha!). The next week I was showing his class pictures of my friends and I at Halloween, and the entire class was completely aghast at what my friends looked like. That girl is from Arizona, but she is Japanese! ... Nope, she's American! ... And that one, she is Arab, yes? ...Sort of, her mom is from Ireland though. ....WHAT?!?!? (ps, thanks to all my friends who unknowingly have contributed to the ethnic enlightenment of my 11th grade class)

This past weekend I spent a night with the old host family in Kortaneti. It was a good time, and we made chunkhrela? with the neighbors at their house. Its basically a paste made from grapejuice and flour that srings of walnuts are dipped into and dried. mmm mmm good.

Also coming from this grape juice is homemade wine, which Georgians are extremely proud of. The wine here is made differently from the normal French process we are used to, and well, read this article for more information : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_wine

Luckily for some lucky people back in the states, I was woken up bright and early this morning by my host dad Larry who was very impatient wanting to discuss the logistics of how we were going to get ten liters of his wine back to America for my friends (and well, basically Kyle who he is in completely in love with) to drink. It was not the most pleasant way to wake up, and those of you who know Larry can only imagine the thorough and illogical questions and assumptions that came from the early morning conversation, but I am looking into it, maybe not ten liters, but enough for a taste =)

There is also a lot of rules and traditions to how and when you can drink the wine at a supra, so I'll post more about this later on!

Last year, the day before Thanksgiving, my invitation from Peace Corps came in the mail, inviting me to serve as a volunteer in Georgia. Since then all kinds of thing have changed, and I have met some really amazing people, both here and back in Arizona. It is hard to be away from my friends and family on the holiday (and all of the lefse!!!) but being here has really made me thankful for everything I do have back home. Being in Peace Corps really makes you value the little things in life. Merely by the fact that I was born in one place and not another, I can wear pants to work if I want to, I don't have to get married at 15, or have kids at 20. I can have heat and electricity, and microwaves. If I have a ceiling creature, there is a book with lists of people whose sole job is to get rid of ceiling creatures. I can study whatever I want, choose what I want to do with my life, and travel and experience the world.

I'm also incredibly thankful for all the other volunteers and friends I have made here, who are making, and have made, all the holidays great. I had one great Thanksgiving a few weeks ago and another yesterday. Thanks guys!

from the big conference a few weeks ago, all the volunteers in Georgia!

Oh man, do I love when I can use random youtube videos as references in my classes.

So the whole "th" pronounciation thing seems to hit a nerve with me every time, and today when a student pronounced "thinking" as "sinking" I said "no, wrong!" to which they all asked me, "why does it matter?" and in comes the highlight of my day, a little youtube joke, to tell them why it is bad to confuse "sinking" and "thinking." And it even uses present continuous like our unit has been covering, double score.

Enjoy:

Things here are starting to get into a groove. I don't love teaching, but I'm getting used to it. I am now constantly being told that I have chalk everywhere on my clothes, so that must mean I am a teacher now. I feel like things are starting to get rolling, finally, after almost 6 months at site.

I am also learning the hard things about being here though. Some days you hit a wall. You encounter something that seems so ridiculous to you that you can't help but feel the surge of energy and think "Yes, this is what I'm here to do. It will be great" and you feel good that you are here to help. But then it hits you. There are too many roadblocks in your way and and too much apathy to overcome them, and too many things entwined together to change just one. You realize that really can't help in the way that you'd like, no matter how much energy and good intentions you put into it. There have been a few moments in my past six months as a volunteer that have really left me torn. Torn between wanting to spring to action and go save the world or to just give up. The "one step at a time" thing is really hard to do.

It is moments like this where I have struggled with what I am doing here, because I am not here to save the world, I realized that I am not really capable of saving something the size of my village, I am only here to hope that some of the tools I bring will be used later on so that maybe one day something will happen, something will be built, or at least one day someone will remember that the tools exists and will ask what they are. It gives me a lot of perspective, because I am here working on a person to person basis, the small picture stuff, but I joined Peace Corps because of dreams of changing the bigger picture.

So I have been jumping in on some projects to keep me busy, and which I think will be absolutely amazing. I am now on a women and gender in development committee, and I am also working on GLOW, which is a camp for young girls throughout Georgia. After the war in 08, a lot of the information was lost about how it operated here in Georgia in the past, but some of last year's volunteers did some great legwork and I am on the team to help get it started again this coming summer. It will not only be a great learning experience, but it will help me impact young girls here, which I have decided is one of my main goals here, and it's a start!

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend 9 days away from site. I spent a few days with the old host family in Borjomi, and then headed to Bazaleti for an All Volunteer conference. The first few days were language training, (ah...6 hours of Azeri and Russian can really leave me tired) and then some other training sessions followed. It all culminated in a great early Thanksgiving dinner, which was cooked by a small group of volunteers apart from the turkeys which were kindly donated by the Radisson chef. So, lets imagine this for a moment. Thanksgiving is hard to cook for in the states, but multiply your family numbers until you get to 80 people, one of which is the ambassador from the United States. Then add in the fact that you don't have a Safeway within thousands of miles of your kitchen and you have to make everything from scratch. Real scratch. Buying pumpkins, cooking them, gutting them, mixing them, making pie out of them scratch. It was definitely an undertaking, and it turned out amazingly well. The good thing about it is that out of 80 people, a few actually know how to cook well, so the food was great!

here's some more blogging about it:

http://seanandmckinze.com/2010/11/09/thankful/

After that I headed to Mtskheta for a night to see some sights. It is a town near Tbilisi which is known for its old churches. We were fortunate enough to be treated to a drive out into the mountains to watch the sunset from a monastery chapel. The thing about chapels and churches in this country is that they are set up on high mountains, which are sometimes a little perilous to get to, and this hike included crawling on hands and knees so as not to plunge off of the cliff. But it was worth it:

also more pictures have been posted from the last few months, so check them out.

Pictures!!

*One of the vocabulary words this week was "teeth" but everyone was saying "tee" or "teef" so I decided to make them pronounce it right. My effort to do this started out with the brilliant idea to over-pronounce "th" at the end. Unfortunately for the boy in the front row, over-pronouncing the sound "th" results in spitting.

*I went to a village out near Lagodekhi to visit my friend Kamran. He is really well integrated and speaks Georgian well, and he got his village excited about a new American visitor. His family killed a chicken for me, when my mashrutka arrived he got calls telling him I was in town, and I was treated to two supras (parties). He also showed me how to make wine! well, sort of. With the Georgian method there isn't as much detail as the traditional French method, but it was interesting nonetheless. His family has a large underground cement vat that can hold 800 liters of liquid. When I got there, the actual grape harvesting was done, but half of this vat was filled with a liquid/grape mix (usually just grapes but his were bad so they added some sugar water) that sit for a while. But you have to mix the whole thing a few times every day, because if the grapes remain separate, all the juice and alcohol form separately, so mixing them causes it all to ferment evenly.

*I showed some of my students pictures of my friends and I from Halloween. It turned out great, especially because Uyen and my dad were kind enough to be creepy for me and go to Walgreens/up and down streets taking pictures of decorations to email me. =) Some of my students were also really surprised by my ethnically diverse group of friends. That sort of thing no only doesn't happen here, but it really can't - there isn't a whole lot of diverse people to begin with.

*We are starting to some out of class projects which is fun. Some older kids want to perform the play "hamlet" which is really great, but I am hoping I can convince them to choose something a little easier to understand. We are also staring an English bulletin board/newspaper where we will post things in English on a wall in the school, the first project is "USA States" and one of the younger classes will be drawing what they think America looks like.

* I also can't complain too much about classroom behavior after hearing about another volunteer's story from one of his classes. Apparently he was teaching the 5 senses and asked a girl what smells. She pointed to a boy near her, because he actually did smell. But the reason he smelled was because the kid behind him was holding a lighter to his jacket and letting it burn. No, children, you can not set your classmates on fire. Sorry.

*I turned on my 'heater' tonight for the first time. It got realllllly cold all of a sudden! I was in Borjomi and it was snowing in the hills. Winter is almost here!

My mother can tell you best how much I hate change. She likes to mention how as a child, I ate the same plain turkey sandwich every day for lunch for years. Nothing new. Ever. When I find what I like, I stick with it. More and more though I am seeing that change is necessary, and how often people are reluctant to do it.

I have an beyond rambunctious 6th grade class. Individually I can't think of one student in it that I don't dislike or who hasn't made me smile in the past few weeks, but as a whole, they could annoy even an entire country of deaf people into submission. So, I have been trying to convince my awesome but just as timid as me counterparts to do a new seating chart. Person A talks to Person B, thus Person A will not sit anywhere near Person B. The problem my counterparts are worried about though is that it will actually work; that is, if Person A is not sitting anywhere near Person B, they will indeed stop talking to each other and instead yell across the room to each other. Very valid point, and I wouldn't put it past them, but my thought is Why not try it?

I come across examples like this on a daily basis here. An organization or school that has an American to help, but won't adopt any suggestions and continues on the path they were before. Students who won't do any homework, don't write anything down in class, don't study, and then ask me why they can't understand something. But somehow it is expected that just because I am here, it will suddenly all change, without them having to actually change anything they are doing.

I'm trying to take all of this as a lesson for myself. I do this all the time in my own life, but its easier to see in a new situation and from a new perspective. My dad sometimes told me that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time. I don't know that I would call it insane, because when put into every day life situations, not wanting to change seems highly rational to me, I'll take a class of 30 talking 6th graders over a class of 30 screaming ones. But then again, if nothing changes, then nothing changes.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps. Last week was when JFK first announced his support for the idea of the organization itself. After being here thus far (6 months next week!), I can certainly tell you that I have some reservations and issues with the Peace Corps, but it is still an inspiring thing to be a part of, and it is interesting to listen to Kennedy's speech that night with the knowledge of what it would turn into in the future.

I think there will be a lot of coverage in the coming months of Peace Corps, and here is a little bit I have come across so far:

Audio of Kennedy's speech

NPR article

So this story might be more for my amusement than yours, but you never know. maybe it will be semi entertaining for my old Kortaneti cluster mates at least.

One night towards the end of training, I started hearing a strange scratching noise coming from the ceiling late at night, a strange noise that would consume my last two weeks of sleep, and a strange noise which I'm sure my cluster mates grew tired of listening to me talk about. It was also a strange noise that has made me come to hate the phrase "don't be afraid" because inevitably to my host families, they think that the only reason I am mentioning any animal is because I am afraid, not because it simply annoys the hell out of me, but who knows, maybe it is a common fear here that something will crawl out at you from the ceiling late at night and claw you to death. (When I first found that crab/eight-legger, I had told my family and their first reaction was to tell me "don't be afraid" as well)

(the picture above is a dramatic reenactment)

When the noise first started, I went to sleep soundly. I knew that it was loud enough for someone else to hear it and that the next morning it would be promptly taken care of. Apparently I had forgotten where I was living. About a week went by and it started getting worse, so I casually mentioned that I had been hearing a sound from the ceiling. "oh! There's just a cat that likes to crawl around, don't be afraid." Hmmm, even if it is only a cat...shouldn't you still be worried that there is one crawling around up there? At first it sounded like purring, so I thought Well, it is just a cat but my vast experience with cats is that they do not spend all night scratching, they spend all night and all day sleeping. Though I am known to have really lazy, fat cats, I was pretty sure it was not a cat.

Slowly the purring turned into a buzzing, and I saw some giant june bugs flying around outside my window. Maybe a bunch of them are up there crawling around? Maybe it's bees? It gets to the point where it really bothers me at night, so I decide to ask them to actually do something about it the next morning. The next morning comes, I hop out of bed, armed with some vocabulary I had looked up/asked my teacher for, and I open my door to find some freaky cockroach that looked like it had come straight from The Transformer's movie. I'm totally serious, it came equipped with its own armor and weaponry system, so I called for my host dad to brush it on out of the house. "Don't be afraid, it's gone!"

So at breakfast, I mention there is something in the ceiling. Now, the problem with not speaking a common fluent language is that oftentimes others assume that a misunderstanding is because you are dumb or do not understand what you are talking about, as opposed to the real reason that you merely do not have the vocabulary to explain. So they misunderstand me when I ask what we can do about the ceiling creature, and they reply "Oh, those cockroaches are harmless, don't be afraid, I moved it out, it's not in your ceiling!" Damn. score one for the ceiling creature, all efforts for that day were futile because they thought I was afraid of the cockroach. Which in fact was not a cockroach, but a 'blahblah' and when I asked my teacher (who by this point was amused by all my new ideas for what was making all that noise) what a 'blahblah' was, she had no idea.

At this point, one of my clustermates suggested it was a squirrel or rodent of some kind, they had been told that there was one around the area and in their house which was nearby. Maybe...But no, I kept coming up with a new idea every day. then I kept getting bitten and I went through a short phase of if I have bed bugs I am out of here and asking everyone I knew if they knew what bed bug bites looked like.

Then one night I was awoken to a new sound. Is that a .....a horse? Yes, it was definitely a horse sound. There is definitely NOT a horse in your ceiling, go to sleep, you are crazy. The next night I hear the horse again. Seriously, you = crazy, but I mention it the next morning to my group and teacher. "Now I am hearing horse noises of all things!" "Oh! There is a horse that just moved in to the house next to you, it is right behind your room." Oh thank god, you = not crazy.

Training ended a couple days later, and I moved into my new house, where I quickly discovered the amazingness of frogs jumping around my room, and have since experienced their amazing ability to find any open or ajar door and get in without you knowing for a few hours. (They like to FREAK out when caught in the bathroom and you surprise them, apparently continuously jumping into a wall is their idea of escape)

And then one night last week. Again another noise from the ceiling. Scurrying around and being loud. Maybe it is a cat. No...it is scurrying around and being loud, cats walk quietly. Hmmm...this is not cool. And it was back again the next night. I resolve to get this taken care of immediately and go to the family and say there is an animal living in the ceiling. "Oh, its just a cat! Don't be afraid!!" Believe me, I KNOW that it is NOT a cat.

*It's cold!!! today the thermometer read 10° C, which if you times by 3.8, divide by 7.984, take the root of blah blah, and then enter it into google search as [10c to f] to do the work for you, means 50° F. I grew up in Arizona where today's high was 86. I don't do cold.

*Along with the cold there has been abundant rain. It has been raining for almost two days straight. So when there was finally a break I decided to do laundry, thankful for a window of 30 minutes where it wouldn't be raining on me. I'm so glad I have a college degree too, because I remembered right after pouring the soap and water on my clothes that 30 minutes was not enough time for my clothes to dry hanging outside in the open.

*One of the lessons today consisted of explaining the words "low" and "high" followed by reading a text on a boy knocking over his tea and burning his grandmother. Then it went right into how to make plurals and use them with present tense, followed by the negation of past simple tense. This was all in two pages. I titled my lesson plan "Headache and a Half"

*My mom mailed me a really scholarly magazine I had wanted to read. (total lie, it was People magazine). On the back of the envelope was a stamp from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. My letter went through Uzbekistan. I don't think that Uzbekistan is on the "please do travel to" list for the United States, so I found it interesting that it is on the "please do send our mail though here" list. But somehow I got it, yay!

*I have been looking into a way to take an Economics course online from over here, and I am amazed at how stupid some people are in terms of the logistics of Peace Corps. One suggestion from one college was that for the final test, I just hop on over to Arizona since it has to be officially proctored. Yes, why don't I just hop on over there for a day?

*There is a man in Rustavi who seems a little off his rocker and sells knives on the street outside a store I often go to. It's a little scary because he sometimes follows you and he likes to grunt and yell "gogo" (girl) to get you to buy knives, all while waving his hands crazily. Oh yeah, his hands are filled with the knives he is trying to sell.

*one thing I have really missed from the states are Garbanzo beans and hummus. My good friend in a nearby city found some garbanzo beans dried in his bazaar, so when I was visiting him this past weekend, we went and bought some. and by some I mean two kilograms. a lot of freaking garbanzo beans are now sitting in a bag in my room.

I have been trying to wait for something interesting to talk about, but it doesn't seem to be happening that way, unless you count a benadryl-induced dream about John McCain saving my crashing airplane something interesting. (Really, I couldn't have come up with Matt Damon or anyone better?)

My counterparts are really great, I love them! They are not only ridiculously nice and fun to be around, but are receptive to the changes I want to make in their teaching styles and we work really well together, which is important since I don't know the native language very well and they don't know what type of activities I want the kids to do.

I have been observing classes and I finally chose my schedule for teaching. I will be working with 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th grade classes. Some of them are really small, with only a few students each, while others have up to 30 students and are foreseeably going to be the bane of my existence. Discipline here is pretty non-existent because there is no punishment you can actually give, apart from yelling at students, which when done in English and they don't understand English, usually elicits laughter. Which usually elicits an evil narrowing of the eyes look from me, which I have found sometimes works. My counterparts take to stomping their feet and banging rulers on desks to get attention, but then it sort of reminds me of some music performance since there's so much banging going on. I also tried moving the talkers to other parts of the room, which would make total sense in an American classroom. Here though, instead of just talking the kids start yelling to each other across the room.

But luckily, despite the noisiness, I enjoy the students themselves and they seem interested in learning. The main challenge will actually not be the noise, but rather the discrepancy in the curriculum and their actual knowledge. English was started at my particular school only three years ago, yet due to (good intentioned but perhaps a little misguided) governmental education reforms and agendas, some of the older classes are learning out of advanced books that kids in other schools don't reach until their 10th year of studying English. This leaves a lot of kids behind and lost through no fault of their own. So how do I go about teaching something like "when to use a gerund" to kids who don't understand me when I say "what did you do yesterday?" I'll let you know after I try it tomorrow! (for those of you who don't know what a gerund is, look it up! I've used it 9 times in this blog post alone!....ps. I'm amazed at how little of English grammar we are actually taught, I didn't learn most of it until I started studying other languages.)

I'll also be taking some tutoring lessons for Azeri and Georgian. soon I will be able to yell in more languages!

So how was school? No idea! I had a bout with two different really awesome infections that left me feverish and sick. But instead of telling you about school, it gives me a good opportunity to tell you about all things medical in Peace Corps.

Over here in Georgia we have two medical doctors on staff, who always answer their phones during the day, and who trade off carrying an 'on call' phone with them for medical problems outside of office hours. Which is good, because us volunteers don't only make bad food decisions from 9-5 Monday thru Friday. (I'm pretty sure a lot of the medical problems are food related, at least at the beginning). And if its not a general medicine issue that they can figure out, they take us to a specialist in Tbilisi who is Peace Corps approved and are there the whole time to translate and make decisions. I had multiple phone check ups late at night to make sure I was doing well (or at least not worse, I don't think I was ever doing well), a super quick and painless experience having my blood taken (I usually get massive bruises that make me very self conscious of someone mistaking me for a drug addict of some sort), and an overnight stay for medical checkups.

So anyways, after a stomach thing, a really high fever for 6 days, then another respiratory like infection, a short time where I felt like my muscles were shriveling up and dying, and a few grumpy arguments with the host family (I should really do a culture clash post on medical theory between here and America, but I don't think I can be objective so ask for stories in person) I'm feeling better, and hopefully ready to start school on Monday.

So after being here for almost 5 months now, my actual job is finally starting. Wednesday is the first day of class, and I have no idea what to expect. At my school there are two English teachers, both of whom I really love. I only have to work with one of them, but I think I will choose classes with both and see how it goes! The first two weeks of school I won't be teaching, just observing every English class and deciding which ones I would like to teach and work with.

I get a lot of questions here about what exactly I am doing. I will be teaching English, but that isn't really my main job. Yes, it will be good for the students to learn from a native speaker, but I'm also here to teach the teachers how to teach. One of the main problems here with language learning is that the teaching method is grammar translation. Kids read a sentence, translate it, and move on. They don't really understand it, and many seem to approach it as almost a math problem - if they see one thing, it means write something else, yet they don't understand what it means or why they are using that particular tense. They also have little speaking skills. In Borjomi I was in a 5th grade classroom where they were reading about a fox who "longed and yearned for some food"...pretty impressive vocabulary, but then when I asked them to say their names and one thing that they liked, they couldn't do it. So the education volunteers here are supposed to help demonstrate new activities, ones that encourage speaking, use different methods of learning, and ones that encourage creativity and critical thinking.

Apart from school starting nothing much is new here. I am getting to know last year's volunteers a lot better (most of my group was placed 6 hours away) and they are all really wonderful. I think the oily food is finally catching up to me and I have been sick quite a bit the last few weeks, so hopefully that can be resolved soon too!

The power goes out here quite a bit. There have been a few times the past few weeks though where power has gone out across the entire country, including in Tbilisi (yeah...riding the metro without power is not fun!). Anyways, one day some friends and I were talking about something that had occurred on one of those nights:

Person A: Oh that was that one night when the lights went out

Person B: ...In Georgia!