Orientation & Staging

Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City

It's the last night of orientation - I've been with the same 58 people on the outskirts of Tbilisi for the last week and it's been weird. The U.S. Embassy and a MacDonald's are in view but out of reach. None of my pictures of Georgia are loading, but I haven't really been anywhere yet, so it's ok.

We had staging in Chicago, where we had a few introductory sessions on Peace Corps (PC) policies and Georgia and got to know each other. I got there a day early and couchsurfed with a botanist and went to a willow identification and cocktails event which was a good time. Other than that, I met many other PC volunteers, one college friend, biked 7 miles, drank some very fancy tiki beverages, went to the Art Institute, and fell in love with a dead architect. 

After that we had a 26 hour journey to Tbilisi, where we had the pleasure of arriving at 3:45 am, to the sounds of the G16/15s and staff members yelling and clapping at us. We got to see our first Georgian sunrise and then began our first day of orientation 6 hours later. Since then, we have been more or less confined to a hotel and its grounds, which becomes very claustrophobic very quickly. I've wandered off a bit to see the surrounding marshes and ponds (many frogs! some turtles! one tropical-looking lizard! middle-aged fishermen enjoying afternoons alone!) and on the last day, to the bread/liquor stores at the main road. There are a lot of wild dogs that people are worried by but they seem more scared of me than I am of them. The food is good, the coffee is instant but constant, and the hotel we are staying in is odd but pleasant. Georgian is somewhat difficult but I feel prepared to learn it, and have not struggled too much in my (2) classes so far. I have yet to figure out the Georgian keyboard on my computer.

We leave tomorrow for our pre-service training (PST) villages, where we will be in individual host families, with five or six volunteers per village. I am very excited to finally go out in the world, after this week of pacing one way around the track and then the other.