Mid-PST ANNOUNCEMENT

Zach #1, me, Jon, and Vadood under the chestnut tree where a man named Giorgi feasted after winning some battle in 1609
Photo: Racheli

Hello!

I am still alive. I am too busy (and too not-internet having) to blog regularly, but Georgia has been pretty good so far. I am in a littleish (somewhere between 1,800 and 4,000 people) village called Kvishkheti which is outside of a small city called Khashuri. I live with a host family of 7 people, 3.5 cows, many chickens, a pig, a dog, and a lot of barn swallows.

My host siblings Anano and Datchi eating leftovers from a holiday meal. There are a lot of holidays, I'm ok with it.

My host mom Nana and I, a selfie was obligatory as soon as I entered the house

My beautiful house for three months.

In the mornings I either learn Georgian for 4 hours or I teach English for 45 minutes and watch another volunteer and a Georgian counterpart teach for the remainder of the morning. At ~12:30 or 1 we (my 4 cluster mates and I) leave the Dmitri Kipiani Public School for lunch at one of our houses, which may be either across the street or like a mile and two bridges away.

Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and apparently pre-service training (PST) lunches are about as good as it gets - a typical one might include soup (often borsht), cutleti (basically very garlicky hamburger patties), bread, khatchapuri (cheese -filled bread), lobiani (bean-filled bread), cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, a salad (usually cabbage), a plate of whole green onions or parsley or tarragon, plum or tomato sauce, salt, some variety or potato dish, cake or candy, coffee, and juice. We are not permitted to drink wine at lunch. After lunch, if we taught in the morning we have Georgian lessons, and if we didn't teach we go to Khashuri for technical sessions.

Example lunch, Allison's house

Kvishkheti's school when we first arrived and the grapes weren't growing yet.

Khashuri feat. Vadood, me, Zach #2, and Olivia #1. Photo: Mark #1

We take a Peace Corps marshutka there, which takes about 20 minutes and is the most peaceful part of my day (usually). The afternoon sessions are on various PC things like data collections or on English teaching, which is very helpful for those of us that don't have any real English teaching experience (me.), but they can feel very, very long. We do that five days a week, we get Sundays off, and one day a week is usually a "Hub Day," where all 55 trainees get together and listen to different Peace Corps lectures, usually the more general ones about health and culture and inclusivity and all that. Those are also long but they are at a snazzy hotel (the only hotel) with wifi, coffee breaks, and fancy bathrooms.

In the evenings I wander around Kvishkheti, hang out with my cluster and the other cluster in KV, look at birds, help my host sister and host mom with English, eat dinner alone because my fam eats at like 5, study Georgian, read books, lesson plan and make materials for classes, sometimes eat second dinner with the fam, and then I go to sleep at like 10:30 or 11, which is crazy early compared to my American schedule but I think I'm adjusting alright to the village life.

A Soviet ruin from one of my walks.

Host family dinner at my host mother's parent's house - another volunteer, Rachel, lives here.
Feat. Dato, Valerie, Mariam, Datchi, Anano, Nana, and Rachel.

We have a lot of rules about where we can go and how late we can be out, so I haven't gone too far from my village yet - I'm in Gori right now for job shadowing, but for my other free days I have staying in Kvishkheti and gone hiking, I've gone to the site of the Soviet Union's favorite mineral water spring in Borjomi, I've stayed overnight in the village next to ours, Tezeri, and I've gone back to Khashuri for the day just to eat and hang out somewhere new. I still have yet to go to Tbilisi proper, but I'm not too worried - I have two entire years after training to do that.

Day off in Khashuri

KV hiking krewe - Allison, me, Josh #1, Kaigler, Dora, Tylar, Kevin, Jon, Matthew #1 - before the unexpectedly long hike~
Photo: Racheli (ty!)