Winter

Chillin' with my sitemate on Georgia's best proportioned bridge.

I guess I forgot about November and December, they flew by like this year has. Winter has fallen in large clumps of soggy snow, sliding off the roof at me every time I go downstairs to the kitchen or bathroom. It took about 3 days for me to get over the excitement of living in the snow for the first time ever - my first time seeing snow flakes! Understanding that snow can be soft, not the clumpy icy stuff that we visited on my middle school ski trip! I am now eagerly awaiting late spring, only 5 or so months away. The snow also seems to have scared off our relatively consistent electricity - during the summer we had occasional power outages, but lately it's felt more like we have occasional power. The lack of electricity has been one factor inhibiting my blogging (and working more generally). Without lights or my electric heater, my hands freeze and my computer dies and I just go to sleep and pretend that I'll wake up early and there will be power and I'll do my work then. That never happens.

Snowy days in Sataplia, just outside of Kutaisi.

On the plus side, the winter schedule started in mid-November, and now school starts at 9:30, a blessing for me, since I am deeply troubled by having to wake up before the sun. Unfortunately our school's heating also requires electricity, so when the power is out our classes are only 1/2 an hour each, because it's too cold and everyone wants to go home. On the first day it really snowed school was canceled at 12 because there were only about 6 students there, and 6 teachers, and we did shots in the school kitchen instead. Today I followed a student to the very crowded guard's shack in the yard (he has a petchi/woodstove) and made her speak English with me there, since I felt like I couldn't force her wet and cold self to come inside and actually attend the lesson and also catch pneumonia. I have a waterproof hood-to-ankle coat that I thought was absurd while purchasing it in the depths of northern California weather, but I have since changed my mind. Now all I need are waterproof shoes, and about 7 more pairs of wool socks. Apparently we have a school bus only when the weather is nice - when there're more than 6 inches of snow we walk.

But really, snow camping in a dinosaur park is something everyone who visits Georgia should do.

Sneaky pics of the GLOW Georgia Mother-Daughter Conference in Kobuleti.

Since October I've gone camping in the snow at a dinosaur park, been to a language training and reached "Intermediate High" level in Georgian, written my first real grant, been rejected for my first real grant, tried unsuccessfully to write an article about a scientist, been to a lot of meetings, visited Kvishkheti, Zestaponi, Kutaisi, Batumi, Tbilisi, Tserovani, and Kobuleti, lost my computer, had my computer returned to me by a very kind Giorgi, celebrated the prophet Muhammad's birthday with my host family (weeks after Muslims in other countries did...), helped organize a conference for rural mothers and daughters, helped organize a meeting on diversity issues in the Peace Corps community, quit the Peace Corps Georgia Diversity Working Group, attended more trainings, and eaten about 40 potato piroshki. More details about these events may or may not follow.

L-R my counterpart, me, and another teacher from Adjara at the Tyrell Corporation HQ in Tbilisi for training.

Feasting and singing and dancing with my coworkers at my counterpart's birthday party.

Fruits of November in Batumi - pumpkins, persimmons, quince, mandarins, kiwis, and guavas.

For now, I'm adapting to a new mode of life, working while sitting on the floor a foot from my electric heater (oh wait, I did that in California too, I just didn't realize how warm it was there...). Summer and fall's vegetables and fruits are gone - just a few last wrinkly grapes, and some persimmons and pears are left. I've heard that it's just cabbage and potatoes from here on out, but we've started eating the canned foods - canned salad, adjika (red pepper sauce), tomato preserves, pickles, jam, and compote, so far.  There's random cloth stuffed in the large holes in my windows, I put scotch tape over the smaller ones, and my host family re-did their roof so my plants are no longer self-watering. I've moved all of my plants and a few of my host family's into my room, which I think is nice but the fam definitely thinks is a little odd. Every week or so I go to the unoccupied section of the house next to mine with 14 beds and steal another blanket.

6th grade, very proud of their snowman.

Georgians celebrate New Years as the big winter holiday, and my school has been getting ready for an end of the year concert and I've been decorating my classroom with my students. I'm apparently a fun enough teacher that kids come to my classroom during breaks, and since I've struggled to organize after school activities at my tiny school, I've been working on utilizing those times for "cultural exchange" or whatever. When I was a kid, pre-Rugby thumb injury, I was a master snowflake artist, so I've been teaching any students that want to learn how to make them. Paper crafts seem very popular  here - my counterpart made a very fancy paper tree, my host mom showed me how to make some cool paper star decorations, and my host sister has been showing me endless videos of paper things that she wants me to figure out how to do with her. I'm content with snowflakes though, and delighted that students of all genders and ages seem interested in making them, though perhaps not quite as interested in cleaning up the tiny pieces of paper that are everywhere afterward. Sometimes when only one student shows up to class I make them make snowflakes too and teach them useful vocabulary like "I'm freezing," "cut," and "fold," since we'd have to re-do any book work once the rest of the students returned anyway. In addition to decorations, my director requested that I teach some students an English or American song for the Christmas/New Years show, so now I, the atheist English teacher, am teaching a predominantly Muslim group of students "Silent Night," because I try to make my director happy, and the students really enjoy singing. They also wanted me to teach them a song called "Last Christmas," but I had never heard it before and it has a lot more words in it, so we've agreed to postpone that for next year. Unfortunately Georgian winter break starts on the 29th, so I'm leaving early to celebrate American Christmas with my Thai father in Thailand and I will miss the show, but I will be warm.

My classroom.

The Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, Georgia's best known former UNESCO World Heritage Site...

Wild horses in the snow in front of my house, apparently if I want one all I have to do is feed it corn.

Me & the park rangers' snow dog at Sataplia.

**PS this post was written in early December & I forgot to post it but here you go

Sezonebi/სეზონები

October in Jalabashvilebi: Summer ended late but suddenly.

There are two words for "season" in Georgian, and I want you to know that I know them both, sometimes. As I sit here shivering in two wool sweaters I still vividly remember packing away my winter clothes, how did summer pass so quickly?

Mariam & Anano, Kvishkheti in early June

One thing that I've really enjoyed here is experiencing seasons. Northern California really just has the more fog and less fog seasons, and sometimes not even that, New Orleans' hurricane season and snoball season and Mardi Gras season and festival season were mostly lovely, monsoon season in Thailand less so. Here, for the first time, I am experiencing the kinds of seasons that I've seen in movies and read about for my whole life. A cool spring, and then green and flowers, then a hot beautiful summer, then a too hot September, and then suddenly it's fall and leaves are changing color and petchis are roaring and it's cold. I thought it would be best to write this post before I experience winter, because my feelings will probably be less enthusiastic.

May in Bublisitkhe.

Ice-cream walks with Diana, nowhere, Shuakhevi, July.

Studying a language in its native country for longer than a few months is a wonderful experience. I studied abroad in college but for shorter periods of time, and unfortunately with less commitment to studying and understanding the people I lived with. Here, whether I've matured or just have fewer options for distraction, I study for an hour every day and hang out in the teacher's lounge and spend time with my family, and keep learning (and sometimes I look at my phone and don't learn as much). One of my favorite things that I've noticed about language learning and time here is that it slowly teaches you the words you need to know, as you need to know them. Unfortunately, the word of this season may be umbrella. During pre-service training (PST), I struggled to remember certain important words - cheese, grapes, job. When I got to site, it was watermelon, desk, the name of the village I might live in. Soon it'll be snow and frost. To combat this difficulty, I study. I have flashcards and verb charts and a notebook for new words and all of that fun stuff, but really time does the job best.

I got here in April, but it was still winter. Datchi in Kvishkheti.

Picking cherries with Datchi, Kvishkheti, May.

Our textbook has a giant list of food words, and I made a flashcard for each of them, but the ones that I never eat, I never really learn. There's still one in the pile for "dried, hardened bread a la crouton," because I have been fortunate enough not to encounter it yet in the non-book world. Instead, I learn them at the beginning of the seasons, when I go out to the garden or field with the family and try to understand what they're telling me to pick or when my host sister is still excited about watermelon, or grapes, and comes up to my room to tell me to come downstairs and eat some with the family. I never say no to a fruit invitation.

October grapes in Kvishkheti

Roadside fig, Diana's hand, September in Mosiashvilebi

My persimmon flashcard that's been floating around for months is finally approaching the end (I have a system that involves getting a flashcard right 6 times before I cross out the word on it and use it again). "Khurma," (ხურმა) a delicious word for a fruit I don't really like that much. You can also call them "karalioki," (კარალიოკი) but I think that's Russian and I don't like that word much. In a non-coincidence, the persimmons outside of my bedroom window are ripening, and the first slightly-greenish ones have just reached the bazaar. By the time they are fully ripe I will never forget the word for persimmon, as I will remember cherry, plum, strawberry, watermelon, hazelnut, fig, grape, corn, and pumpkin, in that order. I'm looking forward to pomegranate and chestnut.

Red leaves coming toward Dandalo, September

Every Single Thing I Did This Summer

A bus stop in between nowhere and nowhere, Khulo.

So it was summer and I’m a school teacher… so I didn’t have to do anything, right? No. Despite many warnings that I would be bored out of my mind during these last two months (I arrived at site on July 7th and school started on September 15th), I was very busy.

My host sister Diana & I by the very historical bridge near my house.

The main thing I was busy with was ~*integrating*~ into my community, which overlapped with the other main thing, work. Peace Corps likes to tell us that this is a 24/7 position, in which we are constantly working towards the three goals of PC: supplying qualified people to address the country’s needs (in my case, an English teacher), representing and teaching about the United States, teaching Americans about Georgia, and the PC way of doing those three things focuses heavily on integration. Integration basically means being accepted as a member of your community, and being able to use that position to stay safe, content, and effective. And of course, a large part of being able to integrate comes from learning to speak the language, so I have been studying Georgian for an hour a day on my own, and trying not hard enough to find a tutor. In addition to that, I spend a fair amount of time drinking coffee with my host mom and grandmother, doing yoga with my host sister (everyday!), wandering around my area, and picking fruit in one of the family’s many gardens/fields/vegetable gardens/other fields (I know how to name all of these in Georgian).

Learning how to make compote, a fruit drink, from my host mother.

Aside from all of that integration, I also had work duties. The week after arriving the new Keda volunteers and our counterparts were invited to help out at a camp organized by the local Education Resource Center, were the supervisor of all of Keda’s schools works along with a bunch of other people and a Peace Corps Response (PCR) volunteer. The camp was mostly planned before we got there, but it was a good opportunity to work with my counterpart, other volunteers, and some locals interested in education. My counterpart and I were responsible for the daily reading hour, which was perhaps not the most exciting camp activity, but the students seemed relatively engaged. I also helped out at another volunteer’s summer school later in the summer, where I taught a lesson and activity related to hobbies and taught a lot of extremely useful vocabulary, like “bird-watching” and “cacti.” My final collaboration for the year was at another volunteer’s girls basketball camp, where, thankfully, I was responsible for taking photographs and not playing basketball.

Keda Camp students with posters they made about (a very abridged version of) The Tempest

Another big side project of mine is GLOW, short for Girls Leading Our World. GLOW is an NGO started by PCVs that is slowly moving towards being Georgian led, and deals with girl’s empowerment through summer camps and conferences. I was selected to be on the grants & finance committee with a G16, and will be writing grants and dealing with other aspects of GLOW’s finances. This summer I also had the opportunity to attend one of GLOW’s two camps, and worked with a group of 7 girls over the course of the week. It was a very interesting experience, and I really enjoyed getting to know the girls and the Georgian counselors, who are all university students close to my age. At the camp girls learn about a very wide variety of topics that are minimally covered in Georgian schools,

We made a bunch of cheesy posteri to decorate for GLOW

A found supply fashion show! The fish dress didn't win but it should have.

Me, Analise, and Cherish, some of the G17 GLOW team.

Another thing that kept was busy was the 15 hour summer camp that all first-year volunteers are obliged to hold at their school. Mine was 3 hours a day over the course of 5 days, and required 3 or 4 planning meetings with my counterpart and director beforehand and a trip to Batumi to buy supplies. Our camp was an English camp with a focus on environmentalism, with an hour of English, an hour of environmental education, and an hour of active activities planned for each day. As with so many things, much did not go according to plan but I would still call it an overall success. My counterpart took the lead for most of the English lessons, teaching more formal grammar content while I provided some games and fun activities. I led sessions on environmentalism, pollution, and appreciating nature and also made the children pick up trash with only small amounts of candy bribery. We also played volleyball, went on a poorly planned hike to a very beautiful but also very distant waterfall, and had a potluck picnic at the historical bridge nearby, featuring a lot of potatoes and some wildly dangerous bridge jumping.

The English part of camp, featuring my classroom & one of my counterparts, Nineli.

A nature appreciation activity that even my director, Inga, got excited about.

They were already tired, and none of us knew how much hike there still was to go...

But also! Who knew such a beautiful & giant waterfall was here?

I spent a lot of the picnic picking up trash and putting it into a trash bag that someone else took away from the site, but the next time I walked to school I saw that it had been thrown on the side of the road into my host family’s field. It was very disappointing, because I felt as though nothing that I said during the five hours that week when we had talked about environmentalism and appreciated nature had gotten through. I couldn’t bring myself to pick it all up again. It’s still sitting there, every time I walk by. Maybe I’ll bring a bag down tomorrow, now that everyone who reads my blog knows it’s there too. And then I will try to teach it again, but differently, and try to remember what was said to me to make me care.

One weird picnic picture, and then all of my devices died and I went swimming.

I am also on a Peace Corps committee called the Diversity Working Group, which deals with issues related to volunteer diversity. We are still figuring out what exactly we are going to do for the next year, but we are hoping to provide opportunities for PCVs and PC staff to talk about their experiences, learn from each other, and learn about diversity related issues. Our last meeting was in Borjomi, which was a nice place to meet.

Olivia (a DWG member) & Annie, the education volunteer lucky enough to live in Borjomi.

Finally, during the month of September teachers are required to go to school every day, so I went too. Generally they seemed to prepare a little and chat a lot, but it was a good opportunity to get to know some of my new co-workers and use the school’s wifi before school started. Everyone usually stayed for about one or two hours around 11-12, and sometimes there was coffee and snacks. I was told to be there at 10 but nobody else was ever there that early. I kept coming at 10 because the weather was nicer for walking and I can get a fair amount of work done in a silent building with wifi that restricts access to social media and video content.

My school, decorated for camp.

Plus I’ve been trying to study a little Arabic everyday so I don’t forget it all and studying for various exams and also trying to learn English since apparently I teach that now.

I also went to a surprise funeral with all of my coworkers. I thought I was going on an excursion, but no. There was still hiking involved.

In addition to all of that important work stuff, I’ve also been able to see a little bit more of Georgia, though I need to work faster if I want to see it all before I leave.

A view of deep Shuakhevi, the neighboring region, from the funeral.

The first place I visited was Vaio, my friend Cherish’s site. I had to stay because my last marshutka is at around 8:30pm and I had been invited to a birthday dinner. Her house is at the end of an hour-long hike that you only usually get a ride for half of, but it is a beautiful village and her host family is extremely sweet, so it’s worth the trek.

The aforementioned birthday feast, pizza in the foreground :D

The view from Cherish's house~

Cherish, her host mom, and a host aunt visiting from Russia.

The next place I visited was Zvare, my friend Jenna's old site. We just went for the day, to hike, swim, and visit her host family, but it was lovely.

Jenna's ex-host-dogs

More lush Adjaran forest views

Post-swim snacks with Daniel, Jenna, and Jenna's host brother.

My first real trip was to Borjomi, for the DWG meeting. Borjomi is known for being home to the favorite mineral water brand of the Soviet Union, also called Borjomi. While I don’t dislike it, it’s not my brand of choice (more on that later). Two of us stayed in a very nice guesthouse overlooking the city that we happened upon after our reserved one seemed to be unoccupied by any staff members. Guesthouse #2 had a pleasantly all-female environment, with Olivia and I, two backpackers, and two women who lived there. While I feel very comfortable at my host family’s home, it’s nice to be able to make your morning coffee without a bra on. The morning after our meeting we went to some hot spring pools in the Borjomi park that I had read about. They turned out to be rather far down a path through the woods, though that hadn’t stopped the masses from getting there. We had met up with one of the volunteers in Borjomi, Annie, and ended up sitting in the icy river more than swimming in the small and crowded pools. I am ever on the lookout for more hot spring opportunities.

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I have had two meetings in Tbilisi so far, and more to come. It’s tragic because Tbilisi is between 6.5 and 9 hours from my site and between 40 and 60 lari, but glorious because Tbilisi is a wonderful city that I would never otherwise go to because it’s too far. Tbilisi is fun because I can dress up and there are always other volunteers around including ones I haven’t met and there are different types of food and beautiful buildings and tourists that I can speak Arabic with and several cablecars. I also use these opportunities to go to the PC office, where I get most of my mail and books from the library and very useful things from the free bin (All of my envelopes! A real towel! A very large scarf!). Despite all of this, I am dreading the next time I have to go back.

Tbilisi's bathhouse street, aka my 2nd favorite place in Georgia.

Also hummusbar has the best food I've had in Tbilisi and it's vegan ?! (Full disclosure these pics were taken during PST, but still in the summer)

On the way back from one trip to Tbilisi I stopped in Kvishkheti, turning a 9 hour marshutka ride into a 3 and 6 hour one. It was nice and weird to see my PST host family and the village, and I hope to go back again soon because I really want to maintain the relationships that I built there.

Remember these guys? <3 <3

While most of the trips I took this summer were work related or I was tagging along on a trip that someone else planned, there was one wonderful one that was all me. While researching my new site during PST I happened to read in passing about a mountain festival called Shuamtoba in Khulo, a nearby region. All I could find online were some pictures of it and evidence that it had occurred in previous years and may have once been the site of some illegal electioneering. The dearth of information obviously entranced me, and I had to go. I asked my friend Natali at the Keda tourism office about it and she called her Khulo counterpart and confirmed that it would occur during the first week of August, and it would be in a village called Beshumi and not in the town of Khulo. Despite my efforts, this was the most information I could find, until another volunteer happened to go their with her host family and sent me the phone number of a guy I could call to reserve a cabin. I did not reserve a cabin but I did recruit two of my fellow Kedalebi, Daniel and Cherish, to go up with me, a marshutka ride away of an unknown distance.

Marshutka views on the way to Khulo.

We paused in the town of Khulo for a bit after losing Cherish, which provided me with the opportunity to ride one of Georgia’s most scenic and underrated cablecars, and to order a meal that consisted of 7 hotdogs and a cucumber tomato salad. After we found Cherish we stopped to get her a beer after a difficult journey, and there encountered a man who decided that we would be riding in his marshutka to Beshumi. We decided not to argue and were rewarded with a small supra in a lovely field, and all the chacha we didn’t want to drink.

Happy **~~~**

Ugh just look at that cablecar

Daniel, a guy with a marshutka, and some of the most painful chacha I've ever experienced~

Eventually we reached Beshumi and wandered around until we ran into Daniel’s host family, who fed us a delicious meal and helped us find a cabin for the night. Cherish fell down the stairs of the host family’s cabin and sprained her ankle, though we didn’t know it at the time and didn’t let it stop us from our wandering. We had planned to camp if we couldn’t find lodging, but it kept raining. There was definitely not lodging though, since we had decided to come to a popular resort village during it’s most popular weekend. People come up from Adjara and Akhalsitkhe with their children because the dry air is apparently good for their health. The woman who rented us a cabin on the first night didn’t charge us because she felt bad about not having space for the second night, and they had had good experiences with prior PCVs. On the second night Brittany’s host family came back and was kind enough to let us stay in their cabin. I may have learned a lesson about the virtues of advance planning from this, but I’m not sure.

Beshumi has a lot of cabins and not much else

Jenna showed up with her host fam and I made her hike with me

Right before the rain

By the time we got to the actual festival we were already tired and it was hot and sunny above the treeline. We watched a series of very old men (I think one was 94!) dance traditional Georgian dances, and then a lot of other people dance them, and then we saw the head minister of Adjara come and say something. There were balloon sellers and fruit sellers and a lot of people with umbrellas to hide from the sun. There were also mysterious food stands with beautiful displays of local specialties that I could not quite figure out the source or purpose of, but after lingering by one long enough someone offered me a plate and I had some delicious sniori (cheese layered thing) and baklava. The highlight of the day was the horse races, which were the exact opposite of horse races that I have attended in America. They seemed to consist of all the local boys who had horses running in a big circle in a rocky and uneven field, with spectators permitted anywhere they felt safe enough to stand. The majority of the horses didn’t even finish the race, including, tragically, the one that I had bet my 5 lari on.

Mystery food and handicraft stand

The oldest dancer (94!) and a bride who just got married at the festival, awwww

A festival attendee and her pet chicken

The highlight of my festival experience~

I’ve also been to Batumi a few times because I have to go through it anytime I want to go somewhere other than Adjara, and it’s easy to come down and say hello to people rolling through. I go for the beach and the food, and occasionally for the bazaar or the cultural experiences. My best Batumi moment so far was walking to Carrefour and buying ingredients for spaghetti though. And also drinking 20 tetri cups of KVASS. I also went on a tour of the Batumi water company's intake and processing centers by tagging along on a water-company sponsored English camp excursion. It was strange and delightful.

Fun fact: on a water company tour, behind every door is... more water

The apartment facade of my dreams.

My final vacation of the summer was one night in Ureki, otherwise known as the beach with actual sand. Rachel and Dora and I went and buried ourselves in the magnetic sand and late afternoon light. The sand is supposed to have some variety of healing property. There were so many people, but no ATM. I bought pickled herring but it was very slimy and strange. Ureki was peak Georgian tourist town, and I loved it.

The beach with the sand

Also the most beautiful bus stop in the most perfect light

SNAKE UPDATE: My Peace Corps live snake sighting number has been raised to 10.

High quality evidence of one snake, by the family cow shed.