Halfway through PST (yep, that's Peace Corps lingo).

17 July 2005

Last week was a flurry of activity for the TEFL (English Teachers) volunteers and a week of inconvenience for my NGO group, but that is life. The TEFL people came into Khashuri last week, M-F, for practice school. This also meant that hub was on Saturday. This was frustrating for my NGO group only because TEFL was using our school as the practice school. Originally, Carole and I thought that this would be great, because we would get to see some of the other volunteers in the morning. Unfortunately, TEFL ended up booting us out of our school, because they needed the room that we use for language class. Our LCF was not happy because they did not inform her of this until Monday morning. Consequently we had to do language class at our NGO. I love our NGO. We have really lucked out in that regard. However, the room we use there is really small and hot. It just was not fun to be cooped up there for about seven hours a day.

The biggest disappointment, at least for Carole and I, again was the idea that we wouldn’t get to see the other volunteers. We would not be deterred. We ended up meeting up with them after we were all done with lunch. It is nice to talk to different people and find out how they are doing and not talk about NGO stuff. I have found that the longer that I am here; there are more people in our overall group with whom I want to talk. Smaller groups are definitely forming, which is probably going to be particularly true in our group because it is so big. We (G5) are double that of last year’s group (G4).

Now for the big news. We find out this Friday (07/22) where we will be permanently placed. The NGO group then leaves on Friday to go to Bakuriani (the town I went to for GLOW camp) to have a NGO supervisors conference in apparently a rather nice hotel. We will meet our Georgian NGO counterparts and go with them to our permanent sites. While at our permanent sites we will be staying with our permanent host families. We have been instructed to bring about half of our stuff at this point so that the final move in August is easier. I think that it has been determined that I brought the most stuff of any volunteer, which is pretty ridiculous (and pretty funny). I do know that I will not be going back to the states with the most stuff, so that is nice.

However, before the thrill of finding out where we will be spending the next two years, we have mid-evaluations. This Tuesday (07/19), we will meet with a language trainer to determine our progress. This just means that we will have a conversation (in Georgian) and we have to demonstrate a certain level of understanding and ability to construct grammatically correct sentences that make sense. This has been a point of great anxiety for a lot of volunteers, because no one wants to go visit permanent site and then have to go back to the states, because they were unable to learn the language. Our LCFs have been pretty helpful in terms of assuaging our fears. There are about three trainers who are licensed to this type of language evaluation of which my LCF is one. This is helpful because she constructs her lesson plans with the notion of being to communicate ideas, plus she forces to talk in complete sentences and use proper grammar. Unfortunately because she is our LCF she cannot be our tester.

So, this will be a stressful week with a great finish. I won’t be able to post anything to anyone about my placement until I return, which will then be after July 28th. I will try to post one more time after my evaluation.
I have not been to a supra in a while. I missed out on a wedding supra because of hub day, so that was too bad. My host family did indeed call my LCF to try to get me out early, but that was not going to happen. It is pretty common for host families to call LCFs and try to get volunteers out of Peace Corps events so that the volunteer can attend the family function. Peace Corps does not go for that. They only way we don’t go to class, training, or hub is if we are dying. This makes sense of course, it was just unfortunate to miss what was definitely a good time.

At our last hub we had more current volunteers come talk about alcohol. We are all starting to get the feeling that alcohol plays a prominent role in Georgian society and that Peace Corps is concerned about the volunteer consumption-levels…hmm. Perhaps I came to this clearly brilliant realization because we talk about alcohol consumption every week, yes, that must be it. Sorry, a bit of sarcasm. This is an important issue because it deals directly with our image in the community and how we are adjusting to being Georgia. I have heard that Khashuri has about 6,000 people, (who really knows, they haven’t had a census for a very long time) but it is not uncommon for host families to know exactly what we’ve done when we have been out during the day. I bought a snack once at a store on the main street on my way home. I did not have it in front of my host family, but two days later it appeared in our house. I had never seen it there before. We really are living in a fishbowl, but we knew that coming in, we just may not have appreciated how much.

Yesterday after hub, all but one of us Khashuri went to have a beer in a café. That is really the only venue for us American to have a beer and just relax, and for some of the female volunteers it was their first alcohol since training had begun. Nine Americans in a café having a beer. Yeah, that’s all over town. We weren’t rowdy or rude, we were just there. We just have to remember this as we go about our days. It’s all good. (Sidebar: the beer which was not bad, had about 14% alcohol, between 16-20 ounces, cost 1.20 lari, which would be about $.70 in America).

That’s all for now. I hope that all is well with all of you. Take care.

Sara