My life in a nutshell.

23 August 2005

Hello everyone. I know that it has been awhile since I have posted. I apologize, it has been a crazy week. I have officially moved to Akhaltsikhe. I have a host family. They are very nice. The family name is Zedginidze – father’s name is Ushangi, mother’s name is Naira, daughter’s name is Marian, and grandma’s (Dad’s mother) name is Zina. The house overlooks Akhaltsikhe. It is quite an amazing view. I live rather close to Chris – he is the other volunteer from my group. I could actually throw a rock and hit his house.

Now to update you on the events of the last week. On Sunday August 14th, there was a supra – a feast/party where is there is a food, wine and toasting – for all of the trainees in Khashuri, thrown by one of the trainees host families. It was amazing, some of the best food that I have had in Georgia. They took very good care of us. It got pretty emotional for all us. The realization that we were about to separate and how much we had come to mean to each other was rather intense. I, personally, was not looking forward to leaving my host family. I had a really good time with them and the prospect of doing it all over again was not exactly enticing. I had two more days with them and really had wanted to hang out with the women of the family since I had spent most of my time with them.

Monday ended being a wash, because there was so much information that the Peace Corps was throwing at us in order to get us ready to go to our permanent sites. We had multiple rehearsals for our swearing-in ceremony. I don’t think that I mentioned it, but my NGO training group had decided to recite a poem for the ceremony. Our LCF (Language and XC facilitator) found a poem that six parts, so that was perfect. It turned out that the author of the poem is a rather famous Georgian poet, no pressure. Our group practiced and seemed to be alright. Naturally the most important part of the poem is pronunciation as that affects what is said and how it is interpreted. This, in some ways, is one of the most difficult parts of Georgian, pronunciation. I, of course, had a very easy section, or not. It’s all good though.

By the time we were done on Monday, we all went home to go pack and hang out with our host families. Since my host family is broken up into three homes – grandparents (where I live) and their two sons each have their own house – it is difficult to get everyone together. I ended up with Nunu and Salome that evening. It was actually for the best, because I anticipated that Tuesday would be the night to be with everyone. Oh, Peace Corps.

Tuesday was rather chaotic. PC staff was running around trying to get everything ready for departure the next day. There were, of course, logistical questions that everyone needed answered, particularly when were volunteers leaving and when were training families leaving for Tbilisi. Each volunteer had four invitations to the ceremony – two for training families and two for permanent sites, i.e. one permanent family member and counterpart/supervisor. Since I had not met my new host family yet, I thought it would be best to invite Marina and her daughter Nana. Unfortunately, Nana left on Tuesday for a meeting in Poland.

My plan on Tuesday was to go home, finish packing and hang out with my host family, but the Peace Corps had other plans. I was about to sit down for dinner when I get a call from another volunteer in my town that we have to put on business clothes and return to the PC office in town, because we are going to be interviewed by a TV station from Tbilisi. Yeah, that turned into quite the fiasco, because it was then determined that the NGO group from my town would go to a nearby town – Kveshkheti – where there were only TEFL volunteers, to be interviewed. Excellent. It was just one more thing we had to and most of us wanted to spend time with our families. It was pretty cool to be doing the interview, the timing was just off.

I got my first phone call around 6:30, but we didn’t actually end up in Kveshkheti until 8:30. Pretty sweet. The interview took place in a volunteer’s home, because the station wanted to speak with Georgians familiar with Peace Corps. In all honesty it went pretty well. Peace Corps only found about the interview at 6pm or so. It’s all good. We all got home around 10pm or so. I, unfortunately, still had quite a bit of packing to do – at this point my parents are not surprised to read this.

I got up bright and early to shower and head off to Tbilisi for the ceremony. Very early – we had to leave by about 7am from the PC office in my town. The ceremony was nice. The Georgian Minister of Education was there as well as the Charges D’affaires for the US embassy – the US Ambassador had left only days earlier because Georgian is getting a new Ambassador. There was a member of our group who delivered a speech in Georgian and English, which he did well. The performances were good overall; some of them were a bit amusing, intentionally. I think that our poem went well. The ceremony was broadcast on Georgian TV. The interview that some of us had done the night before was broadcast on Georgian TV earlier in the morning. The station then showed footage of the ceremony and mixed it with our interviews. We are hoping to get copies of the interviews for families here and in the states. I will let you know if my parents get a copy.

I moved to Akhaltsikhe last Wednesday. It has been quite an adjustment. I know that I was living the good life in Khashuri, but I have returned to reality. It is a matter of getting used to a new family and having them get used to having me around. They are very nice are taking good care of me. One big adjustment is that I had gained a certain amount of freedom with my Khashuri family and I have to go through that process almost all over again here. This is, of course, not shocking, but it can be difficult at times.

I have actually started working. I was editing a proposal for my NGO. I thought that I had some time to do this, i.e., more than the weekend. I definitely got the call Monday morning, when I was at the office, that it needed to be pretty much done, because my boss was taking it to Tbilisi today. Yeah, no pressure. It's all good. My office does not officially open until September and I'm not actually sure of the day.

It looks like a bunch of us are heading to the beach this weekend. It is not too expensive to get there and is worth it for a couple of days. It will take me about seven or so hours to get there. Yeah, that part is not soo much fun, but again, worth the effort to get there. My host family seems to be okay with it. We’ll see. I will definitely send another update after that. I hope to leave on Thursday so I can have Friday, Saturday, and possibly Sunday to have fun. We’ll see.

I am sending my parents so more pictures today. If you are able to get in touch with them, have them forward them along. I hope that everyone is well. Take care and feel free to write. I promise to get better at it.

Sara