GLOW Camp.

15 July 2005

So it has been quite a week for me. At our last hub day, Janeen (Peace Corps staff), announced that four female volunteers would have the opportunity to visit G.L.O.W. camp. This is a camp which was started by a Peace Corps volunteer in the first group (G1 – Georgia 1). GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World. GLOW is the first camp of its kind in Georgia. This is actually its third year of actually having camp. Back to last Friday. Janeen said that two NGO volunteers and two TEFL volunteers would be going. All interested parties simply had to state why they wanted to go.

The way that it worked out the two Masters International students, Sue and I, were the NGO people selected to go. An added bonus to this was that we were able to get a day off, visit with current volunteers, and go to an amazing camp. The only downside was that we missed a day of language.

We tend to get information here on an as-needed basis, which is not really surprising. This was particularly true in the case of GLOW. Sue and I were informed at our NGO on Tuesday that the next morning we had to meet at 8:15 to go to the camp. It was a bit anticlimactic considering just about every woman had expressed interest in going. This was simply a visit not an actual selection of who will participate in GLOW, however, it does not hurt that our group of four has already met all of the directors. I will have an opportunity after training to let the current volunteers know that I would like to work with the camp.

The camp was great. The last two years there has been one six-day long camp with forty girls. This year there are two four-day long camps. The age of the girls is 12-15, from all over Georgia. Five applications are given to each current Peace Corps volunteer to give out within their permanent site and then return to the directors. There are nine PCVs who run the camp, however, two of them are G3s, so they are leaving soon. They have both closed out their service, in fact one, Sarah, actually left the country and then came back to participate in the GLOW camp. They also have Georgian counterparts who help in the running of the camp as well as with translation, because the discussions would be difficult in English, much less in a foreign language.

The focus of this camp is on building the overall self-esteem and self-confidence of the girls involved as well as making them aware of certain opportunities and choices available to them. It was really quite an amazing experience. I know that there will be a lot of questions and I will try to be better about answering questions.

I realize this is short, but I also wanted to give you a taste of Georgian, written in the Latin alphabet…

gamarjobat. sara mkvia. khashurshi vtskhovrobdi. mshovidobis korpusis mokhalise var.

which means…

hello. my name is sara. i am living in khashuri. i am a peace corps volunteer. (nothing is capitalized in Georgian and verbs are at the end of the sentence in proper grammar).

I just want all of you to know that I just learned the past progressive tense today so the translation regarding my living situation is indeed correct. To further impress you I wrote all of that sitting down at the computer without having to looking anything up. I learned the phrase peace corps volunteer pretty early.

I hope all is well with everyone. I promise to do a more extensive journal next week. I did get sick last week and was out of commission for about two days. I went to school and to the GLOW camp, but I just wasn’t eating. I’m all good now. Take care!