Thanksgiving Follies

Hello All-

I know that it has been a while since we have let you into the Peace Corps Georgia world, but we have been busy, no really, we have been. Since Julien last updated you on the events in Terjola, we have been to two conferences and celebrated Thanksgiving, Peace Corps style, we had out first Georgian snow storm which unfortunately coincided with the first conference, and as always we have remained diligent in our primary goal to convince Georgian children that any form of entertainment, even swatting each other with notebooks during class is superior to listening to Russian Pop (a close second on my personal list is Georgian Traditional music set to a Russian pop beat). I know you may be thinking that we should be teaching children English not pushing our own personal music tastes on them, but Russian pop is bad for the world. It removes brain cells in the process of driving one into fits of madness. These are children who are as unfamiliar with The Beatles as I am of sailing and they listen to a man “sing” (in quotes because mostly what he does is growl in a three pack-a-day smokers voice with a cheerful pop beat behind him) or a girl giggle her way through a song that lasts for no less then fifteen minutes with the chorus that is repeated a minimum of 10 times.

But enough about that.

I bet you did not have a United States ambassador come to your Thanksgiving dinner. Well, we did. We celebrated Thanksgiving a little late on December 2^nd in order to coincide with our Safety and Security All Volunteer Conference, which is as it sounds is a conference where we talk about safety and security (which this time meant several very smart people, including the ambassador, telling us what is going on in the 20 way race for president and that nobody is really sure what is going to happen) and all of the volunteers go. Mostly we go to see each other and the G6 volunteers pass the ongoing projects to us the G7s. I got some good ideas and Julien got elected to the committee that he wanted to be on, so all and all it was a very fruitful conference. The capstone of the conference is the Thanksgiving dinner for about a 100 people where the food is prepared by the volunteers and enjoyed by all. It is probably not a good indication to the Georgian Peace Corps staff of what Thanksgiving in America is like because the turkeys and stuffing were prepared by the Marriott’s chef and the meal included fried and Spanish rice, peanut butter soup (made by Peter our Peace Corps lifer who joined Peace Corps Georgia from Peace Corps Mali where this particular soup is made all of the time), mixed vegetables with peanut sauce, falafel, scalloped potatoes, super spicy corn niblets, etc. But it was very, very good and a lot of fun.

We are coming into the Christmas season, as many of you know Julien and I will be heading to regular Europe as opposed to way, way Eastern Europe as I think Georgia would like to be known instead of it’s more appropriate moniker Eurasia/Middle East. I am really looking forward to the indoor heating and more varied foods. I plan on supplementing my holy trinity of Carbs (potatoes, pasta and white bread most of the time served all together) with waffles, chocolate and beer. Healthy!

Have a great Holiday Season. Thank you to all of our loyal readers we love you all. Mom, thank you for the boots and the warm socks they have come in handy.