Martha and Julien in... America?

Another update..

2008-09-29T21:14:00.003+04:00

As many of you may have heard, there was an out break of violence in Bolivia a couple of weeks ago which escalated very quickly and many people were killed and injured. As a result of this violence and the expulsion of the American and Bolivian ambassadors, Peace Corps has been suspended in Bolivia. All of the PCVs have been accounted for and evacuated. Luckily this all occurred before we were there so we did not have to be evacuated again.
But this does put us in a bit of a difficult situation. We were given the option of taking another transfer to another country leaving in the next month or so or we could call it a day and close our service. We have chosen to do the latter. This was a very difficult decision for us to make and we are very disappointed not to have been able to complete our service under such circumstances.
We are very sad for the people of Georgia and the people of Bolivia, that their everyday lives are now ones of such struggle and uncertainty.

Some former Georgian Peace Corps volunteers have put together a non-profit organization to fund raise and gather supplies for the victims of the Georgian/Russian conflict. If you would like to see how you can help please follow the link below.
www.themegobariproject.blogspot.com

Again thanks for reading the blog and for all of the support that you all have given us over the last 16 months. We will let you know as soon as possible where we decide to go and what we decide to do with ourselves. For now everything is a little bit up in the air, but I am sure that we will figure it out eventually.

Talk to you soon,
Martha

PS I would like to draw your attention to the slideshow in the upper left corner. These pictures are from our "best day in Georgia, ever" which coincidentally occurred just three days before we evacuated Georgia when Russia invaded the country.

Situation Update

2008-09-02T13:12:00.004+04:00

As you have seen from our blog title, Martha and I have slowly drifted out of the limbo we have found ourselves in over the last few weeks here in Armenia, and have decided to transfer to Peace Corps Bolivia. This is a result of the hard work of the Bolivia, Georgia, and D.C. staff, and I’d like to thank all of them for making this work.

This is a very exciting but a rather sad time for us, as we feel as though we are leaving behind friends, family, and incomplete projects in Georgia, and do not know when we will be able to return. Though I did attempt to look for work in Tbilisi, to try to help the humanitarian and rebuilding effort that is going on there, I decided that the situation was just not stable enough to risk going back. Perhaps Martha or I will be lucky enough to find ourselves with the opportunity to return to Georgia in the future, but as for now, we had to look elsewhere.

Our previous Country Director, Kathleen Sifer, transferred to Bolivia a few months ago, and reached out to the Peace Corps Georgia family immediately when the situation began, expressing her concern for us and Georgia. Since then, she has opened a few spots in Bolivia for her old group (G7’s), and we gladly accepted to finish out our last year with her in Bolivia. While details remain to be fleshed out, it is looking like Martha will be working as an Integrated Education/Youth Development volunteer, working on a wide range of issues, and I will be working as a Natural Resource/Environmental Education volunteer, focusing on the dramatic environmental deterioration facing Bolivia. We will start in a few weeks time, as soon as we can get our vaccines and visas in D.C.

We will keep you posted on our plans as we get more information, and we will also be posting pictures from the last few months in Georgia, as soon as we get to a more reliable internet connection in the good old USA sometime next week.

Thank you again for all your support and concern for us over the last few weeks.

We Are Safe

2008-08-12T10:33:00.002+04:00

Just a quick note to tell everyone out there that we (being Peace Corps Volunteers) are well taken care of and are currently in a hotel outside of Yerevan. That, unfortunately, cannot be said for our friends and family back in Georgia. We have not been able to gather the latest news, but we have heard reports that the Russian military are pushing into Georgia from the West. We hope that the violence ends soon, and that - possibly - we may go back to Georgia in the next few weeks, but that is looking increasingly unlikely.

We will keep you updated with the latest information. Thank you for all your emails and your concern for us.

Just some pictures really

2008-07-13T18:58:00.003+04:00

Hi All-
Here are some pictures from our trip to Kobuleti in June. We visited James' school (The Kobuleti Tourism School or something like that) and stayed with the school director Dato. It was a very lovely weekend and if you ever need some guides in Georgia I know where to find them. The school was really amazing and the staff was all very nice and they showed us a really good time and then we were shown around the Botanical Gardens in Batumi by one of the schools graduates. All and all it was a very nice weekend.

Julien, Dato, Josh, Me, Kelsey, Jeesun, Travis, Brian and some of the staff from Kobuleti's Tourism School

Julien pretending that he might consider playing basketball (with Dato the school's Director and Irma James' counterpart in the school gym)

Me at the botanical gardens (see previous post) It was quite hot

Water lilies They were accompanied by many frogs

Some Persian graffiti on one of the Giant Bamboo stalks
All Pictures courtesy of James Douglas

One Year in...

2008-06-27T16:15:00.003+04:00

Hi All,
I am sitting here in my room on the first Monday after the last day of school wondering what I will do for the summer. Today is not a good start as it 12:30 and I am still in my pajamas, but in my defense it is raining and has been for two days and that only means one thing, mud and lots of it. Mud is one of the true constants in my life in Georgia and since the 16th was our one year anniversary in country I have had a year to truly study mud in all of its variety. Sticky, sticky mud that somehow migrates halfway up my pant leg on the way to school making me look like I have come in from the fields, but making me wonder why I am the only dirty one.
Does everyone else have a magical teleporter that I don't know about? Is there some sort of secret locker room in the school where everyone changes their clothes and shoes and I am left with mud all over my pants and shoes? I think maybe it is just the incredibly slow paced walking that Georgians have taken to creates a negative entropy thereby turning the mud particles to ice and makes it impossible for them, the mud particles, to leap up all over their clothes. Who knows? I am not going to spend a whole blog entry telling you about the different kinds of mud, but let’s just say I am going to avoid going out today as long as possible and I will not be visiting my garden anytime soon. I would like to instead muse on our year in country.
We have had several visitors to Peace Corps Georgia and some new additions lately in the form of the G8s, so I have had the opportunity to tell people about Georgia, but with the intention of not trying to scare them off. I have been honest, but guarded in some of the grittier details, like the toilet situation, and the cold. We want them to make it through the summer.It has also been nice to see Georgia again with a fresh perspective.
Luckily I have also spent some time in the Autonomous Republic of Adjara lately, which is on par I believe with any of the most beautiful places on earth with its turquoise waters and jungle like citrus-grove covered mountains leading into snow covered peaks. Last weekend we went to the Batumi Botanical gardens which is the 2nd largest Botanical garden in the world. It was just amazing to wind our way down toward the sea through paths of all kinds of wonderfully exotic plants including Giant Sequoias and huge Eucalyptus trees. The only section that looked a little worse for wear was the desert section, but they can be excused, because I am pretty sure no desert plant is accustomed to over 4 meters of rain a year. Luckily it was not raining when we were there, but it was humid and hot, but it felt right for the jungle atmosphere.
We plan on going to Batumi again next weekend, to fully kill any sympathy for us as lowly Peace Corps volunteers. It's a rocky beach, does that count as roughing it? And sometimes people have sexual relations on the beach in front of you which can be a bit traumatizing, especially when boys and girls can barely look at each other in other parts of the country, unless it is to hit each other over the head with their notebooks, ahh 3rd-9th grade such lovely children.
On the Terjola front this summer, it is camp, camp, camp. Though there will be no real camping due to security concerns from a certain unnamed organization that we currently are associated with. There will be a lot of English spoken and the coups de grace will be SPACE camp at the end of the summer. SPACE used in the previous sentence is not an acronym, this will be actual space camp minus space exploration of course but with all of the cool things like egg drops and spaghetti bridge building and hopefully a well attended rocket launch that does not create any international security issues. So if anyone out there has any cool space things, like posters, movies or books that they would like to donate to Terjola's space camp please send it to us at the following address:

PCV Katchinoff
110b Burdzgla
Box 66
0194 Tbilisi
Republic of Georgia

Congratulations to Julien on a successful grant written for mapping software. Soon Terjola's region will be well mapped and labeled. Yippee! This will actually help us a lot on future grant writing because we will be able to explain what we want to do and where with a visual representation. Many maps to come I promise. We will get more pictures up soon as well.
Well I think that will be all. Thank you to all of you who have been so supportive us this past year and we only have 14 months left, See you soon (relatively).
-Martha

Calling all G8s

2008-06-03T15:36:00.002+04:00

I have heard that some of you are reading our blogs, so I thought that I would use this forum to let you know that it is not too late to turn in your MEGOBARI surveys. Please email them to me as soon as possible.
If you are a G8 and do not know what I am talking about please send me an email martha.wawro@gmail.com and I will let you know.

Thank you and see you in two weeks.
Martha

Some things to check out...

2008-05-31T11:51:00.002+04:00

So we were able to upload a ton of pictures to our Picasa account, so check them out!

http://picasaweb.google.com/Julien.Katchinoff

Also, for those of you who haven't seen this yet, I've included a widget that shows you all my shared articles from my Google Reader account, and those are here:

Julien's Google Reader's Shared Items

The Password is Cheese

2008-05-30T10:48:00.001+04:00

Nervously scanning the street, and tilting an ear towards the darkness, we wait for a sign. They must be moving the gear soon. It’s been months since Martha and I have seen a fresh shipment arrive, and users and suppliers alike are getting restless. I just don’t know how much longer we’ll last. Martha’s already started experimenting with alternatives, but they just don’t cut it. We need fresh cheese.

Let me tell you a little about the commodity we’re discussing. When it comes to traditional Georgian cheese, at least in our region of Imereti, there’s one type, and one type only. Any variety is accidental, due to quality of milk and its freshness. Let me issue a diplomatic disclaimer by mentioning that there is nothing wrong with only one style of cheese. This uniformity does, however, force a gourmand to search for those small variations in taste and texture which set apart an average batch of Georgian cheese from that which is simply delicious.

Martha and I have had them all. Cheese that is so fresh, you have trouble calling it ‘cheese’, and would rather call it ‘viscous curds.’ We’ve also had cheese so old, it approaches something closer to a pecorino romano in its dense, dry saltiness. (Supposedly, this second variety is specially aged, and is worth twice as much as the regular stuff you find in the bazaars. Where and in what conditions it spends it’s ageing process developing its special funk, I’d rather not imagine.)

This might seem as though we are betraying our Peace Corps heartiness by delving into cheese snobbery, but we are merely doing our part in our cultural assimilation into the Georgian cheesescape. You see, Georgians take cheese very seriously. Though this may not be apparent at first – you begin to pick up the signs after a while. In Sakartvelo, it’s all about who you know.

A few months ago, our host mother Zoia nonchalantly brought in a black cellophane baggie filled with what could only be described as “the-greatest-Georgian-cheese-we’ve-ever-tasted.” It was firm, fresh, and light, with the right mix of creamy, tangy overtones and slightly dry, feta-like finish. We chewed in silence, only opening our eyes to exchange quick knowing glances which acknowledged the immensity of our find. “Zoia!” We proclaimed, “Where did you get this marvel?”¹She cryptically told us that she had a woman, a neighbor, who makes it fresh, with milk from her cows.

Our mission was set. Every evening since, while our fellow volunteers scan the Georgian airwaves for news about recent Russian incursions or Eurovision song contest results, Martha and I sit on our porch, intently watching the procession of cows returning from the fields, trying to deduce which house on Lesilidze Street harbors the cows with the award-winning, gold-plated teats.

We’ve tried asking around, trying to find the source. Medea, our host cousin, when asked about it, told us that she’d help us to “score some freshie.” (That’s how we speak in the cheese underworld.) She walked a few feet, and out of earshot, placed a few phone calls, only to return with the answer we didn’t want. No one had any fresh cheese. The suppliers had nothing to offer. I tried asking one of my counterparts (the one who played goalie on the Soviet national handball team), and though she also pledged to help me in my situation, did nothing, but stared me down for the rest of the break period between classes, with a look that said “the only cheese you’ll find is the one called ‘hurt’.”

Everyday, the cows go out, and then return, their swinging udders veiny and swollen, taunting Martha and I from the street with their incessant bovine bellows. The milk must be going somewhere. The cow with the Midas udder must exist. Perhaps we are not as integrated into Terjola as we thought. Perhaps we’re not using the lingo correctly. Perhaps, when I ask for names, numbers, or locations, I come off as a complete dairy rube. Perhaps – and this is my current theory – there’s a secret society which manages the allocation and production of this mysterious magical cheese, and, as foreign nationals, we’ll never be allowed in.

In my imagination, this society, this confederation of cheese-heads if you will, must meet in some pretty swanky digs to discuss their production targets. That billionaire’s garish house/airport/mini-mall on the hill in Tbilisi comes to mind, or maybe a secret armored crypt in the basement of Sameba cathedral. In any case, this cheese OPEC is running a tight ship. Who knows the number of investigative journalists, curious foodies, or starving Peace Corps volunteers that have met their end trying to break into this tasty secret?

¹(Actually, I probably said: “zoia, es pantastikuri yveli, saidan modis?” --> “Zoia, this fantastic cheese, from where it comes?)

Blogging Blackout

2008-05-17T12:55:00.003+04:00

Sorry we've been so mute these last few weeks, but we haven't had much time to blog, or to get to the internet. With great sadness, we lost our host father Gio a few weeks ago, and joined our host family for the funeral. His laugh, bear hugs/neck kisses, and overall generosity and love will be greatly missed.
We also hosted Martha's sister Libby and her friend Emily for a few days and travelled with them from Tbilisi to Ateni, Terjola and finally Batumi. It was a rapid trip, but hopefully one which they enjoyed as much as we did. We were able to introduce them to our friends, our host families, and "our" lovely Georgia, which played a great host by allowing us the benefit of beautiful weather, warm hospitality, and full-to-the-brim marshutkas. We will be posting a gigabyte or so of pictures to our Picasa site as soon as we can get to Tbilisi, which (as can be read by our newsbar and my shared articles) may not be for some time, due to Parliamentary elections and geopolitical scuffles. Hopefully, by the first week of June, we should be able to flood your inboxes with more pictures and stories from the last month, but until then, droebit!

IN MEMORIAM

2008-05-08T12:51:00.001+04:00

Gio Oboladze

"The" not needed or appreciated

2008-05-04T13:22:00.004+04:00

I would like to say hello to my parents, on this their 34th wedding anniversary. I hope all is well and I wish I could be there with you to celebrate and discuss the Derby results from yesterday.
All is well enough here; I will draw your attention to the news links at right for further discussion on a very political topic affecting Georgia at this time that I am not at liberty to discuss in open forum. Let us just say that in case you haven’t looked at a map recently, Georgia’s neighbor to the North is Russia. That is all I can say at this time. I am only getting one side of the story, but this side seems really mad, so I am sure that the other side seems mildly annoyed at least.
In other NATO news I just returned from beautiful Ukraine (definite article not needed or wanted; greatly insulting to Ukrainian people, who speak English, mostly Peace Corps Volunteers in Ukraine, news to me). I spent four days in a former Soviet resort outside of Kiev (also known as Kyiv pronounced Keev, please see above note about insulting Ukrainian people) , which except for the Soviet kitsch could have been in the middle of Nebraska. Luckily due to the glories of Georgian Airways (aka Airzenia for those on the inside like me) and their extraordinarily sparse flight schedule we were “forced” to stay an extra two days in Kiev and instead of leaving us in Soviet Nebraska they moved us to an even more Soviet downtown Kiev. Our quite overstaffed hotel (including a reception desk on every floor, but it is a job) was right on the main square of Kiev next to the McDonalds. We overlooked the statue of Lady Victory on a giant column that was put in after the Orange Revolution, which looks eerily similar to Tbilisi’s statue of Saint George which was put in after the Rose Revolution. So I have come to the conclusion that there is a man, or a woman, who follows revolutions around and sells the new government a giant column statue. Just a thought I will have to do some research on revolutions and their architectural aftermaths.

Kiev was really nice; I would recommend it to anyone for a visit. It is easy to get around in and the cool things are pretty obvious because they are gilded. Everyplace you look there is a gorgeous church which is covered in gold, there have obviously been a lot of work done recently on these churches, because they are beautiful on both the inside and outside. We were there for the Saturday afternoon, Sunday and Monday morning of Easter, so it was really nice to see all of the people with their Easter baskets going to church to get them blessed. We also went to a Church complex which had “caves”, (in quotes because they were more like deep underground hallways) but they are the tombs for former monks and patriarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and people go down there to pray. Since many people go to the cemetery for Orthodox Easter these tiny areas were packed with people, paying their respects to these men who are housed in glass coffins in little nooks along the hallways. I thought in would be kind of gross, but they were mostly covered with only an occasional hand or foot sticking out from under their gilded blankets and they seemed to be pretty well mummified.
After the Church complex we decided to take in some anti-religion, by going to what, in my opinion, is one of the greatest World War II museums in all of the world. It was put in by the Soviets in the late 60’s or early 70’s and all of the information was in Ukrainian, so as for information about WWII it is probably both quite biased and I did not get any factual information from it, but visually it was stunning. Firstly as you walk into the complex you are met a long row of tanks. Then you are met with a giant concrete Cubo-futurism underpass from which you can hear Soviet hymns being played from a long distance and in this underpass are about five Friezes of Socialist-Realism style scenes, androgynous men and women fighting the good fight for Freedom. Then you come upon the main building which appears to be built mostly into the side of a hill with a giant statue of Mother Nation on top with a sword and a shield ( as opposed to Mother Georgia who has a Sword and a glass of wine, but the Ukrainian Mother vs. Georgian Mother is for another time). Inside the building is made completely of red granite and as the woman who takes your ticket tells you many times you must follow the arrows. These arrows lead you through room after room of amazing pictures, letters, wreckage, and thousands of WWII artifacts. It was an amazing experience and well worth the 5 Griven ($1) entrance fee, oh did I mention that Kiev is super cheap.
Julien mentioned the TGIFridays in his last post and there is in fact this delicious American fast casual chain however, Ian, my American sidekick and I did not eat their because unlike the rest of Kiev it was not cheap, but we did have a close approximation of American food at another restaurant for half the price. Julien was a little disappointed in me because when we found a TGIFridays in the Riga airport we went not once but twice in the same day. He is convinced that TGIFridays has figured out a way to bottle the essence of America and dump it all over their burgers, so he was shocked that I would give up a chance to taste a little bit of home in Kiev, but he almost died when I showed him pictures of the Belgian Beer Café that also exists in Kiev. I think his actual exclamation was “And this is Peace Corps?”. I softened the blow a little by telling him that one of the volunteers I was with at training was going to be on a train for 20 hours just to get back to site, so she probably doesn’t get to Kiev, but once every six months or something like that.
I will get more pictures up next weekend when I am in Tbilisi to pick up my dear sister who is coming to visit. I even have some shaky video for you to watch, so there is a lot to look forward to in your inboxes.
I hope all is well with you all.
Best wishes-
Martha

Geopolitical Underdog has his Day.

2008-05-04T13:04:00.003+04:00

Seen at local internet cafe: 50 year old owner playing "Civilization", (an online strategy game where one builds and commands large 'sort-of-historically-accurate' armies) and defeating the virtual Russians with relish, and being congratulated by his friends: Maladetz!

Quick Correction

2008-05-01T15:18:00.004+04:00

So last time, I mentioned I knew that it was "adgoma" (Easter) and I told everyone the definition of said word like I knew what I was talking about. Well, I was wrong. "Adgoma" does mean "to rise, stand," and I did think that that was what everyone was saying when describing our Easter. However, it was "Ardgoma" (french "r") which refers to "spiritual rising." My mistake. Apologies to all the Georgians out there who read this blog and were offended.

On another note, Martha is back from her FLEX training in Kiev, and will soon regale all of you with tales and pictures from a Peace Corps country with a TGIFridays. Hope all is well.

On Pigs and Water

2008-04-24T13:44:00.006+04:00

It is “Adgoma” in

Georgia

. “Adgoma,” of course, the verb meaning “to rise, rising, to stand” which – in turn- means that we (Georgians) are celebrating Orthodox Easter. Though I’m not exactly sure what to expect on the big day (Friday), I have learned that Wednesday night, in my corner of Terjola, is the night of the pig.

For the last several hours (it’s about 8:30PM) I have been serenaded by several dozen strident porcine death moans. What started out as a strange, unsettling and creepy soundscape has slowly evolved in my ears to become strange, unsettling, and very much creepy.

From a scientific viewpoint, this is a simple experiment in the non-communicative abilities of Suidae Budodontia. Elephants, as a counter-example, are able to communicate precise locations of predators and waterholes many miles away to other members of their pack, or herd, or what-have-you. Pigs, on the other hand, seem unable – betraying their best efforts- to convey a pretty simple message over a couple hundred yards. “I appear to be dying over here!” or “Watch out for the guy with the knife!”

Peace Corps strives to have its volunteers set realistic expectations. “Start slow and taper off” is a favorite saying in Pre-Service Training. In our Project Design and Management seminar, we are instructed to set “SMART” project goals (The acronym contains both the words “Attainable” and “Realistic.”) It is in this vigilant vein that I’ve decided to engage in a complete renovation of Terjola’s municipal water supply.

45 years ago, (which was no longer “Stalini’s Dro” but now “Khrushchev’s Dro”) the powers that were decided to create the current municipal water system in Terjola. As can be seen from my lovely “still-haven’t-written-my-GIS-grant-yet” diagram, it is a fairly simple system, drawing water from a neighboring villages’ pump station, theoretically filtering it, sending it up to our local “young-pioneers-camp/IDP-refuge” hilltop, before storing it, and dispersing it among the Terjolelli.

What happens in “Julieni’s Dro” is another matter entirely. You may recall in an earlier blog that we mentioned the power situation in Georgia. Remember the movie Power Trip you were all supposed to go out and watch? Well, as a refresher, it was the story of Georgia’s transition from a Soviet-style electrical power grid and fee-non-collection system, to the current “modern” system.[SPOILER WARNING] What was most difficult for the people involved in the project was convincing Georgians to pay for something that had, since the beginning, been free. Yesterday, I found out that this paradigm applies to water as well. While I can’t vouch for the major metropolitan areas (as has been advertised in The Economist, the government of Georgia has been privatizing like crazy, and utilities were the first to go), water, in Terjola, when you can get it, it still free. This not only translates into a complete and utter lack of water conservation, but also obviously detracts heavily from infrastructure investments.

45 years on, the system is in a poor state. After meetings with the local mayor (Gamgebeli), it was decided that water was the number 1 priority for Terjola, and that my quaint idea for a landfill-that-is-not-the-river will have to wait. (As a side note, the German development agency GTZ is building a two-story sports center in ‘down-town’ Terjola, but I will reserve my comments on this fact for a less public arena.)

Though the final financing source may only appear after I am back in the states (hopefully in grad school with my own financing problems), I know that the first step for this project is analyzing the scope of the problem. Thus, armed with my notebook, chacos, camera, and very amateurish knowledge of gravity-fed water systems, I went with Kaxa, (my director’s husband) and his Lada on a driving tour of the “facilities.” What I found in the sand was something out of Shelley, though instead of two vast and trunkless legs of stone, were rusting pipes, caved-in storage tanks and historical relics posing as pumps. “Despair” indeed.

For a couple hours, I took notes, sketched out the system as best I could, and listened to the ancient pump station operator’s lament about how things were, back when he was paid. The system today is operating at a fraction of its previous levels, only turning on for two hours a day, and only serving the lower half of town, leaving the other half and the small surrounding villages to rely on well water and dubious springs.

I don’t have much faith in the supposed “filtration” stage of the system, nor do I believe that the source is that clean to begin with. As can be ascertained by the business end of the candles in our Peace Corps water filter, there’s some pretty gross stuff in there, and its not “vitamins.”

As I said previously, I’m not sure how this project will proceed, because from my estimation, this project will fall right in the middle of the global financing gap between small <$10,000 projects and large ones >$100,000. Though, to be fair to the development community, this gap has merit: who wants to fund a project that will cost the equivalent of several small projects, but not tip the scales enough to attract the major players in infrastructure development? Hopefully, by next blog, I’ll have a better idea.

All About 'Shifts' (or, 'when the shift hits the fan')

2008-04-12T14:21:00.004+04:00

Reading Ethan Sklom's first few posts about his Peace Corps service in Malawi (see link on right) has brought up a discussion that Martha and I have often had about Peace Corps - Georgia: Why is service here hard? I mean, let's ask a simple question: How long/far will Ethan have to travel to purchase a 500g jar of Nutella? The answer to that is probably more than a 40-minute Georgian marshutka ride and 30km. So, in the realm of Nutella access, Georgia 1, Malawi 0.

However, the interesting and frustrating thing about service in Georgia is that very proximity to the familiar, while at the same time being so far from it. I hate to generalize about a country that I've never visited, but I'd venture to guess that Ethan doesn't wake up in his site, and instantly see something familiar to his previous life in the States. This, in turn, makes Ethan (and I'd love to get his comments on this the next time he's near a computer with internet) not expect anything familiar. I - conversely - constantly find myself being snapped back to the reality of life/work in Georgia, because I've let my guard drop due to being exposed to said Nutella, or some other very 'Western" thing that makes me think that I'm living in a place much more familiar than it actually is.

Additionally, Martha and I live about 3 hours' marsh ride (see how I used PCV slang? "Marsh = Marshutka) from Tbilisi, and our various secondary projects often require us to travel there on our weekends to conduct meetings and work in the Peace Corps office. Sometimes, we're lucky enough to be invited to spend the weekend with a member of the expatriate community and then our departure from our "Village Reality" really gets intense, as we are able to take hot showers and experience an almost-America/Europe for a couple days.

About 2 years ago, when Peace Corps service was a distant pipe-dream-that-might-not-happen, Martha and I spoke to a returned PCV who had served in the Caribbean, on some impoverished island (Haiti?) He mentioned that the hardest thing for him were the 'shifts,' or times when he could see the luxury resorts from an impoverished slum, or when he realized that he was less than an hour from Miami-Dade Airport. Now that I find myself in Peace Corps, I find myself agreeing with this notion, that most of my difficulties lie in forgetting where I am, and letting my expectations grow beyond what is possible. Rapidly shifting from Tbilisi's progress and big city mentality to that of "The Regions," and, in turn, trying to figure out how best to communicate new project details with reluctant community members still operating in a Soviet-Style mentality, all the while quietly noshing on Nutella, takes some getting used to.

-JK

I have grown accustomed to this place…

2008-03-30T18:26:00.000+04:00

I will say it is a lot easier to like a place when you aren’t freezing and it is reinventing itself into the gorgeous Eden that I remember from last summer. As already mentioned several times to many people, spring is in full swing here in Georgia and while that does make for some uncomfortable times on the street with the turkeys in their full mating dance ritual (did you know they go deaf for the event?)it does make for some warm days and some beautiful flowers. For those gardeners out there, we are past daffodil season and well into tulip season and past plum blossom and into apple blossom and the forsythias are at the end of their bloom. We have some trees in full leaf and some and some just starting to bud. And most importantly we are sleeping with the window open and the last frost (though I am not totally convinced we had a first frost) has past, as is evident from the petchi (woodstove) removal from the kitchen this weekend.

On the work front we have had some guest this weekend, in for our first monthly (more or less) English Camp. It was great fun and I think that kids liked it, but most importantly I think that it allowed some of the students who are really good at English to stretch their skills. We actually had three camps in one day for; one for each skill level. We played games like animal charades and Simon says… with the youngest group. We had the intermediate group do things like play Pictionary and create their own English comics (luckily the only examples that we had were in French so no copying was possible). And with the advanced group we had them debate damming projects and write their own plays. All and all I think it was very successful and very tiring. I think that it may take me the full month until the next one to recover.

One thing that I noticed about having a bunch of Americans together in one place with a bunch of Georgians is that though we are teaching Georgians English and I think many of our students are benefiting from the presence of a native English speaker in the classroom, Georgian English is rubbing off one us. The most obvious change is the unnecessary use of the definite article. The most ubiquitous Georgian English phrase is, “The Nature, it is very beautiful”. I have caught myself saying things like “the Nature”. I can’t stop myself. After another year and a half some of my students may be close to fluent, but I will not be. It is very disturbing.

One final note. I would like to make a shout out to my father, who has saved me from a summer of feed corn consumption and contributed to the legacy of “the Americans” in Terjola by sending me some seeds. Julien and I have decided that 100 pound pumpkin that we are going to grow will be remembered long after our classroom magic has been forgotten. “Remember the Americans? They taught English…No? They also grew that giant pumpkin. Yeah, them”. So Dad, thank you. I hope that with some general farming principles and some luck I can coax life (in the form of tomatoes, peppers and giant pumpkins) from the soil. I’ll send you photo updates of the progress.

Tbilisi, City of Lights, City of Dreams (and of Chinese food)

2008-03-23T08:58:00.002+04:00

Hey, we're in Tbilisi this weekend, so I was able to upload a gallery from a language competition we attended in Ryan Nickum and Jeff Haack's site last weekend. Martha's writing up a storm, so expect some gold from her later this afternoon.

- Hope all is well.

General Fevrier Turns Traitor.

2008-02-24T12:03:00.006+04:00

About 6 months ago, Martha and I congratulated ourselves heartily on avoiding a Peace Corps hardship post – like Mauritania or the like, and thus limiting our exposure to hairy insects, the ravages of quaint tropical diseases, or worse; the bat fly.

“But those posts don’t have to deal with 2 feet of snow, do they, Martha?!”

Yes, dear friends, the Imereti region of Georgia has been getting ‘dumped on’ for the past few days, and our equivalent to the Eisenhower tunnel has been closed, hereby dissecting the country in 2, and forcing the cancellation of planned trips to Tbilisi and meetings at the Peace Corps office. We’ve gotten reports of hundreds of people getting stuck on the main road, trains becoming snowdrifts due to power outages, and certain Adjaran PCV’s getting molested and chased by several mini-avalanches while attempting to walk to the nearest regional center.
This has also brought about the usual bevy of questions at school (before we closed up shop due to lack of heat): “Do you have snow in Colorado?” or “Have you ever seen so much snow?” My usual answers to these questions posed by my co-workers are “Yes,” and “Yes.” It just so happens that Martha’s sister Libby has been stuck in Durango due to massive snowfall (Pow-Pow, to use the parlance of our time), and Crested Butte has received over 400 inches of snow in February. Again, America 1, Georgia 0.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Martha and I have been coping well with the continued winterization of Terjola, thanks to the combination of our wonderful host mother, and our petchi, both of which are pictured herein. We’ve spent our time away from school frantically feeding our stove with as much wood as it can consume, eating food with enough calorie content to warm a small town or power a medium-sized battleship, reading, and doing research for our secondary projects.

A couple of quick notes from the sleeping bag:

1. I’ve just finished up “The Making of the Georgian Nation” by Ronald Suny, and have found some interesting and rather frustrating information. First, the fact that many of the very challenges and obstacles I find in my daily work and interactions at school have been previously documented by various travelers to Georgia over 200 years ago means deep frustration for yours truly. Additionally, Georgia has been, along with Armenia and parts of Azerbaijan, a contested no-man’s land between great powers for much of its history. Romans, Persians, Greeks, Turks, Mongols, and the Russians, have all pushed and pulled their armies across this region, in a never ending game of “let’s-play-geopolitical-chess-and-sack-Tbilisi-while-we’re-at-it.”

2. If you find that you have some free time, I strongly recommend perusing the following report: “Environment and Security: Transforming Risks into Cooperation” by an initiative from the UNEP, the UNDP, and OSCE. (ENVSEC.ORG) This initiative equates environmental problems and natural resources mismanagement with political instability, and strives to eliminate any environmental drivers from possible future conflicts. As they put it: “vulnerability assessment, early warning, and risk monitoring.”

It’s a really well written report, and provides a nice survey of what the Southern Caucuses are dealing with environmentally. Incidentally, its maps are kick-ass. I can say this because I’m O.K. with being both the world’s largest nerd, and a Geography major. The map I’ve included is from the chapter on Georgia, and though you’ll have to download the report to access the full legend, Martha and I are currently living equidistant from the large red circles of Kutaisi, Tkibuli, and Zestaponi, near the banks of the purple-lined Rioni river, inside some dotted line corridor, on some orangy-yellow stuff.

Visit Us!

Secondary Project Mania!

2008-02-17T15:10:00.001+04:00

Good news folks; our dulcet days spent watching entire seasons of awful (but splendid) American shows from the “now-starting-to-smell-a-bit” sleeping bags are over!

Martha and I have begun our Secondary Projects, which, by definition, are not our primary project. I’m working hard not to disappoint my community (and the American taxpayer) by helping Martha with our English For Teachers class and English Club for Students, as well as being actively engaged in on-going Peace Corps Georgia programs, ECO-Project, and the Small Project Advisory Committee (SPA).

The ECO-project is under a “project design” (as G6’s have called it) and review phase, which basically means that we are currently reevaluating everything about this very successful – and needed – program. You see, Georgia is a very beautiful place (dzalian lamazi) But, and I think I can say this without being censored by PC Washington about this, the post-soviet environmental landscape in Georgia is in dire straights. Just in the area of water (for those MWH’ers reading) there is relatively no waste water treatment to speak of, and no drinking water testing going on in Georgia. This same sort-of-scary situation also applies to waste management, illegal forestry, etc. Add to that little to no environmental or conservation education and you’ve got your work cut out for you if you happen to like “the nature” and live in Georgia.

Well, some Volunteers back in 2003 decided to do something about this and started ECO-Project, which focuses on ECO clubs and camps for secondary school children throughout Georgia, and teaches them the basics, while encouraging conservation and clean-up projects. We G7’s are looking to build on the successes of the program, while perhaps expanding our visibility and our impact, perhaps by starting cross-border projects with Armenia and Azerbaijan. In any case, we’ve got allot of work to do in very little time.

The small project advisory committee (or SPA) is a committee run by Peace Corps to manage an arrangement with USAID concerning micro-development run through PCV’s. It allows PCV’s to write small grants (under $10,000) for development projects ranging from education resources to business infrastructure grants, and – with 25% community contribution – get funding through PC/USAID. My first meeting is coming up, and with the G6’s looking at 5 months to go in their service, we will probably be looking at a deluge of projects to evaluate and critique before approval and funding disbursement.

On a lighter note, a week or so ago, (as I’m sure you’ve all heard) was King David the Builder’s birthday! While most of the world celebrated with the usual parades, and ecstatic throngs filling the streets, Terjola celebrated by sending the third grade to David’s gravesite; the Gelati cathedral (which he coincidentally built. Thus the moniker “the builder.” Makes sense.) I normally don’t associate with the third graders, aside from giving the odd high-five or fist pound in the hallway, but in this case I was invited to go along, and happily accepted. We rented a private limo (in the form of an aging converted Mercedes moving van) and sped up the tortuous road to the Gelati complex (ahead of the President, I was told) while the third grade regaled me with traditional songs, and the passages they had memorized from the history book chapter on David. All things considered, a great field trip, and a nice Georgian moment.

We’re going to continue to be busy the next few weeks, but keep in touch for more on doings in Georgia, and perhaps you’ll get a nice tidbit on what Georgian pundits are saying about primaries in the states!

- JK

Hello from Tbilisi

2008-02-10T17:52:00.000+04:00

I am in Tbilisi again this weekend working on a project for the incoming volunteers. It is weird to think that in less than six months our beloved G6s will leave us and we will be the experienced and all knowing G7s to the new, un-jaded and freshly scrubbed G8s. I hope that we can pretend to have as much useful information to give them as the G6s gave us.
Julien and I are busy, which is a good thing because as some of you know we lost our souls to a little known TV show called "Lost" or "Losti" in Georgian. I don't think that it is healthy to care so much about narcissitic people who crashed on a beautiful tropical island only to be chased by man eating polar bears, equally dangerous black smoke and "the others". I know that this description has piqued you interest, so maybe you can understand how so much of our January was lost to Seasons 1,2, and 3. But the good news is I am using it as a teaching tool, killing two birds with one stone, rewatching episodes I have already watched hoping to better understand the "secrets" of the island through a second viewing and teaching the kiddos very useful phrases such as, "Duck!", "What was that?", "Is that a polar bear?", "Quick hide in here", "When 'the others' come we'll be waiting for them with this dynamite we found in the old pirate ship wreckage." and so on.
Julien and I have also unveiled the much requested "English for adults" class. We have been asked to teach a class like this since before we even started to live in Terjola, and we had put it off for long enough, so it began two weeks ago. After a slow start with only one teacher from the First school attending the 1st week we had a bumper crop of new students last week, with about 30 attending. I think that this will be a good activity for us after school and in the summer when things are sure to slow down becuase we won't be busy with our 15 hours a week slaving away teaching at school.

See our Slide show

2008-01-26T11:04:00.000+04:00

Hi all.
Julien was able to update the slide show, so check out our pictures from France. They are to the bottom right in the sidebar. You may notice that many of the pictures that Julien took are of food. I am pretty sure that Julien, Josh and I gained quite a bit of weight while we were away. I believe the 10 kilos of foie gras may have been the thing that did us in, but it was all amazing. When something exciting happens here in Georgia we will let you know, for now we are just teaching and keeping warm, working on our secondary projects.
-Martha

"Lost" features Polar Bears?!?!

2008-01-17T15:29:00.000+04:00

A quick note to readers: I'm trying to upload a photo gallery of our Christmas vacation, and "imbed" it into the blog as a slideshow, but I'm not sure if my internet cafe connection will allow me to do it. If not, you'll have to wait until I can get to the Peace Corps office in Tbilisi in a couple weeks. (I've got a few pictures up, but it keeps crashing, so bear with us.)
Apologies for not posting earlier, (Martha and I have been back for about a week now) but due to weather/sleeping bags/travel restrictions/school starting/secondary projects, we have'nt been able to get outta town.

____________________________________________________________________

Terjola, 15th of January, 2008

Firstly, I’d like to wish you and yours a hearty Georgian “Gilotsavt Axal Tzels!” (happy new year), since Monday (1.14) was the Georgian Orthodox New Year, which is not when the Georgian Santa (“Father Snow”) comes down the chimney (or petchi flue), because that would be the other new year that is celebrated in Georgia, or the 31st of December. Yes, that New Year is also celebrated replete with a “new year’s tree,” which looks eerily like a Christmas tree, so go figure. Confused? So are we.

Second, and more importantly, I’d like to join my family in wishing our very own Joachim Alexandre Roman Katchinoff a fantastic 16th birthday. With a name like that, you know DMV is going to enjoy seeing his mug in line. I’m not sure of what legal hurdles one clears when hitting the big “one-six” these days, but I think driving is still one of them. Congratulations Jo, and I hope you had a good time on Monday, eating all that varied food, in your warm house, with broadband internet, television, and my dog.

Great thanks are also in order for my mother and everyone in Europe for our recent Christmas vacation. My mom, who is currently on a NGO site visit of her own in “hot-hot-hot-Honduras!” is gathering her own charming stories of developing world transportation. (How strange it is to read emails from ones’ mother describing almost identical stomach parasites as your own! Giardia: it brings a family together.) I’m only kidding, obviously I would never publicize that my own mother has Giardia. She probably only contracted an amoeba of some sort.

Anyhow, thanks to Grazyna, and my family in Europe, Martha and I were able to spend a very lovely 21 days in Belgium and France. We went with another Peace Corps Volunteer, Josh, who didn’t mind sleeping under staircases, or sharing a room with a married couple, as long as we kept feeding his face with kilo after kilo of foie gras. Thanks Josh, for a great 3 weeks. It was nice to get a change of scenery, and, though we missed out on all of the Georgian holiday festivities, we really appreciated everything Belgium and France had to offer. We also had a chance to spend a few days with G6 PCVs Ryan and Paige (of http://www.whereisnickum.blogspot.com/ fame) in Paris. They had somehow finagled an apartment near the Bastille for two weeks, and we rang in the new year with them at the place de la Concorde (along with half-a-million people/French riot police). We also got to spend a few hours at the beach, taking in the lovely North Sea air, and the brisk Belgian coastal weather at Oostende. Remarkably, our prude Georgian eyes also took in our fair share of Belgian skin, as we happened upon the same Polar Bear club that we saw 3 years ago, and watched 1500 of them sprint into the churning frigid waters of the Chunnel. (I really should just replace “Polar Bear Club” with “Fat Naked Men,” since young Baywatch-esque women seem to have a better sense than to take a winter dip in the sea.)

A couple days ago, stuffed to the gills with great food, beer, wine, and hot new Sarko-Bruni relationship gossip, we returned to the land of the Kartvelli, ready to start an exciting and action-packed new year. Our current cold snap may have forced us to hide in the petchi-room and in our sleeping bags, but we’ve got tons of work waiting for us if we can only brave the cold. School starts up in a couple days, and deadlines for our Secondary projects are going to keep us (well, Martha mostly) busy for the next couple weeks.

Tune in next time to find out everything you ever wanted to know about new PC Georgia winter work innovations in our next post: “Julien and Martha Work-From-Home: lessons in sleeping bag texting.”

Happy Holidays! (and stuff about maps)

2007-12-15T15:23:00.000+04:00

The end of the calendar year is a good time as any to recap, well, the past year. In that same spirit of reflection, I'd like to take a moment and fix something that Martha and I should have included on this blog from the get-go: information.

"Where are Martha and Julien, and where do I find information about this place?"

Good question dear reader. Well, Martha and I are in Georgia. (Not the state, I hasten to add.) The Republic of Georgia is in "The Caucuses", which is a lovely place found NE of Turkey, N of Iraq, NW of Iran, and - of course - S of Russia.

Here are some quick links for those too lazy to Google:

The Republic of Georgia on Wikipedia

Republic of Georgia from the CIA Factbook

Cool Map Collection from Texas

Relief Web Maps: Republic of Georgia (Great Site)

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Civil.ge Newspaper

The Financial (Georgian Paper)

Economist's View of Kosovo/Georgia

[OUR MOVING VAN: A 1970's LADA]

On another note; Martha and I have moved! Without delving into the details or reasons for this change, we've been quite stressed out about this move for a while, and its good to be done with it. We're still in our same village (pronounced "Willadge") in Georgian, and teaching in the same schools. In the move, we realized how much stuff we've amassed: keeping in mind that we left Peace Corps staging in D.C. with only 2 big bags, now we've got 4 more.

Like Martha said in a previous post, we're going to be spending the holidays in Europe with my family, so you might have to wait until January to see any updates from Georgia.

To everyone reading out there, from our friends and family in the States and Europe, to Ryan in Central America, Jen in Japan, and Peter, well, wherever the hell he is in South America these days, have a happy and safe holiday season!

Thanksgiving Follies

2007-12-09T12:50:00.000+04:00

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.

The Blacked Out Place

2007-11-23T12:53:00.000+04:00

A NOTE TO READERS: The following was a post that was created one day prior to the violence which occurred on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, the subsequent start of emergency rule in Georgia, and – coincidentally – the start of a two-week mandatory site isolation period for Martha and me. If any of you have been trying to reach us via email during that time, well, we’ve been incommunicado, and we apologize. Now that we’re out of the emergency rule, (and its associated news blackout) I wish I could regale you all with tales of political swashbuckling or international intrigue that only someone on the ground in Georgia could know, however, the reality is quite the opposite. Without access to the internet, the fuzzy black-and-white Georgian TV news, or the ability to congregate, we were reliant on texts from PC staff to update us on the situation (EMRGNC RUL EN4CED...), and were left to listen to the BBC World Service to see if the situation had gone “top of the pops” by becoming their lead story. Things are back to normal now, and village life as it is, the news that I wanted to communicate over two weeks ago is still relevant. Nevertheless, Martha and I have an action-packed couple of weeks coming up with conferences and travel all over this wonderful land, so keep checking for updates!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terjola, November 7th, 2007

Good tidings from Central Asia! Or is it Eastern Europe? Wait, Mosul is 400 miles away. Does that make this “Northern Middle East?” Well, in any case, hello again friends. As I write to you, the “Position” and “Opposition” are continuing their “conversation” in the streets of Tbilisi, and this is fueling great debate and passion in the Second School’s teacher’s lounge. While I won’t go into the details of our local politics, suffice to say mud-slinging, power politics, political demonstrations and television station shut-downs aren’t a solely American phenomenon. Also, as an quick aside to my close friends and family: I’ll take the total SMS and phone call silence to mean that you’re quite worried about my safety situation. Well, you mustn’t be. Peace Corps - though a completely independent agency of the American government in the day-to-day - is in continual contact with people “in the know” during emergencies, and we Volunteers are well looked after. I’ll keep you posted on developments as they arise, but, to be honest, most of you with an internet connection (or sweet, sweet WiFi) have more access to timely information than I do.

Not much of a post today, as Martha and I have been working hard to bring the language of Shakespeare to Georgian minds, and we haven’t been doing much else. We have, however, had some exciting, and not-so-exciting developments that I thought I should share with all of you.

Prior to our arrival in Georgia, Martha and I rented the DVD “Power Trip.” (or is it Power Trip? Or Power Trip? Seriously; how does one work with a movie title? Is it treated like a play? Or a newspaper? And to say that I teach this language!) Basically, the plot of the movie is based upon the fact that the electrical power situation over the last 10 years in Georgia has been…tenuous at best. With deference to the G1’s through G6’s who really had power issues, it is improving, but we got a lovely dose of “Georgian Reality” for a couple days or so last weekend when the “Shouki” went out and - combined with falling temperatures and non-stop rain - Martha and I were able to feel rather Peace Corps-like (Candles, Shortwave Radio, Sleeping Bags at noon for warmth…) for a while.* The power has since returned, but it has continued raining for about a week, the temps have been in the low 40’s here in Terjola, and I think my “Ahh…It’s just like Belgium!” comments are wearing thin on Martha’s bundled ears.

[MARTHA WORKING BY HEADLAMP]

Lessons, by the way, are going swimmingly, if you discount the “hidden dropouts.” There’s a new UNICEF report out on Post-Soviet education challenges, and one of the most prevalent and egregious problems listed in the survey were children who regularly attend school, but refuse to participate in any class, thus “hidden dropouts.” [Link to UNICEF REPORT]

[MY 6th GRADE CLASS]

Many of these children have been exhibiting this behavior, unchecked, for years, since the teacher would rather have them silent than unruly, resulting in 10th and 11th graders who don’t know anything. In English class, this translates into a handful of students who can read “International Newsweek” (Oh, Fareed Zakaria, you dreamboat, you) and a handful who can’t tell you their name. Some of you might say: “Come on Julien; that happens over here in the States as well. All it takes is a qualified and determined teacher to reach out to them (perhaps through the power of rap music or ballroom dance) and turn these delinquents into scholars!” Well, that may be, but I have yet to find my pedagogical muse, and the 40% of students in my classes that sit and pick their noses instead of reading along to “Keti’s Tea Party” in the text book will just have to wait for my innovative breakthrough. Any cutting edge teaching ideas are welcome (I’m talking to you, Ryan Sitzman/Jason Brady): julien.katchinoff@gmail.com

[MORE OF THE 6th GRADE]

*Keep in mind that unlike the United States, falling temperatures are not a weather phenomenon that are contentedly enjoyed from behind double-paned gas-injected glass, in temperature-controlled environs holding a mug of cocoa. No; here it is experienced first-hand, since there isn’t any heat in the schools, stores, or houses, (aside from wood-burning stoves called “petchis.”) At work, for example, the second school has had hot-water radiators recently installed; however, the school has no funding to run the boilers, which run about 2,000 GEL for a month of use (a ridiculously large sum, when compared to a teacher’s salary of about 120 GEL/month, or about $70.) This fact, combined with bunker-like concrete walls, and semi-permeable window panes that leave to be desired, make for a character-building time at work. Not that I’m complaining for my own sake, but you’ll notice in the photos that the kiddos stay bundled indoors, and that my student count is slated to decrease dramatically as the mercury falls…

Finally, the tutorial you have all been waiting for

2007-11-01T08:11:00.000+04:00

Hello again out there in the blogosphere. Here it is what you have all been waiting for, a step by step tutorial on how to make wine, Georgian Style. We know that this will make you, the public feel, as though we are not suffering Peace Corps volunteers and that is true, but let me remind you just in case you feel like this may be too easy and everyone could do it, we did have to walk through a flock of chickens ( yes, Moe is still alive) and turkeys to get to the next door neighbor's house and the turkeys are in the middle of some fall dancing ritual that seems dangerous. So really we risked our personal safety to bring you this entry.
Step One: Setting: Lazy Sunday Afternoon, Julien and Martha are just setting out for a much needed brisk walk to burn off some of the new winter time food staples of fried potatoes and white bread with butter. But lo, we are stopped by Natia (pictured left with Martha doing what she does best, explaining something, Martha is also doing what she does best listening to long explaination of something in Georgian, and then translating for Julien "it's got something to do with the wine; I think you put some wine in there for a while"), our super awesome next door neighbor and the daughter of our adopted host grandma and grandpa (they are of no relation to our host family, but I see them a lot more often then our real host grandma and grandpa, so they have filled in nicely and they are great in every way). So step one: be interrupted in exercise you don’t really want to do anyway by an invitation to spend time with great people.

Step Two: Watch host Grandma make fresh bread in a thing called a torna which is a kiln like apparatus. Delicious.

Step Three: Sit down at outside table in the garden, speak about the glory that is Fall in Imereti (the region in which we currently reside) and eat bread right out of the oven that is so hot that you can barely touch it with fresh made cheese from the cow that is quietly mooing in the cow shed behind the bread making building and drinking wine in various stages of readiness from fresh juice to ten day old red.
Step Four: Be force fed delicious fresh made khachapuri (cheese bread) until you are going to burst at the seams.

Step Five: Waddle over to wine making building, which is an open air building that currently has a clay soil covered floor with six small mounds of soil. There is a small table which is covered with grapes and more food in case you worked up an appetite in the 20 feet from the table to the marani wine making room.

Step Six: Watch as host Grandpa climbs over a thing that looks like a large cement bathtub that is filled with grapes and removes his shoes and socks, this is where traditionally host grandpa would just step into the vat of grapes, but all those stems and seeds don’t seem like they would be comfortable on feet that are not allowed to set foot on the ground with out shoes (more on the health implications of going barefoot in a later post), so host grandpa put on clean rubber boots. Then the fun begins. Stomp, stomp, stomp. As host grandpa stomps, the juice from the grapes courses down the basin to the end where there is a hole and out into a porcelain catch basin.

Step Seven: Martha and Julien do the only work that they are allowed to do all day and like good Georgians, Natia and Host Grandpa ask constantly whether we are tired from our labors. What is this fatigue inducing work? We are to scoop the juice from the basin into a bucket (See Julien's work), which Natia then empties into a larger drum for future movement. It was such a beautiful sight and the juice was very good, so I imagine the wine will be very good.

Step Eight: After the juice is all collected it gets moved into the clay holding vessels (See picture, this is a much smaller version of the vessels that are in the ground which hold between 50 and 100 gallons each) which are in the floor of the marani, under the ground, to maintain a constant temperature. These clay vessels are then covered with a round piece of wood and a piece of plastic or burlap and a pipe is put in the top for ventilation and a plant piece is put in the top to keep bugs out and then the opening is covered with soil, hence the little mounds of soil on the floor. Here the juice stays for a specific period of time depending on the type of grape. Then it is scooped out and stored in any vessel you can find, from fancy clay pitchers to plastic Fanta bottles.
I must say here the wine ranges wildly in quality. We have had some really good wine and some wine that made us think that perhaps the 5,000 years of practice had not aided in refining the process. Everybody makes wine. I really have not met one person who did not grow grapes and make wine of some sort. Even apartment dwellers grow grapes, we have many times seen serpentine vines that were forced to grow from the flower bed and up several stories to the balcony of an apartment. No one seems to sell their wine, so I think that it is simply a labor of love; the love of making and drinking wine and continuing a long held tradition that is passed down from one generation to the next. Sometimes the wine is literally passed down from one generation to the next because some of the vines are up to and over 100 years old and some of the grape varieties are 100s if not 1000s of years old. It is a lovely activity to behold and maybe one of these days we can convince someone that we can actually do some of the work and we’ll be allowed to do the squishing ourselves, but until then you will have to take our second-hand word for it.

Stealing Martha's Thunder...

2007-10-31T15:26:00.000+04:00

Hey gang! Martha's going to post a blog this evening, after work, chock full of information, photo captions and a logical timeline of events, but if you're not into that sort of thing, then here's a nonsensical jumble of pretty colors and shapes to keep you going.

We found it: the fabled "golden fleece." I'm not sure if its THE fleece, but its close.

Post-carnage grape-stomping boots.
Not sure what the whitish stuff is, but it's grape-related, and may be edible.
Statue of a little drinking man (pirosmani style) in a square in Tbilisi.
The Statue of St. George in Tbilisi.
Tbilisi's "Sioni", the main church, and conveniently located next to the trendy down-town bars.

Grapes in a concrete tub. Most homes in Georgia are outfitted with one of these.
And then there was one.
A food magazine quality picture of snack-time after the stomping. A hellova bathtub spigot.

Ode to John

2007-10-20T09:52:00.000+04:00

Included in this blog entry is a photo of my brother John. I did not receive his permission to put the photo on the internet, but as his older sister I will take some liberties in the legality. He did, after all, let me take the picture, and he will be glad that I did not use some of the other pictures from this same weekend in Durango when he spent most of the weekend dressed as a pirate. Not a good-looking pirate, but a maroon velour jumpsuit clad pirate, not a pretty sight (though inexplicably it did work with the ladies). But I digress. This is in fact an “Ode to John” for being the best brother in the whole world. How did John get this title with so much competition? There are brothers all over the world who do great things, they help you move at least once a year, they pick up giant boxes filled only with books, they retrieve things from the top self, they make you laugh when they do extra stupid things like riding on recliners tied behind trucks etc. But what did John do that was so great, you may be asking yourself? Many of you know that I have an affinity for gummy candies and John took time out of his busy schedule looking at spiders, rocks, trees and various other forms of nature to send me what I can only imagine to be an entire candy aisle worth of gummy candies. While this means I will have to try extra hard not to get a cavity, it also means I am a happy camper for at least the next month or so on the candy front. For that I would like to thank him. I have included a photo showing my joy and only a small portion of the glee creating bounty.

In other news the weather has changed overnight. Just last weekend we “West Georgians” were bragging to the “East Georgians” (more on west vs. east later) that fall had not yet visited our sunny shores. We were still sleeping summer-style with the window open and just a sheet to cover us, however that all changed on Monday. We had hints that fall would come eventually. Hints like the sun setting at 6 o’clock instead of 8:30 or 9 like it did in the summer. But Monday was the day that fall came with no guessing at its arrival and unfortunately it has not left again, and I am beginning to think that it is here to stay. Monday the day-time temperatures fell about 25 degrees and at night it is downright cold. I can’t actually tell you how cold because I have not seen a thermometer since we arrived and it would be in Celsius anyway which doesn’t help me all that much, but it is noticeably cold.

West vs. East: Georgia is a really small county about a quarter the size of Colorado, so about the size of West Virginia, but it has two very distinct halves; the west half and the east half. It is very easy to tell when you are leaving one half and going in to the other because there is one main highway and when you are on this highway you go through a very long tunnel (think Eisenhower tunnel, but with more, um... charm.) when you pass from one half to another. Everyone said everything is different on the other side and they were right. The west side where I live is warmer and wetter and has more bugs and a coastline, while the east side is cooler, dryer and grows more fruit and still has bugs, but not as many. It is strange to think how different it is on the other side of a tunnel, but it is like another country all together, but fortunately (or unfortunately as the case may be for me) they all speak Georgian in one form or another, except for the people in the south, who speak Armenian and the people it the far-east who speak Azeri and the people in Samagrelo who speak Mingrelian, or the people in the North who speak Russian and so forth.

This is a picture of a cow for you city folks. I liked cows before I came to Georgia and I still like cows, but I didn't think that I would see quite so many cows. Cows are everywhere and they roam pretty much where ever including the streets of main cities and along the main highway, the school yards and in pretty much every open bit of land in the town.. This particular one was minding his own business near our formerly illustrious Young Pioneers Camp in Terjola.

Now for my last topic today. As promised I am going to continue to tell you little funny things that I come across in the Georgian language. I have not done it in a while because I have been a very bad student and have not been studying the Georgian language very well. But this is something that I came across during training and continue to come across it everyday as someone tells me some thing about their family. In Georgia and in Georgian it is very important to be able to identify not only that someone is related to you, but how they are related to you. I have included a little lesson for you. The first part is easy, but then we start getting into the intricacies of who is related to whom and how…

Mother- deda

Father- mama (confusing, yes?)

Brother- dzma

Sister- da (also means “and”)

Grandfather- babua

Grandmother-bebia

Uncle-bidza

Aunt (from mother’s side)- deida

Aunt (from father’s side)- mamida

Aunt (uncle’s wife)- bizola

Cousin (uncle’s child) – bidzashvili (literally Uncle child)

Cousin (dad’s sister’s child)- mamidashvili

Cousin (mom’s sister’s child)- deidashvili

Mother-in-law (husband’s mother)- dedamtili

Mother-in-law (wife’s mother)- sidedri

Grandchildren- shvilishvili (literally child child)

And when talking about your family you can say “my sister” or “my brother” or “my cousin” (chemi da, chemi dzma, etc.), but whomever is the generation that is older than yours you must call “mother mine” and “father mine” and “grandmother mine” (deda chemi, mama chemi, bebia chemi) or else it is blasphemous. It is these sorts of things that can trip one up when learning Georgian, so I have given you a head start on your way to speaking what is one of the oldest and most exclusive languages in the world. Lucky you.

Its The Final Countdown!

2007-10-20T08:43:00.000+04:00

Rest easy America, because Democracy is truly spreading across the far reaches of the globe. Yessir, as was witnessed by this humble PCV, power was shared with the people in Terjola this week, as hundreds of Second Schoolers picked among their own for representation on the local school board. Though our host father points at our host sister’s intriguing daily antics as a perfect example of democracy gone wrong, the election proceedings seemed to go smoothly, and all impartial international observers (me) reported no irregularities. While I’m not exactly sure of the overall purpose of the Second School Board, (more on that after I consult my contacts in the school board industry) both the teachers and the students seemed to respectfully enjoy the voting.

Additionally, I’d like to announce a new ground-breaking feature on this blog. A few months back, there was a large hullabaloo about a new Dutch television program where the viewing audience would be able to vote between several critically ill patients in need of a transplant, and, at the end of the show, said winning patient would win the needed organ(s). Well, this show turned out to be a fraudulent P.R. stunt, but continuing in the same tasteless entertainment vein, I call your attention to the new polling feature on the right hand column of this blog.

Martha and I, as you know, are in the Republic of Georgia. This means that we are living in a country where the employed and unemployed (there’s more of one than the other, but I’ll let you guess which) have gardens where they grow a sizable portion of their food. You’ve all seen the posts about our pigs (both post- and pre- carnitas versions). But did you know that we also eat chicken in Georgia? That being said, most homes in the “regions” are equipped with a couple dozen chickens running around and scratching the hell out of could-be-lawns. You might think that once you’ve seen one chicken, you’ve seen them all, but you’d be terribly mistaken. Martha and I, (as well as our host sister) have fallen heads-over-heels for a particular Gallus gallus in our yard, and have named it “Moe,” in reference to his sizable bouffant hair style. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this means that we’ve grown accustomed to his face, and we’re doomed to eat him. So starts the morbid timer. How long will Moe avoid the chopping block? (see Ryan Nickum’s blog for excellent insights on Georgian chickens, their breasts, and their processing into food) Will Moe, due to his innate movie star sex-appeal, moxie, chutzpah, luck, or what-have-you, survive the winter? For his sake, and ours, let’s hope so, but in the event he doesn’t, be among those who “called it” by voting. If you win, I’ll send you something, like Moe’s foot, or a cup of Martha’s tears.

In other news, you may have noticed that there’s been a drought of picturesque landscapes lately. This is because we’ve been (like the majority of you) working, and this means staying at site in Terjola. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy a nice “Ansel Adams” of Terjola now and again.

First off; Terjola. This picture is looking towards the South, and those snow-capped peaks are the backside of the Borjomi National Park. Also; you might notice the smoke off on the left, that's the lovely factory in Zestaponi, which (as far as we can tell) is involved solely in the production of smoke and lovely soviet-style wall murals.
Second: our abandoned local movie theater. Terjola was designated by the previous system as the new regional center, and there are a plethora (jefe, what is a plethora?) of circa-1959 buildings that now lie vacant. This picture is intended to drive all of you to send as many used DVD's as physically possible. Hope all is well out there in the States (and elsewhere), and thanks for reading!

Hey there, its been a while!

2007-10-10T15:19:00.000+04:00

How does one sum up a nearly three-week break from blog posts? How can we communicate the joys of three full weeks, without letting a tasty news morsel fall through the cracks? Pictures, tons of word-sparing pictures! Lets get started, shall we?
First off, FLEX tests! The lovely youths (pronounced you'd'z) above are part of the Terjola "dream team" who passed to the second round of the American Councils-sponsored english-language competition for a year-long exchange in the US. Out of 9 kiddies that we took to the 1st round, a full 4 got a winning ticket to enjoy a grueling 3 hour exam in Kutaisi (on their off day no less!) Their tests are currently being reviewed in Washington, and we won't know the results for a month or so. Even if none of our kids makes it to the states, (and past 2 more rounds of cuts...) the experience of taking such a massive exam will help these kids in other ventures (such as the oft-feared national exam!)

Speaking of kids, here's a quick shot of my 6th graders demonstrating their belief in the "common good." Needless to say, I will be trying to implement some sort of honor system in my classrooms, but we'll have to wait and see if the kids buy my schtick.

Last saturday, Martha and I (along with 30 other PCV's) helped with Kutaisi's yearly Breast Cancer Awareness walk (2k walk, and 5k run.) It was a great way to help get the word out on a very serious problem in Georgia and around the world. The event is put on by JSI, USAID, and others, and is growing into a sizeable event. Even the First Lady of Georgia came! The First Lady of the Nation! Yes Yes.
Here's Martha acting like the rock-n-roll diva we all know her to be, signing shirts for her awestruck fans. I'd like to take a moment to make a quick aside to Mr. and Mrs. King, whom I've been told read this site, and whose son, Joshua signed his shirts "shadow ninja." Seriously. The man also wanted to know the proper way to check for lumps, which, let's face it, is good information to know, and can save lives. Here he is testing his newfound knowledge on a pair of test-dummies.

Another picture out of the grab-bag: Our lovely stallion which brings us to the big city, the Terjola marshutka. I think it used to be a plumber's van in the Chateaugiron region of France, but these days, its transporting a precious cargo across Georgia, with retro-fitted seats, and a few tactical welds.
Speaking of non-traditional transport: check out this kids ride in down-town Kutaisi. Does'nt this ogre just scream "jump in the castle that I'm wearing on my back while a man sits in my belly and drives!" Notice the look on Martha's face; she just touched his toe, and it was "squishy."

A quick culinary twosome. Its walnut season in Terjola, and the myth is dead: Walnuts come from green things that stain your hands worse than a henna festival, and fall all around our host-families house, so we've been eating the things like fiends for the last couple weeks.

Also, cookies in Georgia come in several forms. This, a cell phone, being perhaps the least interesting, but I thought taking a picture of a gun-shaped cookie, or a cookie shaped like a famous athletic brand would get my in trouble with the authorities.

A last one for the road: This shot depicts what Martha deems to be an aberation both here in Georgia and in the US: Julien (a man) helping with the laundry. Which actually is rarer than you think, as this shot was posed. I dropped my cardboard-like poloshirt on the ground in disgust the second I heard the shutter on the camera.

Nachwamdis for now.

Day one at the 1st School, we really are #1

2007-09-22T10:48:00.000+04:00

Julien has already told you all about his first day of school, so I thought I would tell you about mine. We too had a concert of sorts. The students here love to sing and are always happy to sing any number of songs, but they also love to dance. There is a Georgian national folk dance tradition and it is taken very seriously here. Children start taking lessons very young and dancers are very well respected. The dances are a little hard to explain but they involve a lot of jumping and posing and masculinity for the men and a lot of come hither looks and purity for the women. There is a lot of spinning from both sexes and usually some sort of knife fighting for the boys - my favorite dance is one where a man spins around very fast on his knees and throws knives into the floor. What isn’t great about indiscriminate knife throwing while spinning on one’s knees? All and all it is a very beautiful and powerful tradition. This power was displayed by a seven year old boy at my concert and was very amusing because, while dancing is taken very seriously, dancers also take themselves very seriously. So this 7 year old, with all of the grit and determination of a bull fighter in the ring, whirled and struck poses like a true professional. It was quite a spectacle.
After the concert, the first form was welcomed into their first day of school and the rest of us went to class. Well we didn’t really go to class. We sat in the classrooms as teachers and students came in and out trying to figure out where everyone was supposed to be. The schedule is posted everyday, so everyday is like a new adventure. I am not sure when my first class will be or when I will be done for the day. I just go in at 9:30 (yes that is when school starts) and expect to be there until 2:30 (that is when school is over). There is no cafeteria, so school can’t last very long because the students have to eat at home. They have obviously not taken to snack time like the Czechs did when I was in school there. It was strange to be a senior in High School and have a snack packed everyday by my host mom, but that is the way it was. Here it is not so. I think because sandwiches are not popular, maybe non-existent (I haven’t seen any). When sandwiches become popular, school will last longer. I will let the people at Subway know that their lack of enterprising spirit in Georgia is a detriment to the entire education system.
I must say there are a few things I miss about living in the U.S., one is 24 hour news. I thought that I hated CNN when I lived in the states, but living here with one channel where everyone looks like a smurf ( yes they are all blue, though sometimes the skin color shifts to a greenish hue) has given me a new appreciation for information. Julien bought a short wave radio in efforts to remedy this information problem; however, the only stations that come-in in English are actually Chinese, maybe he shouldn’t have bought a Chinese radio. I would like to make a quick plea to the American Embassy in Georgia, I would be okay with any type of radio programming in English, even Fox News as much as it pains me to say it, as long as I don’t have to hear about the daily preparations for the 2008 Olympics any more. I suppose that is all for now, I have to get back to making my vocabulary lists and boning up on my Russian because even though my Georgian language abilities have far surpassed my Russian language, Russian is still the lingua franca for all foreigners here in Georgia even if you tell someone you don’t speak Russian, please speak Georgian they switch to Georgian for about 2 seconds and then back to Russian again. I don’t get it but I think I will join in on the fun.
This last picture is just something that we found funny. Well actually Julien found it hilarious, and I found it mildly amusing. It is the storefront of a Purfume Chain called Voulez Vous. This is what Voulez Vous looks like in Georgian.

First Day of School at Terjola's Second School.

2007-09-19T15:32:00.000+04:00

“Life is better in Qatar.”

This was the epiphany that simultaneously struck Martha and I this weekend. What caused our synapses to simultaneously fire in such a fashion, and interrupt our not-so-secret eavesdropping of inane conversations at an expat bar in Tbilisi was the most gorgeous television advertisement I have ever seen. Ever. Simply by the quality of the lighting, this ad made the best Nike or Target production look no more professional than the regular late-night used-car dealer hawking his wares. (We’re thinking of you; Dealin’ Doug!)
What made this ad especially poignant was its subject: a school. But not just any school. This here was the cream of the crop (if the “crop” were already of the super-creamy variety.) Here, sons and daughters of the world’s elite came together to work towards excellence in the noblest and most critical of professions: Athletics. Yessir, “Aspire; a school for reaaaaly wealthy jocks.” Aside from the 4 minutes of sumptuous slow motion with fleeting shots of 6 year olds boxing, helicopters lifting off or teenagers playing underwater tennis with golden weights on their arms, what makes “Aspire” so fantastic? They have a guy named Pele as the soccer coach, combined with the fact that this ad hit these weary eyes 48 hours before the first day of school in our lovely Terjola.
Well, that auspicious day has come and gone, and I can say that “Aspire’s” got nothing on Second School.

What we lack in stylish high speed transport, Olympic-quality gymnastic equipment or sports-med staff, we make up in our overabundance of grit, charm, and determination. Mind you, much of what was said during today’s opening ceremony (over our more-than-adequately-loud PA system) was in kartuli, so some of the staff -really, just myself and some of the older auditory impaired faculty- did not fully grasp all of the points made in the half-dozen speeches that rang in the new school year. However, I can report that there was a palpable sense of excitement, universally understood to mean that the children are ready to stop the fun of summer, by turning in those bathing suits and soccer cleats for the good ole’ paper and pencil.
Parents turned up to escort their young scholars, and warmly greeted me in a seemingly never-ending stream of handshakes and cheek kisses. I must, however, pause here to make an important point: in this blog and other sources of information about the Republic of Georgia, there has been much discussion about the undeniable macho-manliness which pervades Georgia’s man-culture. Countless times, we (and others) have (and will) discussed the incredible testosterone-filled feats that dominate the daily birja-scape in Georgia.
This might lead one to believe that Georgian men would be too busy “one-upping” each other by lifting heavy objects, wearing pointier shoes, or developing more aggressive squints to bother themselves with the tedium of child-raising. This would be a grossly false assumption. No, in the land of St. George, the only thing manlier than opening a bottle cap with your teeth or re-wiring your house using a kitchen knife, phone wire and scotch tape is being a great dad and this country’s full of them. So, macho culture notwithstanding, I got more than my fair share of virile hand shakes, followed by rather prickly cheek kisses.
I also was pleasantly surprised, during a lull in the day’s activities, with the opportunity to speak in front of the entire school, in Georgian! Was I expecting this? Nooo! Was my English-speaking counterpart nearby to aide in the translation? Nooo! I was on my own and flying under my own power, which resulted in a pedestrian bunny hop of “Hello. Congratulations on the first day of class everybody!” Unfortunately, I am still limited in my language abilities, and would really have been able to take off in linguistic elegance if only the subject of my impromptu speech had been my likes/dislikes, directions to the post office, or how many siblings I have.
All in all, today resulted in a quick and painless exposure to the students and staff of the Second School. One can only hope that I haven’t permanently tarnished the reputation of the Peace Corps, the Katchinoff-Wawro family, or convinced some of those little baoshwebi to take a look at that school in the desert instead.

Quick Pix

2007-09-15T17:14:00.001+04:00

Hello all, things are going a-o-k here in Sakartvelo. I'm not feeling too witty right now, so in lieu of a great post filled with charming and slightly sarcastic nuggets about Georgia, I'm just going to put some pictures up for you great people.

First off, Sigma: fellow PCV, and great PC promotional material.

Second, host sis Salome: a little uneasy with the pig dissection happening behind her. (aren't we all?)

Our host parents: romantically locking horns. So did Josh and I. And Josh and Sigma. and Martha and Kelsey.

Our host mother, her sister, and Giorgi. (If you think that's cute... check out the one below. Oh, yeah; that's cake on his face. Cute-splosion!)

I'm not including the pictures from the pig slaughter, A) for my father, and B) because, even though they are award-winning, they're a little much for this family-friendly site. That's all for now!

ALMOST FORGOT!! The reason I'm so tuckered out today, is Martha and I just spent the whole day running around this wonderful city called Tbilisi! Great times, and I'll write about it at another time.

Two perish, but four more enter the world... (and my more about my birthday)

2007-09-15T16:54:00.000+04:00

I am going to try to keep this short, but the family has grown again, and again; by surprise. On the very day of the pig slaughter (more later, but I will save you from the 80 pictures Julien took of the event and its aftermath) for my birthday party dinner a pig that no one knew was pregnant (I am not a veterinarian, but come on, there have to be signs) gave birth to four little baby pigs. I am trying not to get too attached to these cute, little piggies because I have been told that they will die soon and I will likely have to eat them. See picture, but try not to get attached either. I also found out that small pig meat is much more delicious than big pig meat, not actually through a taste test, but through many discussions with the host family. This discussion came about when the carnage for my birthday party was increased from one big pig, to one big pig and one small pig. I as many of you know am not a vegetarian, but after this weekend and the ensuing demise of my little pig friends am thinking about picking up vegetarianism as a hobby. I did make it clear that as there were real live vegetarians at the party there would be no big head on the table and it was agreed and I didn’t have to see pig head until a few days later when it (small pig head) was served to me for lunch. I should have made it more clear that most Americans have no connection at all to where their food comes from and most of us like it that way. I honestly could not tell the difference between big pig and small pig, as they were both served at the bacchanalian feast that was my birthday party. The party itself was really nice and I was glad to have had some Peace Corps friends come and see the new place. Our host family really outdid themselves and I think are very glad that there are no more birthdays for a while.

Julien and I are gearing up for the start of school and to get really geared up we have been running a summer camp at our schools for the past two weeks. These have been going moderately well although I think as English teachers more actual English language lesson was expected of us, but I told them from the get go that this was going to be a fun camp. I have 65 students in my camp which as you may guess is a lot, but I am really glad that we have had this opportunity to get to know each other before the formal educating starts. One problem is that it has been really hot (like 95 and there is no AC to speak of, anywhere) and because I am an American I drink a lot of water which then comes out of me in sweat form, so I am afraid I might simply be known not as the American teacher, but the" American-teacher-who-sweats-a-lot." Julien and I ran a field day on Monday which was a lot of fun and I think that the kids really liked it. It was the first time that they had ever seen the spoon and egg race or the three legged race which was really funny to watch, please see pictures. I wanted to have it on the playground, but it was the only day since we got here that it was rainy and cold, but somehow I still managed to be quite sweaty.

I have gotten several requests for my new address, but as there is not really a postal system in Georgia all of my mail should still go to the same address in Tbilisi. I will repeat it again for you:

PCV Martha Wawro

110 b. Burdzgla Street

PO Box 66

Tbilisi 0194

Republic of Georgia

I would also like to request some items be sent if anyone is so inclined.

First and foremost would be some reading material. Magazines would be the best I think because they would be easiest to send. So for the specifics I would really take anything, but People magazine, The New Yorker and The Economist the first of course for me and the last for Julien, but he will steal People and relish it whereas I will only read the interesting articles in the Economist and leave all of the weird number crunching articles for my hapless students.
Food items- it may seem as though the Georgians have this bit covered, but there are a few items of necessity that we can not get. There are an incredible lack of gummy candies here. Anything would be appreciated, Swedish Fish, Peach-Os, Sour Tongues, Gummy Bears etc. There is also a lack of hot sauce, my personal favorite is Marie Sharp’s Habanero Pepper Sauce (Hot) from Belize, but it can be difficult to find, so Chalula would be much appreciated as well. Some Mac’ and Cheese with the squeeze packet (Annie’s has a squeeze variety that is very good) because despite all of the cows they don’t drink a drop of milk.
Business Products- many of you who know me well, know that I am a bit of a pen snob and am somewhat incapable of using a simple bic ball point. I thought I would get over this affliction here in Georgia, but it has not happened yet and I have had to resort to sub par pens which make me crazy. So I would like, if at all possible, the refills for a Pilot G-2 Roller gel pen in black ink .05 width.

Thank you and that is all for now,

Martha

Watermelons...

2007-08-29T15:52:00.000+04:00

We have moved to our permanent site (Terjola, close to Kutaisi) and left our dear Ateni. Julien and I are doing a lot of walking. We will call these walks “community walks” because that is what we are supposed to be doing right now, walking around the community and seeing where people hang out (Part of our PACA development tools). They are actually “self preservation walks,” (walks to preserve the appearance of a waistline). Imereti - our new region - is known for a number of things; something about Jason and the Argonauts (I really need a guide book or a better understanding of Georgian to delve further into that one), the ancient capital of western Georgia (Kutaisi,) the home of King David the Builder and his Academy at Gelati (see previous post about Gelati) but most importantly, it is well known in this most hospitable nation as the most hospitable part of Georgia. And by hospitality Georgians really mean food and lots of it. (I am sorry that these posts are always about food and how much we eat, this is Peace Corps after all; shouldn’t we be suffering?) But we live as they live. Here, that means three squares a day, and these days that means lots of fruit, namely watermelon.
The other day we went on an “excursion.” (The photo is from a cave visit.) Our host father in his old soviet automobile took us down a very long and bumpy road in what seemed like the unending fields until we reached a band of very swarthy Georgian men sitting at a picnic table, under a tree, located next to the open back half of a moving truck. These men were all barefoot, usually a big no-no (god only knows what happens when you walk around barefoot but I am sure that either you will be left barren or you will end up with an ugly husband or evil mother-in-law, but I digress.) As soon as we piled out of the car, said our hellos and offered our hosts the ubiquitous Fanta bottle of homemade wine, the whole gang took off into the field. Julien and I followed, not sure of what we were doing or what we were looking for, because the field initially appeared to be full of grasses and other weeds, but no; it was a watermelon patch. Tucked in among the fallow were hundreds of watermelons which the motley crew picked and carried in great quantities to picnic table. A machete (itself full of personality) was then produced to cut open several of the melons and we proceeded, over the next hour or so, to eat what I imagine was pretty close to our own body weight in melon. I thought to myself; “what a lovely excursion to the watermelon patch this has been… my god that was a lot of watermelon to eat… hopefully I can have a bit of a watermelon break…augh, can’t breathe… melon suffocation…” Little did I know that while Julien and I were eating our host father was purchasing… oh yes… 200 kilos of watermelon! For you English system types that is almost 450 pounds of watermelon, which I thought maybe we were going to sell to the local market, but no; they are destined for us and only for us.
We now eat watermelon at every meal and so does everyone else in Georgia. It is a good source of hydration, and good for the liver, as I have been told by just about everyone. It was a little taste of the Georgian reality and a delicious one at that. If you like fruit; you should come to Georgia as it is delicious, fresh and cheap; our little excursion to the watermelon patch cost less than 15 Dollars at 10 Tetri a kilo.
Our new home is going to take a little getting used to, but I think it going to work out just fine. We have introductory summer camp next week where we will meet some of our future students which should be exciting, and blogpost producing. All the best and thanks for reading.

At Permanent Site

2007-08-29T15:37:00.000+04:00

Gamarjobat Megobrebi! It’s been a while. Since we last spoke, Martha and I have been promoted from lowly PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees) to PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers!) In other terms, if Peace Corps were a video game (like a weird cross between Monkey Island, Frogger, Carmen Sandiego, and Microsoft Excel,) Martha and I just beat the “Boss level,” and are now saving the princess, or what-have-you. Our promotion required us to pass all of our accumulated technical competencies, as well as language training benchmarks, and I’m proud to announce that both of us passed our LPI (Language Proficiency Interview.) Though, to be fair, Martha did pass “Intermediate-Medium” whereas I only managed an “Intermediate-Low.” (I think I struggled when trying to explain to my interviewer – in Georgian mind you - why exactly do I enjoy photography as a hobby.)While this allows us to graduate from the Training Phase of our service, it doesn’t mean that we’ve struggled through our last Georgian language class. Part of the deal with being a Volunteer, is signing up for tutoring while at Permanent Site, which we are looking forward to, since 75% of our time at Site is spent staring, mouth agape, at a stream of unknown words shot in our direction. “Did she just ask me if I liked Polo?”

I’d like to take a moment, however, to thank our LCF (Language and Cross Cultural Facilitator,) Maka. Maka was assigned to our village cluster of Ateni for the entire summer, and lived with a host family like the rest of us. In her regular life, when not saving naïve Americans from themselves, or answering inane questions about bus schedules, she teaches English at a University in Tbilisi (Go UT!) She was the person responsible for our cultural integration into the Ateni community, and also was our language teacher for the 4 hour morning sessions. Though the same age as many of us, Maka led us through the trials and tribulations of this very challenging language with the deft authority of a veteran instructor, and we enjoyed every minute of her company. (We’d like to think that she found our sophomoric antics charming as well.) She would always be present to correct our use of the post-position –shi or remind us of the correct use of Dative vs. Nominative, or help us outside of class: “Try the chicken, it is very delicious.” We will miss her company, and we look forward to seeing Maka, her Linebacker/Dancer husband Levani and their baby Saba in Tbilisi. (The picture is from the lovely thank-you card that one of our site-mates penned for the occasion of our departure. I’ll let you guess which one is Martha. HINT: Who else wears pink polos with green shoes?)

Our rite of passage into PCV-hood was celebrated by a swearing-in ceremony in a lovely art-deco theater in Tbilisi. Ministers and Embassy folk made speeches, Volunteers spoke in Georgian, Marthas sang, choruses boomed, and dancers danced. We also swore to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” which actually felt cooler to say than was anticipated by the G7’s who were too-cool-for-that-sort-of-thing (and yours truly.) A framed copy of our oath was generously given to us as a gift by our country director and I’m sure it’s something that we will both proudly hang on our cubicle walls for years to come. (I’ve included a picture of it, but NO P.C. LOGOS ON BLOGS, so I’ve blurred out a bit of the oath.) We’re still settling into our routine here in Terjola, but we will send out another post before school starts mid-September. Until then, we’ve got plenty to do, with summer camps, yet more community integration, and watermelon eating.

A New Leaf...

2007-08-19T11:49:00.000+04:00

Early last week I pledged to Martha that we were going to start writing better posts; posts which would more elegantly tread the area between “telling-it-how-it-is” and remaining “culturally-sensitive:”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Martha, we can’t keep writing this schlock!” I exclaimed, pushing back in disgust from my internet café terminal.
“Why not?” Martha muttered, not even moving her eyes from the Coloradoan’s Marriages/Obituary pages. “My mom loves reading my posts.”
“We’re not getting any respect!” I sighed, stealing a glance of the video game carnage happening on the screen next to mine. “By signing on to the Peace Corps, we were guaranteed to immediately earn the admiration of our friends and family, because we were going to ‘rough it’ for 27 months! Instead, my friends are telling me how nice Georgia seems, and how – if they had known – they would have signed up too!”
“Pietro would have a Grand Mal seizure if he saw our pit latrine.” Martha sighed, now scanning Kathy Sabine’s forecast for the Denver Area. “Who cares? The important thing is that we are telling everyone what life is like here, as well as respecting our directive to maintain a blog which is considerate of the host-country nationals, and Georgia as a whole.”
“I just think our blog has been too Travel and Leisure for my tastes, Louise. It’s time we started working harder on really giving people a flavor for life in Georgia.” I said, cracking my knuckles for emphasis.
“Fine. But don’t get us kicked out. I want to be here for the grape harvest in the fall.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the spirit of a new start for this blog; I will attempt to inject a little Peace Corps TEFL program reality into every post, to A) give everyone back home an idea of what life is truly like here, as well as B) prevent our P.C. program from being overrun by tourists and Australian backpackers before the end of our stint. (Actually, Georgia very much is trying to build a tourism sector, so the latter wouldn’t be such a terrible idea.)

That said; it’s been a rather busy week here in the Shita-Kartli region of Georgia. Martha and I are now 72 hours away from our final language proficiency interview, our official swear-in, and departure to our permanent site. While one might think this would nail us to our desks, working neck deep in Georgian script and verb conjugations, we have actually found the time to climb a mountain, witness 2 deaths, discover a troglodytic city, fly a kite, play fetch with children, AND sing a Karaoke duet (When I’m 64…) in front of all our fellow G7’s and P.C.G. staff.

Let me parse some of my words. One of the deaths was bovine (though a sacrifice!) and the other was a guy who was already dead (though an open casket!) And the rest is all true!

Don’t Have a Cow, Man.

I’ve never seen that creepy IMAX movie about the Everest expedition, but I’d wager a packet of rehydration salts from my PC med kid that none of those climbers were met at the top of their peak by a whole truck-full of Georgians who immediately pounced on their parched and exhausted bodies to offer 3 glasses of red wine and cheese bread. Further, I’d guess that there is no small church on the top of Everest in which cows are blessed, and subsequently wrestled to the ground by the overwhelming swarthy power of 6 men before being dispatched with the help of a rusty knife.

Well, if there were, it would have looked pretty awesome on IMAX, and I probably would have picked up a ticket or two (for the wife.) In my version of the story; these men, in addition to being very manly (in Georgian: MamaKatsi), were expert butchers. In less than 20 minutes, this creature of God, content to simply graze and swat flies, was transformed into Safeway-quality beef sections, supra-ready. The only cow-part not utilized by this troupe was a bile sac I saw gracefully flying down the hillside away from the disassembly scrum.

Salute Your Shorts: TEFL Summer Camps

Our technical sessions were replaced this week by a farewell summer camp for the youth of our village. For those of you who may someday find it necessary or simply interesting reading, here are some interesting facts about hosting successful summer camps in Georgia:

1. Candy helps any situation. The addition of candy – in our case a huge tub of Chupa Chups - increased attendance 400%. A dzalian didi madloba to our Country Director Kathleen (who may or may not be reading this blog) for the gift.

2.When dealing with a sudden, unexpected, and candy-crazed surge of 8 year-old boys in a camp built for studious and English-speaking teenage girls, feel free to break out the Frisbees, and, as Josh demonstrated, play fetch. The boys will not tire of this game, and it will get their sugar energy out in a productive fashion (I.E. not as many tearful face-punches, or dusty scuffles.) Violent machismo never looked so adorable.

3.Another successful and greatly appreciated “Joshtivity” was the creation of 2 kites. By just heading down to your neighborhood bazaar, and finding a roll of paper, some thin wood dowel-like pieces, some string, some athletic tape and a bucket-full of hope, sweat, and old-fashioned determination, you’ve got yourself a flying machine! (Sort of).

4.Teaching kick-ball through hand-gestures and pointing works! You might not be able to explain the infield fly rule, or any rule dealing with getting some one out; other than to bean them in the head with a soccer ball, but after about 2 hours of sweating (and burning) in the sun, you might just have yourself a little piece of Americana playing out in the Caucuses.

Week 8 over and done with

2007-08-11T17:05:00.000+04:00

Hello again sorry no pictures this week. Julien has been trying to capture some still lifes of Ateni, so you have that to look forward to and of course my opening at the Opera House or Rustaveli Theatre, the site for our swearing in in 10 days has not been set yet, but that as they keep telling us is "the Georgia Reality". There could be 500 people and a troupe of Georgian Dancers all at park somewhere in Tbilisi.
We only have about a week and a half left in training and I am really excited and really nervous for this phase to end. I will be glad to have a couple of minutes a day when I really don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to do my homework, or go to this place or that place, where I don’t have to spend 4 hours a day in a hot classroom learning a language I am now convinced was developed with the special intent of keeping people from learning it. (More on that later) I am nervous because this is when we really get into it. This is when I don’t get a text message every other minute telling me what to do and how to do it. This is the time when I actually am expected to know what to do and how to do it. That is what training is all about, right. I think that I will have free time, but maybe unbeknownst to myself I agreed to build a new gymnasium or rock climbing wall or a swimming pool, I do like swimming, at my school. Maybe I agreed to go to Southern Ossetia or Abkhazia (for those of you who are not in the know, these are restricted areas in Georgia and I can get administratively separated from the country for even thinking about going there for good reason as there was a bit of a bombing incident this week) I may have agreed to work in the fields everyday until school starts. I don’t know, Maybe this “smile and nod” thing is not the best mode of communication.
This moves us right into the language portion of this post. I would like to tell you why it is hard to learning Georgian if any of you were planning to take it up as a hobby. Firstly, there are confusing things called postpositions, these are little ending that you add to the end of a noun to indicate what you are doing with the noun because they do not have the following words, in, at, on, with, about, for, together with, to, from, until, till, than, towards, without, except, instead, despite, etc. It would be fine if there were different postpositions for different words or there was at least no overlap, but the postposition
–ze can mean on, at, to, for, about, and than and the postposition –shi can mean in, to and at. As you can see there is a bit of an overlap with some words that you use all of the time. For example if you say in the winter or in the summer you use the postposition –shi, ostensibly “I like to swim summershi” and and “I like to ski wintershi” but if you say in the fall or in the spring post position is –ze; “I like to rake leaves fallze” or “I like to pick flowers springze”. The only explanation I have received for such a gross oversight in continuity it that spring and fall are “transitive” seasons, as in transitional seasons, they are neither cold nor hot. And after you have been here for even a short time these sorts of explanations begin to make sense or you force yourself to make them make sense so that your head does not explode. And I made it seem sort of easy by using the English words which contain both vowels and consonants evenly spaced for easy pronunciation. Spring, summer, fall and winter are gazapkhulze, zapkhulshi, shemodgomze, zamtarshi. Which actually aren’t that bad compared to some others such as vvakhshmob (to eat dinner), davrbivar (to run), or gadasakhurdaveblad ( some form of to withdraw money).
And now for what you all have been waiting for, my plea for mail. Actually I have a class idea and I need some postcards, so if you out in the ether could please send me some postcards. The cheesier the better. Hello from …. Postcards would be great, so if you have some lying around at you house from some vacation you went on to the largest ball of twine or carhenge or the place where Napoleon ate dinner once, send them on over.

The address is
PCT Martha Wawro
110B Burdzgla Street
PO Box 66
Tbilisi 0194
Georgia

Last note for all you Poudre High School folks reading this post, guess who I ran into the other day, Caitlyn Ryan. She lives here in Georgia and has been for two years. It was really good to see her again. For all of you who don’t know, Caitlyn and I were in IB together and were good friends in high school and coincidence of coincidences she is here in Georgia. I look forward to seeing her again soon, well as soon, as I am allowed off leash.
Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for sending me some postcards.

Quiet Sunday...

2007-08-05T11:56:00.001+04:00

Well, another week down in Peace Corps Georgia’s Pre-Service Training boot camp. Martha and I are now in week 8, with 2.5 weeks to go before we are met with a battery of training project deadlines and final technical and language proficiency exams.

Before then; we also are hosting a final goodbye summer camp for the children of our town – sans formal English classes – and we are beginning to prep for those sweltering (but fun!) three days. If anyone out there in the e-cosmos has instructions on how to make a kite with rather limited materials, or some of those cool votive candle hot air balloons, we’d really appreciate it. It’s shocking to see how much the non-proximity of a target store hampers one’s creativity. One of our site mates, Josh, had a fantastic idea of using the materials around us by having the children collect trash near the river, and turning that frown upside-down by making boats out of the detritus and having a race (in the river.)

Early in the week, Josh, Martha and I, along with a small portion of Josh’s host family (his host brother Irakli is pictured here) decided to mount an assault on the local fortress which we’ve never actually been able to reach. Previous attempts have been mostly full of getting lost in the thick brush, losing the trail, then having to go cross country towards a ridge-line to get your bearings. This time, however, we were joined by another of Josh’s host brothers, Giorgi, who knew exactly how to turn a 1 hour adventure through the flora and fauna of Georgia, into a simple 25 minute hike along a rather well maintained trail. Once at the fortress however, we were met by a precipitous rocky crossing to get inside, which I did not feel like risking (even though Josh maintains it wasn’t a cliff, but actually just a steep hill.) I don’t know how one can capture cowardliness on camera, so you’ll notice there are no pictures of myself in this post.

On the home front, the Satakashvili family has grown to 4 more, with the addition of – is it a “litter”? – of kittens, which have been the source of much confusion for Martha and I over the past few weeks, as our attempts to communicate to our host parents that the cat was obviously pregnant was met with frequent “no’s.” Well, either our Georgian is terrible, or the word pregnancy doesn’t apply to cats, because at a lovely 4 in the morning on Wednesday, the cat’s belly tumor gave birth to 4 not-so-adorable mini-cats. Martha also wants me to mention how cute our small guard dog was in his concern over his moaning buddy throughout the morning. Yep, it’s a regular James Herriot-scape over here. By the way, Martha says hello, she’s too busy reading our Peace-Corps issued “Where there is no Doctor,” which is a really fantastic book for a couple of hypochondriacs and I recommend it to everyone.

Posing with myself and the cats in the picture is our host father Gia, who is a truly wonderful guy, and has been nothing but fantastic in our training phase of service. Although he’s currently stressed-out over an exam he has to take in order to keep his job at the local power company, he helped me get pictures of the kittens for this post. For those of you interested in the Georgian language, that request – in a truly awful and incorrect patois (but-it-got-the-point-across) of broken Georgian - sounds something like this:
“Gia, me mchirdeba potograpia internet-historiatwis chemi ojahritwis, kataze, tu sheidzleiba.”

In an earlier post I mentioned that we were involved in a practice school as part of our technical training. Well, during the last few days of that exercise, our class was joined by a very proficient student named Davidi. Almost too proficient: I created a lesson plan where the kiddies would imagine their own country and create their own set of rules, then present their creation to the class. Davidi, instead of following his classmates and becoming president of such nascent micro-states as “Dream Country” and “The Republic of Roses”, decided that – if he could - he’d create a country called Abkhazia, where the first rule would be “no Russians on our soil”, and “territorial integrity for Georgia.” Hmmm, how does one handle such a downer? Well, to start; this statesman-to-be invited all of us to visit his grandfather’s house yesterday, and we all accepted.

His grandfather lives up the road about a kilometer and a half from our house, and is the village scholar. He was the professor of history and law at three institutes in Gori, which he walked to and from everyday, and was also headmaster of the 1st public school of our town (and taught our host father). The sad point of the visit was the fact that the 1st school in which he had so much pride sat derelict and closed at the edge of his orchard at the end of the yard. Mr. Vanishvili was also, for a time, the local police chief in the village in the 50’s and 60’s, and personally picked a couple peaches for old Joe when he came to visit. He also was, he told us, friends with Shevardnadze before he turned, and regularly hosted him in the same room where we ate and drank yesterday. Interestingly enough, he also told us that within this immense dinning room full of dusty Russian and Georgian books stacked to the ceiling, and paintings of Georgian writers (as well as Shakespeare and Byron), he had put a bed, where for 102 days and a couple of weeks respectively, slept a famous linguistics professor from Tokyo University who learned Georgian and danced at our host parents wedding, as well as the editor-in-chief of Punch magazine. Mr. Vanishvili now earns his living by bee keeping, and he served fresh honeycombs with Georgian white wine, and gave us as many honeycombs as we could handle in doggie-bags. He also quoted Shakesperian sonnets (in their entirety and in Georgian), as well as told us how destroyed he was when JFK was shot, and how his mother lit prayer candles for him after the shooting in Dallas.

Well, that’s it for now, Martha and I are running late, and we’ve got a marshutka to catch.

A couple more pictures!

2007-07-29T14:32:00.001+04:00

So: This is the sign up the road from our house denoting the town's monastery which is associated with our church shown in previous posts. Linguists might be able to discern the name of our town! (Notice the grape vines growing everywhere. Not a big deal in Georgia.)
This is an action shot from our supervisor's conference at a ski resort. We were just posing in this shot, but as the business casual shows, there was much work completed by this bunch of PCT's (Peace Corps Trainees). This is a shot of our breakfast in Kazbegi. It was actually free, as a lovely man who stopped by dressed in luxury puma training wear (and a brand-new 7 series BMW, in the midst of gravel roads) decided to tell us that he loved Americans and bought us our breakfast.
Quick shot of Georgian ingenuity: multiple illegal power lines, draped over a pvc-pipe-protected gas line in Gori.
Oh oh! What this? you guessed it; more Kazbegi. Just imagine what it would have looked like with the top half showing! Marvellous!

That's all for now, next time I promise a more equal text-to pictures ratio.

Who loves their training site? We Do!

2007-07-29T14:22:00.000+04:00

OK. So many of you are reading this, and are sick and tired of majestic high mountain peaks, and want to know what's what in our training site near Gori. Well, let me tell you: We are in peak Jamming season! What does that mean? It means our host family has evolved into a near-industrial canning factory, stockpiling various fruit and vegetable goodies for the coming winter. Not a day goes by that we are not seeing sweet cherries, sour cherries, peaches, plums, you-name-it, go into a gazillion glass containers for storage. "Compoti" is a favorite, where berries or cherries are mixed in with their juices to provide a delicious and sweet drink for the vitamin-starved winter months. The jamming season has made us realize just how many different kinds of fruit and vegetable grow in Georgia. For instance, we have persimmon, quince and pomegranate trees here! Figs are so plentiful, they are thrown to the cows! (well, not really, but almost!)

Kazbegi, Conferences, and Site Visits aside, a pretty boring week or two.

2007-07-29T13:55:00.001+04:00

Where to start? Martha and I are enjoying a quiet sunday afternoon, the first we've had in a while. For the last few weeks, we've been running around this gorgeous country called Georgia/Sakartvelo, with no pauses or breaks! First things first: Kazbegi. Martha's already talked about this in a previous post, but we spent a lovely and dramatically fogged in weekend at a mountain resort town called Kazbegi. Some (most, actually) of the pictures we've posted so far are from that magical place, and we can't wait to go back and see the place in better weather. Let me explain some of the pictures. (BTW: we're sort of trying to figure out how to use our flickr account from over here, considering we've got a fairly tenuous internet connection at times, but we'll let you know when its back up.)

While we were not able to see the entirety of the majestic peak which is Mt. Kazbek, we were able to hike up and around Stepan's Minda Church, which allowed us a brief respite from a storm, and, also, the most picturesque port-o-lets I've ever seen. Some in our group wanted to attempt a early morning hike to a glacier on Kazbek on Sunday, but were thwarted by a continued rainstorm, and a pretty emphatic hostel owner at 4:30 in the morning.

Overall, a great time, and we recommend it to anyone that is thinking of coming over for a visit. N.B: If you are thinking of coming, stay at the newly-renovated hotel "Stepan's Minda", which interestingly or not, is owned and operated by Kazbegi Brewery (sort of a Georgian Coors) which actually brews its beer in Tbilisi. Come to think of it; that makes it very similar to the silver bullet, which advertizes high mountain peaks, and is actually brewed 10 minutes outside of Denver.

Also, for those who are not ex-professional triatheletes, or passionate

runners (I'm thinking of you Brian and Colleen!!) The people of Kazbegi offer charming Lada tours (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva) where instead of climbing a 4k hill and getting a bee painfully stuck between your foot and your sandals, you get to purr your way up to the top, probably with narration (in Russian or Georgian) provided a gregarious driver.

Pouring One Out For My Homies: A Sunday Afternoon Supra Toast Primer

2007-07-29T13:25:00.001+04:00

When we (Martha, our host parents Nato, Gia, and myself) were seated to a meal of soup, butter and cheese fried pasta, tomatoes and cucumber salad, cheese and bread, Gia generously asked (but there could only be one answer…) if we would like a little (tsota) wine with lunch. How could we refuse?

After a couple preliminary toasts, I decided to introduce our Peace Corps Language Textbook, and, specifically, the section where we have Safety and Security phrases. (i.e. Please don’t give me any more shots of cha-cha, or I may indeed die, or Your generosity is wasted on me, I am sickly and cannot taste your wine. Etc. etc.) I wanted to show Gia these phrases in the text to A) share a joke at the US’s expense, and B) show him how manly and rebellious the 155lb. red-head could be.

On the very next page of the text, however, was a complete and translated list of the traditional Georgian toasts, and their official progression. (e.g. “Toast for Peace” precedes ‘Toast for the Better Halves.”) This was cause for great and comical debate between Nato and Gia as one tried to convince the other one that, toast list aside, Martha and I really were not allowed to drink. No! No! Was the reply; why would they have a whole cheat sheet about Georgian Supra toasts if they couldn’t drink??!!

In any case; what followed, interspersed between a pathetic English/Georgia discussion about the local 7th century church’s frescoes as a symbol of Georgian historical territorial linkage, was a truly generous, hospitable and heart-felt explanation of the Supra Toasts by Gia. Firstly; we are -for the next two years- his children (shvilli). Second, though there are a set number of formal toasts, and a logical progression, there is NO going back up the list to visit a previously toasted element, or starting back over at the beginning. If you had to (and most Georgians do many times over) cram in more than the 9 baseline toasts (which we covered at lunch) you had to be creative, and toast each wife separately, or toast to grandmothers (bebias), THEN toast to grandfathers (babuas) etc. Also; a good pointer for those who like the vino; never ever ever take a shower less than 6 hours after imbibing. Wine and Showers are “Ara Megobrebi” (not friends). This means that Martha and I are sitting in our room on a Sunday afternoon, in desperate and well advised need of a shower down at the local bathhouse (great deal: only 2 lari!), but waiting until the wine has been processed, so some awful malady doesn’t come and rob us of our abilities to create future shvili of our own.

The crux of the toasting, however, is the toast to the dead. This is where you compare stories about bebias da babuas and other stories of war and dismemberment. This is also the time where you “pour one out for your homies” by spilling some of the wine you are drinking on some puri (bread) in remembrance! You are, however, after some time, allowed to eat the wine-sogged puri you have honored.

All things considered, a fantastic (and average) lunch in Georgia. Language training is progressing slowly, and Martha is convinced that if I don’t work on my verb conjugations (Me Minda, Shen Ginda, etc.) I may get sent to a remedial Georgian class. We also learned that a medieval ruin we’ve seen on the roadway (pictured above) is actually our host families tower: The Shatakasvili’s fortress.

Nachwarmdis,

Julien

Life on the Georgia Front

2007-07-29T13:25:00.000+04:00

Well there is a lot to talk about since the last update. We have been to a couple of pretty amazing places and learned were we are going to be placed for the next two years and I have received my first stomach parasite. First things first, we went on our cultural exchange trip to Kazbegi which is a small town in the high Caucus Mountains 10 km from the Russian/ Chechen boarder. The whole point of this trip was to prove that we have learned enough Georgian by this point to get around Georgia, but we instead proved that we in fact do not know enough Georgian to get around Georgia, but Colleen our Russian Language expert we knew enough Russian to get around Georgia ( some of you my be thinking, “I thought Martha graduated from college with a degree in Russian?” I will remind you that I graduated with a degree in Russian literature, and only two years of actual language class does not go that far). We took several modes of transport all of them scary, but fast. The Russians will not be attacking the Georgians anytime soon along the highway that we took unless it is going to be a slow moving assault or in an old rickety marshutka. The road is awful a mixture of totally unpaved, matched with giant rocks, and roaming cows that seem to hang out around blind corners and on bridges.
Kazbegi is an absolutely gorgeous town surrounded by high mountains on all sides. One of the hills is punctuated by a 12th century church called Stepansminda which is atop a steep hill. I made the mistake of going with Brian and Colleen who are super athletes and basically sprinted up the mountain. It was so beautiful at the top. See attached panorama. As a reread my journal entry from the trip I am reminded of my initial impression of Kazbegi: I half expected a unicorn to come prancing across the wildflower covered field or an elf come across the moor. The mountains were a beautiful mix of craggy rocks and rolling green hills which were covered with clover, grasses and thousands of wildflowers. All of this was highlighted by Mount Kazbeg; a 16,000 foot beast which we may or may not have seen. I have failed to mention that it was a little overcast on the day that we were up there and even this was unable to mar the beauty, it did, however, mar the view of Mount Kazbeg. All and all it was a an amazing trip and a great escape from the day to day trainings and language classes.
The picture at left is Alexander Kazbeg looking at the mountains in the city center of Kazbegi. The town interestingly enough is not named after this famous author, but his grandfather who was the toll booth operator in the area. Go figure.
Now the news that you all have been waiting for: we’re going to Terjola. I know that doesn’t mean anything to most people, as it meant nothing to us when we first found out, but now we have been there and it has made a special dent in our hearts. Terjola is quite possible the most ideally located city in which we could have been placed it is about 2 hours from the black sea and 2.5 hours from Tbilisi and 1.5 hours from the mountains and 20 minutes from Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city and it’s many internet cafes. It is a nice looking town, but doesn’t have the same aesthetic appeal as our current village. The schools are both very nice and the directors, counterparts and parents all seem to be on board with the peace corps program and teaching ideas. There is a really nice youth center and the schools should both have internet by the end of the year. Julien and I have been informed that one of the things that the schools need is for someone to teach them how to use the computers that they have, which sounds like a good idea except that to me a computer is nothing more than a glorified typewriter/ email machine with picture and music storage capabilities. Hopefully they are not expecting a computer wiz or maybe someone should send over some Oregon Trail or Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?, so that I can teach them how to use the computer the way I learned back in elementary school. We visited Gelati, which was the church of Kind David the Builder. This was a beautiful church filled with amazing frescoes and mosaics. The interesting thing about the Georgian Orthodox Church is that because Georgia has been an Orthodox country for so long there national history is very closely tied to the history of the Church. This was very evident at the church of Kind David the Builder. The frescoes inside the church illustrated a combination of bible stories and historical events. The famous kings of Georgia were depicted along with the saints, halos and all. Every inch of every wall is painted in exquisite detail with beautiful colors which were imported from all over the region and as far away as Afghanistan. The church was partially destroyed by the Turks at one point. Apparently, the Turks came at some point and stole the stone roof and fashioned the stone into bullets which, to ad insult to injury, the Turks then used to shoot at the Georgians. On this same site was also a place that was translated to us as an Academia so David the Builder was a busy guy. Well that is it for the time being if anyone has any questions or would like some clarifications please drop me a line.

Just a Quick Update for the Week...

2007-07-15T15:22:00.000+04:00

Just to let you know that Martha and I are back safe and sound from our awesome cultural trip that we were granted by the Peace Corps as a mid-training carrot. We will upload pics and news about it in about 2 weeks; when we will get access to the internet again. (In the mean-time, we find out our permanent placement site, meet our future supervisors/school directors, travel for a couple days to our sites, meet our future site host-families and have our mid-assessment language proficiency interviews, so we are very excited/nervous.)
We spent much of this weekend on a wide variety of comical "high-speed" transportation (i.e. did you know that cows like to congregate on high mountain bridges? Or that basic family station wagons do great off-road?) to and from Kazbegi; and the town and the hike was fantastic, minus a little rain and fog.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazbek).

We will talk to all of you soon; and keep checking for a torrential post upload.

2007-07-07T16:18:00.000+04:00

Saghamo Mshwidobisa you Crazy Kiddies you,

Just a quick hello to wish Ryan "Can't-make-up-my-mind-let-me-tell-you-in-five-minutes" Siztman, and his NEW WIFE ANGELA congratulations on their wedding! We hope to see both of you soon; and hope all is well in Costa Rica.

2007-07-07T15:40:00.001+04:00

Hello Again,
Just a quick hello for today. This week was pretty good. Not much to report. I would like to send a proverbial shout out to Ryan Sitzman who is getting married TODAY!!!! for the second time this year. Congratulations to Ryan and Angela and I hope that you have a long and happy life together. I am sorry that I could not be there to share in your joy.
More of the same this week although we are getting closer to finding out our current placements and there is some talk about splitting up the clusters for language class. I am not sure that this is a good idea considering it took us over an hour to get to Gori today and it is only 3 miles away. This is counting of course the 45 minutes that we sat at the bus stop waiting for the 2:30 marshutka that came at 3:15.
Well that is all.
Talk to you again soon.
Martha

Martha really likes the place that we live that I can't tell you what it is called

2007-07-04T15:37:00.000+04:00

Hello everyone,
I hope all is well with all of you. I don’t have much internet access; in fact, I can only use the internet when I get permission to travel to Gori which I can only do on Sundays. Peace Corps Georgia is like a really strict summer camp; you go where they tell you to go and do what they tell you do, when they tell you to do it and listen to what they tell you to listen to, and, as long as you do that, you can do basically what ever you want (as long as it is in business casual).
Georgia is really great, I actually I feel like perhaps I am not in the Peace Corps. Everyday we have loads of delicious food prepared by our super nice and doting host moms. For example last Saturday we went to the Sergeant’s house. Her name is Dali and she is called the Sergeant because that is what she is a Sergeant in the Georgian Army, but more importantly to us she is a fabulous cook. We go to her house on Satudays, she is the host-sister of our language teacher Maka. The following is what she whipped together for our lunch last Saturday; boiled chicken, fried chicken, chicken in walnut sauce, cheesebread stuffed with beet greens and garlic, fresh tomato and cucumber salad, cornbread dumplings, eggplant in walnut sauce, fresh cheese, unnamed vegetable salad, soup, rice with hazelnut something, bread, fresh berries and cherries from the garden, homemade cake, and Turkish coffee. I am probably forgetting something, but you get the idea. All of this is served on tables the size of card tables, on plates the size of saucers so plates of food are perched on the top of other plates. We travel around gorgeous countryside looking at really old things. And we receive hours and hours of language lessons to speak a language that linguistic scholars study inside and out, but that is generally useless outside of Georgia.
This past Sunday we went to A***s Sioni. Which is translated as: A***s Sioni. Still no word on what the translation is for Sioni. A couple of ideas: “Sioni is Sioni”, “Tbilisi has a Sioni as well” and “It is the type of church”. Name aside - it is a 6th Century Georgian Orthodox church. The church was really beautiful and nestled in the hills. Ateni’s Sioni is about 3km outside of lower Ateni where I live. We walked up there along the main road which is quite narrow. Along the way we passed a 9th century monastery and the ruins of a fortress from who knows when. Lower A*** has its own fortress which we hiked up to last week. What I am trying to get at is that in less then 5 kms, (less than 3 miles) there are a least 4 “world heritage” style sites and the Georgians don’t even notice them anymore. It is amazing/sad to see all of these things going to ruin, but also cool to see them nestled into everyday life and not closed off from everyone. When we were in Gori for example we went to another fortress. This fortress is a more substantial 13th century fortress which sits atop a hill overlooking all of Gori. We were able to climb up to the fortress, go into the fortress and see it innards, touch it’s walls, looked through its turrets and know what is was like to see the galloping hordes coming over the hills around the city. See pictures attached.
On Sunday A***s Sioni was filled with 17 year old girls who were praying that they would do well on the national exams. Georgia has “completely eliminated” corruption by implementing national exams. The students who want to go to college take a test and - based on their results from the test - the government pays for either 100%, 70% or 30% of their tuition. It does seem like a pretty good system, except that none of the 11th graders went to school this year because they all stayed home with their private teachers to study for the national exams. Teachers in Georgia make about 50 lari a month which is about 35 dollars. It is cheap here but not that cheap so must teachers supplement their incomes with private tutoring sessions. Georgia’s most skilled workers make about 500 lari a month, about $350. So there is a big “brain drain” here. A lot of people who can go somewhere else to work. There are a lot of people who go to Greece it seems. It should be interesting to work in the system.
In a couple of weeks Julien and I get to leave for the weekend ( with written prior approval of course) to go on a cultural tour. We have decided to go, along with some of our Peace Corps peeps, to Mount Kazbeg (Dad, don’t look at the map). We are taking a marshutka (hopefully one that we can sit down on) to Tbilisi and from Tbilisi to Kazbegi, a lovely mountain town that one can only get to during the summer when the roads are open. Julien is pleased because there is a brewery in Kazbegi which makes creatively enough Kazbegi Beer, a popular Georgian brew. I wanted to go the beach, but it is very far and I would only get sunburned and overrun by Russian tourists in Speedos yeeew. So the mountains will be nice and everyone we have told says that it is very beautiful there. I will let you know how it goes.
I will sign off by saying Happy 4th of July! I hope you enjoy your barbeques; we are having a Peace Corps picnic (attendance: required, dress: casual, yesss!). Although I think a good day for all of us would be a day without eating, or a day without cheesebread, or a day where we only drank water or for us village people, a day with a flush toilet will be heavenly.
I would like to say that if there is anything going on that you think that I should know about, you should let me know via email because the news is not useful to me yet and I feel as though I have dropped off of the face of the earth information-wise. I won’t of course find out about it for a couple a weeks even with this sort of methodology, but at least that is something. Also, anyone who would like to keep me up-to-date on any gossip (any kind of gossiping is fine by me, political, social, entertainment, Sturtz, Fort Collins) that would be great.
Another thing if you would like me to not send you this email or you would like me to send it to another address or you would like me to send it to someone I have forgotten (I may have forgotten you) please let me know. I can not get on to my hotmail account, so I am missing a lot of addresses (John and/or Peter you know who you are). Talk to you soon,

Narchvramdis,
Martha

PS If there is an emergency I do have a cell phone ( I told you it didn’t seem like real Peace Corps) you can get the number from my mom, but she has never been able to get through, so you may want to try a different calling card.

First Blog Entry From Georgia!!!

2007-07-04T15:02:00.000+04:00

Gamarjoba Megobrebi!

Well, here we are: I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Gori (Stalin's hometown) surrounded by little Georgian kiddies (mostly named Giorgi) playing Counter-Strike. My training site-mate Josh just told me that he automatically is logged into my blog account from his computer across the room, so I guess I'm also speaking to the future strangers who will be accessing my blog/email/bank accounts.

We (Martha and I) are learning Georgian and Teaching Techniques 9 hours a day 6 days a week in a lovely town outside of Gori (which will be kept secret for security purposes), and living with a fantastic host family who are not (for good or bad) forcing wine down our throats. :) They are, however, preparing embarrassingly large and delicious meals for us. Just yesterday, for example, we had a meal at a host familiy who prepared a half dozen dishes, 2 or 3 desserts, with fresh fruit grown 10 feet away, and that was lunch!

The training portion of Service is a touch highschool, with tons of homework, rules and regulations, but Martha and I are doing well. (though I think I could really use a bit of extra work on my verb conjugations.) I've included a couple pictures from the first week of training. I'm going to try to get more time to write later this week, and also see if someone is buying/posting on my accounts. :)

Ciao,

Julien

Welcome to the Blog!

2007-06-03T02:39:00.000+04:00

Thanks for checking out Martha and Julien's Peace Corps in Georgia Blog! Unfortunately, nothing very exciting to report, since this first post is going up prior to our departure. That means that - if blogs are supposed to be an accurate representation of daily reality - you'll only find information about stressful and very last-minute packing (How many black t-shirts do I bring? Why do I not have any track suits??). However, and this is a HUGE "however", we will be posting interesting, enlightening, and rather touching entries in about 11 days. Until then, kick back, relax, and enjoy your hot showers!