Futher observations................

I am convinced that all marshutkas have cracked windshields and are a minimum of fifteen years old.

Many families (at least in Gori) have one or more cows that are kept at their houses at night and turned out in the fields surrounding the town during the day. Every morning and evening there is a parade of cows through the city streets, as their owners herd them to and from the fields.

There are lots of holes in the middle of the streets and sidewalks (where they exist), as well as open 18 inch deep storm gutters on the sides of most of the streets. You have to watch your step at all times because of the holes and also because of the drivers who are attempting to avoid the holes by weaving their vehicles at high rates of speed from one side of the road to the other.

There are "maghazia"'s (stores) everywhere, many so small that only the proprietor himself can fit inside. Sometimes there are five or six situated immediately adjacent to each other, all selling the same stuff at the same prices. These stores are where everyone buys their groceries (unless they venture out to the bazaar, of which there is one in every town or village of any size). You have to wonder how the store owners can make a living from what they sell. I bet that most do not.

It's hot here and there is no air conditioning. Many people have fans that they constantly wave to keep themselves cool.

Everyone kisses (men included) left cheek to left cheek when greeting an acquaintance.

Whatever fruit is in season is served at every meal. It's watermelon (sazamtro) season now.

Many people keep their savings in Rubles, Euros or Dollars, rather than Laris (the national currency).

Banks also act as pawn shops.

Two years ago Russia cut off all imports from Georgia. At the time, Russia was by far the largest market for Georgian goods. Relations between Russia and Georgia have not been good for the last several years, and Russia supports the defacto governments established in two "breakaway" regions of Georgia, one of which is located less than 10 miles from our new home.

Almost everyone in Georgia at least nominally belongs to the Georgian Orthodox Church. There are a number of Muslims also, located mostly in the area of the country adjacent to Turkey. There once was a substantial Jewish population as well, but most of the Jews have emigrated to Israel. My observation is that most people don't actually attend church, but many people (seems like more women than men) cross themselves three times in succession every time they pass a church, either on foot or in a vehicle.

Almost no one in Georgia wears glasses, and it's not because they see well, wear contacts or have had laser surgery.

The numbering system here is based on 20, rather than 10. For instance, the number 55 is "two times twenty plus fifteen" (ormotsdatkhutmeti).

The time is stated to be the next upcoming hour, rather than the hour last past. Thus 8:20 is tskhris (the number 9 in the possessive case....if the minute hand is in the first half of the clock the hour is stated in the possessive case and if it's in the second half the number of the hour is stated in the dative case) otsi (20) saatia (o'clock). If the minute hand is in the second half of the clock, you would say tskhras ("9" in the dative case) less the number of minutes until nine. Thus, 9:45 would be tshras uklia tkhutmeti tzuti (nine less 15 minutes). To say the least it is very confusing. I usually just show people my watch when they ask me what time it is.

I think it is always proper (and generally observed) that the last word of every sentence be the verb. Thus, "I newspaper and book read" is a well constucted sentence in Georgian.

Today, our 16 year old host sister Nino spent a good portion of the afternoon cutting a small piece of the overgrown lawn with a pair of scissors.

That's it for now. I am sure I will think of more stuff later.

Our new home..........

August 26th. We are now in Zugdidi, in the northwest part of Georgia (approx. 25 kilometers from the Black Sea). This is to be our home for the next two years. The climate here is more semi-tropical than the climate was in Gori. We even have palm trees! In the one day since our arrival, I have discovered a new all-time favorite fruit......figs! They are in season now and taste delicious. You peel off the outer skin of a green fruit which is the size of a small peach. You then eat the entire fruit (no pit). It is the most succulent, sweetest fruit that I have ever tasted. Lisa thinks that what we know as figs are a dried out version of what I have been eating (with reckless abandon) since we got here, much like a raisin is a dried out version of a grape. All I can say is that they are good....very good, and at our new home we have a fig tree in the yard (along with an apple, cherry, peach and pear tree).
We left Gori early on Friday morning (August 24) with the rest of our group of trainees and traveled to Tbilisi by bus with all of our belongings for the big swearing in ceremony as official Peace Corps volunteers. Enroute, we learned that another two members of our group had decided to pack it in at the last minute and return home, bringing the total to 4 in the last two days. This was very surprising, since we hadn't lost anyone since the very first day of training in Georgia 10 weeks ago, and that was due to a medical issue. The swearing in ceremony was held at a large theater in Tbilisi and was actually quite well done. In addition to the speeches given in Georgian by two members of our group, there was a movie about the Peace Corps mission, remarks by Georgia's Minister of Education and comments by the number two man at the US Embassy here. As a finale, there a very entertaining performance by a professional Georgian folk dance group, which showcased traditional dances and dress particular to the various regions of the country. Following the ceremony, there was a reception held for all those in attendence. Our new host mother and sister came from Zugdidi for the festivities, along with representatives from my new office and from Lisa's school. That is noteworthy, since the trip on the night train from Zugdidi to Tbilisi takes over 8 hours and the return trip by bus (which we all took) was about 7 hours. It made for a long night and day for many of them.
We occupy the former living/dining room of our new home , and ever since our arrival, Lisa has been working hard to configure the space in the best possible way. It is bright and airy and has a nice feel to it. We even have our own woodstove ("pechi") for heat in the winter. Soon we will have to buy our wood, since it gets more expensive the closer to winter that you make the purchase. As best as I can figure at the moment, you must either split the wood yourself or hire out the job to someone else to do for you. Of course, I lean toward the latter alternative, but I don't want to appear like a wimp while our host family is in the process of splitting its own wood. Probably the most culturally appropriate way of handling the situation would be to let Lisa do the splitting, since the women here do everything anyway. I intend to discuss this idea with her shortly.
In the center of Zugdidi, there is a large park within which is situated a large palace and residence which belonged to the Dadiani family, who founded the city and lived here for nine generations. There are lighted walkways and fountains throughout the palace grounds, and each evening during the summer there are hundreds of people out strolling. Last night we walked with our host mother, sister and dog (Shelley) into town (a thirty minute walk each way by itself) and spent an hour or so strolling through the palace grounds and watching all the people. It was something that Lisa and I never do at home, and we had fun (although we were all somewhat tired by the time we got back to the house).
Our internet access here "ain't what it used to be" in Gori, but we will try and get this blog entry posted as soon as we can, and we will also try and put some pictures up to give you a better sense for what things here are like. We are thoroughly enjoying the experience so far, but then again, we haven't yet started our respective jobs either!

Some Pix......................

This is a random conglomeration of pictures that we have taken. We are still feeling our way in reducing the size of pictures and getting them posted in the proper way to the blog. If the presentation of the pictures seems somewhat disjointed , it's because it is disjointed ! We'll post more later.





Here's a small park near the Bazaar. As you can see, some people are not particularly environmentally conscious. The Peace Corps is involved in a number of projects to raise environmental awareness, particularly among young people.













Here comes the train we are about to board for a day's excursion with our host family to Borjomi. It is about 2 hours to get there by car, but it turned out to take us more than 3 1/2 hours by train. We came back by marshutka and bus.














The train was hot and slow and the seats were hard wooden benches.











This is a church located right in Gori. It takes about an hour and a half to hike up to it. We haven't done it yet, but we hope to get there before our training is over and we leave Gori


















This is the family after getting off the gondola in Borjomi park. Borjomi is a travel destination within Georgia and is also the home of Borjomi water, the most sold bottled water in Georgia. With the family is Marina, the person who tutors Miriam, Natia and Ilia in English, along with her children, Luka and Elena.







The gondola during its ascent.














This is a wishing tree. You make a wish and tie it to a branch of the tree.















Lisa had practice school for a couple of weeks during
her TEFL training. These are some of her students.

















I was lucky enough to be invited to attend a conference in Batumi, a beach resort on the Black Sea. No conference would be complete without a supra, and this one was held at a restaurant on a pier extending out into the water. Other than the fact that the temperature was a humid 100 degrees plus, a good time was had by all.









Here's the view out the restaurant window at the bathers on the beach. As you can see, the beach is all stone, rather than sand, as are most beaches in Georgia.

Winding down PST...........

We are still in Pre-Service training (2 weeks to go) and we are being kept very busy by the Peace Corps. As a consequence, we have not been able to post to this blog to provide you with details on the funny, odd and just plain different things which permeate our daily life here in Gori.

Our host family are parents once again. This time to 20 baby chicks. They go along with the 20 chicks that were hatched a couple of weeks ago (actually I think there were originally 25 or so in the original batch, but a stray cat got to a few). We have a constant supply of eggs (K'vertse) which we often cook scrambled or fried. This is a source of great amusement to our family, since Georgians generally take their eggs only one way--hard boiled.

As we noted in previous posts, we have language class 3 1/2 hours each day (a 4 hour class with a 1/2 hour break in the middle), six days a week. We also get lots of homework. It isn't easy (particularly for us older folks). We are taught by an LCF (which I think stands for "language and cross-cultural facilitator") who is assigned to a group of between 4 and 6 people. That means that we have about 9 LCF's for our entire group. The LCF's are all women, in their early to late 20's. Most of them are English teachers in the Georgian school system. The competition to become an LCF for the Peace Corps is intense; there are many more applicants than there are positions to fill. As a consequence, those chosen to be LCF's are GREAT teachers. Not only do they pour their hearts and souls into each day's lesson, they make themselves available for tutoring on an individual basis
whenever and wherever anyone wants additional help. We have taken advantage of the opportunity to receive the additional one on one training on several occasions, but there is only so much language class that one can take in a day! The LCF's work very hard, and they deserve whatever pay and recognition they get for having been chosen as LCFs for the Peace Corps. In little more than a week, we will have our LPI (language proficiency interview), given by an independent tester, to assess our ability to converse in Georgian. If we don't pass, which I think requires a "low intermediate" rating, we will be allowed to continue as Peace Corps volunteers "on probation". That means we will be required to get tutoring in the language at our permanent sites and that we will be tested again in 6 months or so. I don't know (and I don't want to ask) what happens if we don't achieve a low intermediate rating on the follow-up test (we just may be coming home sooner than you think).

We are required by the Peace Corps to be politically and culturally sensitive in our blog postings (the blogs are monitored), so without any editorial comment, I will relate an interesting occurrence we experienced this week. Georgia has just accused Russia of violating Georgian airspace and dropping a bomb near a radar facility located about 15-20 kilometers from where we live in Gori. The bomb did not explode, but it resulted in many accusations and denials which made the international headlines. The day after that happened we were eating dinner with our host family when, all of a sudden, a huge explosion rocked the house and scared the S..T out of everyone. Initially we were told that a bomb had accidentally exploded at an Army base located a few blocks away from our house. However, later we were told that it was the unexploded Russian bomb that the Georgian Army had brought to the facility and detonated. Either way, it made a lasting impression on us.

Ah yes, life here in Georgia is more than somewhat different from life back home. However, the people are great, and we are having the time of our lives so far. Now if we can only get through that LPI next week..........

Random thoughts......................

There are street dogs everywhere, barking all day and all night. No one allows a dog into their house and most of the dogs don't have owners at all. Because of a fear of rabies, the Peace Corps has given us "dog zappers" which emit a high pitched sound when a button is pressed. The sound hurts a dog's ears, but humans can't hear it. We carry ours with us, but neither of us has had to use ours yet.

There used to be a law against regular kidnapping, but kidnapping a girl for purposes of marriage was not considered a crime. The theory is that the boy would kidnap the girl and that after spending a couple of days together the families would say "what's left to protect" and allow a marriage to take place between them. Sometimes the kidnapping was with the girl's consent (though not with her parents), but many times not. A couple of years ago the law was changed to make kidnapping for purposes of marriage illegal also. However, it still happens. Our host sisters were waiting for a marshutka earlier this year and were witnesses to a bridenapping in which the girl was screaming as she was stuffed into a car. The kidnapper and his friends brandished a gun and told the girls that they knew who they were and they were to keep their mouths shut. They reported the incident to the police none the less, but they don't know what came of it.

The electricity is forever going off or we are having brown outs. Any electronic stuff always has an uninterruptable power source attached to prevent damage during the frequent power outages.

We are not allowed to drink the water. The Peace Corps has issued us bulky water filters that we must use to get water that we can drink (or we can boil the tap water for ten minutes or buy water).

Teachers are very low paid. It depends on how many classes they teach, but their pay is in the vicinity of 50 Lari a month (that equates to approximately $33). All teachers also tutor to supplement their income. All kids (or at least all that I have come in contact with) have tutors (English, Russian, Math, Music, Dance etc), so they are very busy everyday after school. In fact, alot of kids, particularly in the higher grades, skip school itself. Surprisingly, university teachers are paid less!

The country has been working hard to reform the educational system. This year, they are transitioning from 11 grades to 12. That means that our two host sisters, both of whom are just entering "eleventh form", must go to another year of school the following year. There will be no graduating high school classes in Georgia this year.

There is lots of smoking (everywhere), drinking and eating (mostly good, but very starchy foods).

There are switches to pump water from the cistern when no water comes out of the tap. And there is also a switch to turn on the water heater to produce hot water (after the appropriate lag time).....but don't turn on the heater when there is no water in the system!! We still have not figured out the timing on all of this.

Almost every family grows grapes and makes its own wine which they serve year 'round (even in the cities). Lots of families also make cha-cha, which is an alcoholic drink of high potency, which if misproduced can kill you. Families take great pride in the quality of their wine and cha-cha. Vodka is a very popular and cheap drink. Depending on the quality, you can buy a bottle for somewhere between $1.75 and $8.00. compare that to a bottle of Jack Daniels, which I recently saw for sale for 60 Lari ($40). Pretty expensive, especially when compared to a teacher's monthly salary.

There is no tipping. If you want to be a sport, you round up the bill to the next full Lari (each Lari = approx. 66 cents).

You pay cash for everything. There may be places in the country that accept credit cards, but I haven't seen one yet.

If you go out to dinner (which doesn't happen often), you bring your own wine.

Women do everything around the house, and often are the wage earners as well.

There is no air conditioning or central heat. You get and split your wood in the summer, because the price increases the closer to winter it gets.

Everyone seems to have a cell phone. You buy cards at the local store in various denominations. You then punch in the code on the card and you are credited with some amount of money against which you place calls and make text messages. For every call that is made there are approximately 20 (or more) text messages made (it's much cheaper than calling).

Men give up their seats to women on crowded marshutkas and buses.

Georgians are very loosey-goosey about being punctual.

Georgians view guests as gifts from God and they are always ready to host more people than they planned for at any dinner or other occasion. It is not at all unusual for guests to drop by unannounced to visit, have dinner and stay until one o'clock in the morning (Georgians stay up late!).

There is no such thing as a doggy bag. Georgians typically over-order in restaurants and there is always much more food than can be eaten. All of the extra food is just left on the table. A Georgian would never think of taking any extra food home with him.

Almost all drinking (other than drinking by the drunks is done at meal time and is done in conjunction with a toast. Toasts are long and and emotional and touch upon everything you can think of (and one usually quickly follows another). All toasting is done with either wine or liquor. You only toast your enemies with beer!!



There are a million other things which make life here interesting and different from what we know in the US. These are but a few. I will post more as they occur to me.

It's Zugdidi..............

This was a big week for us here in Georgia. On Friday (7/20), we packed up all of the stuff that we won't be needing until cold weather arrives in a few months, as well as all the clothes etc. we would need for a 5 day trip. We were picked up at our home by a Peace Corps marshutka and were transported to our usual training site in Gori. Shortly after our arrival we went outside, where a large map of Georgia was painted on the pavement and various cities were labelled by sheets of paper taped to the ground. One by one our names were called and we were given an envelope which contained information as to where in the country we were to be permanently assigned for the next two years, where we would be working and information about the family we would be living with. As each name was called the volunteer stood on the appropriate spot on the map. As you can imagine, the level of excitement was quite high. Lisa and I will be going to Zugdidi, which is a city in the western part of the country, about 20 km from the Black Sea. Until now, Zugdidi has been an area of the country which has been off-limits to Peace Corps volunteers because it is located immediately adjacent to Abkazia, a conflict zone where many of the people want independence from Georgia. Russia supports the secessionist movement and there has been armed conflict in the region off and on for the past 10 years. Zugdidi is a city of about 70,000 people, with an additional 50,000 or so IDP's (internally displaced persons from Abkazia). Lisa and I will be the first Peace Corps volunteers ever to serve in Zugdidi (the Peace Corps has been operating in Georgia for 7 years now). Lisa will be teaching English with a Georgian counterpart teacher in a school that has 1200 students. There are 22 English teachers in the school !! I will be working for a Chamber of Commerce/ Business Service Organization which supports businesses with permitting issues, financing, tax issues, public relations, import/export matters and the like. Shortly after learning our destiny, everyone loaded all their luggage onto several Peace Corps marshutkas and we were of to Gudauri, a small village high in the Caucaucus mountains, for a 2 day conference where we would meet and interact with our workplace supervisors, who were also traveling to Gudauri from all over the country. The conference was interesting and productive (I think). Neither my supervisor or Lisa's spoke any English, so there were some language issues, but our language teachers were also in attendance at the conference to assist in translating. After the conference broke up on Sunday morning, we then left with our supervisors (most of whom had arrived by marshutka or bus) to go for a three day visit to our permanent site. It was a tough day for us, since we had to travel by marshutka to Tbilisi (about 2 hours) and then we boarded a non-airconditioned bus for another 6 hour trip to Zugdidi. The temperature was hovering around 100 F and the bus was absolutely full of very sweaty people. If you count the time that we sat in the bus waiting for it to leave and the time it took to fix the flat tire we had along the way, the 6 hour leg of the trip turned into a 9 hour ordeal. When we arrived in Zugdidi our new host family was there to greet us, along with the son and husband of Lisa's supervisor (the Director of the school). We loaded our stuff (contained in a mere 5 suitcases) into the two vehicles and proceeded to our new home. Our new host family had prepared a Supra (an elaborate dinner which symbolizes Georgian hospitality) in honor of our arrival. Fortunately, our host family was able to convince Lisa's director and her son to stay and participate in the festivities. I say fortunately because no one in our host family speaks any English (good for us learning Georgian), and Irakli, the Director's son, had just returned from a year as a foreign exchange student in the US. He was able to act as translator, and we successfully communicated with our new "host parents" throughout an enjoyable evening. Our new house is very clean, but simple. It does have a western style toilet (as well as an outhouse). Lisa and I will have a large room on the first floor, which by the looks of it previously served as the living/dining room. Our new host mom works part time in a government office and the host father is unemployed (as is over 50% of the workforce in Georgia). The family is clearly not well off, but they are very kind and I think we will do just fine there. We stayed in Zugdidi for three days and visited our workplaces and toured the city. The town has a nice feel to it and we are happy to have landed in a more urban environment than in one of the many small villages where lots of the other Peace Corps volunteers have been assigned. On our last night in Zugdidi, we were invited to another Supra, this one hosted by my new boss, the President of the BSO where I will be working. It was quite a production (think of a dinner that starts at 7 and ends at 1 in the morning, attended by 20 or so people). There was lot of toasting, dancing and singing. They even lugged the piano out of the house in the middle of the Supra to facilitate the merriment. My supervisor's house is magnificent, located high on a hill overlooking the entire city. We had lots of fun and, as always, Georgian hospitality was in abundant display. Lisa and I just got back to Gori, having taken a marshutka whose driver took delight in tempting fate by passing cars on every turn in the road. Georgian drivers are reputed to be the worst in the world and this fellow has to be right up there with the worst in Georgia. It took us just 3 hours and 45 minutes to get back, and we fortunate to have made it in one piece. Well, tomorrow is back to the grind with language class in the morning and technical training in the afternoon. In one more month we will be done with our training, and after the swearing in ceremony in Tbilisi at the end of August, it will be off to Zugdidi to begin our two year stint. Enough for now...more later.

Our first days...............

This is our first blog entry since we arrived in Gori, our PST (pre-service training) site. Of course we've been here for more than a month now, but we have been so busy that there has hardly been a free moment to try and update the blog. We have taken a bunch of pictures, some of which are posted in this blog entry, just to give you a feel for what it's like here. Of the 44 remaining members of our group (we've lost 2 already), I think that we are acknowledged to have the nicest living situation. We have indoor western toilets in a big house with lots of bright airy rooms with 12 foot ceilings!! Our host family is the best too! Here are the pictures:

This is a picture of Lisa standing with our suitcases at Dulles airport in DC. We were each allowed to check two pieces of luggage of not more than 50 pounds each. There was also a limitation on the dimensions of the bags. We were a total of 3 pounds under for our four bags (197 pounds total)! Once we arrived in Tbilisi, we were taken by bus (at 4:30 am) to an old Russian compound of some sort for 6 days of orientation before going to our PST site in Gori.

Here is a picture of a Georgian dance troop that the Peace Corps brought in to entertain us one evening. They were really quite good (and very limber too!).

While we staying at the Russian compound, we were invited one evening to a reception at the house of the US Ambassador to Georgia. Here's a picture at the reception. The Ambassador is the gentleman in the white shirt standing in the middle of the picture. He was very personable and enthusiastic about the Peace Corps being in Georgia.

















This is a picture of our cluster. These are the people that we spend the majority of each day with. The woman to the left of Lisa (with her eyes closed) is our language instructor. Diane (pronounced Dee-anna in Georgian) is 28 years old and is an English teacher by profession. Work is very scarce here and the PC holds a competition each year among the many teachers who apply to teach PC volunteers the Georgian language. She is an excellent teacher (its not her fault that Lisa and I are lousy students), and she is all business during our four hour language session each day. The picture was taken at the Ambassador's reception, when we really didn't know her or our cluster mates at all. After spending everyday with them since then, we now know them all intimately!

















Everyday after language class is done, we walk to the house of one member of our cluster, and the host mother of that member feeds us all lunch. This is us at Amy's house.

















Here's Lisa with our host mother Dodo and host sister Miriam. They are really nice and Miriam and her sister Natia speak perfect English (not good for learning Georgian).














Natia, Miriam and Dodo at the kitchen table, with a bowl of cherries picked from the trees outside.














Bebia checking the lottery results which are broadcast on TV at 11 am each Sunday. Last week the electricity went out just before 11, and I thought she was going to have a coronary. She's 87 and has not been out of the house for 7 years.













Here's the family walking with Lisa on the street in front of our house. The house is where the iron gate is, just to the left of Ilia's ballcap in the picture.













This is a picture taken from the fortress, looking out over the town (and the river that runs through it).














The fortress from below.















Here's the whole family (less Bebia) on top of Gori fortress. The fortress was built in the 10th century and stands high atop a hill in the center of Gori.
















A picture of the Bazaar. The Bazaar is where most everything in Gori is bought and sold. It consists of a haphazard array of vendors spread over a wide area selling everything you can
imagine. You are expected to bargain, but the Georgian numbering system is so difficult to understand that sometimes it is hard to understand what you are negotiating over.














A picture of the apartment building across the street, taken from our bedroom window. I'm glad we live in our house, rather than in the apartments!












A picture of one of the trolleybuses rounding the corner at Stalin Square. You can see the statue of Joe in the background.
















Here is "Bear in a Cage", as he is known by the Peace Corps volunteers. Definitely a case for PETA. The bear is located in the middle of a park in Gori. You can walk right up and stick your arm in if you want.
















Another picture of the Joseph Stalin statue and square.

















That's it for now. Back to studying for our language class tomorrow. This blog post was actually made at the beginning of July and now it is July 15th. It took that long for me to figure out how to get the pictures loaded and into position adjacent to the corresponding text. Hopefully, I will do better next time, but at least this should give you some flavor of what life here is like. Nakvamdis (Goodbye) for now.

Saqartvelo at last

Georgians are known for their hospitality, and on the plane from Munich to Tblisi we met a Georgian who was traveling home to visit his parents in Tblisi. He couldn’t have been nicer and insisted that we give him our email addresses and also our cell phone numbers (once we got cell phones) so his parents could have us over for a supra ( a big dinner party with LOTS of drinking). We’ve been warned about the supras, since they go on for hours and hours and carry a strong potential for alcoholic disaster. Apparently, Georgians are always looking for a reason to hold a supra and generally any reason will do!
We landed in Tblisi at about 4:30 am and the whole Peace Corps country staff from Georgia (about 28 people) was there to greet us. It was very nice, because they had obviously been up all night. We took a couple of buses from the airport into town (traveling in part along George W. Bush street!), stopped for a picture somewhere and then on to our training site up on top of a high ridge outside of town. The training site appeared to be an abandoned Russian camp or resort of some sort within an enclosed compound. It was literally falling apart, with large chucks of concrete having fallen down at various spots in the multiple buildings (mostly abandoned) on the site. The rooms were okay though , with western style toilets and small concrete balconies, overlooking the unmown lawn. This was to be our home for the next 6 days. We started language classes immediately, in groups of 5 or 6 and had class every day. Since it was immediately apparent that Georgian is no ordinary language, we also started extra tutoring sessions with our teacher every day as well. Our days were also filled with various classes intended to prepare us for our soon to be complete immersion into Georgian culture, including classes on how not to get forced into drinking too much at a supra (it seems that Georgians generally drink very little other than at a supra, so they are having them all the time). We also had sessions with the medical staff and lots of shots! The electricity kept going off, which seems to be a routine part of Georgian life (while at Tabakemela, we watched the movie “Power Trip” which is an English language documentary about the problems with the electrical system in Georgia). After spending that much time together, we became quite close to the rest of our group, known as the G-7's since we are the 7th group of Peace Corps volunteers to come to Georgia. One night, a group of Georgian dancers came and performed for us and they were really quite good. On the last day of our in-country orientation, we were given the identities of our respective host families, with whom we were to live for the next 3 months. Of course, their names meant nothing to us, but we were told how many family members there were and whether they had ever hosted a PCV before. Lisa and I were lucky in that we were designated to live in Gori, a city of about 50K people, rather than in one of the surrounding villages, where life is more difficult and the available amenities are fewer in number.
After packing up all of our stuff, which had increased in size by virtue of all the training materials, medical kits, dog zappers and other paraphernalia that Peace Corps had armed us with, we lugged everything to two waiting busses and began the 1 Ѕ hour trip to Gori, where our host families awaited us. It felt a lot like being a fresh air kid traveling from NYC to GF for the summer and having the host families all waiting in a group and then trying to match each kid up with his/her family. It was a big press event and the Gori TV station was there doing interviews with wide eyed PCV’s who had no idea what questions the reporter was asking them.
Unfortunately, we were among the three volunteers whose host families did not respond when their names were called, but our problems were cured shortly thereafter when our new host mom and sister showed up in a cab to get us. The cab (an old soviet era Lada) was barely able to accommodate the four of us and all of our luggage, some of which had to be wired on the back of the vehicle (we stopped once on the way when the driver thought something had fallen off). We traveled the pot-hole filled streets of the city eventually winding our way along a dirt/rock street to a spot opposite a four story apartment building which is quite tenement like in appearance. Fortunately, our house is located opposite the apartment building and not in it. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that our host sister Natia, who accompanied us in the cab, actually speaks quite good English. We lugged our luggage through a metal gate and into a open courtyard, over which a grape arbor hangs. We walked up a few steps and then into a concrete building which is our house. Inside, the place is magnificent, certainly by Georgian standards. There is a large 4 feet wide curved wooden staircase leading to the upstairs from the entryway. All the rooms on the two floors which comprise the living area are accessed off large hallways (15-20 feet wide), running from the front to the b ack of the house. Our room is in the front. It is very large and bright with lots of storage. All the ceilings are 12' high so the rooms feel palatial. Across the hall we have another huge room ( 20x20) with parquet floors , 4 huge windows, an area rug, table and chairs, a stereo and 2 comfortable chairs. This is where we study. The bathroom is down the hall. It is very large with a flush toilet that needs a bucket of water half the time to make it flush, a tub w/shower, pedestal sink and washing machine. Sometimes there is no water and when there is water the pressure is always low and “hot” is only “luke warm”, but we have no complaints. In fact, we feel as if we died and went to heaven. Many of our fellow volunteers have only cold water (when there is water) and outdoor squat toilets. Next to the bath on the second floor is a computer room with a DSL connection!! The Dad is a physicist and the Mom is a former university Physics instructor so there are bookcases full of science texts. Peace Corps pays us to pay our host family for providing room and board for us. The families get 208 Lari per month per for each volunteer. That is the equivalent of $125 per month and includes three meals a day.
Our family consists of the 87 year old Grandmother, affectionately known as “Bebia”, the Mother, DoDo, who is 47, two sweet girls; Miriam 16 and Natia 14 (both of whom have studied English for years and speak better English than we do) and Ilia, the 11 year old son. The Dad has been working in Trenton, N.J. as some type of engineer. He could not find employment here. The rest of the family has not seen him in 6 years. He calls every Sunday, and sends money and gifts. You can tell the rest of the family misses him dearly.
The girls have hovered around us. They are sweet but their use of English is not conducive to the development of our Georgian. They check our homework and help us out when we’re stuck (which unfortunately is often). Everyone is trying to help us with everyday words and if we mispronounce a word, Bebia enunciates it at the top of her lungs repeatedly until we get it right, and then she gives us the thumbs up. She speaks no English and it’s a hoot trying to communicate with her. She was a teacher for 54 years! Now she can barely shuffle with her cane from the chair in front of the TV to the kitchen where we eat. She had a stroke a couple of years ago and lacks the use of her right arm. As far as I can tell she watches TV from the time she gets up until the time she goes to bed.
We walk to our language class every morning where we meet up with the teacher and the other 4 volunteers who are in our class. The teacher is very nice but is very strict. Lisa and I got reprimanded for being three minutes late on the very first day of class, after we miscalculated how long it would take us to walk there (it takes 25 minutes). We are the dunces in the class, but we are trying hard to make sense of everything, which is difficult.
Today (Sunday) was our day off and we went with our family to Gori fortress, a stone fortress built in the eleventh century, situated high on a hill in the middle of the town. It was pretty interesting. If something like that were located in the US it would undoubtedly have been made into a tourist attraction. Here you can walk into the fortress and climb over all the walls or do anything you want to something that is very old. It’s surprising that it remains as intact as it is. While we were at the fortress, we met up with a number of the other Peace Corps volunteers from our group. Word had already spread regarding our living conditions compared to everyone else, and they didn’t hesitate to take the opportunity to accuse us of having joined the “Posh Corps” rather than the Peace Corps.
After visiting the fortress, we went with our family to the Bazaar, which is a large open air market where you can buy anything. We wandered around for awhile and Dodo bought a bunch of groceries for the house. It is open every day and will undoubtedly be a place we will visit regularly.
Loaded down with stuff, we squeezed into a marshutka, which is a 17 passenger van that runs a regular route like a bus, and rode it back to a stop near our house. We spent the rest of the day hanging around the house, doing homework and chatting with the girls while Dodo worked on the preparations for the evening meal, which Lisa tried to assist with.
Right now it is almost 11 pm and it is time to go to bed , so I will stop this blog entry here. It’s hard to believe that we left GF only two weeks ago tomorrow, since we have had lots of experiences since then (almost all positive ones!).
To be continued later...........

Going to Peace Corps "Camp"

Staging in Washington D.C. was quite an event. We checked into the hotel with our four 50 lb. Bags, 2 backpacks and one carry on. We handed in our numerous forms and were awarded our official Peace Corps passport. Our staging directors (our counselors)
were three former volunteers.
Peter had worked in Costa Rica in the 80's. Pam had been in India in the 60's and Igor was in Slovakia in the 90's. They had wonderful stories to share to illustrate the points they were trying to make with regard to safety, cross-cultural adjustment, unwanted attention and Peace Corps policies.
Our fellow “campers”, with whom we will serve for 27 months, are a large group of 46. There are four couples, and a total of six people (including us) are over 50. One of the other couples may even be older than we are! There are four or five thirtysomethings, and the rest of the group are either just out of college or have been out for a couple of years.
We met for twelve hours of training over two days. Peace Corps uses a very experiential learning approach which involves lots of interaction so we quickly began to bond with the rest of our “pledge class” as we did skits, made murals to illustrate points and dialogued on lots of different topics.
In the evenings we went out with one another and shared info, rumors, fears and alcohol.
On Friday, our travel to Georgia began with a night flight to Munich. We arrived at 10 in the mornng after an 8 Ѕ hour flight. PC had reserved day hotel rooms for us at the airport, since our connecting flight did not leave for another 11 hours. It was like herding cats to get our group of 46 pointed in the right direction, but eventually we all arrived at the hotel (there were no PC leaders on the trip itself, just us PCV’s, and there was some confusion after we arrived in Munich as to which hotel we were supposed to be going to). Everyone slept, showered and refreshed in our modern German hotel. Then it was back to the airport. As I write this we are again at the airport waiting for our delayed flight to Tbilisi . We were due to arrive there at 3:30 am on Sat., but now it looks like we won’t be getting in until 4:30 am or so. I will update this blog after we arrive. We will not have internet access for at least a week and maybe longer, but we will get this entry and those which follow posted as soon as we can.

Hellos and Goodbyes.........

The countdown continues...11 days until we fly to DC to attend the PC staging. We will meet the other members of our group. We have corresponded with several of them on a Georgia PC Yahoo group. There are 50 in all which is a surprise.

We have also been networking with the volunteers who are currently in Georgia. We are the seventh group to go there so we are known as G-7's. The G-6's are introducing themselves online and sending many tips about packing and what to do in our last days at home. The major recommendation is to eat lots of Mexican food (not available in Georgia), spend time with friends and have fun. Well, we definitely have been doing lots of that. Every night we get together with different friends who send us off with hugs and good wishes. Last night was with Mark’s high school buddies at the local pizza joint. Last week Lisa’s tennis friends in Saratoga had a luncheon with poems, pictures and gifts of travelers’ clothes.

On the practical front, we are readying our house for our new tenants...changing addresses on bills and learning how to put cars away for two years.

On the packing side we each can bring 2 bags of 50 lbs. The length plus the width plus the height of the bags can total no more than 107". That’s a challenge!!

Jake-a-loo (our dog) has had a visitation of 2 nights with my cousin and his wife in Delmar. He will vacation there for the duration. After returning we will share “joint custody” of Jake. I think we are all winners, the dog, my cousin and us.

PC has sent us language discs so we can practice all those gutteral sounds which are almost impossible for English speakers to make.. The G-6's have sent us an Alternative Handbook on CD to clarify some of the info in the Official Handbook. And of course we have more forms to fill out for staging in D.C..

This weekend we are off to our daughter Molly’s college graduation from Cornell. Lots of things are happening as we near blast-off!!