About Me

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I am a scholar, writer, dancer, traveler, dreamer, adventurer, and tea connoisseur. I love to travel whether it be through volunteering in the Peace Corps, interning internationally or for my own delight.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Day in the Life of a PST Trainee

I officially have completed my first month of PST (pre-service training)...now two more to go! PST is a rigorous and challenging time for all of us new trainees. We have to go through three months of PST training before we are officially called volunteers, until then we are still trainees. Here is a peek at what a typical day in PST consists of...

7:00 am Wake up, dash to the outhouse, brush teeth, wash face, make a cup of tea and check the internet on my family's computer (They are usually still asleep then and it's nice to have some quite time)

7:30 Get ready for the day by picking out clothes, putting on makeup, gathering up my homework and other materials that I studied with the night before.

8:20 My host brother Giorgi like clockwork knocks on my bedroom door and tells me, “Anneke eat”.  I usually try to head to the kitchen before 8:30 but lately it’s been later. My grandmother usually has a cup of coffee and a cup of tea for me waiting when I get there and then an assortment of food. There is always bread on the table but other than that is changes….list of stuff I’ve had so far:  homemade meatballs, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, fried chicken, plain yogurt, hard boiled eggs, beef stew..etc. Breakfast is not really a set cuisine…you kind of just eat the leftovers from dinner the night before.

8:40 Leave with my host brothers Giorgi and Atchiko for school. The Osiauri village school is about a 15 minute walk from my house.  There are usually kids that run by me or tag along and shout Hello from a far. It's nice too see everyone  in the morning. Some kids that I've taught in class come up and say "Hello Anneke, how are you?" I usually respond and ask them how they are doing as well. 

9:00-1:00pm I have Georgian language class with my other cluster mates in one of the empty rooms of the school. Our door doesn't close all the way or lock so at least twice during our four hours of class students fling open the door to look in and shout hello. Our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator aka my Georgian teacher)  Ana promptly tells them to go to class. We have two breaks in the middle of our four hour language class to use the bathroom or to step outside and stretch our legs. I’m learning Georgian slowly; it’s a very difficult language with 7 different cases. By the end of class I’m usually brain dead from all the new information from that day.

1:00/1:30 Walk to lunch.  It usually takes a while to get anywhere we are going just because we have to pack up our stuff padlock our room door for the day and walk 15 minutes to lunch.

1:30 Eat Lunch. Our host families take turns each day hosting us at lunch. We are on a rotation schedule throughout the week. This gives us a chance to see the different living styles of each cluster mate’s home. We also get to know each other’s host families and converse to them in Georgian.  I’m pretty sure each family tries to outdo each other and they usually ask us if their food is the best.  Georgians never cease to amaze me; they just pull out large quantities of food from nowhere.

2:20 Walk to the martshutka (van) stop in Lower Osiauri. We usually pass a Frisbee around while we are walking just to make the journey more interesting. Our walk normally is about 15 minutes too although when the Frisbee is out there is a lot of backtracking.

2:40 Meet Giorgi our martshutka driver and his martshutka. We like to think that we have formed a bond with Giorgi even though he doesn't speak much to us and when he does we usually can’t understand it. Either way we've grown accustom to seeing this white 10 passenger van with a painted alligator on the hood and a Giorgi sitting in the front seat. Did I mention that he has a gold alligator figurine on his dash? The martshutka drives us the eight minute drive to the town Khashuri where we have PST Education training.

3:00-5:00/6:00 PST Education training. All the clusters come together during the afternoon for training so it’s nice to catch up with the all education trainees who live in other villages. We have different sessions each time…some sessions cover how to properly write a lesson plan while other sessions teach us about how to teach a class with limited resources.

6:00/6:30 The martshutka  picks us up outside our training school in Khashuri. Sometime we convince our driver to give us 10 minutes of shopping in the town because we need to recharge our phones or grab some essentials like toilet paper.

6:30/7:00 Get dropped off in our village, Osiauri.  My cluster mates and I usually try to get a rough plan going of what we are going to do later on that night if we get together. After plans are made I make the 10 min walk from the martshutka stop to my home.

6:45/7:10 Arrive home.  I usually arrive home, say hello to my host family and go to my room to drop off my big backpack that I've had with me since language class that morning.  I have time to do this and use the outhouse before my grandmother escorts me to the table and demands that I eat at least three pieces of bread and seconds of everything else on the table. My family usually refers to this meal as Lunch…kind of confusing.  But “Lunch” consists of anything left over from breakfast plus some potato dishes or veggie dishes.

7:40 I usually excuse myself and try to get some homework done. I try to study until around 8:30ish if I can. Sometimes if my cluster mates and I make plans to meet up I usually meet up with them around 8ish. We normally attempt to study but we end up hanging out and sometimes watch movies.

If I end up going over to a cluster mates house I try to get back home as close to 10pm as I can. As soon as I get home I usually get asked if I've eaten while I was  and even if I've responded yes  I am still escorted to the kitchen for dinner which usually takes place 9:45ish or 10ish. I usually try to eat a little bit both there have been other times where I tell them that I am full...but that does not fly here.

If I don’t go over to a cluster mate’s house then I hang out with my family before and after 10pm dinner time. We watch TV as I attempt to use the new Georgian words or phrases that I've learned that day.

11:30 I am exhausted from the long day and I just want to have my alone time to wind down. I get ready for bed, use the outhouse (hopefully for the last time that night…dashing outside in the dark to an unlit outhouse while wearing a headlamp on your head should be a new game or sport lol) wash hands, wash face and brush teeth.

12:00-1:00 Either finish my homework that I have not completed yet, read my kindle or pass out from exhaustion.

7:00am Repeat.



Like I said PST is intense training. 

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Georgian Easter


Georgian Easter (Sunday April 28th this year) is such an interesting experience. The whole extended family meets together at the family’s cemetery plot to have an Easter supra.  There are picnic tables between the grave sites. They start out their celebration by rolling an Easter egg across the grave and then sprinkling wine across the grave in the form of a cross.  Then the women all sit at the table and eat while the men stand around it and toast each other. After we had finished our food, we packed up and headed to the next cemetery in town where Gabro’s side of the family is buried and had another small supra. We repeated the wine sprinkling and the egg rolling as well as the toasting. Then the whole family headed back to our house where we had yet another supra. Keep in mind this is all in three hours. So much food! I feel like I have gained 10 pounds while being here. Later after the celebration I met up with my cluster mates Brenna and Aaron for “studying” but really it was just hanging out and eating more food. We then walked across the street to collect/rescue Kirk from his Easter celebration. The next few hours were spent at Aaron’s host family’s house doing dance moves, learning new Georgian words and singing to Adele.

Part of my family and I at the supra
Grave plots with picnic tables in between


Supra meal
Beautiful view from the village


Borjomi!


These are pictures from Borjomi from a few weeks ago.  I went to Borjomi with our volunteer group and took my brother Atchiko with me on the trip. I don’t think he or the other host brothers and sisters of our group really knew what they were getting into. We went on a four mile hike up a small mountain that overlooked Borjomi. There was a small orthodox church at the top that we could walk into and take pictures of.  The girls had to wear head scarfs and skirts to get into the church.  The church was so small that it was almost like a small shack.  Then our whole group stopped for a supra lunch where we all shared our food that our host moms had packed for us. There was katchapuri, walnut past, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs, chocolate, Fanta soda, oranges, kiwis, apples and bananas, and homemade cheese.  We then hiked down the mountain to this nice lookout point where we took a lot of pictures.  We or course had to stop and taste that natural spring in Borjomi. Borjomi is known worldwide for its natural mineral water. Many people head to the city for its healing properties.  After our adventure ended, we took a train ride back to Osiauri. I was pretty tuckered out but Atchiko was beat. We both took afternoon naps afterwards.



Inside the very small but very pretty church 
Me and my head scarf in the church

The fountain

Here are pictures of the famous Borjomi Fountain. All of the Volunteers are gathered around it. The water straight from the ground is kind of warm and smells like sulfur. I think I like it better when its cold and carbonated. 

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

First Week Living in Georgia!


Hey all! I finally made it to my new host family! It’s been a big change from the past week though. I got placed in my new cluster group in the village of Osiauri. There are five volunteers in Osiauri including me. We are quickly adjusting to the village life.
Team Osiauri!
The first day for instance, I learned about the ins and outs of squat toilets (extra or old paper is commonly used as toilet paper) and bucket baths.  Adjusting to the new lifestyle and learning a new language is pretty intense but I’m thankful that we are always busy with something. We (the volunteers) usually have our Georgian language class from 9am-1pm and then lunch at one of our houses from 1-2:30. After lunch we usually take an 8 min marshutka (bus) ride to the town Kashuri where we have our Peace Corps Service Training (PST) from 3 to 6.  Our very busy schedule had us so convinced that we had been in the country for two weeks that it wasn't until we were looking at our calendars that we realized we had only been here for 8 days. Life in Knoxville seems like a lifetime ago.


My bedroom

Side yard with toilet and chicken cope



 I have two new brothers, Achiko who is 14 and Giorgi who is 7.  Both boys were pretty shy at first but I think they are coming around. My new mama, and no I don’t me mom I mean father, is Gabro  (I think the Georgians switched mama just to have a laugh though it is confusing sometimes…imagine coming up to a grown man and calling him mama and meaning it).  Gabro is an actor and actually was the star of a big theater production in Kashuri.  My deda (mother) Neli, works as a credit checker at bank in Kashuri. And then there is my bebia (grandmother) Nino. She is very sweet and always calling me a kargi gogo or “good girl”. Believe me you want to be considered kargi gogo here. She always says “tchama, tchama”...”Eat, eat” at the table.  So far the whole host family experience has been awkwardly good. My little brothers know a little bit of English and my host parents know some too but it’s more like a word here and a word there.  With their little bit of English and my nonexistent Georgian, we play a lot of charades, mainly me pointing words in the dictionary, and at various objects around the house.

My host family and I minus my grandmother Nino. From left to right: Me, my brother Achiko, my mom Neli, my other brother Giorgi and my dad Gabro.