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, January 2, 2015

The Last Few Months of 2014 and The Future

Like most bloggers, I'm running a bit behind on my posts. I've been pretty busy since October and it seems to never let up. This is what I've been up to:

1) Halloween
We had our annual Halloween party at my school again. All the teachers and students were asking about it as soon as October started. This year we had a costume contest, slide show, dancing, and students reading the history readings from my students about Halloween during our presentation.




2) All-Vol
This was my last All-Vol conference. Every November all the Peace Corps volunteers in the country gather together to conduct trainings and interviews for next year's committee members. This is also the time that we get together and have a Thanksgiving feast with the U.S. Ambassador.

The Thanksgiving Cooking crew
Anthony and me

Finishing our All-Vol Thanksgiving

All the Volunteers: G13s, G14s, and Response Volunteers

3) Thanksgiving
I celebrated Thanksgiving with a few friends in Tbilisi at another friend's apartment. We made pumpkin pie, a gratin, mulled wine, chicken, hummus and veggies. Yum yum.

4) GRE and graduate school applications
Ugh, not fun especially when you have to take the GRE two days after Thanksgiving. Also applications and personal essays are the worst. I want to earn my masters degree in social work so I'm currently applying to graduate schools. I've narrowed it down to seven different schools and so far have submitted four of the seven applications. Trying to coordinate transcripts, recommendation letters, rough drafts, application fees, final drafts, and communicating to various admissions offices overseas has been a juggling act. Wish me luck and I'll keep you posted about how it turns out.

5) Grant Project
Finally finished!!! I mentioned a few posts back how my counterpart and I were awarded a grant for our school. Well ,we finally finished it. Now all that's left is to submit the paperwork








6) GLOW Camp Preparation
We have our Winter GLOW camp in less than two weeks so I've been busy finalizing our camper and counselor list for camp. Having a camp in the middle of break and making sure that all of our campers and counselors can be present for the whole of camp has proven to be challenging. I'm so glad that my recruitment part of camp is almost over....just gotta get them there. 

7) NESC Regionals
We finished the second level of our competition! Now for the big push in March for our national competition. This is going to be a big task too but fortunately it's after GLOW Camp so I can focus on it afterwards. I've got to coordinate volunteers and plan and manage the resource fair among other things.



6) Christmas
Christmas was much needed after all this stress and cold weather. Ten of us rented an apartment in Tbilisi for a few days to celebrate Christmas. We made/ate tons of amazing food that we normally don't get to enjoy (take out Chinese food, fresh veggies, tacos, tomato soup, mulled wine, hot chocolate etc.). I even got to Skype with my family back home.

7) New Years!
My host family rang in the new year Georgian style. We cooked and prepared food all day for the midnight supra that we would have when the clock struck twelve. At midnight my brother, mom, sister, and I set off fireworks in our front yard and toasted to the new year.




I'm ready to take on 2015! It's going to be a year of change for sure with my sister  and a ton of friends getting married, finishing up my two year service here, returning home and hopefully starting grad school in August. 

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