School Days

So I just finished my first week of school. (Whew!) I've been looking forward to/dreading this day but it was actually quite fun. The first day of Georgia as I have now learned is a day of celebration. It is far from the typical American first day of school where we go into our homerooms, have book lists, syllabi, and supplies lists handed out. Not here. Georgians, if you haven't figured out from my many posts of food, dancing, and supras, love to celebrate! They are very good at it and the first day of school was no exception. All of the parents, students and teachers gathered on the front lawn of the school facing the school steps to watch the Back to School Program. There were speeches given by teachers about their goals for the new year as well as speeches from my director about how well academically the school did last year. Afterwards there were a series of traditional dances performed by the school's students. After the program was finished the students, teachers and parents alike went to their students' classrooms in order to pick up the new textbooks for the year. I wandered around the school looking slightly confused (my permanent face in Georgia) greeting excited students that would run up to me and yell Hello. After talking to a few of the students I finally found my sister's classroom (on the third floor...need to remember that). I was greeted by a dead chipmunk on the floor as well as a group of 11th grade boys who would a min later pick up the chipmunk and dangle it in front the girls seated next to the door.

Well after all of this school excitement I decided to return home and take a 2pm nap (a practice that is slowly developing into a habit). I was however informed that my mother and her friends were planning a back to school supra at our house later that evening. Five women rushed into my home around five and commandeered my family's kitchen. They brought beer, pickled peppers, sausage, eggs, cake, beer, wine, onions, tomatos, pork, sauce, xinkali, and even glass plates. Within 30 mins we had ourselves a full blown feast.  We ended the night with a good ole fashioned Disco party!

The rest of the week I observed my counterparts' English classes. This really boiled down to me answering a few questions about myself to my students (Do you like jewelry? What are your parents names? Are you married? Do have friends?)  and then creepily lurking near the back of the class to take notes about each individual class and my counterparts' teaching styles. I will continue observing classes next week and then come Friday I'll sit down with my teachers and pick which grades I want to teach. I need to at least teach 18 hours to meet PC standards but I'm thinking of teaching a little extra and doing a full 20 instead. When I told my counterparts about this plan to teach 20 they thought i was crazy. My counterparts here teach about 18 hours each. They were astonished that teachers back in the states teach full time. Apparently 18 hours is pushing it here, how else could they have their day off in the mid of the week. Strange world Georgia.

Below are some pics from the week.

Everybody gathering for the celebration

Celebration banner!

My neighbor/student performing a traditional Georgian dance

More dancing

Cute students singing a song about rain and umbrellas

Poor Chip...or is that Dale?!

Back to School Women's supra...these are the best!

Shake it like a Polaroid picture!

Summer Camp Sagarejo Style

So if you’ve been following along, one of the activities I have to do before I start school is plan and implement a summer camp for my community. Not an easy feat when you lack materials, money and oh I don’t know…basic communication with vendors, students and others alike. However my camp ran really smoothly thanks to the help of my two counterparts and my sister and her friends. They helped me out with translation and guidance when I needed it.

The camp was 5 days long with each day being a different theme. Themes are as follows: Introduction Day, Sports Day, Arts & Crafts Day, Pop Culture Day and Nature Day.  I would open each day by passing out an attendance bead to each of the campers…this served as an incentive for the campers to come back each day. By the end of the week the campers who attended every day of camp would have enough beads to make a summer camp bracelet. After the bead passing and roll call, the students and I would warm up by dancing the call and response song called “Funky Chicken”.  After “Funky Chicken” I would give the day’s vocabulary lists to the campers and go over each word to make sure that they knew them. Afterwards we would do various activities and games that involved the words from the words list of that particular day.

I tried yet again to teach kickball to another group of Georgian students….just as hard as the first time but by the end of the hour they had a pretty good grasp on the rules and such.

I think they activity the kids loved the most was the clothing relay game. I brought some articles of clothing for this activity and asked each student to bring one article of clothing for this activity as well. I divided the clothing into two piles, each pile having the same amount of shirts, pants, hats etc. as well as equal numbers of colors and patterns. I would shout out an article of clothing or a color and each time would have to find the item and then run to the other side of the room and dress their other team member. They got so into it!

The other activity that was a huge success was the making of God’s Eyes. This was a craft that my family and I would do when we would go camping. All you need is two small sticks and some yarn and presto a cool craft and as I have come to realize from my memories of family camping… a way to easily keep kids occupied and in one place.

Besides god’s eyes, the clothing relay game and kickball we also  did the hokey pokey to learn body parts, made collages from magazines (each student had to spell their name, I love Georgia, include a picture they liked and spell out one new word that they learned that day), wrote poems with 3 new vocabulary words, went on a nature scavenger hunt, a human treasure hunt (students had find other students in the classroom who had something in common with something on their list…asking questions in English of course), watched and English film (Finding Nemo), made team posters and team songs, and had a celebration picnic at the end of our last day of camp

Though the camp had a lot more work/planning/improvising than I had originally anticipated…it all worked out in the end.

Below are pictures from my camp…my counterpart Zaira took most of these photos

Playing Everybody who has...

Maka, one of my students, and her collage

I know you all are jealous of my beautiful handwriting...

Just a sample of some of the god's eyes made...my students picked the craft right up 

Checking off the Nature Scavenger Hunt list...(and for your information I'm thinking...not picking my nose)

Last day of camp supra picnic 

The infamous clothing relay

Learning body parts and action words with the help of the Hokey Pokey

Kickball! The sheets of my summer camp schedule also doubled as bases

Nature hike exploring

Pictures and collages time!

One of the team posters...We had team Funny Children (poster above) and team Smile

Woot Go Sagarejo's 2013 Summer Camp!

Lost in the Mountains

I've been pretty busy the last week and a half and its about to get even more hectic with school starting in less than three weeks.  Let me bring you up to date with what I've been busy with:

A few weekends ago I went on a overnight camping trip with some of the other G13 and G12s here in Georgia. Our training manager Tengo planned the trip and took us to the Khevsureti area of Georgia. This area was one of the most beautiful most unreal places I have ever seen! The mountains are so tall and numerous that you feel like they could easily be swallowed up into them. Also it is impossible to capture such a sight on camera though I did attempt to do it. I left on Friday and stayed the night in Tbilisi so I could be ready to meet our tour marshutkas that were leaving around 7am on Saturday. On our trip we saw some of the oldest establishments in Georgia. We saw Shatili and Musto….those were the biggest highlights of our trip. Shatili is this old fortress from the medieval century. It was so cool because it was like a maze trying to explore all the building because they were all connected to each other in some form or fashion. Mutso is an old fortress with more than 30 something fortified towers

Below are some pictures of Shatili  and Mutso and a Wikipedia link about each of them too.

Shatili Info and Mutso Info

Datvisjvari Pass (the area that separates Southern and Northern Khevsureti)

Lebaiskari (small abandoned village)

Shatili, an old town-museum, built between 
the 7th and 13th centuries

More Shatili pics

Anatori crypts (a dead village with the history of the Black Death)

Our campsite for the night...we hiked up to the abandoned village in the top left of this pic

Mutso, 30 medieval fortified towers arranged on vertical terraces and overlooking Mutso-Ardoti gorge

After this weekend trip I went to Lagodekhi Nature Reserve with my sister Mari to go explore the park's hiking trails and waterfalls. My friend Aaron works at the park and he was kind enough to be our trail guide for the day.

My sister Mari on our day hike

Aaron proud of his falls

Woot made it!

Five Things Friday 08.09.2013

Five things that happened at site this week:

1) On Thursday I made ice cream floats for my family as a dessert. They told me they liked it but they might have been being polite.

2) Mari (my host sister), her friend Nino and I had a girls night in my room and watched August Rush. We were going to watch Notting Hill but the external hard drive was having none of it.

3) My whole family and I moved our very large wood pile into our barn space so that the wood can stay dry during all of the summer thunderstorms we've been having. I think my family was concerned that I was helping them but I reassured them that there were many a day back in East TN where my family I would chop and stack firewood....not to mention pick up sticks, rocks and rake leaves (Now that I'm looking back at it, I'm pretty sure my parents had all of us so it would be easier for them to do yard work...just a theory)

4) I was only asked three times this week by people in my community if my hair was in fact my hair. That's a new record.

5) I accidentally broke one of the glass panes in my bedroom door when a gust of wind closed it quickly...oops


Five words/ phrases I've learned this week:

1) ობობა (oboba): spider...I thought with the word being oboba that it would be the translation for a much cuter animal....I was wrong

2) დარჩენა (darchena):  is the verb "to stay" ...useful when my family was asking if any of my  friends in Georgia would come here and stay for a weekend

3) ვირი (viri):  donkey...we have one on our street who always eats the blackberries off of the bush on that corner

4) დოქი ( დoqi):  yarn...i need to know they one because I want to buy some yarn at the bazaar in order to make god's eyes for camp.

5) საფული (saphule): wallet...because the former Volunteer who lived in my site before me lost her wallet the day before she COS and my family was asking me where she had lost it.


Five books that I have read while being at site:

1) Getting Stoned with the Savages - J. Maarten Troost

2) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

3) The Road - Cormac McCarthy (Yay Knoxvillian!)

4) The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

5) Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost

Five books I read in Georgia before I got to my site:

1) Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer  (Love the movie...had to read the book)

2) The Art of Being Single - Judy Ford

3) Wild Things - Dave Eggers

4) The Definitive Guide to Stuff While People Like - Christian Lander (Makes fun of every and all trends...some I am guilty of being a part of lol)

5) This Twenty Something Life - Jon Rance

Five things I'm looking forward To:

1) Going and and exploring Tbilisi with my host sister sometime next week

2) Having my summer camp in Sagarejo

3) Receiving care packages from home...bring on the taco seasoning and peanut butter. 

4) My overnight trip to Khevsureti with some of the G13s and G12s

5) The start of school...though I am kind of nervous about it....and when I say kind of i mean mortified 

G.L.O.W. Camp

Greeting from G.L.O.W. camp! G.L.O.W.  (Girls Leading Our World) is a week long all girls summer camp that empowers young women to make healthy life decisions. The camp focuses on topics such as: sexual education, nutrition, healthy relationships, career planning, emotional well-being, self esteem and leadership.  This week we have 40+ girls from all of Georgia with ages ranging from 14-16. We have 6 Peace Corps Volunteers and 6 Georgian counselors counterparts who run the camp. PCVs like myself are here to offer support guidance and new ideas during the small group time but the camp for the most part is  facilitated by the Georgian counselors. Through out the week we have large group sessions, small group sessions and exercise routines in the morning. In the evening we have fun activities to do during free time like Bingo, hiking and crafts. Then at night we have fun activities such as movie night, disco night, campfire, talent show and formal dinner.

The girls have been really amazing and engaged in all of our presentations so far. Today we have a guest speaker who is speaking to the girls about the importance of sexual education and healthy relationships and then later we will have discussion groups about gender roles and then we will close the night with a campfire (hopefully if it doesn't rain). Well gotta get back to camp but just thought I would check in. .

Below are links to Glow Camp in case you want to know some more information about it:

GLOW Georgia

G.L.O.W. Camp 2012

Cheers,
Anneke

I've Been Around...

I have been living with my host family for almost two weeks! Things are a little awkward…but what do you expect when you move into a new family and can only speak a few phrases to them. The first two days I completely let myself go and slept for most of the day…PST will wear you out like that. The next day I went on an excursion with 24 15-16 something year old girls to see some of the churches and lakes around the area. At one point I could see the mountains where the boarder of Russia lies. The trip was amazing; it was like being in summer camp again. The girls were braiding each other’s hair in the marsh while others were singing traditional Georgian songs in a round.

Our first stop was to Gremi Church, a 16^th century church. It is the Church of the Archangels in the little town of Gremi in the Kakheti region. It has a secret tunnel and everything. Very Game of Thrones like!

After our visit to Gremi, we went to go see Nekresi Monastery. Nekresi Monastery is a 6^th century monastery located on top of a steep mountain. This place has some interesting history behind it causing it to be the only Christian church where pigs can be sacrificed. Legend has it that during the Muslim Lezghins invasion, people sought the monastery for refuge. They covered the area with pigs’ blood and skin making it impure for the invaders to enter. Very interesting indeed and because of this piece of history, we were allowed to have grilled pork kabobs for dinner.  It was very picturesque and overlooked most of the countryside below it. We even saw the remains of an old pagan structure in the field below us.

Nekresi Monastery

Me at Nekresi Monastary

Well seeing all those churches worked up our appetite so we then had huge women’s supra with water fights, dodge ball and badminton in-between. We later closed the day’s activities by swimming in Illia’s lake.

Getting Ready for a our women's supra

Pagan Site below

Later That Week...
Then this past Saturday a few G13s and I took a trip to the beach to bring our vacation time into full swing.  The beach is quite a journey for me since is on the opposite side of the country…but I made it! It only took 6 different marshutkas, one metro, and a book and a half but I finally made it to the beach and back again in one weekend.   A lot of work to only be at the beach for nine hours but it was totally worth it. There were 11 of us that got together on the beach. Most of the time there we spent trying to figure out the best approach for entering the water…rock beaches and their rocky shores can be hard to navigate.

My weekend Journey to the Beach and Back again:   

Friday:

2:30pm Friday afternoon take 45min marshutka ride from Sagarejo to Tbilisi

3:30 Arrive in Tbilisi…take one metro to the Didube  Bustop in downtown Tbilisi

4:00 Meet Brenna at stop, procure a marshutka ride to Khashuri

 5:30ish Arrive in Khashuri, stay with Melissa for the night

Saturday:

5:30am Get up and board 6am Marshutka for Batumi

10am Arrive in Batumi …hang out at the beach and coffee shop

 7pm board marshutka and drive 3 hours to Kutaisi…Stay at Ann’s for the night

Sunday:

2:30pm Failed to catch a marshutka to take us to the marshutka stop in order to catch another marshutka  to take us to Tbilisi…projected arrival time to Tbilisi at this point, 8pm…last marsh to leave from Tbilisi to Sagarejo leaves at 7:30…screwed.  End up staying another night at Ann’s-

Monday-

12pm Catch the marshutka in Kutaisi a

4pm finally arrive in Tbilisi 

At this point, i  met Emily, the older Response volunteer that was finishing her service and had a few drinks together in order to celebrate her last night of service in Georgia. After drinks we took another marshutka back to our site. I had planned on going to my house and passing out from exhaustion but Emily’s family insisted that I have dinner with them before doing so. She had somehow overheard her director making plans to rent a marshutka and have all the girls in Emily’s organization take it to the airport and surprise her there. We had to pretend to the girls and her director  that we were unaware of said plans….This was much harder than we thought since the girls assumed I didn’t know the plan and kept on insisting that I go to bed…(by this point it was 10pm and they were planning on leaving at 12am). After an hour nap my sister woke me up and told me of the big surprise. We, along with eight other girls and Emily’s director, climbed into a marshutka in the dead of night and took the windy countryside roads out of Sagarejo and to Tbilisi. (Funny, I just left this city 4 hours previous). We “surprised” Emily at the airport and waited with her until her flight left at 3am. Then we piled back on the marshutka and drove the next hour back to Sagarejo.  

 4am crawl into bed…but can’t sleep…at 5am my Skype rings and friends in America want to talk…and so it goes

Like I’ve said, I’ve been around

Ladies and Gentlemen…I now am Finally a Volunteer

July 12th, 2013

I had my Swearing in Ceremony on July 12, 2013! Now I am officially part of the Peace Corps Georgia family! All 30 of us (the trainees) got up super early…6:30ish mumbled goodbyes and farewells to our PST host families and boarded the PC caravan that drove us the hour and half to Tbilisi. 

The Swearing In Ceremony is kind of a swanky event. PC invites one member of your PST host family, one member of your new host family and your school’s/organization’s director. We get all dressed up, give speeches, say oaths, cut cake, and have live performers come and give a performance on stage for us.  It’s so swanky that we have to do a practice run of the whole event. Unfortunately I made the mistake of placing my bag in the marshutka that broke down on the way there so for a while I thought I would have to swear into the government in a pair of jeans and some black converses…The marshutka came in time though.

My cluster mate Ann and I, along with a few other volunteers, performed both Georgian and the American national anthem for the ceremony…we had no idea though that we would be on Georgian tv later that night…another reason I was glad that my formal clothes had arrived on time.

My invitation, Peace Corps Pin, and my certificate. 

It's Official!!! 

Nora, Brenna and I in the front Swearing In

Maura, our country director, cutting cake