Well I think I have survived winter here. The days are getting a little bit warmer and
the chances of having our water frozen again look pretty slim. January and February have been the hardest
months of service so far because of the cold weather. PCVs here often call
February “Depression Month” because it is the coldest month and many of us are
bound by necessity to stay in the petchi room (often there only being one in
the house) with the rest of your host family 24/7. I myself had to abandon my bedroom upstairs
and sleep in the living room in order to stay warm at night. Being in a room
with all of your host family members every day for 12 hours straight with
nowhere to escape can get to a person. However like I said, I believe the worst
of winter has passed. I had distractions like the Olympics, the events in
Ukraine, phone conversations with friends and school to keep me going.
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| View of Tbilisi's main church |
I spent most of January and February getting back into
school mode. It’s been hard to do so because the start of school has been
hindered by two long weeks of training by Peace Corps. One training was for
reporting purposes and the other training (which ended this weekend) was focused
on how to write grant proposals and project proposals for our communities. So far since school has started I have
managed to start our English club back up and get a set of donated books
delivered to the school. After this
training though I’ll be working on trying to get a project proposal written in
order to get funding for a new language cabinet at my school. Other tasks on my ever growing list are:
working on the applications for GLOW NGO, revising and editing our TEFL
Education activities book, and working on logistics for NESC’s (National
English Spelling Competition) final competition coming up this spring.
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| My third grade and their new books! |
This month is looking pretty crazy already with all the
things that need to get done. Some exciting news is that we, that is the G13
group of volunteers, have received our megobari (friend) information about the
new volunteers that will be arriving in April. Basically we serve as pre
departure pen pals to the new kids, mainly giving them advice about what to
pack, what the culture is like and what to expect before arriving. I can’t believe it’s almost been a year since
I’ve been here. I remember receiving an email from my megobari, Kristen, and me
promptly writing back to her worried questions about last min packing advice and
what the gender role expectations were for women in Georgia.
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| Me and my new birthday hat! |
Among all of these trainings and projects, I managed to turn
another year older and finally hit 25. My 25th birthday was pretty
tame since we were at a training conference but my friends managed to make my
day memorable. Ten of us were crowded in a hotel room playing card games and
toasted to my birthday with champagne at 12am. The next day we all had project
training and grant writing but I still managed to receive a birthday call from
my parents in Tennessee, numerous “Happy Birthday” text messages, Facebook
shout outs, a birthday card signed by my friends, gifts, and lots of singing.
