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

Put the "Black" Back in Blackboard

Before we are allowed to become volunteers, we have to come up with and implement a community project for our town. We decided that the black boards in our school needed to be updated immediately. The previous black boards had a light brownish shiny paint background in which the chalked didn't transfer very well and the sun would reflect off of the board to the point where one had to crane their neck or physically move in class to read the contents on the board. We called our project “Put the Black back in Black Board” hehe Below are some pictures from our project: 

Paint Brigade 

Painting away

Sanding Queen right here lol 

Osiauri Summer Camp!!!!

This week in PST our cluster had to design and run a three day summer camp for the kids in our village. Our camp is supposed to heavily focus on the English language. We wrote an announcement flyer and had our LCF help us translate it into Georgian. Afterwards we made copies and placed our flyers in various hang out spots around Osiauri. Counting our host brothers and sisters and their mutual friends, we were only expecting around 20 kids to attend our camp…..Big mistake.  On the first day of our camp we had not 20, not 30, not 40 not even 50 but 60, that’s right 60 something kids showed up to our summer camp.  Kind of overshot our projected number by a lot. Fortunately we had considered the possibility of having an insane amount of kids show up (though we didn't think it was likely) and had planned activities/games that could work well with large groups.  

Link to our village's summer camp Youtube video. Osiauri's Super Awesome Fun Summer Camp 2013

Day 1:

2:30 Kids start arriving to school to sign their name on to our sign up list…we run out of paper quickly and have to start doubling up on our lines. Expected to have a bunch of Giorgis sign up but we surprisingly only had two…that being said we had something like 10 girls named Mari so we had to write last names on the name tags too.  Kids ranging from 4 to 17…this might be tricky. Ann, Ana (our LCF/camp translator) and Brenna man the sign up table….Kirk and Aaron play basketball with some of the kids while I entertain a large group of girls with my poor volleyball skills

3:00 summer camp officially begins! We put everyone in a big circle around the gym and explain the rules to our first game. We tell our kids that whoever is in the middle of the circle (a.k.a. IT), they will call out something that other kids might have in common with (Example: I like pizza or I have a dog) and that those who do like or have the same thing will run across the circle and sit down before IT steals an open spot. The person who is left without a spot in the circle is the new IT. Rules explained….whew….and start…chaos ensues.

3:30 Break kids off into various teams.  Kids are left to come up with their team names and make a poster. After much deliberation, Team Spiders, Team Crazy Children, Team Lions and Team Gangnam Style are created.  After a short name game in our groups, we decide that our groups should play an arm tangle game in which everyone in the group crosses their arms over and grabs the hands of two different other people. Once everyone is linked then the group must untangle themselves without letting their hands go….This last point was difficult to explain. Note to self…drill this last part

4:00 Take kids and introduce them to kickball.

4:10 Quickly realize how difficult it is to explain the concept of kickball…start from square one... no you can’t pass your fellow teammate if they are on second and you are on first…this is the fowl line…

5:00 End of summer camp for the day. Only have thirty kids by this point but they seem to be in high spirits. We survived.

7:30 Our cluster meets up and decides to revamp our games and activities for day two…today has served as a trial and error day.

Day 2

2:30 Sign in begins. There are 40 something kids today…lost a few of the older ones but we have gained some new faces too.

3:00 Decided the easiest and most fun route for our first game would be to play a huge game of Duck, Duck Goose. Play game and it is a success!!!!

3:25 Break off into competing teams for scavenger hunt. Have prepared list before hand and hope that the kids will really get into it. Included things like, “Find three things that start with the letter “r”, and “Find someone named Giorgi and sing  to them an English song or preform a dance”, Call Kirk and ask for the password”. Have cameras divided between all of the cluster mates so as to document some of our tasks/objects that we can take back to the school (such as a cow).Scavenger hunt is a success!!! Two for two today. And on the plus side, my team wins scavenger hunt.

4:10 Have two activities simultaneously…hope it works out.  Aaron, Kirk and I help the 20 or so kids that brought shirts with tie dying them. Ann and Brenna play Sharks and Minnows in the gym with the other kids.

5:00 Both are success and we have tons of dye left over so made an announcement for kids to bring a shirt tomorrow that didn't get to tie dye today.

Day 3

2:15!!! The kids are already at school. Warm up with basketball and volleyball before everyone gets here.

3:00 Camp starts. Start playing lava game in which our four teams compete with each other. Kids need to correctly read the English word written on a card and pass it to the next person to read. Once the card has been passed up to the front person, the front person must make a sentence out of the word ...if they do then they are able to place the piece of paper on the ground and use it as  stepping stone to get to the other side of the gym.  Hard to control but fun.

3:25 Play capture the flag and made jail a place where you have to create an English sentence to get out. Didn't foresee that everyone would want to be in jail...Guess that's a good thing...right? 

4:30 Grab water balloons for water balloon toss...kids are excited but don't want just one balloon to work with...game goes a little south and kids want more balloons. 

5:00 By this time the rest of my cluster and I are very tired.  The last few minutes or our summer camp consist of pictures and videotaping goodbyes. 

Cultural Trip to Gori

So last weekend PC allowed the G13s to take a cultural trip somewhere within a day's worth traveling from our cluster site. Our cluster decided to go visit the city of Gori. We picked it for a number of reasons

1) It is one of the few places that we have to get prior approval to visit because Gori is really close to the South Ossetia buffer zone where we are not allowed to travel...so we decided to take this opportunity when we could because you never know what could happen in the South Ossetia region

2) We really wanted to see the Fortress of Gori and Uplistsikhe Cave City


3) And the last reason was that we wanted to see Joseph Stalin's birthplace and visit the Stalin Museum.


We rushed to our Osiauri train stop to take the 9am train to Gori, which is about a 45 min train ride. We then met are fellow G13s at a cafe about a 3 blocks away from the station. We then proceeded to have coffee and katchapuri (kind of like a big cheese hot pocket) for breakfast before checking out the sights.

First stop was the Stalin Museum. The museum was surprisingly well laid out although it did a pretty good job of skipping over/ not even acknowledging all of Stalin's crimes. The view of Stalin here for the most part is that Georgians recognize him as an infamous figure in world history but they don't support what he did. That being said many folks in the city of Gori celebrate him for the mere fact that Stalin was a small town boy from Gori who made it big in some context. 

We gonna walk down to Stalin Avenue...

Ann and I doing the Stalin

Me looking at Stalin's picture...pretty sure he is sloshed in this picture 

Stalin's Birthplace.

After the Stalin Museum our group decided to split up and tackle different sites around Gori. I decided to go see Uplistsikhe, a cave city from the 5th century. Four of us decided to go but we had to find a marsh to take us to the city since it was a few kilometers out from the center of the city. We witnessed our first Georgian funeral procession as we got of the marsh. Everyone was dressed in black and four men were carrying the open casket of a man decorated with various military medals. Kind of weird thing to witness in the mist of our journey but we didn't let it bring us down too much. The walk/hike to cave city is a little strenuous or as Brenna's guide book states "for the able bodied". The view from the top was amazing I've included a few photos here but I probably took closer to 50. Here is a website if you want to check out more of the cave city's history Uplistsikhe Info

The cave city of Uplistsikhe, it's from the 5th century...very old

This was a theater back in the day

The view from the top of the cave city...Ann took this picture of me....sneaky girl

Our cluster...well minus Aaron but yay! Wish Kirk would pay attention.

After our excursion we caught the last marsh back to our village in Osiauri. When we got back we went to four, that's right four supras (feasts) around the town because it was a local holiday in our village. Everyone was drinking, toasting, dancing, and singing. I wasn't able to take too many pictures...mainly because I forgot  too but I did get some pictures of the supra at Aaron's house.

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.