July is gone already?!?!?

Where did July go?  Here I am looking back in this sorry, rainy excuse for an August looking back at a month that went on forever just as much as it flew by.

LIFE Camp was all kinds of incredible and rewarding ... and completely consumed my existence for three straight weeks.  Three other volunteers and I traveled from town to town putting on the week-long camp with many a guest star from the rest of the volunteer crowd.  What have I learned?  The dangers of saying the word "condom" to a 12 year old, how incredible some 15 year olds can be given half the chance, how to throw both a football and a rugby ball, how to survive being tackled by 10 Georgian teenage girls, and what it smells like when 7 Peace Corps volunteers stay in the same old Soviet-era one bedroom apartment together for an entire week while they conduct a kids sports camp all day long (hint: think biological warfare).

Here are a few cute pictures from the camp.  This was just the warm-up, too!  Our funded camp is two weeks from now!  We're editing our resources and gearing up!  In the first picture, the kids are acting out a scene about what they would do in a situation where everybody is too drunk to drive home.  Nika's on the phone calling a friend.  The second two are rugby!

Today is my 3rd night back in my village after having been gone for almost a month working on LIFE Camp and hoo boy did I miss The Mafia!  Tako asked me over and over why I left and where I'd gone for two straight days after I came home.  All in all I had to agree with her-- what the heck was I thinking?!  We're back to our usual routines now, thank goodness.  Today I carried her out of my room as she beg-moaned for more paper.  She has books full of blank paper now and doesn't have to ask me anymore, but don't think that changes anything!

To combat the effect of the old Russian spring mattress on my back, I've started doing yoga in the mornings and evenings to the fascination of my host family.  Even though I do it in my room in private, I'm invariably interrupted at some point by someone knocking on my door for one reason or another.  Thus in the span of two days home, my routine has been well discovered.  So tonight Anuki and Keti came in to exercise with me.  I wouldn't call that hour of my life the most productive ever exercise-wise, but it was pretty dang funny.

Near the end of our yoga session I passed my camera off to Keti and this was her take on the situation.  I'm posting representitive selection of her pictures.    I didn't post the picture she took of my computer screen, hower, where the lady in the yoga video is just lying on her mat because that was just way too creepy.  You'll notice the Bananagrams set that Janell sent me and Keti LOVES and broke out soon after she got bored with the weird poses.  She likes to just group all the same letters together ...

Anyhow, enjoy the world through the eyes of my 5 year old Georgian host sister!

Work? I work?

It's come to my attention that I never talk about work on this blog.  That seems strange to me because sometimes I swear work is all I think about.  Really, I wonder if my family just thinks I'm off in another country partying and speaking a language that I will never need again a year from now (except to continue communicating with The Mafia and possibly write some really awesome grocery lists).  It's possible that they've been whispering "it's just a phase" behind my back my whole life.

"Hey Mom, I'm a vegetarian."

"Hey Dad, I'm a Spanish major."

"Hey family, I'm leaving for The Republic of Georgia for the next 27 months."

In defense of my spare moments not spent drinking wine and learning how to make cheese AND in a huge THANK YOU to all of my friends and family that donated to our LIFE Camp PCPP grant which was recently FULLY FUNDED (that's a lot of caps, I know, deal, we're so happy!) ... here is a blog post enumerating all the other Peace Corpsy goodness I've been up to lately.  Dear friends and family, this is what you're supporting! I swear I work too!

Special thanks to Laura and Darlene who are the only people I know to thank!  Your names both came up on the donor's list and if anybody else donated but didn't leave their names, I don't know who you are!  Thank you  Darlene and Laura and to the rest of you awesome (but apparently quite shy) donors!

SELF CAMP (June 29-July 2):

First of all, the dates listed there are something of a joke.  I mean, those were our camp dates, yes, but two other volunteers and I started working on putting that camp together last November.  Talk about a long time coming.  But I think the most important point about those dates is that they're ooooooooovvvvvvvvverrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!  Hoo boy, are we ever excited to have one successful camp behind us now.  Huge shout-out to Merissa and Brittany without whom I can't even imagine conducting such a huge endeavor.

SELF Camp is a girls-only fitness camp that's about equal parts lectures on health topics (hygiene & communicable diseases, mental health, reproductive health, drugs & alcohol awareness, gender based violence awareness) and sports and exercise (running, stretching, yoga, ultimate frisbee, soccer, basketball).  We stayed with 40 girls, 2 guest speakers, 2 new trainees, and 8 counselors & jr. counselors, and 1 head counselor in a large renovated school in a small town near the Black Sea.  The school had a cafeteria (?!?!) a beautiful auditorium (!!!!!!!!!) and showers with hot water (!!!!&^$%#!).  The staff set up beds in the rooms and we just stayed there all 4 days.  The camp was embassy-funded and completely free for the girls (many of whom would have not have been able to attend otherwise).

At the end of the camp, the girls had a talent show and a dance party and oooooooooooh were they ever sore!  They traded phone numbers and signed their notebooks like yearbooks and my great hope for them is that they begin to form a network of women who advocate for their own health, who recognize that they deserve to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect, and who take an active role in deciding their own futures.  Very most of all, I want to watch them crush the concept of "taboo topic" under their heels.

This isn't the camp you funded, but it's super important too.  LIFE Camp caters not only to co-ed education but, also, naturally to more liberal open-minded families that are willing to allow their daughters to travel so far away from home alone and stay in a co-ed situation.  SELF Camp is there for girls who aren't allowed to go so far.  Even to get girls to come and stay at SELF Camp (which is a 3 GEL travel distance from my village), it was such a circus.  Every single eligible girl at my school filled out an application ... and we had to re-choose girls 3 times to come up with two whose parents would allow them to come.

(Never fear, I have my LIFE camp campers set up and locked-in already, it just takes a little more legwork and a lot more persuasion.  I ended up getting a girl camper for LIFE camp from the same family that allowed their younger daughter to come to SELF-- when they told me her older sister could come to the co-ed camp with me near Tbilisi, I about fell out of my chair.  What a nice family!)

Here's a link to the pictures Brittany took of our camp with her super awesome camera.  I've still yet to get mine back-- I gave it to one of my students to take pictures with her friends during the camp.  I've got a trek ahead of me to upper Makhuntseti today to get it back ...

https://plus.google.com/photos/113108152858433535181/albums/5897446772708850897?authkey=CLySi_mxqvbqnQE

We also had a videographer at the camp and when we get that video, I'll share it too!  I can't wait to see footage of that talent show!

The Gym Project (forever ongoing):

When I came to this village on my site visit waaaaaaaay back when over a year ago now (so crazy to think about that!) ... my school told my unequivocally that they wanted help renovating their gym.  Now, the blanket advice I got from Peace Corps before I moved to site was to thoughtfully take my time figuring out what my village wanted me to do to make sure that I wasn't just picking some "American Idea" that nobody else here considered to be important.  Ha.  Ha.  Ha.  They were like:  "We want a gym.  We want a gym.  WE WANT A GYM."  I'm forever grateful to my school and village for taking ALL of the guesswork out of THAT process!

Then came the grant.  And the realization of how truly expensive new wood flooring would be.  And, oh, the agony.  Do we still write the grant for what we need or do we work on the blacktop outside (which would be cheaper but certainly not helpful in the winter)?  I actually wrote the whole grant before I learned that for a tiny village like mine, the unofficial cap for grant money is $2,500.  Shaved down to the barest minimum construction-wise we were at $3,300.  We didn't even ask for wall paint.  Any more and we would have been compromising the integrity of our project.  On top of the grant money, we had 44% community contribution through reduced cost labor and a ton of money from the school's budget.  I called Adam (poor Adam!) on the grant committee over and over.  I turned that grant in and we all collectively held our breaths.  In the passing weeks, I answered the "deadline" question to my villagers far more times than I could count.

"We'll know in two weeks."

"We'll know in a week and a half."

"Just a few days now, I swear."

I was in Istanbul checking my email 3 times a day waiting when we got the news.  WE GOT FUNDED.

Well, as every volunteer knows, getting the money is just the beginning.  Then came the wait for the money to come in from both the Peace Corps and the school itself.  One month later, everybody is "rich" or poor.  However you want to look at that one.

The gym teacher bought materials in Batumi yesterday and construction is set to begin today.  Cross your fingers for us, I'll be headed up to the school this afternoon to check it out.

Gulnara (every dang night!):

This woman deserves her own darn category.  Gulnara is my main English teacher counterpart and boy is she ever a trip!  Now, we're all supposed to lesson plan with out counterparts.  Lesson planning, aside from being great for a smooth day at school, is key for working on English with your counterpart.  Now, there's a range of "lesson planning" for every volunteer-counterpart pair ranging from "What's lesson planning?"  to a very steady schedule.

And then there's Gulnara.  Whose "lesson planning" work ethic is so legendary that she earned herself a spot on the most recent Embassy exchange program to America.

Between her and my other English partner teacher, I lesson planned upwards of 1.5 hours every night during the school week for the entire school year.  But, to be fair, "lesson planning" is a broad term that encompasses actual work, drinking tea, eating dinner, gossiping, and potentially dancing to Gagnam Style with surrounding small children.  And I, in my infinite naivety, thought that this schedule would end with the school year.

Hahahaha.

Well, now we have the Teacher's Exams on the 10th.  And Gulnara has been going to exam prep classes 6 days a week in Batumi.  And our lesson planning has just morphed into studying for the exams.  Now, I'm happy to work if she asks for help, but on top of that, I feel a huge responsibility to support her because she tries so hard for her own sake.  I found myself coming home for the afternoon on the 4th of July to write essays with Gulnara before leaving to celebrate America's birthday with the other volunteers.

There's no escaping it.  I will be "lesson planning" every night until the day I leave this village!  Yesterday we studied together all afternoon, I went home for a while, then I went back to correct her essay, put antivirus software on her computer (arghhh fixing virus-ridden computers in Russian ... I think every volunteer could write a soliloquy on that) and my favorite to do a prenatal yoga video with Gulnara (who is a few months along now), her niece, and her 4 year old son sandwiched between us and crawling under our jungle gym of legs and arms.

On the quick topic of yoga-- thanks to Brittany at SELF Camp (who led an awesome "hot yoga" session) and to www.yogadownload.com (which gives free 6-month subscriptions to yoga video downloads to active duty military and Peace Corps Volunteers-- SO AWESOME), I have started doing yoga in my room here.  Why didn't I do this a million years ago?!?!?!  I feel SO much better.  My bed is an old Russian spring mattress that is akin to a very lumpy hammock (I imagine the hammock would actually be more comfortable) ... and after a year of that, now I'm dragging the mattress to the floor every night in a desperate attempt to save my newly creaky back.  Am I old?  Can that happen to me?!?  Enter yoga.  Such.  A.  Huge.  Difference.  Now my host mom wants to learn how to do it.  I need to grab a blank DVD in Batumi somewhere so I can burn her a video to do.

LIFE CAMP (gearing up):

This is the next move.  I leave on July 9th for a dentist appointment in Tbilisi and a Gender Equality Committee organization meeting.  From there, I will be gone from the village for an entire month (woah) traveling from camp to camp.  The first three camps will be free in different larger towns around Georgia (so that we get good attendance) and the last one is FUNDED NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and will be conducted near Tbilisi in tents in true camp-style.  We got a new partner organization (Charity Humanitarian Abkhazeti), so now we have two.  The new organization deals solely with Internationally Displaced Persons, so instead of the original 20% of IDP involvement in the funded camp, now the vast majority of campers will be IDP kids and many of them will actually be coming from an IDP children's group home.

Obviously, when we get photo and video footage, I'll be putting it up for you all to see the end result of your donations!

Sorry for the infinitely long post about work, but I just really, truly want you all to see where your donations went and to know what a huge, grateful community is benefiting from your help.

More to come for sure!

Love,
"Aluchka"

Family Abroad

I haven't written for a while again, so hello.  I feel like I owe the world at large a story here, so I will tell the story of my host uncle and my real family.

My host uncle is a cool guy.  He's a big dude, especially for a Georgian, with a big broad face and a wide, very charming smile.  He gets away with stuff.  He's one of those people that, even though you know that he would never harm a hair on your head, you're still never sure if he's going to do what he says he's going to do.  In other words, a politician to the extreme.  I don't think I'm saying anything that's not generally known here-- his own wife prefers to refer to him using the Georgian word for "devilish".

When my family visited, he requested that I translate for them that he works in Parliament.  He always says this.  He works in a hotel.  Now, I certainly don't see the shame in working in a hotel, but I think he was a "bigger man" back in the old government and the change is rough on his ego.  Still, I suppose these niceties should be preserved.  Parliament it is.

He's always searching to let me know that I am a daughter and, more than that, my American cultural differences are OK (although he is clearly disappointed that I don't drink chacha more often).  He emphasized that my strange American ways were OK by letting me know that I could stay for free at the hotel he works at with my, ahem, male companion.  He renews this offer semi-regularly and I appreciate it-- while I'd never accept (my relationship status notwithstanding).  As a consequence, he's always seemed miffed that I don't appear to trust him.

So, when my mom, brother, and grandma came to Georgia, I saw the perfect opportunity.  Family!  Family is socially safe!  We can stay a night at this hotel, allow my host uncle to show us his hospitality, and everybody will be happy!

Fast forward.  We are all on a marshutka going through the backstreets of Batumi.  Looking for this hotel.  We find it.  It's not that far away from the main street.  Cool.

It's kind of a funny building and it looks like it may contain more than one club.  The floors on the steps inside are marble, though, and the stairwell is full of stained glass windows.  The hall containing the door to our room is dimly lit, not decorated, and infinitely long.  How long is this building?

Our room has a big screen TV, no light in the bathroom, a shower that leaks considerably and sprays water in very awkward directions.  This, however, is Batumi and none of this fazes us so much as the very interesting lighting and color scheme of the room.  When you turn on the lights, they're white in the middle with a colored strobe light around them.  Every wall is painted a different, bright color.  The room is relatively large and does not look like a bedroom, even though it contains a bed.  The other "bedroom" is partitioned off by a curtain.  In fact, this definitely looks like a party room with a few beds in it.  Hmm.

There are only 3 beds and my host uncle very much would like to put my brother in his own room.  I tell him it's fine and I can sleep in the same bed as my grandma.  He's miffed.  Man, this dude is miffed at me a lot.

We take pictures, we laugh at the very strange lighting and, exhausted from a weekend in the village, we go to bed.  My brother can't sleep, though, and decides to check out the club downstairs.

 The next morning, he tells us we are staying in a brothel.  After a few comments from the bartender, the club containing only smoking girls in normal "club wear" took on a whole new meaning.  My bro bailed after being offered new friend with good English skills.

... my host uncle put my grandmother up in a brothel.  And didn't think twice about it, either!

Seriously, I live with the Mafia.

And a few pictures

 My (just turned!) 4 year old host sister in her new favorite evening routine of coming into my bedroom while my host mom is milking the cow and rifling through all of my clothes to try on anything that is pink or red.  Those are also my slippers.

 The springtime view out my bedroom window.

 An "old" volunteer trying on the traditional Georgian hat that she got as a parting gift.  These fools are leaving in a week and then I'll be "old"!  How 'bout that?!

 

 A particularly beautiful sunset in Kobuleti overlooking the Black Sea.

 

Trainers and trainees (minus 2) standing outside of the Batumi USAID office after SELF Camp Training of Trainers.  Go us!  Go SELF!  (If anyone from my family is reading this, this is not the same camp as the email I sent you, but it's awesome too!!!)

#2

"You will be sick all the time."

Counting backwards to the top, here are the worst (best) moments:

5. Gulnara's party "For the Americans".  Now, don't nitpick my definition of sick.  I told them I should have stopped drinking roughly 5 shots beforehand.  For those of you who know my drinking (in)capabilities, let the magnitude of that sink in.  The upshot?  I threw up out my bedroom window, the chickens ate it, and I didn't walk for a day.

4. Marshutka rides.  I never know where to put this "sickness", but it makes the list for sure.  At least I know I'm not alone.  The sight of a pulled-over marsh for a sick person is one we all know well here.  Sometimes I travel back and forth to Batumi every day for a few days straight and then the nausea just sort of follows me like a haze. 

3. That time I got food poisoning at site visit (when I visited my village for the first time).  Not the last time I'll have food poisoning in Georgia, but surprisingly it was the first.  It makes the list for the intense embarrassment that I felt.  I was so sick that I had to end my welcome dinner in Batumi and make my new host family take me home.  Everybody was all freaked out.  Then I went back to training, still sick.  Bad news all around. 

2. I made it through the first HALF of winter without getting sick.  I was, like, the SuperKali of Georgia.  Until I came back to my host family after break and walked right into a sea of people who cough and don't cover their mouths.  Because being cold makes you sick.  And then it began.  And continued.  And never ended.  For months.  And months.  And after a course of antibiotics and a slew of cough medicine, it persisted.  Maybe I was the cough and the cough was me and there was no separating us.  Ever.  And then I had to get my chest x-rayed in Tbilisi.  After which, it cleared up in a matter of days with no extra medicine.  Wtf?  Magical x-rays?

1. Because it's a law for me in Georgia that I always get the sickest when I have to travel long distances, it makes sense that #1 happened right before I left to go halfway across the country to job shadow another volunteer.  This was the monster disease, The Big One, the disease to cough and fever all other diseases away.  I remember feeling so faint and so determined not to complain that the entire end of the first day shadowing turned into just a series of moments where I was focused on staying upright and walking forward.  Then I gave that disease to like 10 other volunteers.  Because I should have stayed home.  Sorry guys!

My rating for this platitude? 7.  I can't give it a 10.  For as sick as I've been, it doesn't amount to the horror stories I've heard from other people (and my God the pictures Africa volunteers post of their parasites ...).  Guess I'll remember to take my vitamin today ....

#1

Our one year mark here in Georgia is creeping up on me.  To celebrate, I will write about a Peace Corps Platitude every day to see if I've measured up to the propaganda.

"You'll experience your highest highs and your lowest lows." - I don't agree with this at all.

A case could be made for the highest highs.  Off the top of my head?  The times I've spent laughing with my counterpart-- and the times I've spent with her getting schooled on the things nobody talks about here.  Watching my little host sisters do insane things and having them imitate me in ridiculous ways.  I started quite the trend carrying a water bottle around.  I've never seen a four year old protect a water bottle so fiercely before.  Successfully teaching something mildly challenging on my own.  The look on my partner teacher's face when she found out she was going to America.  And then hearing her complex take on it when she returned to Georgia. 

The lowest lows?  No.  Thankfully, I don't think that this is true.  I've hit a few serious lows here, mostly loneliness in one form or another, but not the lowest I've ever been.  I think you can feel just as lonely when you're surrounded by people in America as you can when you're physically alone in the village halfway across the world.  Sure it's hard to be here sometimes, but loneliness takes a certain commitment to the idea that you're actually alone, as opposed to accepting the fact that human connection is not always easy.

My grade for Platitude #1: 6 (or a 9 if you're living in the village and this platitude is your coworker's nephew)

And in other news ... also known as regular news ...

Okay, let's get honest here.  I watch the frogs.  That's right, I'm a crazy frog-watching person.

Every day, I walk up and down about a 1/4 mile stretch of my riverbank back and forth, back and forth.  The path is too rocky to run, the roadside is incredibly dangerous, and in the other direction is the weird neighbor who stops me to ask questions about my "village lover" and otherwise thoroughly creeps me out ... so this is what I do because I go crazy* in the house if I don't.  I can pace along the same path for hours.

In my defense, it gives me a lot of time to think about things.  Not in my defense, there's not always a lot new going on so I spend time thinking about ridiculous things.  Like, what I would be doing on Facebook if I wasn't out pacing a riverbank trying to scrape my sanity up out of whatever is left of my sanity.  Or whatever.  I think this blog is developing an alarming theme.

ANYWAYS.  The frogs.

They're pretty cool.  They give me a measure of time.  I watched all of the eggs hatch into tadpoles, I watched the tadpoles grow, and now I'm watching this unusually warm spring dry up all of the little ponds before the tadpoles can turn into frogs.  Looks like rain tonight, though!  Is it weird that I hope for the rain because I'm worried about the frogs?

In other news, I befriended a horse grazing in a field and fed him two old apples.  Here's to hoping that if I end this post by talking about cute ponies that I will sound less weird.

**crazier

Nope.  Not happening.

Dilam Mshvidobisa

Hello, it's been a while.  How is the life you're leading?

And that is how I feel lately about everybody who does not live in my village.

To the people in America: How was that margarita?  How was your drive to work in the morning?  How was that Starbucks latte?  Your paying job?  Your family?

To my fellow PCVs: How was that night of supra and cha-cha?  How did you get out of teaching those crazy 7th graders?  Ah, really?  You faked appendicitis?  And your bowel movements?

To other PCVs around the world: Are your jeans dry yet?  Now?  How about now?  Now?  Now?  Now?  Because I assume this is a question that we ALL have in common.

Long stretches of time in the village causes me to take up curious routines.  Take my morning one, for example:

Wake up in the morning, refuse to get out of bed.  Snuggle down the bed (literally lengthwise) as much as possible to reduce the "hammock" effect of the Russian springs.  Hit snooze but stare at your phone.  Don't sleep.  Just wait.

Get up, finally.  Easily 30 minutes after you've actually woken up.  Slip on slippers and fleece.  Wander downstairs.  Spend far too long mulling over tea.  This may cause your 3 year old host sister to ask you if you've "gone senile".  In response, stick your tongue out at her.  This is the adult way to react.  Really.

Get up, go into high-gear, dress as quickly as possible.  Fix hair and brush & floss downstairs.  Give a piece of floss to your 5 year old host sister.  Floss together.

Purposefully wait until everybody else has left for school so that you can walk on your own.  Call it Zen, call it antisocial, call it whatever you like ... just try not to get hit by a car careening around one of the multiple blind corners.  Walk as close to the guardrail-thing as possible and accept the potentiality of your imminent death.

Get to school.  Say hello to every student under the age of 15.  Go to your classroom.  YOU HAVE YOUR OWN KEY NOW.  You are still celebrating this and doing a mental happy dance every time you unlock the classroom door with YOUR KEY.  It's the little things.

Or the noticeable slippage of sanity.