#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.