Village Life

Our last day of training!

So Max proposed the title of this blog be "The Places I have Pooped" which seems like a pretty appropriate title considering the fact that I found a flushing toilet for the first time in a week today. But I met the host fam (masp'inzeli ojakhi) this past week and got all settled in and have pretty much fallen in love. Last week after our orientation and training was over we all said our goodbyes and met our host families that we would be spending the next 3-10months with. I think the Teach and Learn in Georgia (TLG) people were kind of glad to see us go considering our group (Phase 45) got in a little bit of trouble for our drinking habits and someone may or may not have "relieved" themselves in someone else's closet which was a TLG first :). The whole process of meeting the families we were placed with was definitely super exciting as well as overwhelming. You're literally standing on one side of the room with your bags, the host families on the other side, and someone calls out your name, the region you've been placed in, and the family you'll be staying with. Everyone claps.. you meet in the middle.. you can't understand eachother so you smile and hug.. grab your bags and get rushed out the door to the unknown.

Gia, Irma, and me outside our house

  It was about a 3 hour car ride from T'bilisi to my village and the scenery was gorgeous. I love the mountainous terrain here and lucked out and my village is on top of a mountain so the view from my room is breathtaking. My host family consists of my host parents, Gia and Irma, two sisters that are 9 and 15, Nata and Nino, and a grandpa that I see every now and then. We live up a dirt road about 5 minutes from my school with about 4 other family farms surrounding us. The house is absolutely amazing.. outdoor turkish toilet and all. I have my own room which is pretty sweet and am the only room on the upper level so that rocks for now.. when it gets cold I might feel differently as it's only accessible via the outdoor stairs and there's no heat in the house.

Nata and me playing Uno on the steps up to my room. She's already learned her numbers and colors in English thanks to this
little gem of a game :)

Our handy dandy outdoor sink

Irma making bread in the Georgian "bake house"
aka a clay barrel with a fire at the bottom. Delicious!

   I've always felt that everything happens for a reason and I feel like all my life experiences have been culminating to prepare me for this life experience. Prior to leaving to go with our host families I had expressed to the other volunteers that I was basically looking for an extreme indoor camping experience, and that's exactly what I got. My host family is amazing and live a modest, easy going, yet hard working life style. Irma makes fresh bread and cheese everyday from their cow that she milks every morning and evening. We have fresh tomatoes, grapes, walnuts, figs, and fruits that I've never seen before that come straight from the garden or the fruit trees outside the house. They have chickens, turkeys, and cows that roam freely (down the village streets and all) and a pig that's tied up in the vineyard. Dishes are done with cold water in the outdoor sink. They shower once a week in a room that's not connected to the house. The room consists of a showerhead attached to a wall with a hole in the middle of the floor and a water heater the size of the bucket that has to be turned on a few hours before showering. Electricity goes on and off throughout the day and they have a small TV that gets a few Turkish and Russian channels, and some Georgian news channels. The outhouse is a solid trek from the house down an unlit path and is literally just a hole in the ground..the distance is good for the stench but bad for the 4am bathroom run. Gia goes and fills a bucket up every day or so with water that we can drink as we can't drink the water from the sink. We play cards and try to teach eachother words/phrases in the evening and we all just laugh until we cry.

The view from the top of the pasture

Gia and one of their cows

Ladies and Gents... the toilet

Yupp.. there she is

The front of the school

 I finally got to go to the school this week which was very exciting. I was nervous at first seeing as Carly had gone to her's the day before and commented on the bathrooms being four Turkish toilets separated by  two foot stalls without doors. Come to find out my school doesn't even have a bathroom, let alone a chalkboard in most rooms or electricity. Thanks to one of my teacher friend's suggestions, I made the  kids individual dry erase boards out of ziploc bags with a piece of paper in it and a dry erase marker. Huuuge hit and the kids are starting to learn their ABCs :) My co-teachers are amazing in that they let me basically do whatever I want in the classroom. Both speak verrry broken English but are quickly becoming amazing friends. One of the co-teachers isn't even supposed to be an English teacher and the other has been a teacher for about a week so I can basically run the class which I love. I'm hoping to eventually get ahold of a copy of the kid's books so I can stop flying by the seat of my pants every class but my co-teachers don't even have copies of the books so we'll see how that pans out. The class sizes range from 3-15 kids and they all look at me like I have 6 eyes so I have their undivided attention at all times :)

Irma walking the cow through the vineyard

 At least twice a day I have to step back and breathe and try to take everything in. I honestly can't believe that I'm getting paid to do this. I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't challenging at times (i.e. getting stared at evvveerrrywhere) but I'm surrounded by beautiful friends and family in a beautiful culture in a beautiful country. Kids bring me flowers at school, old women smother me with kisses just for living in their village and speaking qart'uli, and my host family has already made plans for me to stay for a year and has started making arrangements for my birthday party in March. Georgia doesn't really have a postal system and there's no internet in my village so sorry for the lack of communication but I love and miss you all!

Little Background on Saqartvelo

Jamie rocking out to a giant piano in a park in T'bilisi

Recap of the week spent in T'bilisi!! I met some awesome people and have had some amazing experiences. I got so lucky and my roommate Carly and I both got placed in the same region and district. Although there's really no info on the villages we got sent to, from Google Maps it looks like our villages are only about 10 miles apart and at the base of the mountains which is ammmaazing. There were about 60 volunteers in this group that got placed all over the country, from the Butomi area on the Black Sea, to villages in the mountains, and we got placed 10 miles away from eachother.. winning! You don't get your placements until a few days after you get here, which made packing a bit tedious considering the different climates here, but the only info they give you after that is how many family members you'll have, whether or not your bathroom/toilet is indoor or outdoors, and whether or not you have internet. Apparently I'm the first volunteer this village has had, I won't have internet, I'll have a host grandfather, mother, father, and 2 sisters ages 15 & 9 that I'll be staying with, and the bathroom is indoors but the toilet location is still up in the air. The cell phones they give us have flashlights on them for those lucky enough to have outdoor outhouses or turkish toilets. Carly got an outdoor toilet and bathroom so I expect we'll spend some weekends in the Turkish bathhouses in the city that's near us :)

Future teachers.. scary..

  We've definitely had some amazing times in the past week and I've made some amazing friends already. One of the best quotes of the week would go to Max and his discussion of how much of an honor it was for all of us to get AIDS tested together. We got to see eachother's urine after the drug test as well which I think bumped up our friendship levels ten fold. Carly and I made friends with the workers at a coffee shop and they haven't let us pay for an iced coffee since so that was pretty cool. We also turned down two separate petitions to go home with random men that would pull up on the side of the road next to us while walking home. Even after blowing them off, flipping the bird, and repeated saying "Ara, ara" (no, no) they didn't quite take the hint and proceeded to just drive along next to us for about 5 minutes trying to get us in the car.. didn't quite get the hint. Apparently the men here can be super forward which kind of sucks being a foreigner. Women are supposed to be virgins before marriage, but men are supposed to be pretty experienced (which makes no sense) so apparently they think foreign women are the way to go. I'm going to play the whole engaged card because apparently the host fam will try to set you up with everyone in the village.. should be interesting.

Max and I with Giorgi who offered us great dancing lessons
and free chacha shots

Shopping at Goodwill 

Fort Narikala at night

  Other things that I've learned since arriving here is that there is apparently there are a lot of rabid dogs running around and the only advice the TLG recruiters gave us was the not make eye contact and assume the fetal position.. excellent. There's about to be a big election here so it's been a cool time to be in T'bilisi. There's been peaceful protest with people just marching through the streets, some wearing surgical masks, or just posting up in front of government buildings. People are always out lining the streets and fences with campaign posters and it's just really been pretty cool to see. Max has decided to elect himself Mayor of his village so we'll see how that goes. We've been warned about once a day not to go into the occupied territories here and informed about the various conflicts, the US Consulate came in and talked to us about being "safe" travelers. Someone took a shit in a closet. You only toast beer to your enemies so we've made toasts to everything from cat abortions to the Soviet influence. The consider special needs children here to be those from Armenia and Azerbaijan. We've drank and danced with the locals, I've yet to try the homemade chacha (vodka) that's supposed to be amazing here but men will come up and offer it to the guys in the group freely. Within every family someone has a vineyard so I'm just holding out that my family is the one to have it in the backyard :)

Carly and Boca, our self nominated tour guide

 But we get to all go meet our host families today which will be both exciting but terrifying nonetheless. Living with people that you can't communicate with will pose quite the barrier at first but I'm hoping that it will all work out! Much love to all!

Warsaw Choresaw..

Well seeing as Kevo is still uploading photografias from our roadtrip I guess I'll wait until I have those and skip ahead to the past week of the latest adventure! I ended up landing a teaching job through a recruiting organization called Greenheart Travel (look 'em up, they're awesome!) in the Republic of Georgia for a semester and just landed here this week!

  I still can't believe that this is actually happening to me seeing as this has been, quite easily, the epitome of the phrase "too good to be true". Not only did the Ministry of Education in Georgia set up and pay for my flights, but they arranged all of us future teacher's health insurance, host families, school placements, cell phones, Georgian language classes, methodology classes, hotel rooms, food.. the whole shabaam! This past week has been absolutely amazing getting to know all my fellow teachers in "Phase 45" of the English teaching initiative called "Teach and Learn with Georgia" aka TLG.

Old Town Warsaw

  The flight information was sent to us the week before we left and I was initially somewhat put off by the 12 hour layover in Warsaw, but then I realized that I had a 12 hour layover Warsaw.. winning! I was lucky enough to meet up with a few other people from my group that had layovers in Chicago and flying with me the rest of the way to T'bilisi so we all had quite the time in Poland. We were able to take the metro from the airport, check our bags in at the train station and then just go wander freely around the city. We got to see everything from monuments, to the Old Town area, to the old Ghetto wall and also your casual transvestite running around on more drugs then you could count. All the while, Max was not enjoying Warsaw as much as the rest of us and came up with little slogans such as "it's a Choresaw; Boresaw; Eurgaysia; Snoregia; I want some Moregia" which made the day a bit more entertaining.

Part of the old Ghetto wall

Coucous and perogies! (Please note Max's face... priceless)

After exploring the city we made it back to the airport in plenty of time and just hung out and slept on the floor until it was time to head out. We were a little weary at first seeing as the plane was over an hour late and in order to get on the plane everyone had to hop on one bus to the tamarack to board, but we arrived safe and sound at about 4am after 26hrs of traveling.

 When we got to the airport TLG was waiting to help us with our bags and exchanging our monies and then they shipped us off to the hotel. I got lucky and Carly who was with me from the Chicago flight was my roomie and we're basically two pickles in a jar. We've spent the last week doing some intensive orientation and methodology classes as well as working on our qartuli (georgian) language.. which has a lot less rules than English I might add. We've also had lots of time to explore the city though and have just had the time of our lives thus far and I'm so so excited for this next semester!  

  Although we're all getting split up tomorrow, I've met some amazing people from literally all walks of life with all different experiences and I feel so fortunate to be able to surround myself with such inspiring and dazzling individuals. For some people this is their first time out of the country, others have spent the past few months backpacking across Europe or Russia, some just finished teaching in Japan and South Korea, and some are just looking for a change of pace. It still hasn't quite hit me that this is real life yet but I just can't wait to meet my host family and get started in the schools!

View from the top of Fort Narikala

Downtown bar in T'bilisi

View of part of Fort Narikala with the Mother of Georgia statue in the distance

Dave Grohl and Buffalo

My bank account the day I was accepted into Nursing School.

 Well seeing as it's been since about February since I last touched this thing, I can honestly say that life has definitely taken a bunch of unexpected, yet amazing nonetheless, turns. If I had to sum up my last semester of college in a few words I would definitely say sleepless, broke, and bittersweet come to mind. My travels in Australia and India put a giant (but totally worth it) hole in my pocket so the remedy was working full time nights :( To add to the financial stress, I had to throw in a 22 hour semester only to find out a few weeks in that I was 2 classes short of graduating. The solution would be to take two summer classes at Parkland with the promise that I could still walk (errhhmm) with my class in May but not get my diploma until August.

The roomies since freshman year the last day of school

 Despite the mayhem, I still managed to have an amazing last semester dancing the nights away with none other than the love of my life, Shmanda McMandersons (my roommate Amanda :)) and having life talks with our roommate Sonita San. I had 15cents in my bank account the day I found out I was accepted into nursing school which I took as a big red flag that it wasn't something that was feasible in my near future/financial situation. Life talks with my mom and roommates definitely helped me see that it didn't matter what my post-grad plans were and that life would work itself out. I like to think that it was this care-free mentality, mixed with Rhea's complete disregard for alarm clocks, that contributed to me oversleeping and missing my graduation but we'll blame Jesse as well for that. Sorrrry mom!!

Graduation picture outside the Waffle House after I missed my
graduation ceremony. 80% Rhea's fault for letting us stay
out so late and hearing our alarms going off but not waking anyone up...

...and 20% Jesse's for not being a good friend
and carrying me home sooner the night before

 After the semester had ended and the shear devastation of Amanda moving back to Chicago had passed, I
decided that it was time to evacuate Champaign for a bit. I took some time off work and had a few weeks before my summer classes started so I was lucky enough to make it up to New York to see the one and only Sam Reed (S'America!). We had scored tickets to a concert in New Jersey to see a music festival so we spent a few days in NY then roadtrippped down to New Jersey where we both had emotional breakdowns when Dave Grohl (from the Foo Fighters) was close enough we could spit on him (but why would you ever spit on Dave??) while he say 'Everlong'. After returning from NY, I was able to make it up to visit my broski, Ryan, and  his girlfriend, Annie, in Canada and make it to Missouri to see my other brother, Jordan, and his new house and land that he bought before the mass chaos of two full time jobs and two summer classes set in.

The love of my life

Live Minnows vending machine in Pennsylvania

Sam and I at Niagra Falls.. so romantic.

The question we should ask ourselves on a daily basis
on a park bench ad in upstate New York

My brother, Jordan, with his Sold sign for his new house
and farm land in Missouri.

Memorial Day lake party with the Rantoul crew :)

Sports Fitness Camp crew in our spiffy camou t-shirts

  For the past four summers I have worked at the U of I's Sports Fitness Camp. It was through this camp that I met my ultimate partner in crime, Sarah, and we somehow managed to con our way up to Assistant Directors of the camp (who would honestly trust us with their kids?). This was the best summer that we've had yet and were blessed with an amazing staff and no kids dying. Sarah and I both worked nights at the hospital as well and I can honestly say I couldn't have survived the summer without her. We would go work 7pm-7am Friday and Saturday nights then work 7pm Sunday- 7am Mondays, go get coffee, then head into camp from 7:30am to 5:30pm and work full time days Mon-Thurs. We were completely delirious by the end of the day but we still managed to have a lot of fun, and the best part is that no kids died! Winning!

Kev and I in our AWESOME matching Tshirts at Mt Rushmore
in South Dakota

 During the course of this chaos, I had also managed to lure Kevin into going on a massive "last hoorah" roadtrip with me... poor kid :) So the week of August 4th I managed to pass both of my online classes (D for degree!), move out of my apartment, finish up camp, quit the job at the hospital, accept a job offer to teach English in Georgia for a few months, and pack for a roadtrip. We made absolutely zero plans for the trip and just decided on an ultimate goal of ending up at Yellowstone. So after I worked my last overnight shift at the hospital, and took a nap of course, we threw a tent, some sleeping bags, and a ridiculous amount of canned food in the car and set off for the West.