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!