...And We're Off

Okay, pictures first...the first picture is of my computer lab at school, and as you'll notice, it's actually quite nice (along with...wait for it...the fastest Internet in ALL of Akhaltsikhe, so I lucked out). The next two pictures are of a supra the American volunteers had last Saturday night after the Breast Cancer Walk in Kutaisi (more on that below).




Since our last update, we've been quite busy. Last Wednesday, we had a safety & security regional meeting in Akhaltsikhe, so everyone from Samtskhe-Javakheti came to tour the police station, hospital, and meet for lunch with some of the PC office staff (I am convinced, by the way, that in terms of pronounceability, we got the short end of the stick for regions...but I digress). I have to say we were pleasantly surprised by the condition of both the police station and hospital. The police station is a brand-new building, and is quite nice. We met the Akhaltsikhe police captain, as well as the police captains in Borjomi and Ninotsminda, and we reviewed crime statistics. Turns out, by the way, that if we are a victim of crime here, the S-J region has the highest rate of any region in Georgia for solving the crime. The most dangerous areas tend to be the big cities, not surprisingly, and Akhaltsikhe doesn't really fit into that category. Lunch was nice; we had a supra-style spread waiting for us at the Romantic Restaurant (this is the one restaurant in Akhaltsikhe with tablecloths and it is a popular destination for wedding receptions; everything else is a cafe as opposed to a full-blown restaurant). We got to talk to Kathleen, our Country Director, about the Georgian political situation, which some of you may have seen news about (I am told it made CNN or BBC; we rarely get to watch those channels, and our language skills aren't advanced enough to watch it unfolding with great detail on Georgian news channels). We also got heaters for the winter, which were supposed to be kerosene heaters, but instead, now we get electric heaters, which we are much more excited about (at least until we figure out how expensive it's going to be to run them). After those exciting distributions, we were off to the hospital, which thanks to the Norwegian government, has just undergone remodeling, so it looks pretty nice inside.

Last Thursday, I began my Georgian tutorials; I now have tutorials on Monday and Thursday afternoons for an hour. Brenden is still looking for a tutor (I am using my friend Josh's counterpart; he lives and teaches in a village 10 minutes away from Akh, but his counterpart lives in Akh).

On Friday afternoon, we left for Kutaisi, Georgia's 2nd largest city, for a Breast Cancer Walk. This is orchestrated by a NGO that our clustermate Johanna works for, and also receives strong support from both the U.S. Embassy and the Georgian government (both the U.S. Ambassador John Tefft and the First Lady of Georgia spoke at the rally after the walk portion). Friday night, we went to a reception at the home of the NGO's director. This was also the first time we got a chance to see the majority of our fellow PCVs since swear-in, so there was a lot of catching up to do. On Saturday was the actual walk, and that was a cool but odd experience. In Georgia, just the fact that we're American means we attract attention. Here are a few examples of the attention we attract:
In the second week we were in Akh, one of Brenden's co-workers came up to him and said, “I saw your wife on the street” (she had never met me or seen a picture of me, but she spotted me in the crowd).
I was wandering around the town center looking for the Bali/Magti office when a stranger came up to me and asked in English, “Can I help you? I can tell you're not European—you must be American.”
Last week, a boy at my school I didn't recognize (although it is possible that I sat in on one of his classes) came up to me and kissed me on the cheek and then kissed my hand (kissing on the cheek is a standard greeting in Georgian, but I believe it is usually initiated by the older person)
My friend Josh came to my school to visit last week, and two of my 11th grade students saw him in the schoolyard and came to my 7th grade class so they could converse with Josh (one of the girls lives in Josh's village, and although she had never met him, she had seen him once before)
News crews came to our arrival in Gori, swearing-in ceremony, and my summer camp, and I know some of my fellow PCVs have also been interviewed in their permanent sites

But our experience at the BCW put all my semi-celebrity status experiences to shame. I was standing around, waiting for instructions of what to do with two other PCVs when a group of girls came up to us and asked us if we could take a picture with them. We obliged, and a minute later, another group came up and asked us for a picture, too. Within 10 or 15 minutes, we'd taken 5 pictures, and then the first group of girls came up to us with their BCW t-shirts on and asked us to autograph them. I wasn't quite sure what to write, so I just signed my name. I haven't signed a t-shirt since summer camp many, many years ago. It's weird, this celebrity status we have acquired just by moving here.

The other thing I noticed was the fervor with which the BCW t-shirts were coveted. We were in charge of helping to hand them out, which basically meant I stood at the table with another PCV and attempted to block off the sides of the table so people were only attempting to grab shirts from one side, rather than surrounding the table. Georgians don't really queue, so it was just a mass of people concerned with getting a t-shirt. We were only giving them out to people actually walking or running (there was also a 5K run), so people were handing their running/walking numbers off to their buddies so they, too, could get shirts.

I was quite impressed with the turnout the BCW achieved and it seems a pretty effective tool for awareness. We were handing out brochures on causes and prevention of breast cancer, which the men and women who came were eagerly collecting, and then hundreds of people marched through the streets of Kutaisi wearing BCW shirts, and it ended in the central area of Kutaisi with speeches by the First Lady, the U.S. Ambassador, some other official-looking people, and finally a concert with Georgian musicians (who, interestingly enough, kicked it off with a rendition of a popular American song in English and then in Georgian).

Finally, I'm not sure if I've talked about my secondary projects, but I have two now (I wasn't planning to start any until January, as the PC recommends that we should give it a few months to figure out what your community needs, but these both just sort of fell into my lap and are both connected to school). I was asked by my non-English speaking teachers to teach an English class, so once a week, I've been teaching that since the first week of school. It's both refreshing and a challenge, because the teachers are there only because they want to be, not because anyone is forcing them, but this class I teach on my own unlike my student classes, which I teach with my counterpart), and most of the teachers began knowing only the alphabet, “hello,” “good-bye,” and “my name is...” Those limitations have made me realize how little Georgian I actually know to explain concepts. Next week, I hope to start a class for students interested in applying for FLEX, which is foreign-exchange program for high school students from the former Soviet Union to spend a year in school in America. The first examination is the first weekend in November.

- Carissa