A tale of awesomeness. Prepare to be awed.

Perhaps the post won't live up to the title, but one has to reach.

C and I went to Batumi last week, and it was awesome. Our YouthBank group, which we had been attempting to join for the last month and a half, finally got together 2 weeks ago, and prepared for the training. We had two meetings, which ended up being mainly formalities, and then moved on to the Batumi training.

But, before I get to why the training was so great, and why we now have hope that something, anything, will go right in our PC service, I need to describe the hotel.

Holy [bleep] it was awesome. The shower showered. The toilet toileted. The faucet fauceted. EVERY TIME. The magic water geni that lives in the pipes even offered a bounty of water, and I kid you not, it was hot. Live for 6 weeks without running water (and counting!) and the magic of indoor plumbing becomes even more fantastical. And just as great, the room was warm. Wonderfully, deliciously, fantastically warm. Changing became something one could do in a leisurely manner, rather than a frantic scramble to avoid frostbite. I put on fresh clothes EVERY DAY. That, my friends, is indeed a delicious wonder. And, to add even more awesome, the room was larger than our current room. Seriously. It had a minifridge. A minifridge. To be fair, our room is currently a maxi-fridge (it hovers at 2 - 5 degrees centigrade, which is the actual temperature inside your fridge at home), this one was cute and self-contained.

It was a wonderful vacation from the cold. We were able to really relax, take many showers, and I even shaved every day. I'm out of positive adjectives, so I'm going to describe the training now...

Youthbank, for those of you not in the know, is a program started in Northern Ireland to create groups of young people who give small grants to youth-led programs in their communities. Our group, for instance, is going to give grants to sports, ecology, and club programs. The usual grant amount is 500 lari (about $320). They go through the entire grant-giving process - creating the application, anouncing the competition, gathering applications and interviewing, and then scoring the applicants and awarding the grant. It's a great program for youth because they actually do the things that major NGOs do, but on a reasonable level. The training helped them through the process of grant-making, and did some team-building exerises as well.

The group 7 people (technically 8, but we haven't met the last person), 5 girls and 2 boys. The definition of 'youth' is pretty wide (16 - 24), so there's a wide range in ages. 2 highschool girls, a highschool boy, a college guy, a married woman with one kid, and an english teacher. It's a nice mix, and there are several Armenian members of the group as well. Three people speak pretty good English, but most of the business is done in Georgian or Russian. It's helping to stretch my Georgian, which is a good thing.

The training was really positive, the food was good, and we were clean and warm. What more could we ask for????

The ride home was pretty awful - 7 hours in the marshutka, and we got home at about 9pm (way after dark). That's just a really long time, and not very fun. The way out was much quicker (about 5 hours) and it was a better ride. But hey, we got to go for free, team built with our team, and hung out with some cool PCV friends.

On a side note, I've discovered the greatest finance tool for pcvs ever - mint.com. I highly recommend it. It's a financial account agregator - one sign in, and you have access to all of your account information. Where it's really helpful is in emailing, once a week, the account status of your accounts, including credit card balances. This is great because it lets us check one place, or one email, rather than having to go to 7 different websites. We know everything should be zero on the cards, and it's super easy to monitor them this way. If you get a chance, shoot over to mint.com and set it up...

Its definitely warmer in Akh now! This morning was only -5... yesterday, the afternoon was actually +5. Yay! Most of the ice has melted... and then this morning/today there's been another snowfall of about 2 inches. Walking to work to about 20 minutes, and my backpack was COVERED in snow. It was pretty funny, actually... My hat was drenched, and I had to put it next to our heater to dry out. Hopefully it'll melt quickly, and we can move into the spring soon...