The day we had our first visitor!

A couple weeks ago, Logan and I got an exciting message - our friend Megan (technically Logan's from DC, but I like her so I'm claiming her) told us she is going to Turkey and was wondering if she could come for a weekend. My answer was not just yes, but heck yes! Now that we hit our six month mark, we can take vacation days and welcome visitors. And fall is lovely here, so we were so excited for her to come! Plus it was short notice, so we didn't even have to wait long - just the way I like it.

She flew in on Friday morning, and with no time to spare, we went directly to Mtsketa, the ancient capital of Georgia and a lovely little town. We met up with Sophia and had a feast of kinkhali. As proper initiates of Georgian hospitality, we were bound and determined to stuff her as full of food as possible during her trip. After a quick tour of Mtsketa, we traveled out to Galivani and spent some time with the Bookmobile kids there. They were so excited to welcome new friends and use their English. Logan and Megan introduced themselves and we all played some games in the school yard.

From there we rushed off to Skra, Logan's training site. We had dinner and stayed the night with his host family there. They are some of my favorite people in Georgia. The welcome is only matched by the deliciousness of Irma's food. Everything is from their garden or animals, and she works magic in the kitchen.

The next day, we kept up the pace of the activities by taking a drive through Kakheti. (It may not sound like much, but that's Georgia's Eastern Region. Our entire round trip was about 300 km/186 m.) We hired a taxi for the entire day, and he was a great sport. He would drive us to a fort/church/castle, wait for us to explore, and then drive us to the next one. He even added a spot onto our itinerary, and it was a great addition. Fall is in full swing in Kakheti, and it was gorgeous. The rolling hills covered in bright colors was so gorgeous.

Most emblematic picture of our trip: our driver, the fall colors, and Russian music videos

The day was a bit of a blur of car rides, fall colors, and old things, which turned out really great.

Stop 1: Ujarma Fortress
I don't actually know that much about this one. It was a fortress with a great view.

 Stop 2: Shuamta
This was a set of three churches. The one in front is from the 5th century, the other two from the 7th century. So old! It's so impressive that they are still around, and then you add in the fact that people still use them.

Stop 3: Alaverdi Monastery
UNESCO Heritage Site. Second largest church in Georgia. The frescoes were impressive. Plus this one had a winery and pomegranate bushes in the yard.

Stop 4: Gremi Castle
Personal favorite. This one we got to go into a museum and they had a fancy old toilet chair. We were a little obsessed with the color of the roof. Lots of wars happened here.

Stop 5: Nekresi Monastery
This one was on an impressive hill. My favorite part about this one was that when we were across the valley, I pointed it out to Megan and said "See that? In Utah, I would think that's just a big rock. But I'm sure it's a church." As it got closer I knew it was, and then we ended up going there. Surprise! The road there was so steep with crazy switchbacks, we had to take one of their buses and assigned drivers. The view was amazing. I learned later that one time this monastery was kept safe from attacking Muslim Persians because the monks filled the road there with pigs and the Persians wouldn't deal with the dirty animal. So now this monastery loves pigs.

Stop 6: Sighnaghi
Georgian "City of Love". On another hill with an awesome city wall that we got to walk around on. Super charming little town. Hometown of our taxi driver.

Stop 7: Bodbe, or Nino's Monastery
Saint Nino was the woman credited with bringing Christianity to Georgia. She's a pretty big deal. This is where she spent the last part of her life and she's buried in the complex. The gardens were amazing.

It was a marathon day and we covered so much ground, but we all enjoyed it. So much history and culture, and we barely scratched the surface. We showed Megan on a map of Georgia how much we covered and she agreed she needs to come for another visit - there's so much more to see!
We even had part of another day to explore Tbilisi and the festival that was happening there. More kinkhali was eaten too. We got her to the airport on time and unfortunately she left us for Turkey. I'm so glad she visited, though! Hopefully this shows people how fun we are to visit and that they should come visit us too.

The day I squished the grapes

Fall in Georgia means grapes. Not literally, but grapes are everywhere. At every turn, you can see either grapes or grape products. One morning, I woke up to a flurry of activity on the porch outside my window. This flurry of activity was the harvesting and squishing of my host family's grapes. (I'm sure there's a more technical term than "squishing", but I'm not sure of it in Georgian or English, and squishing is a fun word, so I'm going with it.)

Alby and Zura hard at work

Naturally, I was excited and intrigued. The process was a bit different than I expected. Yes, that is a bathtub, which is pretty ingenious, since the juice drains perfectly out of the bottom into the collection bowl. But the funny part is that this is the only bathtub I've ever seen in Georgia. No one takes baths. It's either showers or buckets. I have no idea where this bathtub came from (or where it went after). It's a mystery. 

Action Shot

First, they let me watch, and then gave me some juice to drink (which was delicious!). I've had freshly squeeze orange juice, but never grape juice. I'm a fan. Then after a while of me hanging around and low-key begging to do it too, they let me put on the big work boots and give it a go. It was really fun, but harder than I expected. I had to move the bag around to make sure that I got the most juice out that I could. Also I had to make sure not to fall over (possibly the hardest of all the tasks) and stay to the back so that the tub didn't move forward. 

I finished up my bag and drank some more juice. I was feeling quite satisfied with myself until later that day when I learned that you shouldn't drink too much fresh black grape juice because there's something about the color/skin/juice that is too strong. Which I learned the hard way because I had quite the stomach ache that evening. So I literally drank myself sick on grape juice. It wasn't even wine. So I'm a lightweight, but a lightweight who regrets nothing. 

The day I turned 26

I love birthdays, most especially my own. So I was very excited to hear that a training had been scheduled the week of my birthday, which meant that although I had to be in a training on my birthday, I would be surrounded by other volunteers in a fancy hotel (paid for by Peace Corps) with a buffet and a spa. That is definitely my idea of a great birthday. And it lived up to my excitement!
As the clock struck midnight on September 16, most of the G15 IOD PCVs (that's a lot of letters to describe my group: the people in the program and same year group I'm in) were in one room - hanging out and watching VH1 (the best thing on TV, tbh. They were rocking the 00's jams.). One of my favorite birthday traditions is celebrating my birthmoment (12:08 am, I'm really lucky it wasn't at like 6 am). The other volunteers complied and sang Happy Birthday to me right then and it made me very happy.

During the training, I got a shout out and M&Ms from the staff, and birthday wishes and songs from many people. Plus, luck was even on our side, and my table even won both the trivia games. The party continued all night. Two people love me and gave me Oreos. I quickly proceeded to eat them with milk from the restaurant, which came in a goblet. In the evening, the hotel had live music. It was two of the hotel employees playing guitars and singing covers of Georgian, Russian, and English songs. They were really great, and I think we were the biggest and rowdiest crowd they'd ever had. They were great. Scott had them play a song just for me. By the end of the night we were all dancing and got them to play a couple encore songs.
Even at home people were working to make my birthday special. My family did acts of service all day "in my honor". It was so sweet. Their updates all day were such a lovely gift of the heart.
The best kickoff to my 26th year I could have asked for. Thanks for everyone who helped make it special!

The day summer ended

August is Georgia's vacation month. Mostly everything stops and people take some time to relax. Then on September first, the country bustles back to work. It's funny what a difference a day makes. I had some fun adventures during the month of August, here's a quick wrap up:

The first adventure was Bookmobile Camp. The Bookmobile is one of our projects at my organization, but it doesn't operate during the summer. But they planned a camp with kids from all four settlements where it operates. The camp was in a campground above a town called Juta, one of the highest continuously populated villages in Europe. Basically it was hours on a dirt road from anywhere, but beyond beautiful. The camp was so much fun. We had sessions on different life skills, plenty of games, hiking, and I led a morning yoga class every day. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth millions, so watch the fun video they made of the camp, even if it is in Georgian:


The next weekend, a bunch of volunteers met up in Kutaisi (the second largest town in Georgia) because it had been almost a month since a lot of us had seen each other and obviously we were having some separation anxiety. There was of course, the required copious amounts of talking, eating, and adventuring. One of the volunteers lives near Kutaisi and showed us the incredible Martvili Canyon. Parts of it reminded me a lot of the slot canyons in Southern Utah, but the water was clear blue and surrounded by green instead of desert. It was the perfect summer day of swimming and fun.

Kutaisi wasn't done with us yet. The next day, to escape the heat (did I mention it was high 90s and humid?) we went to Prometheus Caves. I was expecting it to be cool, but I was very impressed. The cave system was much larger than I expected and it had awesome formations. One huge difference I noticed between Georgia and the States was that in the US, we usually try to put the smallest amount of things in the cave to minimize impact. But in Georgia, they carved out the path and light it up like a Christmas tree, and I have to say, I liked the Georgian way better. (Side note, they called it the Prometheus Cave, because there's a rumor that maybe the Prometheus myth happened here. Or it was the place he got condemned to after he stole the fire? Something like that. I was too distracted by the pretty stalactites and stalagmites.

The next weekend the party was at my house! Literally. Some PCVs had signed up to do an enamel jewelry making workshop at my organization. Naturally, that couldn't be all we did, so they slept over the night before and after. They did an awesome job at making the jewelry and then we celebrated by making fajitas and watching a movie with a borrowed projector. It was almost like a movie theater! (Funny story, we shared the fajitas with my host sisters and they did not like them at all. But they were good sports and much prefer fried rice.) Tserovani might not be as happenin' as Kutaisi, but we know how to bring the party.

Thanks to Logan's dental filling falling out of his head, the next weekend was an adventure too! He had to get it fixed in Tbilisi, we took the opportunity to explore the city. I hadn't really been there on more than business, so it was great to be a tourist for the day. We utilized as many forms of transportation as we could, including cable car, metro, taxi, funicular, and foot. (The last one counts because we put in like 16 miles that day. We checked on Logan's phone pedometer.) We explored the old fortress, Mother Georgia (a huge metal statue that looks over the city), the largest and newest church in Tbilisi, and a flea market in a park. That market was so much fun; I felt like I had been transported back to the Soviet Era. We spent almost the whole time trying to find the right Hammer and Sickle pin for Logan to buy and I got an awesome new necklace. I'll definitely go back - there was so much cool stuff! Another highlight was when we were up on the hill overlooking the city (by this time it was night), we took a ride in the Ferris Wheel, and fireworks started going off while we were in there! We had the best seat in the house. It was awesome!

By the time the month ended, even though it was so fun, I was ready to quote Green Day and say: "Wake me up when September ends." But it's my birthmonth, so it's my favorite. Plus, the rest of Georgia was ready to get back to work too.

The Day We Hiked Among the Clouds

The Thursday after I started at the organization, it had a birthday. To celebrate, the whole office closed, we piled on a marshutka, and we drove a few hours north into the mountains to a place called Kazbegi. Kazbegi is the home to Mount Kazbeg and a mountaintop monastery named Gergeti. Every time I researched Georgia, I saw pictures of this place. It’s world famous and for good reason. It was quite a hike to get there, but when I got there, I was breathless for a different reason.

My words can’t do justice to how beautiful this place is. We were so high in the mountains that we were literally in the clouds. We could see them below and as the wind passed, it would obscure the church for a minute or two. The church was built right at the peak of a mountain among the mountains. I was blown away (not literally, even though it was windy), and I never wanted to leave. This place made its way into heart and my list of most beautiful places I’ve ever been (on that list includes Guilin, China and Havasupai, Arizona.) Since my words fail me, I took lots of pictures. Look at them instead.

360 Degree Pano

Afterwards, in proper Georgian tradition, we feasted. There was mtsvadi (Georgian barbequed meat), khinkali, salads, watermelon, and even s’mores! No Georgian supra is complete without toasts and laughter. We even danced. This was a wonderful way to get to know my coworkers better and experience the incredible beauty of the Caucuses. 

The Day I Started as an Official PCV

We swore in on Friday and then started at our organizations on Monday. I was so lucky in my assignment – the organization For Better Future. My counterpart is Nana – an incredibly active and tenderhearted woman who is involved with basically anything that happens here in Tserovani. She’s also a bit of a foodie, speaks English well, and has even been to Utah. (Which is incredible, because most Georgians just give me blank look when I say I’m from Utah.) There’s also Eka, who just graduated college and she’ll be helping with our social enterprises. One of them is an enamel jewelry making business. We have three full time artisans (Matsi, Tiko, and Tako) who make beautiful rings, pendants, earrings, and cufflinks. It’s so cool to watch them work. Our other enterprise is a café here in the settlement. It’s brand new and just getting started, so I’m excited to help with the progress there. We also have other projects with other settlements. We have the Bookmobile, which is an American Corner library that rotates around the four settlements in the area. Another project that is starting this fall is for youth civics clubs. I’ll write about each project specifically in their own blog post, because they deserve their own.

The organization is busy and full of amazing people. I’m so excited to be working here and I know it will be an amazing experience. Two years is going to fly by!

The day we swore...in

They day finally came. We had passed our language exams, proved ourselves capable in our technical trainings, and cramped our hands filling out paperwork. We were officially ready to become official Peace Corps Volunteers. The day started early with leaving our PST Host Families. It was an emotional moment. It was hard to say goodbye to these wonderful people who had introduced us to Georgia and been patient enough to take care of us until we had mastered simple phrases like “I need to go to the bathroom” and “I really can’t eat any more of your delicious food.” But luckily we can still go back and visit while we’re here.

As a G15 group, we traveled together to Tbilisi, loaded with anticipation and all of our physical belongings. We got all dressed up and after a rehearsal, welcomed the U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, old host families, new host families, and future counterparts for our swearing-in ceremony.

In a small choir, I sang the Georgian and American National Anthems. We definitely did better on the American one, but they still applauded us for effort on the Georgian one. There were speeches and cameras and pomp and circumstance. It was a very special moment as our names were read, then the Ambassador had us raise our right hands and swear-in as official Volunteers.

After a reception and cake, we all headed our separate ways to start what we came here to do. As our group has said at every big milestone, “it just got real”.  Congrats and good luck to all my fellow G15s!