So I thought I was so smart...

Well the first few days I was here, I mentioned to my host family that I always put my eggshells plus other vegetable scraps in a compost pile , that eventually fertilizes the garden.... Thinking I was teaching my host family something new... And clever.

Well two weeks later I realize that they recycle their scraps so they don't have them to use in compost.
1. All table scraps are thrown out the kitchen window for the chickens.
2. All meat scraps are thrown a little further, for the neighbor dog, Jimmie.
3. Eggshells are fed to the chickens (sounds weird, doesn't it, but I watched them eat the shells) or they are ground up and used for calcium supplements!
4. Walnuts are ground up for many dishes, including this great eggplant salad, but the black part inside that isn't eaten, is ground up and mixed with vodka to make the lovely tan color for cognac. I made my first cognac with it.

And speaking of cognac, I had some rose cognac. It was great and smelled and tasted like roses!

And speaking of roses, they should be out soon, and promise to be spectacular. Almost every home has bountiful bushes.

But that's for another day.  Here is grama Nellie with our recycler on the kitchen window ledge..

My Khashuri home and hosts

Gamarjoba. I have been in Khashuri almost two weeks now and it feels like home already. I attend classes each day with four other students. No way to goof off! Here are some pictures of my host home and family.

 Here is Tamriko and Gocha, a very nice couple

Here is the kitchen at breakfast with "babea" grandma Nellie and daughter Marie , a graduate student in auditing. Tomika, Mom on the right, is school librarian, and owns a magazina (small convenience shop) AND wakes up each morning at 4am to cook for school lunch program.  Did I mention they are hardworking people.  They obviously have the entreprenurial bug, but they don't undercut each other in business. Interesting.  Dad owns a car shop attached to their house - very handy.

 Here is own home, really nice and relatively renovated, from my understanding.

Here is  the bathroom. Very nice. 

Here is the garden. These grape vines are very old, planted by the grandfather. I did mention that they have great wine?!  They have vats in the garage to keep me, I mean us, quenched until fall harvest - probably 100 liters worth!  :-). 

Restaurant photos

This is the restaurant, each room was a standalone building.

There is a special way to eat these dumplings - one bite and suck out the meat juice. To die for

Tengo is our training leader - quite a character! Great guy.

I met Ambassador Norland of US Embassy in Georgia. WOW!

The Peace Corps isn't political and we are not allowed to engage in politics in the country. We do have a robust embassy here and Ambassador Norland came to welcome us to the country last week.  WOW.  Since I'm new to all this,  I was just amazed to find a committed foreign service diplomat with such credentials, experience, and SUCCESS.  Take a look at his credentials! Georgia in 1993 last time they had conflict, brokered Northen Ireland peace, Afghanistan, Ubekistan, ... ( emphasis added below).  If our foreign service moto was like the Hippocratic oath,  ( First, Do no harm)  he would be leading the effort. WOW!


http://georgia.usembassy.gov/ambbio.html

Ambassador of the United States of America to Georgia

Ambassador Richard Norland was nominated by President Obama, confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and took up his duties as U.S. Ambassador to Georgia upon presenting his credentials to President Saakashvili on September 10, 2012.  Before becoming Ambassador to Georgia, Ambassador Norland was International Affairs Advisor/Deputy Commandant at the National War College.  He served as U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan from September 2007 to July 2010.  Prior to his tour as Ambassador, he served for two years as Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.  He was also Deputy Chief of Mission in Riga, Latvia, and served in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan as a diplomat with the U.S. Army Civil Affairs team promoting political and economic reconstruction.
Ambassador Norland was Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council for two years during the Clinton and Bush administrations, focusing in particular on the Northern Ireland peace process, as well as on the Baltic States, OSCE, and a number of key European partners.  He served as Political Counselor at the American Embassy in Dublin, Ireland during the negotiation of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Ambassador Norland served from 1988-1990 as Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, USSR during President Gorbachev's tenure and the period of glasnost and perestroika.  He was detailed to the Pentagon's Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on policy issues following the break-up of the Soviet Union.  He served in 1993 as the U.S. representative and acting mission head on the CSCE Mission to Georgia, addressing conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and later visited Chechnya in a similar capacity.

Gamarjoba, (Hello),  so we left our orientation site a week ago and came to Khashuri - about in the middle of Georgia, where we spend 3 months learning language, business, culture, security, and health. This is lovely small town where we can walk most places, and what great exercise.  It is surrounded by mountains.

 I am staying with a a wonderful family of:
Grandma Nellie- reminds me so much of my Grama Ko! and let's me struggle with my sign language daily,

Host mother - industrious and so friendly and open lovely woman with 2 children, one at home and one in the capitol.  She owns a sundry shop, works as school librarian, and also cooks about 300 school lunches each day from 4am - 9am.  Did I say she was hard working?  But great happy attitiude, plus Nellie sure helps out!

Host father - Gocha, hard working and kind, with a quick smile and friendly demeanor.  Owns a car repair shop in front of the house.  Georgia has a thriving business of repairing imported cars and re-selling them.  We see mercedes, alpha romeas!, Fiats, etc. running around town.

Host sister - Mariam is early 20s and getting executive MBA (my term) on weekends in capitol (Tbilisi) in auditing, while working full time in gas company here, about 1 1/2 hour from Tbilisi.  She is lovely and pleasant and speaks English!  Hurrah!

We study at school 9-6 daily except Sunday. So tomorrow we have day of rest - hurrah again.  This is exhausting but so exciting.

And last Sunday I attended Orthodox Mass. WOW.  The priest was in another room and came out just to read gospel (?) and shake the incense.  Lots of singing from the choir - also in the back room - and busy with people standing and walking around. They say some prayers for the dead and touch the floor at strategic times. Then they all kneel on the floor and kiss it.  No communion but I heard other churches did.  And the priest had the famous long grey beard and hat on.  My host sister went to a wedding today, but only family and close friends go to the church. The reception is in a restaurant in town.  And she was a dressed to the nines!  Fun time for them.

A few interesting tidbits:


Bathrooms - very nice, but all outside. I don't know why.  And toilettes are often in separate room than sinks.I am learning a whole new way to thinking about showers and restrictive drinking, and I'm not just talking about wine.  Ah,  the wine - all family made and it's great!   Georgian wine is very famous too, but I don't think in America. (is it Pearl?)

Water - is usually just available in the am, so they collect it and use it all day from a bucket in the kitchen.  They have a back up for showers if you really need one. But it's amazing how little you really need.

Gardens - fabulous - it will be my favorite experience in Kashuri this summer: flowers and vegetables. Irises, roses, mums and tulips are coming up.  Tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries on the way.

Dogs - they don't get pet here I guess, so they are all around, but never even give you the time of day. Just lay around.

Turkish soap operas - on each evening- really fun and demonstrative.  and great way to learn Georgian

FOOD - I had no idea how famous the are for their food.  Incredible use of herbs and seasoning. Bread, bread with cheese in it, BBQ on skewers, cakes, salad ( all types),  I can go on and on,  but will try to keep my girlish shape for the next 2 years.

Did I mention,  girls translates to GOGO,  Dada = mother,  mama = father, and bitchy means boys.  HA HA!

Pictures coming when I can figure out the connection.  I am lucky to have wifi most of the time, but many peers do not.  We have lost 2 volunteers that left in our first week here in Kashuri.  I hear that 10% leave during training, and about 1/3 don't finish their committed 27 months.

Missing friends and family but facetime'd with Matt and Amanda and Mom, so I got my fix, ... and I sure needed it this week.  (Did I mention the tough language training!?)

Have a great weekend,  I will.  Nock von dis! (Bye)

whoops - can't forget this disclaimer - this is my thoughts - not Peace Corps or US government :-)  

The Good, the bad, and the ugly

Hi folks,  since it is such a packed week, I'll send another update.  We arrived in Tbilisi to a crowd of about 30 people - volunteers and staff - that came to welcome us... at 3AM LOCAL TIME!  Then we took a bus to our training center about 1 hour outside the capitol for a week of orientation before we move to our training clusters about an hour west where we live for the next 3 months of language/culture/security/health and business training.  Tbilisi looked fabulous by moonlight and look forward to getting back there. We haven't seen much of the country yet; they care keeping us very busy.  But here is that link again of some nice overview material on Georgia.  If it doesn't work, cut and paste into your browser.  And a few summer pictures...  16,000ft mountain peaks, but also borders the Black Sea, so really beautiful settings.

http://www.gotravelyourway.com/2013/11/12/8-reasons-to-travel-to-georgia-and-tbilisi/#.U2KBZaKKIg8

Georgian Language: we are expected to be intermediate-low in the next three months.  This expectation is based on the goal of fully integrating into our communities, communicating best we can, and for safety and security.  So...
The GOOD:

• Each letter is pronounced
• No articles
• No capital works
• No letter combinations
• The accent is always on the first syllable 

The BAD:  (OK you German Band people, quit laughing at me!)

• Completely unique language, not associated with ANY other type of language in the world
• Can have 4-5 consonant clusters
• Post positions instead of prepositions
• 8 cases
• mama mean father, and dada means mother - honest!

It's only been two days, and I'll keep plugging.

OH YES, and THE UGLY?

... shots start today: Hep A, Hep B, Typhoid, Rabies, Polio, Tdp,  Oh My!

Next up, our visit with the Georgian Ambassador!   Thanks for listening,  Kim

Mandatory Discalaimer:  The contents of this Website are mine personally and do not reflect any positoin of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.