Black Sea Adventures

After a very long and grueling trek from one side of the country to the other I finally got to swim in the Black Sea!! It is absolutely beautiful. Initially I went to a smaller town that is not such a tourist destination which has regular sand beaches. Because this was my first time swimming in a sea and it felt so much like the ocean I kept forgetting I need not be worried about sharks. This is us on the beach and then lounging on the roof of a restaurant after swimming all day. We also eventually went and briefly joined the volleyball game.

I also visited Batumi which is one of the hubs for vacationing in Georgia. The city itself has wonderful architecture and there is a very nice boardwalk on the sea. The only catch to the beach in Batumi is that in lieu of sand there are huge river rocks on the shore and in the water. They do a number on one's feet. Water shoes would have made it a less painful experience but it was a fun experience nonetheless. On the up side, there is no sand to get all of your belongings or clothes dirty.

Love statue on the beach.

Awesome turret, which I always notice now after my parents building their house. :)

Titanic towel I really wanted!

MTV stage for Enrique Iglesias' free concert, which everyone was freaking out about.

The circus building!

A whole lotta ladas! And other Cool Vehicles.

I am rather fond of the old Soviet Ladas that are so common here, and I have taken pictures of my favorite ones. I will add to this post as often as I see one that excites me. :)

Additionally, I have taken pictures of other modes of transportation and/or machinery which I found unique.

The first time we saw the train going through Dviri.

I think a tractor, or some other kind of farm equipment (just for you dad.)

I am officially a volunteer!!!!!

SOOOOO many things have happened since my last blog, I have been too busy to breath let alone blog, so before I get to the most important piece of info and all the glorious details, I will share some other wonderful experiences that happened along the way.

I sang along with Goodloe playing guitar to all the students in Dviri on their last day of school. I felt what it is like to be a celebrity with all the picture requests from them, which I have to admit I didn't hate. :)

I went to Ahal Sitke with a big group of my friends a few weeks ago. We intended on going to the cave city of Vardzia but it wasn't feasible (I should have time in the next 2 years to make it so it wasn't a huge deal), but I really liked the city we were in. This is an old church with a museum that one of our host sister's brought us along to. The first picture is a normal picture, and the second one is our "Georgian picture".

This picture is from the day we found out our permanent placement sites. The staff laid out the shape of the country with the green rope on the floor. We all stood around the perimeter and one by one read the envelope and placement of the person whose envelope we had in our hands, until we all were standing in the relative location of our new homes! I am located in Lagodehki which is a relatively large town with a whole 8,500 people! We have three banks and a post office and multiple stores, suffice it to say I am ecstatic! It is Texas hot here however and air conditioners are not near as prevalent so I might melt.

Despite the heat I think I am absolutely going to love it here! There are 700 kids in my school and 5 English teachers that I have a chance to work with. On top of all that the volunteer who was here previously just got a grant to have the English room completely renovated in the school, so I will begin the year in September with amazing brand new facilities!







On another exciting note, we had a 4th of July celebration up above Borjomi Park that our host Families and all the trainees attended. We did sack racing with our Georgian siblings and balloon toss, and tug-of-war. Unfortunately, as soon as all roughly 50 people pulled on the strap we were using as a rope, it snapped and I flew feet over head on the concrete. I was not hurt but it was a very typical Jana moment. It was crazy to see a strap that strong snap so quickly! This is a picture of my friends and I above Borjomi park near the sky trolley.

I of course felt the need to represent Texas on our festive day. We later sang the Georgian and American National anthems and the youngest person attending blew out the candles on our American Flag cake.







For one of our last project in Dviri, Colin, Claire, Goodloe, and I decided to overhaul the English classroom at the school which had been allowing us to use their facilities for the duration of our training.

This is the classroom pre-renovation.

This is Claire and myself and scraping the very old, very sticky wallpaper from the walls.

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Next, came very extensive cleaning of the walls and soot ridden ceiling from the fire burning stove that is used in the winter time

As you can see the students all eagerly helped us, even on the most uninteresting day of cleaning! One last step before painting- spackling with our hands! At one point we ran out of spackling, and since we were way over budget improvised with a small amount of dirt, like adobe to fill the remainders of holes in. :)

Finally the painting began! And there are pictures of the four of us along the way...

Note the plastic bag on my head; if there is one thing I learned from painting in America, it is that paint in hair = not a good time! Once we got the first coat of yellow on Claire was able to begin her magnificent English Alphabet!

Finally we painted the floor.

All the Children that helped with the room got to put their hand prints with their names on the cabinet.

And then the children were able to enjoy their new room for summer camp!!!!

A gift from the Peace Corps. (Claire did the flags :))

For summer camp we then had all the students who participated make different posters in English to even further decorate the room!

On a side not in Borjomi, I saw the best graffiti I have ever seen in my life! Superheroes!

There is a somewhat crumbling statue on a relatively isolated hill that my clustermates and I have passed everyday we have left our village and never ventured to it until last week on our last weekend. We still don't have the full story, but it was nice to see, and we visited the old Dviri train station. Claire's awesome friends from America and Germany are also in the picture! :)

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity with a few other friends to go to Tbilisi to run in the Susan G. Koleman Breast Cancer Awareness 5k run. It was a great experience to help support a cause I am already passionate about in the States. :)
Brittany, Claire, Ariana, Myself, and Jack (all some of my favorite people here!)

For our last American dinner we cooked in Dviri for our host families, they made us a cake with 5 roses on it, one for each of us and our wonderful teacher Dali.

Finally the day we had all been waiting for! On July 15, 2011 myself along with the other 41 trainees to an oath to the Constitution swearing us in as official Peace Corps volunteers! It was a wonderful day and celebration. Ambassador Bass, the Ambassador to Georgia gave a speech and amazing traditional songs and dances were performed for us. Myself with 4 other of the new volunteers performed the Georgian national anthem- slightly nerve wracking but very exciting!
This is the last picture of the Dviri Crew before swearing in!

Americouli Satchmeli!

Last weekend the other members of my cluster and myself all got together to make "American" food for our families. Being that the only really American cuisine are hamburgers and all that jazz we made our version of Tex-Mex and quasi-Italian inspired Americanish food. We made for them beans and rice with a little seasoning from home, salsa!, a salad with lettuce in it which I had never seen before here, homemade tortillas and chips, noodles without butter or oil, and an amazing pasta sauce made from fresh veggies in a saucepan. It was an experimental endeavor to say the least, and hardly really equated to the dishes back home just because of the difference in ingredients, but it was wonderful and our families seemed to really enjoy the whole operation! By the way hand making tortillas is quite the undertaking and one that I feel I am now an expert at from our hours of practice that day. :)

After the meal the two guy volunteers and us two girl volunteers all cleared the table and were doing the dishes together. Because of the very different dynamic in the homes here, my grandfather explained to the guys that this was a women's job and they should sit down. In the spirit of sharing all aspects of American mealtime traditions the boys continued to do all of the dishes and encouraged us girls to enjoy our evening and they finished all of them. :) Riotous laughter and some misunderstanding as to why this was happening were our families' greatest reactions to this little cultural exchange.