Kaketi

This is a really old blog post that I wrote before everything 'went down' in Georgia. It was already written and eventhough not exactly timely, I figured it wouldn't hurt to put it up. Oh, and if you're privy to my ketchup story, here's where it all started...


This weekend all the TEFL’s went on job shadowing trips. How we’re supposed to ‘job shadow’ teachers in the middle of summer on a weekend, I don’t know, but, alas, that was the plan. In all honesty, I think the Peace Corps staff was just trying to avoid insurrection…the business kids always get to leave site and do fun stuff…TEFLs not so much.

Two other PSTs and I were job shadowing a G7 in the Kaketi region. Kaketi is the easternmost region of Georgia. It’s also the hottest region of Georgia and a malaria zone. Oh, and guess who forgot to pack her malaria meds?

If you guessed me, you would be correct. I figured I’d just stock up on tonic water and try to find some good gin. PC medical didn’t feel as optimistic about my obviously well thought out plan. The good news is that you can buy malaria medication in almost any pharmacy and it’s cheap.

Anyway, the G7 we were shadowing lives in a village about 10 km from the Azeri border. This means we were in for a 4+ hour trip on Georgian public transportation from our villages in central Georgia. Yay!

As a quick aside, the notion of Georgian public transportation seems pretty cool, right? I mean you can go anywhere you need to in the whole country for like 20 Lari. But, then you may ask yourself, how can a country like Georgia have an efficient and inexpensive public transportation system? “Cities in the US like Seattle hardly have reliable public transport and the CTA in Chicago is on the verge of collapse,” you may muse.

Well, Georgia can have such a system because it’s ridiculously unsafe and not regulated by the Government. Georgia’s country-wide ‘public’ transportation system is a system of old 16 passenger vans that drive no less than 70 kmh on mountain roads and poorly maintained highways…but, hey, they’re cheap! I’m sure Wikipedia can do a much better job of explaining these than I can…so have at it.

Back to the trip…so we took various marshutkas and navigated the metro in Tbilisi all by ourselves and arrived in Vardisubani (our final destination) in a little under 5 hours. Vardisubani may be perhaps the hottest place I’ve ever been. It was easily pushing 115 degrees when we arrived and didn’t cool down our entire visit. But, on the plus side, it’s beautiful and our G7 host and her host family were wonderful to us.

On Sunday we traveled up to Signaghi. Signaghi is one of the first towns in Georgia Saakashvili pushed to renovate, as he has a vacation home there. It’s really beautiful in a fakey-touristy sort of way…so of course I loved it! St. Nino’s church, where St. Nino is buried, is also there. If you haven’t been reading up, St. Nino brought Christianity to Georgia and she’s kind of a big deal. We went into the church, which is beautiful, lit candles and touched her tomb. Unfortunately, its kind of holy site, so no pictures of the inside, but if you’re ever in Georgia, be sure it hit it up.

While St. Nino’s was pretty amazing, I think the highlight of the day was lunch. We had Mexican food. Yes. We ate Mexican food in a little town in eastern Georgia. The owner is part of an international Georgian dancing troupe and his brother-in-law is American, so the food was surprisingly authentic…we even had hand made tortilla chips! After a month of nothing but Georgian food (which is amazing, don’t get me wrong…just a little lacking in variety) it was a very welcome change.

The next morning it was time to depart again, we caught the early Marshutka into Tbilisi and may or may not have spent a little more time than necessary making our way from one side of the city to the other. We stopped for American style breakfast: omelets and Starbucks coffee, and did a little window shopping. I bought real Heinz ketchup at the big grocery store in Tbilisi, which really can’t be replicated, and is absolutely essential, I don’t care where you are in the world.


So, all in all, I had a wonderful weekend. It was a nice little morale boost. PST can be ridiculously stressful and adjusting to Georgia can be tough, even though there is a reason certain countries coughlikegeorgiacough are considered ‘posh corps.’ It was nice to have a break and an opportunity to find a few American style comforts. The big news is that they announce our permanent sites Friday…which signals the beginning of the end of PST! We’ve already lost 8 G8’s…I’m just so glad I’m making it through.