Last weekend we heard about our permanent sites. We all met at the Peace Corps hub in Gori and we stood around a large map of Georgia drawn in chalk on the basketball court. As our names and destinations were called out, we moved to our sites on the map (see picture). It was actually quite emotional.

After having received our postings, we left for the mountains for a conference with our future principals. This was particularly interesting as our Georgian can be exhausted in about 10 minutes and our principals’ English is likewise limited. However, the PC had devised a lot of games and activities to oil the wheels and we managed pretty well. The conference site was in Gudauri, one of the major ski resorts in Georgia. There was a helicopter pad for extreme skiing and, apparently the hotel can cost as much as 500 Lari per night ($300) in the winter. However, I think the summer rates are much lower, as the Peace Corps generally tries to live low on the budget. To us it was all luxury. We had good rooms, hot showers, a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi and a sauna! Gill went swimming with her principal to be. Bob took a rest as his leg was not quite healed.

Re Bob’s leg: It was really quite an ordeal, but finally the leg is healed over and he can go swimming, etc. He is going to have a lovely scar, but it will be a great talking point. Not everyone can lay claim to an injury in the baths in Tbilisi where Pushkin and Lementerov relaxed.

Bob and I will be posted to Borjomi, a spa town in Georgia which was established by the Romanovs in the 19th century. It was a major destination for Russians during the Soviet era. Now, the town is trying to find other tourist opportunities. Our host family runs a B and B in the summer season – price 20 Lari (about $12) per night and 25 Lari for full board, so we hope to have many visitors. The town is in the largest nature preserve in Georgia which covers about one percent of the country. There are all levels of hiking trails and some huts where you can stay overnight in the preserve. Apparently, it is absolutely gorgeous in the Fall. We have included a picture of the former Turkish official’s house. At the moment it is occupied by refugees from Abkhazia. We thought the satellite dish was a good touch.

We spent two days with our future school principals (pictures included) and they showed us around Borjomi and introduced us to thousands of people. They seemed to know everyone. Bob and I will be in different schools. Bob will be working at a school in Borjomi itself. The school has already had two PC volunteers. They have a room full of computers donated by someone from The States. They are hoping that Bob will get them all going. Gill’s school is in a village close to Borjomi. She will be the first PC volunteer in her school. The English teachers all speak pretty well, but are rather shy about speaking. We kept on reminding them that our Georgian is absolutely terrible.

Our host family in Borjomi has two children, one 18 and one 22. Both speak English very well, but they will be leaving for Tbilisi in September to work and to go to the university. This will be good for us. The father speak Russian and so does the mother. Not that this will help very much, but might be useful. We will be dropped in at the deep end. Probably the best thing that can happen to our Georgian. During three days we were in Borjomi the family had six paying guests, all of them Israelis. Apparently, the bulk of the tourists in Borjomi are now Israeli. We asked our family about this and they said that there is absolutely no history of antisemitism in Georgia, even though the country is very orthodox. Georgians respect all religions. In fact, it is not uncommon to find mosques, synagogues and churches on the same streets in Georgian towns. So Georgia is up there with Denmark as belonging to the good guys. Israeli tourists say they have never felt more welcome than in Georgia.

Some of the mistakes Gill has made so far:

• 
  The Georgian for yellow and cheese are somewhat similar and I keep on asking for cheesy M and M’s. By the way, I have become addicted to peanut M and M’s.
• 
  The German for “just a minute” is Moment, so I tried “momentsi” as most Georgian words end in “I” and they use quite a lot of German words. However, “momentsi” in Georgian means “give me”, so I have been saying give me, give me to my Georgian family for the last four weeks.

Fortunately, they are very good natured.

Cave city Uplis Tskhle

Turkish house in Borjomi

View on the way to Gudauri

Bob with his principal, Keti

Gill with her principal, Nino

View on the way to Gudauri

View on the way to Gudauri.

Bob in local headgear.

Map of Peace Corps postings in Georgia this year. We are dead-centre.

Family's grandson and grand-neice, Guga and Salome.

Stalin's coach used to go to Yalta conference.

Garden of our host-family in Kareli.

Language class.

Gill with Stalin in Gori.

We still do not know where we will be posted for our two year service, but we will find out next weekend and will spend a few days with our "permanent" host families. Next week, we also start our teaching practicum. We are working at summer school with about 15 children in each of two classes - 5th and 7th grade. Their parents have paid a small sum for their children to go to summer school. This is the first time our teacher counterparts have taught summer school also, so we will all be experiencing something new. Our TOEFL teacher has given us many ideas for teaching techniques and we will see how it goes. More on that next week.

This weekend the Peace Corps paid for us to take an excursion out of our villages. We decided to stay fairly close to home because it is very hot and humid and the thought of 3 hours in a marshutka (the mini-buses that people use to get around) did not appeal. So we moved into the main town of Gori and took a hotel with mod cons. We went out to a famous site called Uplis Tsikhe - an ancient cave city on the southern silk road. The city was founded appoximately 1000 BC. At its peak, in the early middle ages, it had a population of 20000 and an area of 9.5 hectars. Now it is down to about 5 hectars and of course nobody lives there. In the 13th century, Tamerlane destroyed the city and its environs and subsequent earthquakes have added to the damage. We were told by our guide that there was a 9 point earthquake in the 1920's. This does not seem possible and we are going to check. The city had theatres, temples, palaces for "King" Tamara, who was actually a woman, but Georgian refer to her as a king, because she was so strong and because her reign was a high point in Georgian history - sounds like Queen Elizabeth I. The rooms have carved stone decoration and faux wooden beams which are actually sandstone. The theater has recently been used in a movie and the walls were painted blue so that they would show up on the screen! There is evidence of wine making all over the place. The method was to have an upper pressing room (actually foot stomping) and a lower capture basin for the grape juice. Our guide told us that there are over 400 varieties of grapes in Georgia and that 25 of them are found in the small region around Uplis Tsikhe. Our guide's name was Stalbe. He was 70 years old and had been named for Stalin and Beria. He looked pretty good and scrambled over the rocks while Gill puffed her way up them. He attributed his health to a litre of red wine a day and tea for breakfast. The first church in the stone city was erected in the 4th century, but all that remains is a carving of a Georgian cross which looks a little like a celtic cross. The "new" church was built in the 9th and 10th centuries on top of a pagan temple. Interestly, the pagan temple was to the sun goddess and men used to be sacrificed to her - as in the Renault book "The King Must Die." The church is still very much in use and Gill and Ruth (a Peace Corps friend) went inside. It was very plain with a few icons. Many women were praying out loud and it was possible to make out the Lord's Prayer in Georgian. There was a monk praying quietly in the corner. Monks, by the way, are the only Georgians to have beards. They can be married, but the rule is that they have to be married before entering the priesthood.

We learned that the Georgian for capital is dedakalaki which means mother city, so everthing is a little different here. Mama = father and Deda = mother. They probably think we are equally strange.

Our host mother, Zoia, is in the midst of the annual juice and jam making season. She picked 20 kilos of cherries last week and this week the small apricots and raspberries have come into season. She has put up 20 liters of juice. Gill did offer to help, but it is difficult as we are always so busy. She did help her to make stuffed cabbage one time. Zoia spends a lot of her time up trees picking fruit. She says she enjoys work. The garden is amazingly fecund and seems to be mostly bugfree (Susan eat your heart out) despite the fact that they do not use insecticides. We keep on asking about this, but have received no explanation except perhaps that the Caucusus are a barrier to bugs!

The groupings for language classes have been changed. Gill remains with her wizkid colleagues and I have joined the remedial group where I might become a big fish in a small pool. The one good possibility is that I might be able to get on the internet more often, but apparently the teacher is very strict and does not allow much time off.

Bob, like many others, is having a bit of a problem with this language, which is certainly difficult. However, he is brilliant at the teaching of English part of our job. He seems to have a natural talent for pacing the lesson and for making it fun at the same time.

We will end now. We are off to have lunch with friends at the coffee shop opposite the Stalin statue. Our favourite meal is mushroom blinis.

By the way, the Georgians frequently use English English terms and spellings. We have been told to use the terms "full stop" and "Zed." We also received information about English English and American English usage and some of it had never occurred to us. More about this later.

We miss everyone and would like to hear your news.

This is our first post since arriving in Georgia. We have very little access to the internet, so this is our first opportunity.

We arrive in Tbilisi at about 5 in the morning after a day and a half journey. The Peace Corps took us to the famous baths in the center of the town for a group photo. Unfortunately, Bob fell and hurt his leg quite badly. However, we have had fabulous treatment by the Peace Corps. In fact, it has become one of our jokes: How many Peace Corps staff and Georgian medics does it take to look after an injured volunteer? Bob has at one time or another had five doctors in attendance in the new hospital in Gori (I think I was the first person to use the loo in his room (outpatient)). The doctors are amazingly attentive and the Peace Corps staff brought chocolates and diet coke!

Anyway, the first five days were spent with the whole Peace Corps Georgia 2007 group (46 of us) near Tbilisi in a rather sorry run-down hotel (used to be used by Russians for conferences I believe) where we were given preparatory information about what was to come. I must say that this was an eye-opening experience. All the staff, Georgian (the majority) and American (just a few) are fabulous and the "initiation" business was very impressively done by these folks.

We then split up into about 9 smaller groups in different places but all within an hour of Gori, another large city (and Stalin's birthplace) about 2 hours from Tbilisi. Gill and I are with three others in a village called Kareli about 30 minutes from Gori. Here we are getting our language and teaching training and the language is really grueling. Gill is mopping up the words easily and is doing well. The others in our little group are doing well too (their brains are only 23 years old) but I, Bob, am undoubtedly the dunce of the class. I just cannot seem to remember all the new vocabulary. It wasn't so bad when we were learning Spanish where there was a reasonable arrangement of consonants with vowels and many cognates to hang your hat on, but Georgian is fiendish.

Gill and I are the oldest in Georgia 2007 group, but there are a few others close to us (a couple and two single men). There are four couples altogether.

Our "host family" consists of mother (Zoia), father (Koba), son (Otari), daughter-in-law (Bela), and grandchild (Guga), and the dog (Jessica). Koba's brother (Lari) also has a small country house in the family compound and he is frequently there with his wife and two grandchildren, Salome and Georgi. Salome, who is ten, speaks very good English and generally acts as our translator when she is around. Otherwise, we get by with pidgin English and Georgian mixed with some Georgian (Zoia speaks some German). All this makes for very interesting sentences.

The family home is quite elegant, but has fallen on hard times. The family, who were, like many other Georgian families, quite prosperous during the Soviet times, now has little work (infact Zoia is the only one who presently has a job), are now having a hard time economically. The same applies to the town of Kareli as a whole. It used to have five factories and now they are all gone. Everyone relies very much on their gardens, which are fabulous here. Everything seems to grow in this country. It has lots of sunshine and lots of rain. We are in the middle of the cherry season and the red and white cherries taste delicious. They also have sour cherries from which they make a great drink. It looks as if raspberries will be next!

We will post again next week if we can get to an internet cafe between lessons and lectures. We are certainly being kept busy, but it is all very interesting and great fun, if very challenging.