Beginning of the school year

School is staring next week! The first day of the school year is September 17^th, and I am thrilled to be getting to work. The summer has been nice and relaxing, getting to know my new family and the people in my lovely village but now it is time to get serious. Many things are taking off with the start of school. I will start the year with two weeks of observations. Sitting in on classes and observing the students as well as my counterparts, I will get to know everybody at my new school much better. Using all this observation I will choose which classes I will be teaching for the year. This also means starting to get involved with the students, hosting clubs and events, decorating the English cabinet and working towards the goals my counterparts have for adding to English resources. Our first goal is to build a small English book library of young adult literature that would interest the students and encourage them to practice their English reading skills. I have been looking into resources to get books and start our little secondary library.

In addition to starting school, I will also be hosting my first community meeting to get involved in the community through secondary projects aimed at what the community wants. I am beyond thrilled to hear my communities wants and desires for projects, events and activities that I can work together with them to accomplish.

Despite all these exciting upcoming things, summer was not all sitting around reading and enjoying time with my ბებია (grandmother). I hosted an English summer camp together with my counterpart for students 8^th- 12^th, where we focused on art, music and STEM learning. We had an American Idol competition, put on skits, learned about weather and had a team egg drop. On the last day of camp, all our students along with my counterpart and director took a sigh seeing tour to visit the cities of ზუგდიდი (Zugdidi) and ქუთაისი (Kutaisi).  It was lots of fun! I also walked to the next village over to attend another volunteers camp that ended with a hike to a monastery and a beautiful waterfall.

I also spent a week in the beautiful costal region near ურეკი (Ureki) for BUILD camp. BUILD, or Boys United in Leadership Development, is one of my outside projects. Working with 6 other 2018 volunteers alongside 6 2017 volunteers who planned the camp last year, we spent a week hanging out with 4 amazing counselors and a cluster of young men who learned about things leadership and community development to gender equality and men’s health. At the end of camp each boy came up with a project to enact in their community that would improve it or make life better in some way. It was a very inspiring week of bonding, learning and growing.

I am still struggling with the new language but slowly my communication with Bebia is getting better and better. This week was the grape harvest in her garden and the beginning of wine making season. I watched my cousin stomp the grapes and strain the juice into big containers that will be turned into delicious red wine the same way it has been done for centuries in all the villages of Georgia. It is also corn harvesting season and all around the village there are big bundles of corn stalks and piles of corn cobs. Overall an exciting time while the village prepares for the coming winter.

Between training, moving, camps and my community, it has been an eventful 5 months of Peace Corps service. There have definitely been ups and downs, I would be lying if I said everything was smooth sailing, but overall I am happy to be here in beautiful საქართველო (Sakartvelo)