Endless Training

Well, I won’t be in a village, but I did not find out until last night (thrusday night), which was pretty intense. In the culture and methodology classes, the most important thing we learned was that the West and East have very different cultures and ways of doing things (like forcing people to eat way too much food in the west).

Sunday morning, we went to the first of what would become the most painful beginning of every day EVER. The entire group of volunteers met for an hour to hour and a half and learned some of the things we should expect. But was the week went on and we still didn’t know where we were placed the information was just too much, and the people’s questions in the group went from relevant to “why didn’t you listen to what she said!!!” Very painful to watch one person give a presentation of something that might not even relate to you, but you have to watch on the chance that it does. The information meetings were always painfully long.

Luckily, I had Georgian class in the morning. My teacher, Nana, was wonderful and I had a lot of fun in her class for the first two hours. Then we had a fifteen coffee break, followed by another two hours of Georgian. For the first three days, we ended class with the alphabet and I thanked my friends over and over again for being geeks and going over the alphabet before we got class. It was nice to end class on something I was good at or knew. Next was lunch (at 14:30! and we had breakfast 8:00-9:00! I stuffed my face with cakes at the coffee breaks) followed by Georgian culture for the first three days. This class was about telling us the worst case scenarios. Then, everyone wanted to know if such a thing might happen to them, but of course, no one knows where we will be, so no one can say anything for sure. After Georgian Culture ended, we had methodology, which would have been great, except that it was basically what I had learned when I got certified. But again, our teacher knew there were different levels to work with and kept things interesting and tried to keep it fun. But if you think that four hours of Georgian Culture was bad, try four hours of education classes… and you know how I love education classes…

Basically, the whole week of training was exhausting and exhausting. Some things were useful but most was not. The most important thing I learned was I am going to POTI! Poti is a city on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. I am SO excited. I spent what little time the internet gave me (it cut out again) looking up Poti and I think it is beautiful. Today, our host families come. I think I am going to be on a bus with the other people on the coast, because it is a five hour drive, our families won’t come that far.