Let's dance... the last dance...

I may have just put the last two phone cards into my cell phone. It's not the most exciting landmark one could note, but it occurred to me as I was scratching the back with a 10-tetri piece.

Three days left, zero weekends left, zero days of class left, probably five or six Tbilisi metro rides left, one train ride left, two more chicken mtsvadi sandwiches from Ori Lula left, three nights in the host family's apartment left, et cetera.


I suppose this is a note to go out on... last Monday, the local newspaper published an article from an interview with me, complete with a nice-sized picture of me smiling. We spoke about me, about my sister, my job, and how to make hamburgers. Accordingly, across the top in bold letters is the title, "If I Fell in Love, I Would Marry a Georgian." The effect is rather like a personals ad. Good thing I'm leaving before the responses come in.



It's also on the front page as a tabloid teaser-- "If I Fell in Love, I Would Marry a Georgian... Page 5!"

In any case, Peace Corps is over. There were times when I would have loved to leave early, but mostly there were times when I knew no desk job could compare. There were times when I wanted to pull my hair out, but then the bell rang and school was out. There were times when I missed my friends and family, but there were (and are) also times where I feared for the impending departure of the last taxi full of my Georgia friends to the airport on July 17th.

I returned my water filter and said goodbye to my host family and neighbors. I swung by the houses of my counterparts one last time, fairly certain that they and their teaching styles are completely unchanged from June 2006. I sent text messages to my favorite students implying that I won't come visit them again if they stop studying English. I went on one last terrifying car ride, the driver squeezing between oncoming semis as the Geocell 2007 Christmas CD filled the July air with the sound of Jingle Bells.

And now, a clip from my other blog written April 17, 2006:

"I feel like I'm preparing to leave the planet. Every once in a while it'll occur to me that these are my last few weeks in the U.S. for a very long while, but most of the time the Peace Corps seems like a daydream I've been having, like it's not entirely possible that I've decided to ditch everyone I know and every cultural sensibility I've grown up with and every perk of strong economic performance (the nation's, not mine... clearly...) that I've become accustomed to-- to go hole up in a communications-isolated rural village in an ex-Soviet nation with spotty electricity and shaky governmental foundations. My little dream right now is that I'll be posted in a relatively-large city on the Black Sea (where the climate is warm and they grow oranges) with an Internet cafe or two. There's very little chance, but stranger things have happened. If all else fails, Squaw gave me a travel journal that I'm sure I'll spend many evenings crying into. What the hell am I thinking!?

Of course I know what I'm thinking: I'm thinking that in addition to the fact that I wouldn't get into any of the grad schools I want unless I have an application boost like this, the fact remains that the reasons I told the Peace Corps recruiter were true. I would like to represent the United States overseas in a non-combat, non-religious, non-elevated role, volunteering two years of my life to enhance a community, knowing that I probably won't have another untethered two years in which to do so for the rest of my life. It's a little different when you try to translate lofty ideals into concrete plans, though. I can't think of any other time I've tried to do something this crazy.

It won't be that bad. That's the difference between this trip and my trip to Cuba: I was prepared to burn through the 4 weeks and get my ass back home to my friends and family as quickly as possible. Result: weeks of abject misery. This time, the situation is quasi-permanent; any efforts on my part to try and speed up the process or to count the days until I leave will result in an even more deep-set and chronic misery. I'm sure there's people out there who hate the Peace Corps, those volunteers who get there and decide it's too hard. And I remember I almost thought Cuba was too hard, even though it was only 4 freaking weeks. But dammit, I stayed, and the Peace Corps will have to drag me out of Georgia by my hair before I'd quit (easy to say that now, huh?). I'm gonna teach English whether the kids like it or not, I'm gonna travel around the region with other volunteers, and I'm gonna retreat to my journal and mp3 player (think anyone will get me one?) to cry less and less frequently as I stay there longer."

Yay for me.

Goodbye, Georgia. Every time I see an issue of Us Weekly in a checkout line and every time I see a commercial for a Super Duper Grande Quadruple Greaseburger value meal, I will think of you fondly. Every time I step on the scale and every time a Georgian word passes my lips when I'm trying to speak Spanish, I will curse your memory. Much like the ups and downs of my Peace Corps service, it will balance out in the end.

P.S. Join Peace Corps.

Authentic Bulgarian Miak

Mom said that my sister and I had to give our Eastern Europe extravaganza a name, and for this purpose we chose Authentic Bulgarian Miak. It suits the trip, partly because we intend to stop in Bulgaria for at least a day or two, but mostly because we've seen the movie that it references at least a hundred thousand times. Even if you are one of the ten people in the world who get the reference, you are still wondering why anybody would name a trip after that.


To update you (since I don't remember what the last post I made was about), my sister Sara has arrived in the great land of Georgia and is currently adjusting to this brave new world of supras and squat toilets. After my Peace Corps service ends (10 days!!! EEE!!!), we're going to mosey back to the US over the course of 4 weeks. Success will be defined as: 1) staying within $200 of our projected budgets, and 2) not killing one another.


So far, so good. She's been here three days as I write this, and we've seen Soviet model town Chiatura and country village Kheltubani. She prefers the latter, it seems, though this might be because the host family has made an inspiring effort to spend time together and to take us to ancient cave cities, both of which contribute to memories and culture and all that. In another show of culture, we did spend the entire day until 5PM staring at the wall and waiting for the heat to diminish a little bit.

As I write this, she's looking through the pictures we took today at the cave city and at Sioni, a 7th century church in the village of Ateni. She seems more delighted by the pictures of my host family's one-month-old puppy, but perhaps that's because there's no squeal-y equivalent for awe.

In any case, I will make a valiant effort to put forth at least one more post on this blog before I depart the country. I foresee posting approximately zero times during my four weeks in Eastern Europe, mostly because I won't have a computer.

And after that?

Well, I assume that most of the people who read this are travelers or wannabe travelers who enjoy reading about life in another culture. I also assume that none of those same people would be remotely interested in hearing Jennifer's Observations About New York, subtitled I Live in a Box. Nonetheless, I have come to the self-promoting conclusion that there must be someone out there who would benefit from a blog about the process of readjustment to America after Peace Corps. It should be interesting. But maybe it won't be interesting to you; should my hit counter slow to a crawl, I won't be offended. Just delete this page from your Favorites, and we can move on with our lives.

So this means that the next post-- my last post until late August-- should be about conclusions and What I Learned and such. We shall see; that sounds rather lofty and ambitious. To boot, it would really blow to end this era with 500 words of contrite fluff ("I learned that all cultures are beautiful!"). The suspense is killing me...

Why You Should Go to Sarpi

This was going to be a list of the top ten places to visit should you find yourself in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, but then I realized that those places I'm not supposed to go-- breakaway republics, medieval fifedoms in the mountains, gorges that double as terrorist hideouts, etc-- might have made the list if they'd had a chance. So instead, I'll just describe one of the coolest places in Georgia really quickly, and then offer some links to blog posts about my favorite places here, and you can decide for yourself. Frankly, it's way too late in the game for me to start putting any "research" or "effort" into these posts, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Cool place of the day: Sarpi


Sarpi is the border town between Georgia and Turkey along the Black Sea coast ("Sarp" on Turkish maps). From the beach, you can see lines of semis waiting to drive through customs, two mosques, mountains, and-- some have told me-- dolphins. In fact, my friends pretended to spot dolphins the entire time we were there because they knew I'd whip around and drown myself in a desperate attempt to get a peek. There were no dolphins. My friends suck.


One cool part about Sarpi is the rock beaches. Yes, there are rock beaches up and down most of Georgia's coast, but rest assured-- they're here too.


Another thing: the water is clear. If you were considering a dip in the fetid oil slick that they call Batumi harbor, try taking a 20-minute marshutka to Sarpi instead.


It's sunny and hot, too. For anyone who still thinks that Georgia and Siberia are neighbors, I invite you to come sample their 90-degree weather this summer, which is a welcome departure from last year's 104-degree weather.


Also, the jellyfish don't sting. After a test application of the underside to our arms, we established that they were not painful, merely gross. While there were jellies galore the first day, there were minimal ones the next day, so maybe you'll get lucky and avoid the whole gelatinous debacle all together.

And now the other places you should visit:

1) Chiatura-- Former Soviet model town, now just filled with crumbling signs of USSR glory. And cable cars.
2) Ratcha-- Mountainous region on the border with Russia. Come see the nature!
3) Vani-- Destination of Jason and the Argonauts, with a museum to prove it.
4) Samtredia-- There's... um...
5) America

A Roject-Pay

There's not much point in writing a before-and-after post for the project done by the 3rd school, since the dramatic transformation from GOOD to BETTER is not at all inspirational. Nonetheless, for those of you who are even mildly interested, here's a quick before-and-after series.


Exhibit A, the old teacher's desk. Exhibit B would be the new teacher's desk, except I forgot to take a picture of it. But it just looks like the computer desk, so picture that. Part of me wonders what my counterpart will clang her keys on now when she wants the students to shut up. Hopefully not on this desk.


In the first corner, a nook. In the second corner, the new nook. Did the mirror need to be there? Perhaps not. I've noticed that, contrary to my expectations, the boys are the ones who pause in front of it to fix their clothes most often.


On your left, our back wall. On your right, our back wall is completely obscured by the new shelves, which are the centerpiece of this project. You have no idea how many previously hidden books we discovered in the annals of the old locked cabinet that held them beforehand, including a book for children that introduces them to the reproductive cycle, puberty, sex, homosexuality, and abortion. I hope one of the kids finds it and starts a revolution of not pretending that sex doesn't exist.

There you go. I fear that the tone of this post has revealed too much about how I feel about this project, but there's not much to be done about that which doesn't involve deleting the whole post. I can't explicitly describe the rationale behind my negativity, but it has a lot to do with the fact that this kind of grant-based project is the only eason-ray why I was rought-bay oo-tay is-thay ool-schay, and I ope-hay at-thay ere-thay will ever-nay e-bay another olunteer-vay ere-thay.

Eriously-say