First week in Georgia -- Orientation at the Bazaleti Training Center

From Tuesday AM through Saturday, we were all together at an isolated training center in Bazaleti, which I think was only about 30 minutes outside of Tbilisi.  We were all in a bit of a bubble the first few days -- suffering from jet lag (I woke up wide awake at about 2 am the first three mornings!), general nervousness mixed with excitement, and almost no contact with the "real" Georgia.

The weather was cold, but mostly sunny, and there were spectacular views of the Greater Caucasus.  I need to figure out if I can identify Mount Elbrus -- I heard that you can see it from Georgia (although it's technically in Russia).  It's the highest mountain in Europe...assuming you believe that the Caucasus are in Europe!  (I say they are...)




Highlights of the orientation week in Bazaleti:
I was one of a lucky few that had his/her OWN ROOM and OWN BATHROOM.  Basically, they gave out the single rooms based on age, I think.  All of the older volunteers had singles.  Those in their 30s mostly had doubles or triples, and there were a few "dorm-style" rooms with up to six people in them with bathrooms down the hall.  Here is my room:



We had Georgian lessons in groups of about six trainees each morning.  My instructor, Nestan, was very good.  We started learning the alphabet and some basic words/phrases, like "How are you?". "My name is...", etc.  Here is a picture of some of the language instructors, officially, "Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitators", or LCFs.  Nestan is the one with the colorful scarf:

Afternoon sessions were general overviews of things like PC in Georgia, basic safety & security, introductions from the medical staff, visits from the embassy staff and the PC country director, etc.  The days were long but we had nice coffee breaks.  Interesting note: Georgian instant coffee is remarkably good.  (Anyway, it's waaaaay better than, say, Folgers or Maxwell House drip coffee in the US!)

One lowlight from Bazaleti: We all discovered that the food in Georgia is SUPER salty.  Uh oh.  It will be interesting to figure out how to limit my salt intake!  It was amazing to see swollen ankles on ~20-yr old trainees!
That's about it. Everything else is kinda great.


NEXT UP:  Host families!!

On Saturday, we packed up our stuff and headed off to a big lunch together at a restaurant before meeting our host families, who would be hosting us for the next 11 weeks of PST.  The 58 trainees were separated into 10 different "clusters", each living in/around a different village or town in the greater Gori area.  There are six Education clusters -- those folks will eventually be teaching English in Georgian schools -- and four Individual & Organization Development clusters. The IOD folks (lie me) will be working in various NGOs after PST.

We had SOOOOO much luggage, that, even though we had TWO big tour-type buses, we had to also use a cargo truck to get everything to the host family meet-up point in Gori.

In closing....here are some pics of other PC Georgia trainees in my "G15" group:

 

These are two IOD trainees...heading to meet host families.

Ingesting enough salt in one meal for about 10 people...

Ingesting more salt...

And more salt...

And more salt.... (Side note, the lovely lady on the left was a Jordan PC volunteer, but she was evacuated with the rest of PC Jordan earlier this year and was reassigned to Georgia. We are lucky to have her.)

Just hanging around.  The folks drinking juice boxes just had some vaccinations.  The PC didn't have us all get ALL of the shots we needed before arriving in country. They prefer instead to do some things in country, including Hep A, Hep B, and rabies.  Downside -- I can expect to get lots of shots over the next few months, since all of the above require at least two (or more) injections!  Upside -- we get a juice box every time we get a shot. :)