Apeni, Georgia

The village of Apeni, where I will be for the next two years it seems.


It's a nice place. I live alone upstairs. Everyone else is downstairs, the parents and their boy and girl, Giorgi and Lika.


They've painted the floor boards upstairs for me apparently. A dark reddish brown, a thick oil paint. You can reach down and scratch the floor and get a little of it under your finger ails. Should be interesting in a six or so months.


Last night they had a nice welcome dinner for me. The director of my school was over with her daughter and sister too. I was very tired though.

This has nothing to do with my post but when we went to the castle in Atskuri, John's dog walked out on the wall, and almost committed hari-kari, before John followed him out there, picked him up and carried him back to safety. He's hard to spot, so look closely.

Yesterday we swore in. The ceremony was at Tbilisi university, and host family members came, the directors, and all sorts of Peace Corps people. We sat on the stage in bright lights, and there were several speeches from people, our director for one, some volunteers, and some other people, and then we got to stand up, and say we promised to be good, and then we were congratulated, and walked off to sit down in the front rows. A Georgian music group got up next and played, and they were very talented.


Afterwards there was lots of crying and hugging all around me. We stuffed all my luggage into the trunk of my latest host family's car. It's remarkable it all fit. And then, we were off to Apeni.


The night before, on Thursday, we had a farewell dinner. I showed a short film I'd made in my village, and everyone liked it a lot. I'd finished editing it that morning. We got back to Kistauri late, and then I put off packing and gave my host family a bottle of wine. Wine? They probably thought. But we make our own... And went to sleep. Getting up at 5:50 the next morning was getting up late, and leaving then at 6:40 made me ten minutes tardy. I was almost to the road, when my host brother Zaza caught up and gave me my camera bag.


My new bedroom appears ransacked, my personal belongings everywhere and concentrated around two epicenters, a mostly clothes one, and a mostly books and notebooks and paper one. It's hot up there right now though.


What I'll be doing with myself for the next little while before school starts, I don't know yet. I have to do a summer camp or something, and last night I think I told my director I'd teach a computer class for the teachers.


It's a weird time. Starting up, a new place, new people, stuff I need to start planning, and already so much has happened here. Several crazy-busy emotional days, everything changes, and then now I'm here, waking up, with two huge piles of stuff, a billion digital photos, and nothing I have to do. I'm probably in some kind of withdrawn autopilot state... and I think maybe it's time for a sweaty afternoon nap...


I sitting on the couch now. It's hot, and I'm getting good at killing flies and mosquitoes in the style of the president (not as a metaphor --- that clip where he snatches a fly out of the air in the middle of an interview,  remembe?) They keep asking me if I want coffee or food, and have cut up a peach and brought it on a plate to me while I sit here.  I won't post any more photos right now. It's sound like too much work. But I'll take a laptop photo. And then be out.