Site Announcement

Thursday was a big, exciting day for us. We were scheduled to have what PC calls a “hub day,” where all the trainees were to get together for joint sessions (normally we stay in our “clusters” of five people and have language classes and technical training, so “hub day” is a fun change of pace and a chance to see the other folks we don’t see daily). This Thursday started off with a real bang, though. We got to do a practice emergency drill called “consolidation.” PC has a whole slew of safety and security rules and regulations, and in the case of an emergency, they have a safety system in place to rally all the volunteers to one spot. It’s like a fire drill on a much larger scale.

We got the call at about 7:30am, telling us that we needed to grab our “go bags” (the most important things we need to have with us in the case of an emergency situation, like passports, money, cell phones, change of clothes, valuables, water, etc.) and meet at the consolidation point, which, luckily, is also our hub site. Sam and I scrambled around a little bit (I had just gotten back from a run) and headed out the door. The most time consuming part of the drill turned out to be trying to convince our host family to let us go without eating breakfast first. “You have to go to Borjomi for an emergency drill? But you have to eat first! No time? How can you not have time for breakfast?! At least drink your tea!” And so on. After some quick thinking, we convinced them that PC would have breakfast waiting for us, and with some tongue clicks and sighs, they let us go.

Once the drill was over and we got started into our training day, we got to the part we’d been expecting to be the most exciting part: site announcement, when all the trainees get to learn where they’ll be spending the next two years. PC did a great job making this a fun event. They set up a huge outline of Georgia and taped down the names of the cities and villages we’d be off to, then handed out envelopes. We went around, opening the envelope we’d been given, reading off the name of the trainee we’d received and then telling them where they’d be going, Academy-Awards style.

Some site placement activity pictures:

Standing outside the map, waiting to learn where we'll be heading


Tengo tells us how it'll all go down


Oh, the anticipation!


Heading to Akhalkalaki


Some happy sitemates


Sam and I found out that we will be spending the next two years in a predominately Armenian town in Georgia called Akhalkalaki. From what we’ve heard, it’s the city with the worst weather in all of Georgia, and has very rough winters, worse than the rest of the country sees. Lucky us. The other thing people keep telling us is that Akhalkalaki has the best potatoes in the whole country. So we’re going to the Idaho of Georgia, it seems. Our Armenian language teacher tells us that she knows our host family, though, and that they have a bathroom with a toilet, shower and washing machine. If this holds true, I think I’ll forgive the harshest winters.

We’ll find out a bit more about our permanent site next week, when we’ll go for a “site visit.” We’ll spend 4 days in Akhalkalaki, staying with our permanent host family, and we’ll get the chance not only to see the town a bit, but also to meet the directors of our schools (Sam and I will be teaching at different schools in town) and some of the other people we’ll be spending the bulk of our time with. I’m really glad that we’ll soon be getting a better picture of where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing soon!