Last days in Kortaneti

We spent our last few days in Kortaneti in a whirlwind of taking tests for Peace Corps, finishing up our classes, packing, saying goodbyes, eating, toasting, eating and eating. PC requires us to fulfill a number of requirements by the end of our training before we can be officially sworn in as volunteers. We have to fill out a book, detailing our progress in integrating into the community, putting our technical training to use and so forth. We have tests on our technical training materials, health and well-being sessions, safety and security training and to test our language acquisition. On the technical side, we had to score at least 90% in order to pass. For the language, we were required to attain at least an intermediate low level of proficiency in Georgian. At this level, according to one PC manual we should be able to deal with a number of simple tasks and be able to discuss "topics related to basic personal information (such as) self and family, daily activities and personal preferences... ordering food and making simple purchases. Intermediate-Low speakers can generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors, particularly by those accustomed to dealing with non-natives."

In our cluster of trainees, headed off to minority communities and thus struggling to learn not only Georgian, but also Russian and either Armenian or Azeri, we were only required to reach a novice high level of Georgian proficiency, and we were not required to be tested in our other languages, which was nice and took a little of the pressure off. All the same, though, we spent a lot of time studying, going through our copious notes and stacks of handouts, books and other materials.

The Kortaneti cluster, with our teacher, Tea, on our last day of class


We didn't spend all our time just working, though. We also found time to hang out with our host families and the other volunteers, enjoying some last-days-of-training supras. Our very last night in Kortaneti, we stayed up to the wee hours with our host family, some neighbors, our teacher and her husband (another PC staff member), talking back and forth in Georgian, Russian and English, toasting each other and trying not to get too upset about the leave taking that would happen the next morning.

The supra table is set...


Enjoying the feast


Raising a toast


Our Kortaneti host family


As if our last night in Kortaneti weren't already exciting enough and full of enough activity, we got a call at about 6pm that a television crew wanted to come interview some of us for the next morning's news, to talk about Peace Corps and what were were going to be doing. We were told that the reporter and camera man would show up within the next half hour or so, but several delays meant that they didn't show up until about 11:30pm. They interviewed me and Sam and another guy from our training cluster while about half the village gathered to watch. After they had gotten all the footage they needed, the journalists joined us at the supra table for a few toasts and some cake and khatchapuri before heading off to edit their tapes for the next day's news broadcast. The next morning (Friday), our host family's phone started ringing off the hook after the segment aired on the 9am news. If I can find a link to the clip, I'll post it, but otherwise you'll just have to take my word that I got at least my 15 seconds of fame here in Georgia!