Moving house

6 months, 2 continents, 4 languages, and 4 homes. When you say it like that...
We moved last Sunday; our first three months of service were up and with it our initial homestay at our permanent site. We were happy with the family we were staying with, but the heating situation in their home wouldn't allow us to stay there with winter coming on. So we started asking around and found that the aunt and uncle of a good friend of ours here had a room that they'd be willing to let us move into.

We'd met the family before and they struck as extremely kind and welcoming, but that turns out to be an understatement. They're just downright great, and we've really enjoyed getting to know each other better over the past week. Our host mother teaches Russian at Melissa's school. Our host father owns a pharmacy downtown. Our host grandmother is busy around the house and helps watch the two kids (a 7-year old boy and a 1 1/2 year old girl) while the parents are at work. Our host brother is a big Spider-Man fan, which made for some instant bonding.

It was daunting moving on Sunday and getting right back to work on Monday, so it was a relief in some ways to finish 4th period on Monday and return to the teacher's lounge to get the news that the rest of the week's classes would be canceled to allow students to work on the potato harvest.

Meanwhile, Melissa and our friend in town who works at the adult education center were in Tbilisi from Sunday (just after our move) to Saturday for a training on conducting peer health education with a focus on HIV/AIDS. The training was interesting and revealed a lot of the challenges of talking about the subject in this society. It was also a good chance for her to spend time with some other Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts.

And today, in celebration of Melissa getting back and our really being moved in, we had a deliciously huge khinkali dinner. It's been a great week; we really couldn't be happier with our host family, and we're eager to get back to work tomorrow.

(I'll get a picture up of our new place shortly).