One year, more or less

We hit the one-year-in-Georgia mark on April 28th, and though I wanted (and planned) to write a great summarizing account of that first year, I missed the mark by a few weeks. As most of you reading this blog know, Sam and I went home from April 17-April 26 for my sister's wedding. We had a great time, though too short a visit. Somehow, even though we were only gone 10 days, when we got back to Georgia we were up to our eyeballs in jet lag and work. So my big, exciting PC-Georgia-by-the-numbers recollection of our first year got shelved. It may be a little late and not quite as grand as I hoped, but here's a recapitulation of what we've done, what we've seen and what we've learned (in numbers) in year one.

-10,000 residents in Akhalkalaki (give or take)

-6066 frequent flier miles gained on a flight from DC to Tbilisi

-5178 new acronyms introduced to us by Peace Corps (or thereabouts)

-4500 calories consumed (at least) every day during the New Year's celebrations

-770 students at the Russian school where Melissa teaches

-705 pictures taken by Melissa so far this year

-530 miles run and recorded on my Garmin running watch

-414 days left in our Peace Corps Service (from today)

-400 students at the Armenian school where Sam teaches

-378 days of Peace Corps Training and Service completed (up to today)

-365 days between our first passport stamp for Georgia and the most recent one (4/28/10 we arrived in Tbilisi and 4/28/11 we returned after Emily's wedding)

-100 total volunteers in Georgia currently (G9, G10 and G11 groups)

-100 tetris in every Georgian lari

-73 days spent in Pre-Service Training before departing for our permanent site

-62 blog posts about our experiences written and shared with you brave readers

-50 years of Peace Corps worldwide

-41 attendees for my largest Women's Fitness Club meeting thus far

-39 letters in the Armenian alphabet

-37 days (on average) that packages have taken to get to us

-33 letters in the Georgian alphabet

-31 volunteers who arrived with us in Georgia

-15 khachapuris and lobianis baked (and consumed) for my birthday

-15 cities and villages visited in Georgia (for overnight trips)

-10 years of Peace Corps in Georgia

-10 pumpkins purchased and carried around Tbilisi in preparation for our big Thanksgiving bash

-8 language clubs Sam and I host each week (combined)

-6 cups of tea (on average) we consume every day

-5 hours for us to get from Akhalkalaki to Tbilisi on the old road

-4 hours of language classes, Monday through Saturday, during Pre-Service Training

-4 Peace Corps trainings attended (Pre-service training, In-Service Training, Project and Design Management Training and Health Lifestyles Training of Trainers)

-4 McDonalds in Georgia (and more are apparently in the works)

-3 hours for us to get from Akhalkalaki to Tbilisi on the new road (yay new road!)

-3 alphabets and languages learned and studied and used

-3 host families lived with (2 in Akhalkalki and 1 in Kortaneti)

-3 main goals of Peace Corps

-2 attendees for the Women's Fitness Club when it got started (and for the first several weeks of existence)

-1.68 Georgian Lari in every dollar at today's exchange rate

-0 Starbucks in Georgia :(

-0 days we could have lasted as volunteers without all of your support and the support of all the great people we've met here!

That's the short summary, by the numbers, of our year. We'll try to keep up the blog posts and the stories (and the picture-taking) into year two!