Job Shadowing in beautiful Samegrelo

Over my birthday weekend, I was away from my permanent site to job shadow a current volunteer to see how they teach and get ideas and advice for our service. The volunteer I shadowed was Lilya, a volunteer living in Samegrelo, in the northwest of Georgia.

The day after we arrived, I went and shadowed her at her school. She has done a lot of work at the school - she got a grant to make an "English Cabinet" at her school, which is essentially an English classroom. Georgian schools are different from American ones in that students stay in one room, and teachers come to them to teach. This can be inconvenient for teachers as they do not have resources and visuals to use in their class. So, many volunteers choose to create an English classroom that students will come to for their class that has English resources, books, and posters to make classes more interactive and engaging. Lilya's classroom was amazing -- it had a new floor (important because most Georgian schools have terrible wooden floors. In Lilya's school, many classrooms were missing pieces of the floor because during hard times, people would take the wood to use) and she had so many books, and posters up on the walls! She had even set up a "reading corner" for students with a carpet. Here are some pictures of her classroom posters:

We happend to be at school on the "last day of class" celebration for the 12th graders. Lilya's school is very small, so there were only 8 12th graders. Basically what happens is the families come and there are performances by the 12th graders and other students. There was singing and dancing and lots of speeches!

After this, we headed home and ate. We had decided to go on a hike with the volunteer in the neighboring village (who also happened to be hosting my clustermate, Phil). Another crazy coincidence: this volunteer is also from NC AND has my same birthday!!

We started out walking to to his village, Balda. Samegrelo is a beautiful region, and we had incredible views:

Lilya's street

the road to Balda

road sign pointing us to the village of baldo

SO MANY PIGS EVERYWHERE

When we got to Daniel's house, I was amazed. He has probably the best house set up in Peace Corps. His family has 3 houses. He stays in one of them and has his own bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom WITH A FLUSH TOILET AND SHOWER! The view from his balcony was amazing as well!!

We started out on our hike. Our destination was a waterfall. Here are some views from the road:

This part of Samegrelo is famous for its canyons, and here is one we came across. Don't be fooled by the picture -- the drop to the river below was at least 40 feet!

We also stopped off at a beautiful old church. Here are some pictures from the church:

looking out the door

the outside of the church and the graveyard

Walking further along, we came across this old Soviet truck -- complete with the CCCP logo (USSR in Russian alphabet)

It started to pour rain, but we persevered. Our determination was rewarded when we finally reached our destination. The waterfall was so beautiful! We spent a while here taking pictures and relaxing.

We also couldn't resist taking some funny pictures. Phil has a photo series of him "eating" various landmarks in Georgia, so here is the waterfall installment:

As far as Lilya's host family was concerned. my favorite part was all of the baby animals they had. They had the CUTEST baby calf, and tons of baby turkeys running around the yard. The baby turkeys were hilarious looking as well and provided me with many laughs.

The villages had many World War II monuments to villagers who died in the Soviet army. Here is one such monument, complete with a bust of Stalin (and pigs...because it is Georgia).

The next day, we went to Kutaisi, the nearest city to Lilya and Daniel's sites. They accompanied us and we had a great couple of hours in the city. Here is Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi - built in the 11th century, it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site! It was very impressive, and had great views of the city below.

The view of Kutaisi from the cathedral:

On the walk down from the cathedral, we saw this statue - I think it is a famous Georgian writer receiving inspiration from an angel.

Lastly, we ate pizza at a restaurant that overlooked the river. Here is our amazing lunchtime view:

I had an amazing time job shadowing in Samegrelo, and a great time meeting other volunteers! It gave me so many ideas and a lot of inspiration for projects to do at my permanent site!