If you were curious how Peace Corps volunteers end up speaking another language in a short amount of time (at least conversationally), let me share the rewarding (but sometimes painful) process. We literally have classes 6 days a week for 11 weeks. The first 5 days is learning something new and each Saturday is dedicated to reviewing the new material. In the four hour language class everyday, I go through many emotions. And since today was the last day of language class, there is no better day to write this post. Of course, the best way to explain these emotions are through GIFs. Enjoy!

Many times, you encounter very patient Georgians as you butcher their language into unrecognizable sentences. Other times, there is visible frustration from people on how come we aren’t learning fast enough. And sometimes, this is the feeling I’m assuming Host Country Nationals feel towards me, but that is projecting my own insecurities upon myself.

And to reduce those insecurities, you can never give up! You have to show up to class everyday- rain or shine! And in Ruisi, it is rain most of the time. So it is by sheer force from God where I get dragged out of bed and walk 30 minutes uphill to only get injected with 50,000 new words a day!

Most days, we are assigned something the Peace Corps likes to call “Community Tasks.” These are lovely verbal questions we are assigned to ask our host families to practice our Georgian. When I go to class the next day and put together a perfect sentence, I feel like nothing short of awesome.

But that awesomeness is short lived. I sometimes get corrected that I use the wrong case or given a whole new meaning of what I thought I said. Life is confusing and I don’t like it.

Then my teacher asks me how I feel about the new acquired information. This is how I feel.

Still confused by my earlier interaction, we move on to learn 5 new verbs. Of course, half of them sound so much alike. And of course I’m supposed to memorize them within 30 seconds. And yes, I’m still confused.

At this point of the day, I just want to whine like baby. Why is Georgian so hard?! Why do I add “s” to everything?! Ahhhhhh.

Just as I’m about to check-out from information overload, my teacher announces it is break time! 15 minutes of internet! 15 minutes to just stare at a tree until I feel okay inside. wohoo!

Around 11:00 a.m. is when I experience deep sleepiness. I think about taking a nap but I then I remember I still have two more hours. There is no caffeine in sight. Stay awake, Rawan! Stay awake!

Then we learn a cognate! Oh wait, it is false cognate! But why?! Why can’t we just have the same word for the same meaning?! Why does my life need to be any harder???

And speaking of harder, I sometimes make it harder for Georgians to know what I’m saying. For an entire week, I kept on saying “I like to eat People” instead of “I like to eat onions” because there is one letter apart! This is my face when I realize what I just said. Whoopsie! Do you still love me?!

And saying the wrong thing can make my brain explode. Because now I can’t legit can’t tell the difference or hear the difference between the words. In the onion/people case, I started debating how important it was for me to get it right. My conclusion, very important. Thus, my brain proceeded to figuratively explode in front of my face.

At 12:30 p.m. begins the most painful 30 minutes of all. Why you ask? Because at this point in the day, I’m STARVING. All I could think about is food, food, and oh, food.

1:15 p.m…….ahh, the lovely time I reach the dining table in which food is served. Oh potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes how I have learned to love you so much since I eat you everyday. Mmmmm….Mmmm….

In two weeks, the G-16s (our group/year for Georgia), will be swearing in as official volunteers. The thought of “graduating” from our Pre-Service Training (PST) feels oddly familiar. Training will be over and we will be finally allowed to let our wings soar in the “real world.” Of course, anyone who graduated from high school or college has experienced “graduation jitters.” Except, here is how it will be different for me this time around. When I “graduate,” I will be upgraded from an out-house to an indoor toilet (at work and at home). I will walk on paved roads. And I will have Wi-Fi.

I’m just kidding, this isn’t obviously the important things in life for me…if it was, I would have never signed up for the Peace Corps. Although, I can’t complain that these luxuries are very much welcomed.

The real reason it will be different is because I won’t be taking Georgian lessons every day. I won’t be surrounded by many Americans. I will have to get to know a new host family and establish norms all over again. I will also have to work in a Georgian workplace, completely unaware of the professional norms in this country.

And yet, I’m so excited. The last few days we actually went to our Permanent Sites after finding out what they were last Friday. I couldn’t be any happier. I will be working at World Vision! Who wouldn’t be excited to be working at such a world-class organization?! I will also be at one of the best cities in Georgia (my biased opinion of course). The city that we will serve in has so much history- it is actually older than the capital, Tbilisi.

Watch out world, in 14 days, you will be getting 57 full-fledged new Peace Corps Adults whether we are ready or not.

Normally, dinner is uneventful. Tonight was not the case.

We were told to eat on the small kitchen table accompanied by the small stools. This should have been my first hint something was going down tonight. We normally eat in the dinning-room, but tonight it was set up nicer than usual. Guests must be coming.

Sure enough, about ten minutes into eating my eggs, my host brother comes in the kitchen with the biggest jug of wine I have ever seen. This thing could have easily been 5 gallons of homemade white wine. Seconds later, Justin was whisked away to sit in the dining room as I was left with the two adult females in the kitchen.

A bunch of men arrived and the feast begun in the dining room! The men came with the bbq meat. Excited, I chowed down on one of the most delicious bbq pieces I’ve ever had. Sounds delicious, right? Well, consider this….as I was enjoying my meat, my host family proudly told me that the pig I’m eating was our very own pig. And yes, the cannibal pig I talked about a few posts ago (please read that post if you haven’t). So inside of me right now, I’m digesting a pig that digested her own piglets. I couldn’t help myself finding the situation ironically hilarious, so I tried my hardest to not crack a smile.

Minutes later, my host sister looks at me and goes, “F*** You!” I look at her and she is laughing and asking what does that phrase mean in America. After almost spitting out my tea, I told her that this is not something you tell people and it should never be repeated. Did that work? Of course not, it just created a debate on how it is perfectly okay to say this in Georgia.

As I’m having that discussion, Justin is trying his hardest not to keep up with the Georgian men and their large tolerance of alcohol. Justin was shocked that they did not stop drinking after the 10^th glass. Exhausted, I retire to the bedroom alone thinking Justin will follow. Nope, he was still there. So at 11:00 p.m., I give up and attempt to rescue him to get him to bed.

As I’m grabbing Justin downstairs, one of the drunk men sees me and suddenly decided to practice English with me. He got as far as, “What is your name?” Then looks at Justin as said, “Wife Beautiful.” Then the man looks at us and makes a gesture that tonight, Justin should get me pregnant. My reaction at this point was, “of course, he would say that.” My host brother walks out his friend before the discussion could go any further.

I honestly thought taking my mid-training oral language test was today’s main event, but nope, this dinner definitely trumps it.

Living in a farming village will sure teach a city girl like me a whole lot about animals!

Here are a few interesting observations I’ve noticed:

• Cows are way more flexible than you think. All the jokes about cow-tipping has made me think cows are stiff and just stand there eating grass all day. Yesterday, I saw a cow lift up its hind-leg and sniff itself in the behind just like a dog would do. Also, they actually know their way home on their own sometimes. I saw a cow straight walk into my teacher’s drive way only to find it was the family’s cow.
• Spiders love to stay in one place for an extended period of time. That spider in the outhouse I mentioned a while back…still in the same spot. Which brings me to the next point, their lifespan is longer than I expected. Also, I don’t think Georgians are scared of spiders like some Americans are (cough…cough, me)! I’ve lost count on how many daddy-long-legs I’ve seen that are in people’s homes.
• Donkeys can rape one another- or at least attempt. I was walking with a bunch of friends last weekend in a different village and we suddenly heard a donkey howling. We saw that a male donkey just jumped on the female’s behind and started humping while biting her neck. The female donkey was able to escape after a few minutes. It looked like how dogs hump each other uninvited, but much more aggressively.
• Rosters do not just crow when the sun comes up like the movies portray. Those birds go at it all the time! But especially in the morning- like 4:30 a.m.! We hear the rosters wide and clear each morning and I’m not a fan when the sun is not yet shinning.
• Dogs are not a man’s best friend! Well, at least in Georgia. They are in fact very vicious here and I’ve grown to be afraid. As you are walking down the street, it is a legitimate fear that they will come at you and bite you. In fact, many Peace Corps Volunteers have had to fight them off. Which is why all volunteers in Georgia get Rabies shots, in fact, we just completed our third round a couple of days ago.
• Mice can eat through walls. For some reason, I assumed they go through already-made cracks in the walls, but no, their teeth never stop growing. How do I know this? Let’s just say I have an unwanted pet in my room that goes by the shape of a mouse. Current fear, stepping on it in the middle of the night. Justin has placed rat poison and the mouse has feasted on all of it. Is it still alive? To be determined….

On Saturday evening, Peace Corps Orientation was over. We were able to finally meet our PST (Pre Service Training) host family!

I found out that our “Host Mother” was actually a few years younger than me- and I’m still in my twenties! Her oldest child is 7 years old- which I’m assuming means she was about 17 years old when she got married. First culture shock- check.

We got off the bus and immediately hugged with such kindness. When we got home, she pulled out a bag of rings and immediately started placing them on my ring finger. Now, I discovered that married women in Georgia actually place their wedding rings on their RIGHT hand, not the left. So, at first, I thought she assumed that I was making the appearance of living in sin and she wanted me to have a good image in the community. I tried pointing to Justin to say that we are in fact married and gave her 3 fingers to indicate our years of marriage (well, we hit 3 years in July). She kept on shaking her head- in which I realized that she thought I was asking for a ring for Justin! First miscommunication check.

As I’m sitting there confused for hours on what that ring signified, Justin was dealing with his first cultural immersion. As we were eating dinner, Justin was offered shots after shots. Georgian alcohol is quite impressive in the sense that it is extremely strong! As the men began showing signs of drunkenness, the mission became apparent. Get Justin drunk to impregnate Rawan in the fertile Georgian air. Even with zero understanding of Georgian, this was very clear.

This is where my pocket dictionary became my lifeline. By the way, trying to use broken Georgian from a dictionary is not an easy way to converse that a baby will not be happening any time soon. But, the silver lining from my pocket dictionary is that we accidentally found the word for “present.” the ring my host mom gave me was simply just a gift and nothing more.

The day to leave for Georgia has finally come! Before we even left Staging, the Peace Corps told us that our scheduled flight to Georgia has changed a couple of times. Originally, we were going to check-out of the hotel at 4:00 a.m. and have a solid 13 hour layover in Istanbul. But now, we were able to check out at 12:00 p.m. and only have a one hour layover in Turkey. I got all excited…..which was premature. Let me explain.

We did check out at noon, that was great. We only waited about an hour for the buses to pick us up in Philadelphia to take a few hour drive to JFK in New York City. We got to JFK around 4:00 p.m- so three hours later. So Justin and I head to the check-in counter and were very excited to hand her our freshly minted special Peace Corps Diplomatic Passports. She took one look was like, “Miss, you cannot check-in because you are EIGHT HOURS early to your flight!” Puppy eyes and polite pleas did not work here.

So literally all of us moved to a deserted corner in the airport (hard to find in JFK) and busted out a card game on the floor and played for a few hours.

The second we were able to check-in around 7:45 p.m., we immediately did so and then proceeded to security. And that is where I am right now. Silently awaiting for the clock to hit midnight at our gate. Unlike Cinderella, I want the clock to hit midnight sooner rather than later.

Here are my closing thoughts, by the time we go on that plane, we could have been half-way to Georgia right now. True Story.