7 Days in Kutaisi – Training Week

After our quick stints in Tbilisi and Batumi, we spent the next seven days in a dorm style, government training facility in Kutaisi. It was very much like summer camp, tiny beds, brightly colored walls, long days jam-packed full of activities, and bad cafeteria food. We spent 4 hours every morning in Georgian language classes, and then each afternoon in different trainings (methodology, curriculum/school structure, and intercultural). Our evenings were spent mostly in informative meetings talking about questions regarding everything from our contracts with the government to toilets. (super exciting, I know!)

Training was sort of organized chaos to present all the information, but in the end I think it was quite helpful in trying to prepare us for the ‘real world’ in Georgia. Since this program is brand new to Georgia, they are still working through lots of structural and logistical issues as they go. This is a bit frustrating at times, especially when working with a disorganized, non western government. I have to constantly remind myself to be flexible when problems arise because we all come from different working environments, attitudes, and customs when it comes to business and government.

I have to say that the best part of training was getting to know the other volunteers in my group. There are so many wonderful people here! Being in the second group was ideal because we didn’t have all the kinks of the first group, and we are about half the size of the third and fourth groups. We really lucked out because there are about 50 of us spanning a variety of ages and nationalities, and we all get along pretty well! By the end of training it was actually really sad seeing everyone split up and go to their separate towns, villages, and regions of Georgia. Our group is placed in the Guria and Samangrelo regions in the north/central western parts of the country.

My birthday fell on the last day we were in Kutaisi, so we had a nice celebration for the end of training/bdays. It included lots of singing, dancing, cake, food, wine, and friends. The whole night felt like we were at a wedding reception…we were all in a huge room with longgggg dinner tables filled with food and wine…Dance floor, live music and dj, toasting… And might I just say no birthday is complete without a huge, dramatic, fight between our program directors and some Georgian prostitutes that resulted in our quick departure (sort of expulsion) from the restaurant! Story to follow: Sooo there we all were, dancing and having a great old time. There were two big tables of Georgian parties in the restaurant also who were dancing alongside us. There was singing, traditional Georgian dancing, toasts, everything was going great! Two of the TLG training staff (Tatia and Nino) came to join the celebrations, and seemed to be having a great time. Then, all of the sudden Tatia started yelling at a group of Georgians. Arms were flailing, yelling, pointing…this is pretty common when talking to Georgians so it was hard to tell if something was actually wrong or if they were just talking about the weather. But turns out these Georgian girls were prostitutes with their sugar daddies/pimps(and we had NO idea!), and the dancing apparently got a little out of control. Nino quickly got on the microphone and announced we were leaving RIGHT NOW. Most of us didn’t even know what was going on, and it didn’t ruin the night whatsoever. After some yelling, confusion, and crying from our directors the night continued on without a hitch. We all headed back to the ‘dorm’ and continued on singing and dancing until the wee hours of our last night in Kutaisi.