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To make up for my neglect last month in blogging, I’m going to make this a long and (hopefully?) informative one.

First, a couple of weeks ago I went to a training conference in Ukraine near Kiev for almost a week. It was a great trip, and I met a lot of interesting and awesome people. I went to the training because I’ll be working this summer as a teacher for the American government’s exchange program called FLEX. Students from former Soviet countries pass through some very stiff competition, and then are chosen to do a year of exchange at an American high school throughout the 50 states. I get to help train the chosen students before they go on their American adventure. Pretty sweeeeeeeet.

Ukraine is cool. I felt completely at a loss, not knowing Ukrainian or Russian, but I guess I made it out alive, and that’s usually a good thing. For some reason Georgian doesn’t get you very far outside of Georgia…hmm. It’s weird going from somewhere you can get around with general ease, to a place where you are totally helpless. This part of the world is not really equipped for Western travelers without language skills. I may try to hit the Russian books soon…we’ll see.

What else? Lots of work going on, since the summer will be full of activities and our new Georgia volunteers are almost here! That means lots of planning, grant applying, and traveling in addition to the day-to-day challenge of teaching, trying to convince Georgian students it’s a great idea to learn English.

I spent this last weekend with my family celebrating the Easter holidays. Here’s some background info on Georgian Easter:

What we know as Good Friday, or the day Jesus was crucified, the Georgians call “Red Friday.” On this day, they take eggs (in our case from our own chickens), and dye them a dark red to represent the blood of Christ. The shell of the egg symbolizes the sealed Tomb of Christ—the cracking of which (on Easter Sunday) symbolizes his resurrection from the dead.

So it’s common practice for each person to take an egg (they’re hard boiled), then compete to see which will break on the top or bottom when you hit it against another egg. The person whose egg is strongest keeps going until the top or bottom (or both) end up cracking. And of course you eat the eggs after the shells crack. Needless to say, the kids love this, and the result is eating a TON of eggs. I probably ate like 15 over a 2 day period.

Another common practice for Georgian Easter is to bake a cake called Paska. The family goes to the cemetery to visit family members who have passed away. Then they take the boiled eggs and the paska and place them on the graves, before circling them with wine 3 times to represent the holy trinity. My family also poured out soda on the graves. I don’t really know what that represents, but I guess it might seem weird to run around looking for plastic eggs with money and candy in them, so what can I say?

Anyway, after you place the food/pour the drinks on the grave, you have a little picnic at the gravesite, where you eat more paska and more eggs. When you see someone, you say Criste aghsdga (Christ is risen) and they respond with Cheshmaritad (truly). It’s a nice holiday, and it was nice to be able to be a part of it.

Of course, I missed our Easter traditions and had to watch my niece hunt for Easter eggs via Skype, but I’m grateful that we have the technology to do that from halfway across the world. Pretty cool stuff.

Pending all the right permissions from all the right people, I’m getting ready to buy my plane tickets to visit Texas in August, thanks to my friends back home who are generously helping to finance my little adventure South. I’m so excited! But it’s far away! But I’m still pumped!

Ok enough of that. Thank you to my awesome friends for taking care of me. Your care packages and messages help keep me sane when the going gets rough. Miss you guys like crazy.

Talk to you soon, I hope! Enjoy the Spring! It’s a great season.

Love,
Lauren