Claire's Around the World Blog!: Site Placements, Race For The Cure and Our Community Project!

So many great things have happened since I've last posted so here it goes! I finally got my permanent site placement which will be in a town called Zestaponi. It has about 24,000 residents (huge in Georgian standards) and I'm relatively close to a lot of my friends. Brittany is about an hour and a half marshutka ride away in Lanchuti, and Caitlin is only a half hour away in Dimi. My site visit went really well, my counter parts at #4 public school are wonderful, and their english is superior to any other I've heard in the classroom.
These past two weeks have been crazy for sure. To begin my cluster implemented a community project, something that we came up with that would be wanted by the community, and that they could take ownership of. Originally we wanted to paint the marshutka stand, but after talking with the school director we decided to repaint and clean the English Classroom. Little did we know how big the project was to become. The classroom is a decent size and had some faded wallpaper with lots of soot stains due to the fireplace that is used in the winter time. By no means, however, was this a run down classroom, we just wanted it to be a place that the students would enjoy, and that would hopefully foster a better learning environment.
The first step was taking down the old wallpaper. Now this is easy when you have the correct tools - not so easy when you don't. We went around town collecting and borrowing materials that we thought would be helpful in our restoration project. Brooms, buckets, sponges, scrub brushes, mops, etc. We ended up using pieces of wood, dustpans and the handle of a scrub brush to take down the wallpaper. Te scrub brush handle being the best tool by far. Once we finally got down all of the paper, we discovered that the room had actually been painted two different shades of green, and also had a very bizarre boarder around the entire ceiling. We scrubbed the walls, but especially we scrubbed this border which was completely black. Some children had written their names and other random tags in the soot, that's how dirty it was. After getting off what Jana has now decided MUST have been at least 30 years of soot we called it a day and went home exhausted and excited.
Our work the first day had generated a lot of talk in the village, and the next day loads of students came out to help. About 25 - 30 kids showed up and helped us scrub that walls, dispose of the wallpaper, (sadly thrown into the river), clean the ceiling, paint the ceiling and sweep the floors. It was so great to see them getting involved, and since then they have showed up every single day to help us out. We eventually painted the ceiling, painted the walls (with at least three coats of primer to cover up the green), repainted the walls with the new color twice (a sunshine yellow), painted the alphabet on the back wall (done by your truly), painted the radiators (that are not connected to anything since there is no heating), ripped out the lights, took off the blackboard, painted the cabinet, painted the fireplace hole, dusted the window sills and wrote a poem on the wall complete will an illustration. Oh yes, and we painted the floors.
Yesterday, right after I had finished the illustrations we had all of the children that had helped with the classroom come to school to put their handprints on the cabinet. It was a great semi-unveiling ceremony and the Peace Corps Training Directors even came out to see it all happen. To say that our cluster is proud of the classroom isn't saying enough, but I know that the students are proud of it too. They did such an amazing job, and I hope that they enjoy the classroom.
Two days prior to finishing the classroom I took a quick trip to Tbilisi with some other trainees. We all decided to participate in the Race For The Cure which unfortunately took place at 1pm when it was crazy hot out. We had a great time though. The course was 4 laps around Turtle Lake in Vake Park in the center of Tbilisi. I was exhausted by the end of the run, but it felt soooo good to be running again! We even got a glimpse of the First Lady, as she was there for the 2k walk which happened directly after the run. Sadly due to time constraints we couldn't stay, and after a quick bite to eat at the best pizza place around we rushed to the Marshutka station to get back to our respective clusters. It was all a whirlwind, but I had a wonderful time and now I have a Race For The Cure shirt in Georgian!
As for now, I've just gotten back from our Peace Corps 4th of July Party. It was held in Borjomi park complete with waterballon tosses, three-legged races and "apple pie". I was pretty exhausted so I didn't stay long, but it was nice to get everyone together. Tomorrow it's back to the grindstone, but for now here are some pictures from the past month. Hope everyone is doing fabulously at home and Happy 4th!