Saturday, July 12, 2008

July 3, 2008: Almost a Holiday

Today we celebrated our independence day in Josef Stalin’s hometown and the irony was most definitely not lost on us. The staff organized an event in the honor of the 4th that could only happen in the Peace Corps. Aside from the location the astute reader will notice that we’re a day early. Don’t ask my why this is, the fact that we can’t get the answer leads me to believe in either poor logistics or the staff has tomorrow off.

The food was good and definitely well intentioned but lacking a certain authenticity. Whatever we ate resembled burgers and hot dogs although I’m not sure any of us forgot for the day we were in Georgia. The cake was good.

Naturally, no Peace Corps event would be complete without a bit of paperwork and even our Independence day is no exception. Mary, if you’re reading this, I think we’re ready for a break from the ice breaker activities.

After our picnic some of us decided to take advantage of the day by heading to the Stalin museum in the center of town. If you haven’t been, it’s an experience. It takes about 30 minutes for the tour and, while they do seem to leave out some rather critical bits, we learned a lot. Did you know Stalin wrote 18 books? Me neither. We saw some of his belongings including his private train car (I have a picture of me laying on Stalin’s bed!) and a casting that was done of his face after he died. This was probably the most fun I’ve had in Georgia so far and a hell of a way to celebrate Independence Day. Best 10 lari I ever spent.

Back to work tomorrow, hope everyone in the U.S. is enjoying the day off but we’ve got to keep at it. Have fun.

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