The week before Christmas, homesickness came and told me, “don’t be a stranger, come knock on my door.” Homesickness is like M&Ms in a way, you just can’t have one thought or one moment of sadness. You find your hand reaching in for more despite your better judgement. Silver lining is, I’m not the only Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Georgia who feels this way. We were told in Pre-Service Training (PST) that a “the low phase of service” will be around November-December. Essentially, we were told to expect to be homesick between Thanksgiving and the New Year.
Good thing though, I was doing really good for the Thanksgiving period. I was surprisingly not homesick. Maybe it is because in college, I worked every Thanksgiving. I used for work for the Mouse, aka Disneyland. Since the holidays get really busy at the park, pretty much every staff member worked some sort of shift. But the main reason is probably because our Peace Corps staff in Georgia did a beautiful job in giving us a Thanksgiving dinner (albeit, the week prior). We had an All Volunteer Conference (All-Vol) in which all G15, G16s, and Response volunteers attended a two day conference in Tbilisi, Georgia. Some of the PCVs volunteered to cook us an all-American, perfect Thanksgiving. There was turkey, apple pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, and even cranberry sauce.
During dinner, one of my friends in the English Education sector, Kelley, decided it would be fun to do the Mannequin Challenge. It was such a fun activity that everybody could participate as a group. Check out the video here.
So in essence, I think it is because I had Thanksgiving a week early, it really did help alleviate any forthcoming homesickness. On the actual day of Thanksgiving, I went to work like it was a normal day. Unfortunately, Peace Corps Volunteers do get any American holidays off from work (unless we use our personal time off). However, the Peace Corps staff at our national office gets both Georgian and American holidays off (yes, the world is unfair, I know).
After work, Justin and I went out to a local restaurant with our local American friends. There is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) who lives in town and a Fulbright ETA couple as well.
I also came up with a possibly mean system to also offset any homesickness: don’t talk to the family. When my dad called me to wish me Happy Thanksgiving and reminiscence about our previous Thanksgiving, I told him that I don’t want to talk. I simply picked up the phone quickly and told my dad, “Baba, I’m doing really good today. If I talk to you, I will get homesick. The last thing I want is get homesick. I’ll call you back in a few days.” He respected my wishes sadly and that was that.
But Christmas is a different story all together…
First, Georgians do not celebrate Christmas on December 25th like most of the world. Georgian Christmas actually takes place on January 7th of every year. Of course, there are vastly different traditions that take place in Georgia. For Christmas, I don’t like change: I like to stick with my prescribed traditions. Go shopping on Black Friday and decorate the family tree all together. Christmas songs are constantly played in the house. This year, none of that. This is the very first year I will not be spending Christmas with my family. This is the first year that I will not wake up on the 25th of December and see a Christmas tree. It just doesn’t feel like the holidays for me because all the preceding holiday traditions just have not taken place.
However, it is like the world knew that I would need some Christmas spirit in my life. As I thinking about writing this post yesterday, one of my colleagues walks in the office with a Christmas tree. My boss starts playing Christmas music in the background and we all start decorating our own very Christmas tree. So even though I was no decorating my family’s tree in California, I still got to decorate a wonderful, plastic tree last night.
Then, as I was walking up the office stairs this morning, I see two Georgian men carrying a Fed-Ex box! There is no Fed-Ex in Georgia, so I quickly knew that very box must be my care package. My wonderful friends back home, who are more like family at this point, mailed me and my husband 36 pounds (yes, that heavy) worth of American goodness! I probably should have waited to open the box with my husband on Christmas, but too late!
And on Christmas Day, other PCVs and I will try to capture the spirit of the holidays. We are having dinner together and doing a White Elephant gift exchange. We will try to dress up and look fancy. So even though I’m not with my blood relatives on Christmas, I am with my new family in a way. That helps a lot in homesickness. We have found a home away from home within each other.