A lifetime at Parzival Community, Georgia
- Aoyumi Jung
- Mar 23
- 7 min read
23 March 2025
Dreams
I fell in love with Parzival, the Mastevani landscape, and Georgia from the first day and that love has only gotten stronger. I often remind myself of a guiding question: what new skills and areas could I learn in service of Parzival community? Every encounter that has happened has become stars that would shine in my universe. This newsletter is only a glimpse of my experience!
What is new?
The feeling of home in this place, in these people!
Over 6 weeks, Parzival members have exposed us to Georgian culture and landscape. Amidst the uncertainty of snow weather, the team arranged a trip for us to see the northern part of Georgia, Kazbegi Mountain. Viewing mighty mountains covered in ice, walking to old churches and listening to the unique stories was a gift. We got toured around Tbilisi with a lovely and knowledgeable tour guide. I love the hospitality of Parzival community and some cultural similarities to my country.
Parzival spirit!
We are lucky to stay and work in a space that the whole Parzival team members built together.
I have dreamed of building my own house and perhaps I could make it happen? The kitchen is the heart of this place. All of us felt so glad to cook our food where we could be creative, and express our care for what we are consuming.
Parzival members turned their visions and dreams into reality. The whole team comes together to start initiatives, after that, the person who thought of the initiative has to commit to continue it. Each individual is involved in different projects with autonomy and responsibility. Ani, our internship supervisor, a wonderful human being in charge of the Garden Project.
Ani worked hard to design workplan with us with other Parzival members because we came in a turbulent time of climate and politics. She responded to all of our needs, and would spend her whole time with the garden or studying how to nourish it. For example, planning for spring, preparing equipment, composting, mapping, reading books and learning new techniques and trying to understand plants and insects… Working in the garden is an unpredictable task. The weather has changed massively during the last 3 weeks from snow to sunshine to heavy snow again. We had to be flexible to change plans and come up with something more weather permitting.
This manifestation of ideas into realities is shared practice with YIP. On reflection, what ideas have I manifested so far? I would carry the “youth impulse” of Parzival in my next chapter of life.
School Project
I am thankful that the students in the School project have become beautiful flowers in my life. It is such a gift for me to observe all students so engage in the class, see their creativity and playfulness.
I am glad to have opportunities to take part in different games and activities with them. Love playing board games and seeing students be creative in many ways with clay, with acting, crafts and sharing ideas in class. Because of creative classes, we managed to still get to know each other through translations, body language and cooking time. It’s such a beautiful part of the lesson plan that students not only learn creative skills in theater, moving making and storytelling, they also spend time cooking and eating together every time. That’s how we could become more close on a personal level. I wish them to become unique human beings full of joy and create good meanings in life. They have power in their hands to live and creative positive changes they want to see.
Working with horses
This is the most mysterious task in my internship honestly. I’ve never done such a task in the past. I wondered: How do horses help children of special needs as well as normal people? How do the children become from the therapy?
Part of our morning rhythm is to feed them, and clean the horse stable and gardening. We clean each stable and get rid of the wet hay and manure, then cover the floor with hay to keep the horse feet warm. We had a session with the project team: Barbara, Gio and Ilia about Eurythmy and interact with horses, the first structured experience to understand this project better. These horses work with children with special needs since they could listen and feel the children. They would gain self-confidence and be able to improve physical health from the therapy. In general, the therapy brings humans and animals together to create something where humans step away from their controlling relationship with animals. Animals do not judge who we are or how we feel. Horses especially can mirror our inner world, and will tell us with their body language. What intrigues me is that in order to step into this relationship, both horses and humans have to prepare, horses have to be strong to work with various people, and humans have to be willing to seek new sides of ourselves.
The richness and pride of the “mother language”
The people perceive their language to be so special in Georgia and Armenia which I learnt on my unexpected journey to Armenia due to visa restrictions. There are three different alphabets of Georgian that have been alive over periods of war. Similar with was Armenian language. Most people took pride in their writing system which dated back a long time ago. There’s a place called “Matenadaran” in Yeravan City that restores and maintains the most ancient handwritten texts and manuscripts in Armenian.
Looking at the texture of the old paper, the meticulous shapes of the writing and the artistic decoration to demonstrate different subjects, I stood in deep admiration. I would also want to keep my handwritten notebooks and my knowledge long for future generations. I want to conserve the heritage of my language, and find the origin of our words, meanings, concepts more deeply.
Explore Waldorf Education
I got the privilege to visit Aregnazan Waldorf School in Armenia. The school has warmly welcomed me and let me be part of any lesson. I was invited to English classes to share about our culture. Since most people only heard of our brutal war, I told them my favorite traditional Vietnamese folktales from ancient time, inspired from a storytelling course at YIP. Students are full of curiosity and joy.
In the English classes, students learn beyond the “fixated language” or grammar-centric. They must view language critically, they are required to ask questions, write the readings from their understanding, and express how they feel about the character. The readings in the class are not from a textbook that is for every school, or by the government. It’s selected by the teacher, who found it relevant to the stage of student development as well as students’ language capacities. For example, they read a real story written by an Armenian that survived the Genocide in 1915. The key message from the teacher is when anything happens in life, students would could have strength and overcome it. Students are invited to build relationships with the language and how language expresses meanings and record living experiences. When I read further about the Waldorf curriculum of teaching English as a secondary language, I felt in so much awe. Students learn English literature to grasp the nuance of the international language, and see what role language plays in human development.
I joined other classes such as art, crafts, handwork, Eurythmy, and physics to see how the learning environment looks like. “We are lucky to have a happy childhood in this school where we don’t have to grow up too fast, we might not be as academically centred, but there’s something else like spiritual and creative growth. - From a 12-Grader on making crafts as gifts for every teacher and every grade before they graduate. “I love the teachers at our school the most. They made us feel like a family.” - From a 11 Grader, in an open class in the park
The biggest struggle
It’s not living without electricity or water. It’s not being away from home. It’s the feeling of being in a city looking at concrete buildings constructed over stones and mountains that I couldn’t breathe when I travelled to Armenia. It’s seeing people staring at the phones while eating and talking to each other in different places. It’s me crossing the border from India to Georgia and from Armenia to Georgia, being interrogated like a criminal. However, everything else painted the sky of happiness in my life, so I let the struggle die and keep up my faith in the kindness of humanity.
My favorite - our care structure
Care structure is an important component of YIP curriculum. It is for us to develop capacity to listen, reflect and respect for differences, and experience the diverse nature of what it is to be human. We applied weekly check-in meetings in our internship to share how things are going emotionally, physically and mentally. We have spacious time for everyone to get on their stream of consciousness and be heard. It is so special to see my co-interns in new ways and for us to learn how to work and live together. I am so grateful for their care and acceptance of myself including my silliness, ugliness and complexities. Lots of love and gratitude for these four unique humans: Josie, Seunghyun and Lia. When I am not at YIP anymore, I will bring this heartwarming practice to any group of people or community I live with.
Ending note
Parzival has taught me the power of a true community. With collective strength and vision, everything could come true. On leaving, I wish YIP would come here one day as part of the Outpost experience, not only for an internship. There’s just an image in my head that this space, this community, this culture is perfect for our immersive experience. Everyone would be invited to take initiative the way we aspire, and we will be becoming every single day.
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