There's Fruit In Them Thar Hills

The weeks have become rather formulaic, hence the real absence of updates (that and I'm lazy). This formula is not a bad thing mind you, it's just part of being a grown up I guess. Well, “grown up”. I guess “overgrown child” is more fitting for me. The days consist mostly of teaching and hanging out with the family, as well as sporadic incidents of me falling off of soviet-era farm equipment or slipping in piles of animal excrement. Corn season is over (thank the sweet, merciful, kernel god), and we've moved into bean season, so the nights often consist of me and the family sitting by the stove, shelling beans and watching a variety of imported or locally filmed shows, ranging from:

-Wipeout [Americans embarrassing themselves is a huge source of entertainment in this part of the world, let me tell you]

-Georgian dubbed tele novelas, which have some of the most gratuitous product placement in the world, (especially for pickup trucks and corn chips), second only to Georgian parliament sessions, where every politician has a clearly displayed bottle of Coke in front of them.

and my favorite personal favorite

-Georgian Dancing with the Stars, which is not dubbed American Dancing with the Stars mind you, but rather Dancing with the Stars with Georgian celebrities, [and a whole host of culturally offensive performances, including one routine performed to “In the Jungle” in blackface].

Along with beans and racism, clementines are also presently in season here in Georgia . They are tiny orange spheres of goodness and bounty amidst a diet consisting primarily of oily and/or fried things. I was actually feeling a little drained of vitamins in early November, when lo and behold, my family was like

“LOL, silly American, we have an entire orchard of citrus fruit!”

I was obviously like

“SWEET JESUS WHERE, YOU CRAZY MOUNTAIN PEOPLE!?!”

Their answer: up on the tippity tip tip top of that gigantic hill (see: mountain) behind our house (see: trololol) Georgians invented trolling, I'm not even kidding you. Well if gravity and a 65 degree incline thought they were going to keep me from oranges, they had another thing coming. I hiked (see: scrambled, with much slipping, falling, swearing, and clawing at vegetation) my way up that hill and consumed twice my body weight in fruit. And life was good. Getting down that hill however was quite bad.

Meanwhile, travels around parts of Georgia that are not in my village have been lacking as of late. I've been nursing a four week cold thanks to my gremlins and their sticky, sticky hands.

“TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER HERE IS MY HOMEWORK I DIDN'T ACTUALLY WRITE ANYTHING ON IT BUT I DID SNEEZE ON IT AND HERE IS SOMETHING THAT WAS IN MY MOUTH LET ME PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH WE'RE BEST FRIENDS NOW *cough cough cough*!!!!”

I swear, children really are little petri dishes.

I did however make it to Armenia a few weeks ago (with nary a Kardashian in sight), and it was absolutely stunning. The capital city of Yerevan is a magical place, deserving of water color paintings, poetry, and many a spontaneous musical montage (a la Disney films).

First day in the city: classically trained orchestral concert

Second day in the city: churches, mosques, art galleries, and a breathtaking view of Mount Ararat.

Third day: tour of two UNESCO World Heritage sites.

BOOM. Culture.

Add to that the fact that the Armenians are soft spoken, generous people, and add again that their language sounds like birdsong and you have a magical weekend.

Upon our reentry into Georgia, we were greeted by packs of loitering men arguing with one another in Kartuli. *facepalm*

WELCOME HOME LOL!!!

Transportation Struggles Part II

Good news: I figured out how to walk between my and Mitch’s villages

Bad news: I wasn’t trying to end up in Mitch’s village

Here’s the full story:

Since I don’t have class Mondays and Fridays, Tamo asked if I would be willing to occasionally go to her other school when I have time. There’s not much else to do around here, and my friend Brett teaches with Tamo at the other school, so I agreed to go with her.

Brett and Tamo teach at the Jumati School, where Tamo’s father is the Directori (school principal). He was in the old man posse that picked us up in Tbilisi.

The school day went by pretty smoothly, and I got a chance to see what it is like to teach the upper grades (8,9,10) since Tamo only has one young class (1^st grade) at that school. I particularly enjoyed 8^th grade since Brett’s twin 13-year old host sisters, Nino and Nana, are in that class. They and their two other friends, Nino and Nini, like to give Brett a hard time. He sasses them back, but it’s 4 versus 1. I quite enjoy this dynamic.

One thing that stuck out is how ridiculous the textbooks here can be sometimes. We read a text profiling an actress who lives in Dallas with her professional soccer player husband. The text states that she has a house with 6 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms, and that her personal shoe collection has anywhere from 300-400 pairs of shoes. This does NOT seem like an appropriate text for kids learning English as a second language. Our students live in remote villages where they are lucky to have one indoor bathroom, and the electricity still goes out whenever it feels like it.

After school we briefly stopped by Brett’s house where I got to meet his host mom. She made some scrambled eggs and sausages, insisting we eat before walking to my house. We would later be very thankful for this fact.

So yes, back to the walking story. Tamo had told us that it was a 3km walk between Brett’s house and mine. Wanting to gain a better understanding of the local geography and how to get from one village to another, we decided it would be a good idea to learn how to make this walk.

It sounded simple enough. “Walk to the bridge. Take the left fork. Go 3km from there. Ask people along the way if you want.” Easy. Great!

We should have remembered Mitch’s earlier wisdom: the only things that are ‘easy’ in this country are getting muddy and being late. If we had thought about it, we probably would have realized that part of the whole ‘being late’ thing is likely due to ‘being lost’ a considerable amount of the time.

Needless to say, we apparently did not walk the way that would simply take us from Brett’s village to mine. We eventually stumbled onto the paved road (long after we should have been at my house), which we recognized, hoping that we were close.

As we rounded the bend, we saw the road sign indicating that we were leaving Ninoshvili. We both did a double-take. Ninoshvili. Mitch’s village. How on Earth did we get HERE???!!??

We called Mitch to see if he could point us the right way from there, so he dashed from his house out to the main road to help us. He joined us for about 30 minutes, but decided to take his leave as we reached the base of a large hill and finally stumbled upon the sign for my village, Etseri.

At the top of the hill was my school. A shining beacon letting us know that we were no longer lost. After climbing the hill and walking the additional ~15 minutes to my house, we finally made it to our destination after ~2.5 hours of walking.

My host dad drove Brett home later that evening. We tried to pay attention to see if we could figure out where we went wrong. Turns out we were on the wrong road from the very beginning. There were also enough twists and turns, that we doubt we would have been able to find it even if we had started in the correct direction.

Brett has since learned how to walk to my house, but it still takes him about 45 minutes and seems longer thank 3km. I guess distance is relative in the villages!

My solution? Use my house as a meeting place from now on. Works like a charm.

A Weekend Getaway to Batumi

One of the perks of being located in the Guria region of Western Georgia is our proximity to the Black Sea resort city of Batumi.

In an effort to see the city and swim in the Black Sea before winter arrives, a large group of TLG volunteers descended upon the city en masse from October 26^th through 28^th.

Mitch repeatedly thanked me for selling my soul to corporate America for 2 years as we cashed in some of my Starpoints for a free stay at the Sheraton Palace Batumi. No hostel for us!

Batumi is a lovely city with modern architecture and quaint, old churches. There is a lot of development going on in Batumi right now – hotels and casinos are popping up everywhere. There is a Trump Tower planned, and Georgians are quick to tell you that Trump recently said that, “in five years, Batumi will be the best city in the world.” He clearly is appealing to the Georgian fondness for exaggeration and the ‘braggadocio’ culture here.

Batumi is home to the ‘Georgian language tower’, which has a double helix with the Georgian alphabet winding its way around the outside of the tower. The city also boasts a beautiful structure that is clearly inspired by Islamic architecture. Ironically, however, it is a fountain where free ‘cha cha’ (Georgian moonshine) flows during certain hours every evening. No joke. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Despite all the charming sights Batumi has to offer, the highlight was undoubtedly the hotel. It was a gorgeous Sheraton property, and an amazing value for an SPG category-3 hotel (tip for all my consultant friends out there). The complementary suite upgrade we got thanks to my Platinum status made it an amazing value stay for the points we used.

Speaking of Platinum status, I don’t think they get many Platinum members with large point balances staying at this hotel. When the woman at the desk was checking me in, she literally almost choked then started laughing when she read me my Starpoint balance. Thank you, Uncle Bain!

We had an executive suite on the 18^th floor with a wonderful view of the city. Our living space had a ½ bath, which was particularly nice since there were 4-5 of us crashing there at any given time. We each spent quite a bit of time in the shower, which was a rain shower (a la hotel Kent, Melody!). Lovely.

On our first evening in town, we decided to venture outside of the city to see a ‘castle’ at a historical site called Gonio. This ‘castle’ was more of a fortress wall and was unfortunately closed upon our arrival at 5:30, despite being told that it would be open until 7. Georgian Maybe Time at work as usual. Having suffered an extremely crowded bus ride out there, the likes of which I had only ever endured on the P2P shuttle at UNC, we decided to wander around on some private property adjacent to the fortress. The farmers passing us were friendly and didn’t seem to mind that we were picking and eating the oranges from their trees.

As we headed back to the bus stop, we heard some voices yell, “Hello there! Can you please help us?” Apparently two young German guys had gotten locked in the fortress when it closed early and unannounced. They had found a ladder, scaled the fortress walls, and tossed it over right by the path where we happened to be walking. They threw their bags down to us, and we steadied the ladder while they climbed out of their accidental prison. How exciting, we got to participate in a rescue!

One of the few other times when I was able to drag myself out of the hotel, I visited the botanical gardens on Saturday, which were breathtaking. The weather was beautiful and the scenery picturesque as we hiked around the gardens for a couple of hours. There was a house in the middle of the botanical garden where we attempted to steal some kiwis from their trees, but only Paul found one ripe enough to taste. Later we encountered some citrus trees with an unidentifiable yellow citrus. Unfortunately, it did not taste so great and really burned the cut on my finger. Lesson learned? We’ll see.

On Sunday, I had an amazingly relaxing day. I started the morning with a visit to the hotel gym followed by a quick dip in the Black Sea. It was a bit cold, but bearable once you immersed yourself in the water. The annoying part was that the beaches are rocky, not sandy. Then I checked out the indoor pool and hot tub at the hotel. After that, I found the hot and cold plunge pools, the sauna, and the steam room. As I was just about to head upstairs for a shower, I noticed the Turkish bath. When I walked in, I couldn’t believe that the hotel had such an amazing facility at the free disposal of the guests! I had the whole thing to myself, so I enjoyed dumping water on myself and lying on the heated marble slab in the middle. It was a much-needed moment of tranquility and rejuvenation before heading back to my village.

Wait, there's actually a word for "early" in this language?

Heather and I have been in Georgia for a month now, and the country has begun to feel more and more familiar with each passing day. I wake up in the morning to roosters crowing, dogs barking, cows mooing, and my Georgian grandmother single handedly causing the world to orbit the Sun. The mornings go a bit like this:

-Go downstairs

-Tell the family that I'm not hungry and that I'll be late for school if I sit down to eat

-Wash my face and brush my teeth

-Am forced to sit down and eat some bread and cheese and drink a cup of tea

-Attempt to leave the table

-Am cajoled into eating more bread and drinking more tea

-Look at the clock, realize we have 20 minutes in which to make the 35 minute walk to school

-Scowl at my host sister, who is taking her sweet time brushing her hair

-Finally leave the house with 17 minutes to go

-Argue with host sister the entire way to school

It's actually the most consistent part of my life here in Georgia, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to enjoying this routine.

School is going well. I love my school. I love my teachers. I love my students. And I've found that I like teaching quite a bit. I also enjoy the occasional bottle of wine to myself and long Sunday drives, but I do not mix these two things for a reason. In a similar manner, I'm not sure that all the variables of my school should be mixed together.

Of course I'm saying this after teaching four solo classes yesterday (LOL contract violation), in which three of my classes were awesome (yay for the 3^rd graders, 6^th graders, and 7^th graders) and where my remaining class, my 2^nd graders, went absolutely apeshit, threw approximately 15 paper airplanes at me, and ran out of the room/school building halfway through the class period. I just let them go and prayed for wolves. That really is an exception to the norm though. Usually my kids are awesome. I think it was a mixture of my inability to speak teacher Georgian (see: “Sit down or I'll hang you in the well by your ankles”), their general restlessness at school (I mean, they are only eight after all), and, I don't know, maybe it was a full moon or something. Also, I've been here for a month, so I'm not really exciting to them anymore (which is great for me, because it was driving me nuts being introduced to every Tom, Dick and Giorgi in this village).

Oh yeah, my village. I don't think I've talked about my village. Well, my village is the best village, obviously. That's the general opinion in these parts at least, which makes sense, seeing as IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET OUT OF THE VILLAGE. Actually, getting around Georgia in general is a novel experience. Though I imagine the same could be said for having a limb amputated. What can I say? Serendipity does not live in Georgia. But her sister Inconvenience does, and she's the Minister of Transportation.

What else is new? Well, a few weeks ago I attended a Georgian wedding, which was all sorts of fun and insanity. Think My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with more drinking and yelling and gypsy dancing. Also, the entire wedding party is held outside in a tent. Also, some of the drinking is done from gigantic hollowed out animal horns. Also, there is so much drinking. SO. MUCH. DRINKING. I had to run away (actually run away) from multiple offered shots of wine and of stuff that would take varnish off of furniture. Also, you didn't misread that. Shots of wine. They do wine shots. “Shots”. Glasses roughly two inches in diameter and three inches tall. Filled to the rim. And it's all homemade. So, you know, it's moonshine. And tomorrow we have another wedding. Georgians are the marrying type. Actually, if Georgia were to make a profile on a social networking/dating website, it'd probably look like this:

Name: Republic of Georgia

Relationship status: It's complicated with Russia.

Looking for: Marriage to a lady Georgian who wants to do all things domestic while Georgia drinks with its buddies and maybe hits things with hammers/axes every now and then.

Likes: Drinking. Arguing. Drinking. Eating fried things. Drinking. Yelling at animals. Drinking while doing all of the aforementioned interests (including drinking while drinking).

Dislikes: Armenians, Abkhazia. Russia. Sobriety.

What else? Last week we paid a visit to the seaside resort town of Batumi, which was absolutely lovely. More lovely was our hotel's shower, which was something akin to Hadj for me. That's really all I remember about Batumi. There was a shower and it was a religious experience. The end.

This weekend I was toying with the idea of visiting a nearby nature reserve called Kolkheti. My plans changed when I went downstairs to ask my family the best way to reach said nature reserve. I was met with horrified looks, followed by my host sister fishing down the English-Georgian dictionary, flipping through a few pages, all before she handed me said dictionary and pointed at one word. Swamp. Apparently it's a wetlands preserve, which sounds like it'd be fun to visit, but which my family seems to think would end with me drowning in a Georgian bog. They're probably not far off, really.

Not much else to report on right now, but I promise to keep everyone posted on any new adventures and shenanigans and stay out of bogs for now. At least until the first frost comes and freezes the quicksand.

With love,

Mitch

Teaching

A lot has been said about Georgia already on this blog, but it’s time to talk about the reason we are here in the first place – to teach!

I work with one co-teacher, Tamo, at the Jurukveti Public School #1, which is a ~15 minute walk from my house. We teach 5 lessons per day to grades 1-7 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Being a first time teacher, I was definitely nervous before getting started. How would I like working with the kids? What would it be like working with a co-teacher? What would be my role in the classroom, and what kind of impact would I be able to make?

Now that I’ve gotten a couple of weeks of teaching under my belt, I can say that I am really enjoying it! I feel very fortunate to have been placed at this school, with this co-teacher, and with this class schedule.

My school is quite old (my host dad went there as a child), but the classrooms were recently renovated. Tamo and I stay in one classroom, and the kids come to us (at many schools the teachers are the ones that rotate classrooms). This is great because we have actually been able to decorate our room with English-language posters to help create an inviting and stimulating learning space for our students. My co-teacher has been really enthusiastic about decorating the classroom, even bringing in supplies from home.

Speaking of my co-teacher, Tamo is really great, and I feel very lucky to be working with her. Volunteers often work with up to 3 co-teachers, but she is the only English teacher at my school (she teaches at another school on Mondays and Fridays, hence my days off). She is a young teacher, so she is open to new teaching techniques, she is already familiar with many games, and she is very receptive to my ideas and suggestions. She has also worked with TLG volunteers before, so she knows how best to utilize me in the classroom and incorporate me into the lesson.

Some of the difficulties we were told that we could encounter included co-teachers who struggle to communicate in English and those that are stuck in the old Soviet ways of pure repetition and memorization as opposed to teaching for actual understanding. Luckily for me, I haven’t had either of these problems. Tamo and I have no problem communicating in English, and she does like to do some activities outside of the book with the students.

Speaking of the books, they are not the greatest, but they could be worse. We use a Macmillan series called English World. Unfortunately, a lot of the lessons and scenarios are not based in anything relevant to the children’s daily lives. There are a lot of invented characters, such as clowns, pirates, and astronauts. The kids really don’t need to know the words “space suit” or “roundabout” when they are struggling with “My name is…”

A shortage of books is a constant problem in our classes. Not all of the students have them, and sometimes the ones that do have them forget to bring them to class. Sometimes we have entire rows of 3 students each with no book to share among them. I recently went on an excursion to pick up my set of books provided by TLG, so at least we will have an extra set from now on.

Despite warnings of behavior problems and general chaos in the schools, my classes are actually quite well behaved. The class sizes are pretty small, ranging from 4 students in my 2^nd grade class to as many as 19 kids when we have 2 of the older grades in a combined lesson. The overall English skill level across all grades is fairly low since my school used to have German as the mandatory foreign-language. They just switched to English last year since it has become compulsory across Georgia.

The class schedule is still a mystery to me. Since we have 7 grades but only 5 lessons per day, this means that one group doesn’t see us each day, and 2 of the other groups are combined into one period. Which group skips a lesson and which groups are combined change on a daily basis. Sometimes the combined class is logical (like 6 and 7 or 5 and 7), but sometimes we get something crazy like 5^th and 2^nd grade in the combined period. This obviously makes it hard to plan, and it is difficult to teach to such different skill levels in one period. I have no idea how the kids know where to go and at what time each day.

One amusing thing I learned is that stickers are excellent motivation for students. I brought a huge variety pack with me, and the kids LOVE them. We give stickers to kids when they do their homework (rare - usually 3 students max out of every 10) or when their team wins a game during class. Georgian kids (like Americans) are competitive, so they get really into the games and lord it over their other classmates when they win a sticker. This is not a society where everyone gets a sticker because every kid is special. Nope, none of that crap. No one here has any problem understanding that you can’t always win, and you don’t get prizes for losing.

I have noticed that an increased number of kids are at least attempting to do their homework in order to get stickers, but mostly they just copy the homework from the few students that do it. I noticed the homework (and mistakes) were identical, so I was able to catch them on it. Guess they thought they could sneak one by the “silly Amerikeli.” As Mitch likes to say, just because I don’t speak Georgian doesn’t mean I’m dumb. The problem is, this isn’t seen as “cheating” in Georgia, it’s seen as “helping,” and what kind of friend would you be if you didn’t let your fellow classmates copy your homework?

Overall, I am enjoying my first attempt at teaching. School here is so different from the US, both in resources and in structure. Regardless, most kids here are eager to learn so long as you keep them motivated and engaged. I’m looking forward to the rest of the semester!

Transportation in Georgia: an exercise in futility

One of the greatest adventures and frustrations thus far in Georgia has been navigating the transportation system.

First of all, accessibility from the villages can be a challenge. Unless you have the good fortune to live on the international road and/or rail line (like our friend Brett), you have to catch one of the few marshutkas (minibuses) into the nearest town before you can travel between towns/cities. In order to make it back to your village, you either have to head home around 4:30pm at the latest on a marshutka or shell out 20x more for a cab ride (it costs .5GEL for marshutka, 10+ GEL for taxi).

Which brings me to the only disagreeable people who constantly try to rip you off that I have encountered in Georgia: taxi drivers. There’s no such thing as a meter here at all (even Egypt had them, though they claimed they were ‘broken’ all the time), so you must bargain for your fare. When it is obvious that you are not Georgian, your price increases significantly.

One of my low points in Georgia happened one night after some other volunteers and I had met up in the nearby town, Lanchkhuti. We were going home later in the evening, so my friend Brett and I decided to share a cab. We greeted the driver in Georgian and asked him how much it would cost to go to Etseri and Nigvziani villages. He said 10 lari. We repeated a few times that we needed to go to Etseri AND Nigvziani. He repeated 10 lari, so we agreed and hopped in.

The driver took us to Brett’s village first, which seemed strange. When Brett got out, he handed the driver a 5, and I had another 5 in my hand for when I got dropped off. The driver started yelling, “10! 10!” We tried to explain that I had the other 5 but that I needed to go to Etseri. He continued to rant and rave, but he wasn’t really naming a different price or asking for more money, just repeating “10!” Eventually he grabbed my 5 and started the car back up.

Concerned that he would demand another 10 lari from me upon arrival at my village, I decided to call my host dad who speaks very good English to see if he could sort things out. They spoke, and the driver hung up and handed my phone back to me. I thanked him in Georgian, but didn’t know what the resolution was. A few moments later, he pulled into a gas station still very FAR from my house, opened the door, and had me get out.

I tried calling my host dad again, but he didn’t answer. It was dark, I was alone, and I was very far from home. As a herd of cows meandered past me, I decided I better start walking toward the house (at least I wasn’t lost!), hoping that perhaps my host dad had told the driver to leave me there with the intention of coming to get me.

After maybe 10 minutes of walking, an SUV with floodlights stopped in front of me, and my host dad hopped out. Amiran to the rescue! He had come in his cousin’s car because his car had stopped (it was on the fritz at the time) across from his cousin’s house. We went back to the house where Gigi was playing with his little cousins and had some fruit, nuts, and my first taste of cha cha. Cha cha is Georgian moonshine, essentially (though most of the alcohol is homemade here – from wine to liquor). After a brief visit with the extended fam, we went back to Amiran’s car which got us the rest of the way home. What had been a temporarily miserable moment turned into a nice visit and provided yet another reason why my host dad is the best.

As for the marshutkas, I actually think that they are a great idea. They are basically shared taxis that run a specific route, but you can hop on and off wherever you like. They are inexpensive and about as efficient as things get in Georgia. Some are local, running routes around a specific city or town; these are often numbered. Other marshutkas run between cities/towns, and even a few to cities outside of Georgia.

The one caveat about these marshutkas is that they get FULL. People are packed in like sardines, with many forced to stand. The only other time I have experienced such an overabundance of humanity in such a confined space was on the P2P (point to point shuttle) on the weekends at Carolina. While you risk getting thrown up on in the P2P, the students do smell a lot better. Trade offs. Though I guess you do risk getting thrown up on in the marshutka if you sit next to Mitch after he’s been forced to drink excessively at a surprise supra. Luckily he managed to contain himself until we made it to our destination (but not a moment longer).

No matter where you’re going in Georgia, when you’re going, or your method of transport, it is best to be flexible because as Mitch said, “the only things that are ‘easy’ in this country are getting muddy and being late.”