Happy Birthday! How old are you?

Our most current unit for the younger kids is about birthdays, and how to say how old you are.  We have spent the last classes making birthday cards and learning new words like tree, bird, garden (yard, in America, though in Britain your yard is a “garden,” instead of where we plant flowers and vegetables).  Our eighth grade is learning about potlucks – an area in which I have much experience, since I am from the midwest USA.  I have been doing amazing things with the guitar, and am in the process of learning a Georgian song on the guitar.

 

I have just received word that I have been admitted to graduate school, so have begun to celebrate with my host family today with some wine and a little supra.  They feed me lots of lobio (a Georgian bean dish) here, since they have realized how much I like lobio.  The only bad thing about lobio is, as we Americans know, that beans are a magical fruit.  Anyhow, there was also fresh khatchapuri this morning.  Besides the people, I will miss the food when I leave.  It is all fresh and delicious, even if it has gotten me sick in the past.  I am sure that I will have to come to visit several years from now, when I can afford to.  This has legitimately become my second family.

 

Our school has been invited, with the rest of the country, to participate in a photo contest.  We can submit one photo, of our school, and many people will vote on the photos.  I have begun to take photos at school each day, and will share a few each day, maybe, to show you about life at my school.  The winner of the contest will receive a new, renovated room in the school.  This will give me more inspiration to take photos, knowing that a great photo might get my school a bit ahead of the game.  I mean, we DID get lights recently, but I think there was a mistake and someone installed disco lights by accident.  My village does like to dance, but it is kind of silly to have disco lights in school.

 

Tamuna was playing with my hair the other day, and said she found a white hair.  I hope she meant blonde.  Anyhow, I’m only 24 and have decided to ignore this possibility for as long as I can.

5 eventful days!

It has been a while since I have written, but here’s what you missed:

We are still preparing full-time for our post-Valentine’s Day program, and students are practicing their Shakespeare and their singing between classes and after school.  The English club is working on ideas of excursions and hikes to go on in the spring (April, May, and June).  On Friday, I ran into a struggle in my 9th grade, where we were discussing different jokes.  They told me many Georgian jokes, but I realized that the only good, appropriate American jokes (besides puns) that I knew were Sven and Ole jokes.  Here is my favorite Georgian joke:

How many Svanis does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Five: One to stand on the table and hold up the bulb, and four to lift the table and turn it until the bulb is screwed in.

Anyhow, in a moment of silliness I wrote to Garrison Keillor to ask for advice, because he is a Minnesotan and might understand my desperation/know a few good jokes.  Well, because he is a Minnesotan, he also has been taken by Ole and Sven, though I do like the jokes that he responded with:

http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2012/02/20/american_jokes.php

Friday night I became very ill – another bout of food poisoning, though I have no idea what it was from.  Perhaps contamination of something, since food is often not prepared on a clean surface after raw meat was just on that surface, etc.  Who knows.  I was violently ill with a temperature of about 104F.  By Saturday night I could walk a few steps without being nauseous, and by Sunday afternoon I was feeling mostly back to normal.  We were supposed to have school on Saturday to make up for one of the snow days, but I missed out on that.

Yesterday morning (Monday) I was locked in my room when I tried to escape – my door handle broke right off.  I yelled for help, but no one heard me for about 5-10 minutes, so in the meantime I thought about climbing out of my window – second story – but then decided against it.  I used whatever silly little things that I thought might be tool-ish and help me to pry open the door, but no luck.  My host father finally heard my cries and came to my rescue at my window with a ladder.  My door doesn’t have a new handle yet.

The sun is out, the snow is melting, and another day lies ahead.  Who knows what kind of mischief I’ll get into today?

Here’s a picture of me in our partially-built snow-fort (which has since melted), made when we had the meter of snow a while back:

Valentine’s Day, etcetera

Well, the Macarena has caught on at school and all of the 5th grade is doing it during their class breaks – Tamuna taught them.  We have been working on our belated Valentine’s day performance full time, and have planned to hold it on March 8th.  We are also planning an excursion in May, perhaps to Batumi or somewhere else with interesting historical and beautiful things to see.  I am always busy here, if not with my schoolwork, it is chopping wood for the stove, learning to cook Georgian food, learning language, helping the kids with their work, sewing something together or crocheting, and I’ve even taken up drawing and writing in my few spare moments.

I am not an artist, but here in Georgia they have boosted my ego by telling me that I have talent in this area.  Tamuna tries to get me to draw for her art class.  First she tricked me into thinking she wanted to give a gift to someone, so could I help her to draw a picture?  She turned it in as her art assignment.  The art teacher and I get along pretty well – this week I was gifted a picture that he drew and colored for me – with the crayons that I lent to him.  It is very beautiful and will remind me always of Georgia when I take it back to America and frame it.  The other picture was an oil pastel drawing, which is also really good.

Today after school, most of my family went to Tsalenjikha, so Tamuna and I had our own supra meal.  We drank many toasts with the delicious red tcha-tcha (sour cherry juice).  Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, so I made valentines for the teachers and students and for my family.  I made cool heart people on popsicle sticks for the teachers, and for each student I made a little heart valentine.  I cut out extra hearts, and we spent some time in school making valentines with the kids, for their parents, friends, etc.    I will have to show you a photo of my valentines heart people creations, because I thought that they turned out quite well.

The chicken pox is still happening – half of my 3rd/4th grade class is gone from school, which reduces my class to about 7 kids.

That’s what it’s all about!

There was no school on Thursday or Friday of last week, since we had national snow days (I mentioned this in my last post).  They were much needed snow days in some parts of Georgia, where they received 1 to 2 meters of snow; however, here there was only maybe 4-6 inches on those days.  We will have to make up those school days on two Saturdays sometime this spring.  Either way, the kids enjoyed the time off.

 

I got them to work on English for quite a bit of the weekend, and I worked on my Georgian and Russian, but there was quite a bit of extra time.  Crocheting and schoolwork became rather dull, so we had a few dance parties.  I decided to teach them some new dances, so I broke out the Macarena and Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance.  We spent the rest of our extra time doing those dances.  Any more suggestions are welcome.  And yes, I am learning some Georgian dancing.

 

There will be guitar lessons again tomorrow!  We have all new strings now, so there should be no problem.  It will be interesting to see if I can remember the lesson from about 2 or 3 weeks ago.  Today came uncle Kakha and grandma for dinner – we had a little supra, with more wine and dancing.  It was very warm today, perhaps close to 50F, so much of the snow is melting, though about a foot still remains.  Because of the snow days, we will not be doing our Valentine’s Day program tomorrow (postponed until March or April), but I’m making little Valentines to give out, and I’ll put up the Valentine’s window stickers that I brought.  I may try to get the little ones to make Valentine hearts in class.

 

Today in school, as I sat in the teacher’s room preparing my next lessons, the door suddenly opened and in came a dead bird.  I thought first it was headless, but the head was just bent back and was soon flung forward at me.  Ack!  I was hoping it was just a fake, but alas, “Quoth the raven, NEVERMORE!”  I learned that the boys had been collecting dead things today during the class breaks.

Snow days!

We lost power for about a day and a half, but no big deal compared to the previous week-long outage.  The Georgian government has declared Thursday and Friday nationwide snow days.  It snowed about another 8 inches here on Wednesday, but not enough to have canceled school, I think.  It was supposed to have snowed yesterday and today, too, but I haven’t seen a single flake.  It has been in my favor though, as I currently have a bit of a cold, so I have lots of time to rest up and recover for Monday.  I have been eating honey, and drinking hot milk and herbal teas.

 

We have had many visitors over these last days from our village, from town, and even from as far as Tbilisi.  It has made things more interesting here, since every visitor warrants a supra in our house.  I have not partaken in the toasts of course, with my cold, but it’s fun to listen to the toastmaster come up with the next toast and then elaborate on it for a few minutes.  Other than that, the kids and I have been studying, of course.  They, English, and I, Georgian, Russian, and Migrelian.  I haven’t gotten to study any more guitar – I was informed on Tuesday that my lesson would not happen, since another string had broken.

 

Some tidbits I have to share with you:

1) “Achoo!” in Georgian has nothing to do with sneezing.  It, in fact, means “Giddyup!”

2) Speaking of sneezing, when you sneeze here, they will pat you on the back and pull your ear.

3) When you drink a Georgian toast, you must drink it to the bottom.  However, it is bad taste to ACTUALLY drink it to the bottom.  You must leave a tiny bit in the bottom of your glass, and then proceed to toss it to your side.

4) Again, about Georgian toasts: There is always a toast to shvidobisa (peace).  They like to ask me what shvidobisa is in English and then giggle.  Why?  The Georgian word for pee is pisi (pronounced “peesee”), which sounds very similar to peace.

 

Of course, as I wrote this, it has begun to snow again.  I will update you on the amount we get, provided we don’t have another power outage.  Some of my family has left for a dentist appointment in Zugdidi, so it’s just us girls here, watching fashion TV and dancing.  Our Valentine’s Day program will probably have to be saved for April, when Georgians have another Love Day; some of the kids didn’t have enough time to practice and prepare since we didn’t meet at the end of this week.  I will just have to make it bigger and better for our April performance!

More electricity problems!

Yesterday (Tuesday), after school, I ventured to town for the first time since I have arrived, and picked up some supplies for myself at the market.  My main purpose of going was actually because I needed to use the scanner at the Educational Resource Center there, and had another item to pick up at that same place.  When I stopped there, however, they had no power and the person that I needed to get the item from was gone for the day.  I’ll have to go back again soon, but it is currently snowing and will be for the next three days at least; thus, it’ll probably be next week.

 

I have one major issue with charging my computer some days – if my computer is too cold, the battery will not charge (this happens fairly frequently, of course, since it is very cold inside of my home here).  It has power when I plug it in, but the battery is not charging and then is stuck at 30 percent, or whatever it may be.  That is why I am on my computer now, since it will warm up enough to charge if is being used.  I always like to start with a full battery for school, where I use my computer the most for playing the CD tracks that go along with the book.  If there is power at school today, then it should be okay, since they now have a few outlets in the classrooms.

 

We – the English Club – are planning a Valentine’s Day  show for next week.  Some of the students will recite Shakespeare and tell a little history about Valentine’s Day, others sing American love songs, and still others are putting together a poster about Valentine’s Day, that will go on the wall in the hallway.

 

I seem to be getting a bit sick, with a sore throat and a headache this morning.  It was probably inevitable, since the rest of my family and most of the students and teachers are all sick.  I am pretty disappointed though, as I had been healthy until now.  Hopefully it will fade away quickly.

Update part two.

Thursday February 2nd

Today we went to school, since the roads had finally been cleared (the main roads, but the side roads still had three feet of snow to wade through).  Very few students and teachers came to school because of the snow; some live up on the mountain roads, which will not be cleared for several days yet.  Classes have been shortened to 35 minutes instead of 45 because of the weather.  There was power in the school for about one hour this morning before it went out again.  Ema and I split among the classes we had for the day, due to the shortage of teachers.  This weekend, Ema goes to Tbilisi to see her brother and her youngest daughter, so she will be gone on Friday.  I miss her presence when she is gone, because we work very well together, but I am happy to get more experience on my own with the classes.

 

When I finished at school, I came back to the house, though we still had no power.  I worked a bit on crocheting and read through some journal articles after I helped the children in English.  The lights came on for a half hour today, so I ran upstairs and plugged my phone and computer in – though nothing really charged, since the power turned back off shortly thereafter.  We had another night with the candles and oil lamps (and by the way, thanks mom, for the flashlights!).  Tatia finished crocheting her scarf, and my blanket is getting longer.  Our water from the tap has gone bad, so we had to get water from our neighbors in several pitchers and old coke bottles.  Happy Groundhog’s Day!  I don’t suppose he could find his way out of the snow in Georgia to see his shadow or not.

 

Friday February 3rd

Still no power in the morning.  School went well – worked lots on spelling and pronunciation of words today, and started on the next unit with the young ones.  After school, our neighbor Nukria came with a guitar string and fixed the guitar.  In the process of tuning the guitar, he broke another string.  157 Georgian schools have had no classes all week because of the snowstorm.  Some of those places even had 3 meters of snow!  The power came on and turned back off again at least five times today, during which we were able to get a little bit of laundry done.  Saba also lost a tooth today.

 

Saturday February 4th

We had power for part of the day again, though there were several long outages, it was enough to charge my computer and use Skype in the evening as well as to send a few emails.  Nukria came back with the other guitar string today, so now the guitar is fully functional, though horridly out of tune.  We walked to the neighbors’ home to visit for a bit, and the day was rather warm and melty, so the girls and I played soccer in the driveway.  Tatia was the champion, and I came in second.  The snow is starting to melt, but it will be a long process.  It is very beautiful to look at, especially on the mountains and hills surrounding us.  Neighbors have all been working together to finish clearing snow from the fruit trees and from the roofs of homes.  The cows, and especially the pigs and chickens, have had a heck of a time this past week.  Cars are still getting stuck every morning, so all of the men go out to push them out, which just ends up in a dirty mess and creates many ruts in the dirt roads.

 

Sunday February 5th

I woke up this morning to have power all day.  Hooray!  I was finally able to shower last night, and we have clean clothes hanging on the line outside (though they take forever to dry when it is humid and cold).  I am happy to have been able to spend lots of time with my family in this past week, though I am definitely ready to get out and do something new and unusual.  Probably, I will be going to town on Tuesday or Wednesday this week to do some errands and to pick up chocolate for the kids, since I lost a few card games to them.  My blanket is further along, and I started hemming the scarf I am making.  I also got lots of reading done, though I have tons left to read and research, of course!

 

 

***That brings me to today, Monday!  Nothing much exciting has happened today, though we have had good, warm, snow-melting weather today and electricity all day.  I am happy to have light again to work by, both from the sun and from electricity rather than oil lamps.

Long awaited update!

My last update was over a week ago now, due to an extended power outage here in my village.  We had a big dumping of heavy snow, which has now only begun to melt.  I wrote in my notebook while I was unable to write here, so this is what happened:

Saturday January 28th

I woke up early to go with the girls to music lessons – Tamuna studies piano and sings in the children’s choir, and Tatia was to begin guitar lessons today (I am being allowed to tag along with her to learn guitar).  Beso drove us to the music school in town, where we waited for quite some time for our teacher, Ketino, to arrive.  While at the music hall, I was able to watch the choir rehearse.  It was probably one of the most incredible and moving rehearsals/performances I have ever seen!  The children sang so beautifully that it brought tears to my eyes – of course I clapped at the end of the rehearsal.  I wish that I could share this with you, but I did not think to bring my camera with me to town.

The night before, it began raining, and we lost power.  In the early morning, the rain turned to snow, which began to stick to the ground while we were at the music hall.  By the time we left, the roads and walkways were very slushy and sloppy for our walk home.  We had umbrellas, but mine broke – snapped near the handle when I stopped to shake off a bit of the heavy snow.  By the time we got back to Sakalandio, we were soaking wet from the snow and especially from the many cars rushing past and splashing us with the road slush.  With no power, the rest of the day was spent drying off and trying to stay warm by the wood stove, while we crocheted (I taught the girls on Friday night), read, and tinkered with the guitar.  The snow fell all night as we sat inside by the candlelight.

Sunday January 29th

We awoke this morning to about a foot and a half of heavy snow.  Many trees had fallen down due to this, so all of the men, including my host dad, had their work cut out for them as they went out with saws and shovels to start cleaning up.  We all stayed inside to work more on crocheting and guitar (until one of the strings broke, hopefully will have that fixed soon).  I worked with Tatia and Tamuna on English and read a bit more in my book.  Saba and I went out to play in the snow for a bit, too.  They are predicting at least 5 days with no power, meaning no computer, since that battery has long since died.  My phone should be able to last, but probably not my camera.

 

Monday January 30th

We had school today, despite the loss of power and poor roads.  The power did not affect anything at school anyway, since we weren’t used to having power there until only a few weeks ago.  Walking to school was tricky with all of the snow and slush and fallen trees.  The kids enjoyed going out to play in the snow.

 

Now they are saying maybe 10 days without power – my host grandma called to tell us (since she has power) that we will be getting more snow on Tuesday – maybe a meter.  The roads and trees certainly can’t take much more, seeing how bad it was with only a foot and a half.  In the evening I worked more on my afghan, helped all of the kids with English, and drank some wine and the last of the tcha-tcha with my host father.  Still no light of course, so everything was done by light from candles and oil lamps.  We’ve been going to bed earlier because of the dark.

 

Tuesday January 31st

No power again today, or course; went to school in the deep snow, since roads have not been cleared. It started to snow again while we were in classes, just as predicted by grandma.  Pouring snow, very heavy as before.  Went home to study by candlelight again, and I broke out Twister with the kids to teach them directions and review colors.  We had another early night, and I’m expecting to finish my book tomorrow night.

 

Wednesday February 1st

Got up early this morning with the kids to play in the snow.  We built a snowman, but Tamuna knocked it over, so I showed them how to build a snow fort.  It wasn’t very big, but big enough for even me to fit into (I will include a picture in the next post).  We had snowball fights in the now 2 and a half feet of snow that cover the ground.  And yes, today was a snow day, with the snow still pouring down.  They are saying at least a meter, by the time it stops.  I am now expecting no power for the next week.  Another night of reading, crocheting, and studying.  Cousins came to visit for a few days, so we had a nice candlelight dinner and wine with them.  I showed them how to crochet, too.  We played some more Twister and card games.  I finished my book, so have moved on to my nerdy science journal articles.  Very interesting.  For a brief moment tonight, I thought there might be light!  My host father hooked an extension cord from perhaps a neighbor’s home that did have power, or maybe from a generator, so we had one thing we could plug in.  What did they choose?  The TV, of course.  We watched about a half hour of Spanish soap operas dubbed in Georgian before we lost power again.

 

…. I will continue this story after school – my fingers are much too cold after typing this much.

One last-first Georgia update

After school on Thursday, we went to grandma’s house.  The kids and I ran around and had fun, and there was lots of delicious food and more Georgian toasts, of course.  My host uncle Kakha was there, and was very appreciative of my gift to him of Jack Daniels.  When we came back home last night, the kids and I played cards and games, watched a movie and played with the nerf guns for a while.  I was still very jet-lagged, but am feeling better today.  I am hoping to have some time to be on skype this weekend, as I have no other big plans and it has just started raining, so it will be wet for walking to and from town.

I did get some exercise today running around with the kids at recess, which also resulted in me getting dirty.  No problem, though – it was fun.  I worked today with the younger kids on a project, using some of their vocabulary to draw pictures and write about the pictures.  I will tape them to the wall at school, and show you a photo of their work  next week.  I worked with the high schoolers on pronunciation of strangely-spelled English words, and general pronunciation review (they have lots of difficulty remembering these things).  We also played a game with some of the flashcards I brought from America, where they practiced their pronunciation with some words that they knew, and some that they did not.

I have been very busy since I have arrived, so I am hoping to take this weekend to unpack, organize, plan, and relax for a bit.  I’ll keep you posted about how that goes.  I must take a break from writing, or my family has informed me that I will turn into a cactus.

 

-Karly

 

P.S.: Some München pictures.

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A bit more…

When I arrived at my home, I was able to unpack enough so that I could give a few gifts to my family.  They were thrilled!  Little Saba got some nerf guns (which we played with for most of the day), Tamuna got coloring books and crayons, and Tatia got a Selena Gomez CD and a toy microphone (so that she won’t have to use her hairbrush or the TV remote anymore).  They had prepared food for my birthday supra, and invited some neighbors to celebrate with us.  I had a fun time playing with the kids and talking with the adults too (I was luckily able to remember my Georgian after being gone for a month and a half).  I gave my first Georgian toasts (Tatia helped me to translate a few words).

 

Before the party, Tamuna fixed my hair up and gave me a tiara to wear; I had to take it off after a while though, since it was much too small for my head.  I am quite sure that she’ll open her own salon someday, Saba will be a photojournalist, and Tatia a math professor.  Tatia and Tamuna have the measles!  They have been out of school so far, and very itchy.  Good thing that I have been vaccinated.  Saba had them also, but he was healthy again by the time that I came back.  My host father, Beso, has been remodeling – they have torn a wall out in the kitchen, so that the kitchen and dining room are connected now.  It will be very nice when this is finished.  Apparently I have lost my Georgian belly, so they are trying to replace it by feeding me lots.  So far, so good.  I think I will walk to town on Saturday or Sunday to work off all of the feasting.

 

I went to school on Thursday, and the students all ran to hug me.  I had fun getting back into teaching, and we mostly did lots of review, since they have just come back from a long break.