No presidents this week, alas, life is hard. I did get my ticket home, so I will be back
in the States 2 months from Saturday (December 22nd)! I’ll be home for 2 weeks, most of which will
be spent on the couch catching up on USA network shows as my face recovers from
getting my wisdom teeth pulled (don’t I know how to plan a great vacation?) I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and
family. Assuming the travel agency does
change my ticket, I will also get a free trip (or extended layover) in Poland. I’m looking forward to it. But that’s next year, so back to Georgia.
Last week my classes continued as normal. My 6th graders are now split up for
good, so I simply face the challenge of planning lessons out of a book not
suited for these kids. I don’t want to
veer too far off from the curriculum because that will only harm them in the
future, not to mention I have no idea how to write curriculum for 6th
grade beginner English students. I
probably could, but I don’t want to.
More and more, I like some of my students and have fun with them, but I
realize how much my heart is not in teaching. It’s in talking with the people around me,
traveling, and knowing more about the world around me. That’s encouraging as I spend too many hours
working on grad school applications.
Last week I also got my first private student in a very
Georgian manner. A fellow teacher asks
me if I want a private student who comes to her for private geography lessons. He’s in 12th grade, and I thought
he was from a nearby village
of Toneti. My teacher asks me to think about it, and if I
could have lessons at my house. I tell
her I have to ask my host mom. Although
my host mom is incredibly chill, I still procrastinated until right before I headed
off to school the next day to ask her. She
said she would ask my host dad and that afternoon tells me he said it would be
better to have the lessons at school. Having
no problem with that, I took advantage of one of the last sunny and relatively
warm days and go walking, stopping at another teacher’s house. After a while, my host mom calls me and tells
me to come home. A million problems run
through my head (she’s never done this before) and I hurry home. Of course, she asks if I ran home since I made
it so fast (Georgian girls go very slow, and you all know how fast I walk). There is no problem; she’s simply sitting and
drinking coffee with another policeman’s wife. She then tells me that I can have lessons at
home because the kid turned out to be a relative. So very Georgian. He then comes over and we try to discuss a
schedule and price. Thinking he’s from a
village and not wanting to gouge him, I quote him a cheap price on lessons. He says he’ll think about if he wants 1 or 2
lessons a week and the schedule and he’ll let me know. On Monday, my host sister walks into my room
and tells me he wants a lesson. My host
family asks if I can lower my price (which is already about ½ the price of
lessons in Tbilisi),
but I say “no”. He must have given in,
because he then comes over, laden with books of practice tests. I found out he's actually from Tbilisi, so I'm not sure why he comes here for tutoring. We go through some of them, and I found I had survived
my first tutoring session. Of course, he
hasn’t told me when he wants the 2nd lesson this week, but I’m hoping
he doesn’t just show up. If he does, I’m
going to make him agree to a schedule. In
general, I’m just going to see how this works out. Since I am in Georgia, trying to pin down
anything seems difficult.
That was probably the most exciting part of my week, aside
from learning how to play some new card games from my host family. I like spending time with them and am more
and more, which is making grad school applications even harder to work on. This has been on my mind a lot since my first
application is due on Monday. Oh
joy! I’ll be so happy when they are all
done. Next semester I can use that time
for more serious Georgian and Russian study.
This week has been considerably more interesting at school,
namely because I’ve been on my own. My
main co-teacher has been absent for the first three days this week, and I don’t
know when she’ll be back. I’m really
hoping she’s back tomorrow, because otherwise tomorrow will be a nightmare. One of her husband’s relatives died in a car
crash over the weekend, so I don’t begrudge her being gone at all. I’m just not sure how I’ll survive in a class
with 1st graders who only (sort of) know A, B, C, and D. So far I’ve had an interesting time trying to
instill discipline. Georgian discipline
involves yelling at kids and pulling on their ear/hair, both of which I’m not a
fan of. I have mostly tried to keep the
classes busy, but they’re so noisy, so I’ve said ‘Be quiet’ about a million
times. They didn’t really know what it
meant at first, but they do now. Several
kids tried to tell me the Georgian, but I am taking this week as a chance to
give them an almost entirely English only classroom. It only kind of works. I’m also trying to teach the children to be
quiet and raise their hands if they want me to call on them. The traditional Georgian way of getting called
on is to hop out of your seat, wave your hand around, and yell “mas, mas”
repeatedly. (Mas is short for ‘mastsavlebeli’,
which means ‘teacher’). They are slowly
learning. When they do, I will feel
quite triumphant and have a modicum of peace in my class. The great thing is about half the class always
wants me to call on them to speak/go to the board. The problem is, only half of those kids
actually know the answer. It was strange
the first few times a kid was dying to be called on when he or she did not know
the answer. That would not happen in an
American classroom, for sure. I suppose
the humiliation factor isn’t there. I
have succeeded a bit in maybe a small bit of humiliation as I collected copious
notes, a cell phone, and a few pens. It’s
hard to decide what to do when kids use their pens for spit wads. If you take
the pens away, then they can’t write. If
you let them keep them, they blow spit wads at each other. I also threw one kid out of my worst class
when I could think of nothing else to do with him. You’re not supposed to do that (this lack of
real consequences is a major problem here), but no one commented on it, and it
made that class a bit more bearable.
I’ll stop complaining about my kids for now. I’m sure once my co-teacher returns, life will
go back to normal. One of the nice
things is that I feel more like a real part of my school now. One of my fellow teachers even commented to me
that they all just think of me as another teacher now, part of them. That felt good.
Now onto my weekend adventure in Mtskheta and Tbilisi. We did not have school last Friday because it
was Svetitskhovloba, which you can read about here. Basically it is Mtskheta’s big holiday,
celebrating one of the most important churches in Georgia, Svetiskhoveli.
I went to Mtskheta on Friday for this because I figured I
should see as much of Georgian life
as possible, and also another TLGer had come to Tbilisi/Mtskheta (Mtskheta is
30 minutes from Tbilisi,
so basically a suburb) for his birthday. The streets were filled with a lot of the same
festivities as Tbilisoba (the festival in Tbilisi
the weekend before), except there was less meat and the church had roses and
flowers around a lot of the icons and was all lit up. I met up with my
TLG friend and a few of his Georgian friends, who proceeded to feed me snacks
before treating us to lunch. I think I've mentioned how incredibly hospitable Georgians are, and here was another example. After lunch, the Georgians left, and I went
with the other TLGer to the archeological museum. It had some crazy old
shards of pottery and other archeological finds, but my mind did not really
feel like appreciating things from millennia ago so I breezed through the
museum. A lady there told us about an archeological site so we went there.
I think she said that with our tickets we got in free to the archeological
site, but the guy who should have collected our money was passed out, so it
didn't matter. The site was not that impressive. Let's just say
that in America,
if we had ruins that old, we would have made a huge deal out of it, but maybe
that's because Georgians have centuries of history and a lot less money to
throw into tourist attractions. Actually, the place had signs in English,
so it wasn't that bad.
Another friend
then met us and we wandered around the festival and spent some time in front of
a stage that I hope was meant for children. There were lots of adults
dressed in costumes (fox, clown, chicken, etc) dancing to really awful
music. Random pyrotechnics and confetti accompanied this display.
It was weird but people seemed entertained. We walked a bit farther and
there was a stage of kids performing who were significantly better than the
adults in costume. Go figure. We walked around and found a guy with
a few boxes of bottles of homemade wine. Assuming it would be good, one
of my friends bought a bottle. It was the worst wine I've had in Georgia by far,
probably halfway to being vinegar, which was such a disappointment. We
went into the church, which was way more impressive than when I had gone before
because it was lit up, smelled like beeswax candles, was filled with faithful
parishioners, and had flowers around the icons/graves, etc.
Pretty soon we headed back to Tbilisi. Two friends and I were going to another TLGer’s
apartment so we decided we should bring some wine. Having grown averse to bottled wine, as it is
too expensive for our tastes, we went looking for some cheap jug/homemade wine.
I asked a saleswoman in a grocery store if she knew of anywhere nearby where we
could get some homemade wine, hoping for better luck than earlier that
day. The woman said there was nowhere nearby. In America (well, in America this situation would never
happen for several reasons), that would be the end of that. But I’m in Georgia, so she
asks the next customer if he knew. He told me he knew of a place about
800 meters away, and he could take us in his car. Again, in America, I
would never, ever agree to this. But, we conferred, and we decided this was
worth pursuing. So we followed him to his car, where his wife was (sigh
of relief there). We drove for a bit until he stopped, locked his wife in
the car, and took us into an open door with "Chateau Telavi" on it.
Of course, the guy working there was a relative of our driver, so our driver
dropped us off, and, lo and behold, we were in a winery. The man
explained that he had just been cleaning up, but he let us sample the 3 kinds
of wine they had in vats there. The white was good, and the reds were OK. Of course, the white ended up being 20.50 GEL a liter and the reds 3
and 4 GEL. We went with the 3 GEL red and got a 3 liter container.
The guy asked me how many of us there would be. I said we would have
friends, probably about 4. He assured us that 3 liters would not be
enough, but was mollified when I told him that the others would also be
drinking beer. The old man was actually incredibly nice and even kissed
our hands goodbye after sending us in the right direction. As I was the
one speaking with him (in Russian, of course), I asked for directions and
successfully navigated us back to where we needed to be. This is a huge feat, which many of you will
appreciate.
The next day I headed to the train station to go to the
market there. I had explored it some
before but found a whole new world full of anything you could possibly want to
buy. It reminded me of markets in Russia and made
me quite happy as I whiled away a few hours there. I found some cheap
second hand scarves and tried to find a cheap hat but couldn't. Some old
woman selling socks said she had hats at home so if I came back on Sunday, she
would have one. It also felt weird looking for cold weather items on a
warm, sunny day in Tbilisi,
but in Manglisi it is much colder. Sadly,
when I went back the next day, this woman was nowhere to be found, but I did
manage to find a nice hat that was in my price range. I also completed the entire transaction
without relying on my Russian, so that was pretty exciting.
I then wandered around Old Town Tbilisi until I stumbled
upon the greatest find of the weekend, a tea festival!
Intrigued and incredibly pleased, I ventured
inside and got to taste some honey, tea, and cheese. I then started walking
back to my hostel and met another TLGer, who was on her way to meet other
TLGers, because Georgia
is a very small world. I showed them the Caucasus Tea Festival, and since
it was less crowded, we got more samples of cheese, tea, and honey. We
also got wine, jam, and an explanation of what the festival was about.
The Caucasus Business and Development Network put it on as part of their
ongoing efforts to show that despite political conflicts, businesses can work
together and need to work together. So, the tea, wine, cheese, etc. comes
from various parts of the South Caucasus-Armenia, Azerbaijan, the region they
fight over (which has delicious honey), Turkey, Georgia, South Ossetia, and
Abkahazia and is all called Caucasus tea, Caucasus cheese, etc. A pretty
cool idea, plus I got lots of free samples of several of my favorite
foods. After that, I met another TLGer to investigate ‘dry bridge’. It is just a bridge, but people gather there
to sell all sorts of things, including antiques, Soviet memorabilia, jewelry,
and random electronics. It did not have
a ton of souvenirs, but still happily reminded me of Moscow’s Izmailovo, where you can find any
souvenir your heart desires. Most sellers
spoke Russian, even to each other, so my friend greatly appreciated my language
skills. It is weird hearing Russian and just simply understanding. It
doesn't register as Russian as much as I just get what they people are
saying. In real conversations, this doesn't always happen and I
frequently have no idea what people are saying, but it's cool to eavesdrop and
just understand. I’m finally feeling
like I really am comfortable with Russian.
On that note, I’ll sign off. Soon I’ll have stories to tell of camping in
Borjomi (yes, I’m going camping, and in October). If I survive the cold and bears, I’m going to Armenia at the
beginning of November. In general, life
is very good here.
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