Looking Forward and Looking Back

I have 6 ½ weeks left of school and a little over 2 months before I step foot on American soil once again.  When I got back from Turkey, I calculated how many lessons I had left.  I’m somewhere under 90 now.  These numbers tell me 2 contradictory things.  I have so little time and I have so much time.  Being me, my planning is taking me mentally past Georgia into my travels and then starting to think about life beyond Georgia, like grad school.  Mostly this is simply thinking about what I’ll need for my new apartment because the thought of actual work is terrifying after a year here.  Still, I have adventures still to enjoy, lessons still to teach, and hopefully relationships to continue.

With the end in sight, however, I’ve also started thinking over my year in Georgia.  I know I’ll be able to reflect better when I’m home, but then life will consume me with thoughts of grad school and other matters.  Now I have plenty of time to reflect, especially as I enjoy the fresh mountain air.

Sometimes I think about what I set out to do when I came to Georgia and realize how I’ve fallen short of many of those goals.  While I can speak some Georgian, it’s far from where I expected it to be, because I was so easily able to use Russian. In the grand scheme of things, increasing my fluency in Russian is a much better thing, but still, I wish I would have studied a bit harder with Georgian.  My fluency in Russian is definitely better, but my vocabulary and grammar could have been improved more as well.

While I came here mostly for me, I wanted to be a good teacher, and I often wonder what impact I’ll have made.  I know a lot of why TLG exists is to help raise the English level of our co-teachers.  While my cos can understand me better now, their English is still pretty terrible. I feel I’ve failed in really improving their English, but the limited overtures I made in that regard were ignored or misunderstood.  My cos seemed in no hurry to appreciate having a native speaker around and prefer to speak in Georgian than attempt to work on their English.

While it isn’t a great excuse, I blame my cos’ poor English as the reason I didn’t do more in my school.  They don’t really translate announcements for me.  I usually find things out from a teacher who translates for me into Russian if I find out at all.  I talked with my cos about a few ideas for English clubs and working with older students but again was ignored or misunderstood, so nothing came of it.  My English Club for other teachers (which has fizzled out) basically only got started because my Russian-speaking friend helped me talk to the director about it.  People with more enthusiastic/engaging cos are able to communicate and just do more.

Basically, in TLG, you have to have a lot of initiative to implement new things or get lucky and have a really receptive school.  I have initiative, but I funneled it more into graduate school applications and travel plans.  Ideas for improving my community stopped mostly at ideas because I had basically no support and no initiative to override that lack of support.

Sometimes this is why I think older volunteers are better.  They have more life experience, confidence, and are less likely to bend their expectations to fit the status quo.  Sometimes I hear volunteers (especially those placed in cities) talk about all the things they find shocking about Georgia and just want to laugh.  I overheard say she asked if there were grief counselors at her school when a student died.  Seriously?  While that would be a great thing, so would adequate heating, books for all the students, electrical outlets in every room, and schools that were not falling down, just to name a few things I view as more pressing problems.  Those in the city don’t really understand the poverty and difficulty of Georgia.  Yes, Georgia is trying to rise above being a developing nation, but it has a lot of work to do once you leave Tbilisi.  Resources are scarce and often not used correctly. 

But, maybe these city folk aren't always just being city folk (but sometimes, oh they are!) and are just unwilling to accept the status quo as is and are voicing their concern as part of the effort to change Georgia, which is why we're here.  Sometimes I wonder if by fitting in, I've wasted opportunities to instigate change.  But then I realize I live in a village, where life sometimes feels as different to life in Tbilisi as it does to life in America, and the way I know how to affect change requires resources I don't have here.

I realize that this is another excuse I’ve created: that in the village, there aren’t the resources to do the things I’d like.  I also realize that I’ve worked so hard to remain conservative in my life in the village so as to avoid problems and be considered a ‘good girl’ by everyone, since crossing that line invites lots of problems.

Yet, lately, I’ve realized that I’ve been so conservative in some actions, I’ve failed to take risks that really could have helped my community and school.  I’ve made small strides toward change, but not major ones.

And there are volunteers who have taken risks and made real impacts upon their communities.  This weekend, I went on an excursion to Vardzia, a cave town in western Georgia. It was arranged by TLG, so I got to meet some new TLGers.

One guy had been a nuclear engineer and then a broker in New York before coming to Georgia.  That, of course, prompted the question of why he was here.  Apparently foreclosing homes in New York made him so disgusted he wanted to go do something good for poor people and ended up in Georgia.  He came in fall 2010 and started out in a small somewhat isolated village.  He was trying not to brag, but just told some stories about the changes that he had made in his village.  After a year of him being there, they got a racquetball court, since he loved to play.  After he left, his school went around the village and picked up trash (a huge problem in Georgia).  He said that they had done this on their own because he had talked to them about how it was a problem while he was there.

“I was just honest with them, and if you’re honest with people, they’ll respond,” was more or less his way of describing the sudden interest in the environment and other changes he helped bring about.  This got me to thinking, that, sadly, I’m not really honest with the people in Manglisi.  No, I don’t lie to them, but I also choose the diplomatic answer over the truth.  I haven’t really shown who I truly am to them.  This is part of why I like leaving every weekend and look forward to being in America, where I can feel comfortable again.  Sometimes the language barrier prevents me from being honest.  A lot of times, I decide the cultural barrier is too great to overcome.  Sometimes I just decide it isn’t worth the trouble.  Thinking about it this way makes me sad for all the lost opportunities I’ve had because I haven’t been honest.  I could have made a bigger impact had I been willing to take risks and tell the truth.

I’m hoping that I have made an impact in ways I just can’t see.  I hope that I’ve inspired students in ways I don’t realize.  I hope that my co-teachers will take something away from how I’ve taught class.  I really hope that Manglisi gets another TLGer and they aren’t shocked that the school and community had a volunteer for a year.

While I realize I’ve had a lot of missed opportunities, I’ve still had a wonderful year.  I discussed the lack of being honest with a friend, and she agreed she did the same in her village.  We’ve both gotten wonderful travel experiences and have gotten to experience Georgian culture, sometimes more than we’ve wanted.  I have a much better understanding of life in a developing/impoverished nation.  As much as I hated life in the depth of winter, village life has shown me a lot about living outside of the comforts I’ve always known and shown me many of the joys that can come of it, like drinking fresh milk, eating fruit off the tree, seeing baby animals in the spring, and living in beautiful surroundings.  I have come to care about my students, which is why I still get so frustrated by them some days and am so happy when I realize I have taught them something.  I’ve made some great friends, even if they are mostly other expats.  I’ve grown as a person and am far more confident in the face of challenges.  I have been constantly amazed by the kindness of strangers and hope to bring home the spirit of hospitality I’ve witnessed here.

Let’s see what the next 6 ½ weeks bring, since it’s not over yet.