Closure...

This blog has been over for a while, as many have noticed. I apologize for the abrupt halt in my writing, but I didn't want to write any summaries or reflections or ANYTHING about Georgia so soon after I left, especially since I had a lot of conflicting feelings about the place at the time. I was also ridiculously busy preparing for my Fulbright year in Siberia whilst teaching high-school Russian all summer. So... Now that I have a minute, here are my thoughts...

You can have too much of a good thing: Towards the end of my stay in Georgia, all I wanted was to go home. I missed my real family, I was irritated by village life, and I wanted to expel 90% of the students in the school. I could NOT relate to Georgian people, I considered most of them simple and narrow-minded, and we disagreed often. I felt like I had wasted four months of my life, gaining only a practical understanding of the Georgian Language, which I considered less than useful. But...

Absence makes the heart grow fonder: almost as soon as I left my Georgian family, my village, and finally the country, I saw how much I was leaving behind. I cried my heart out (as my sister would say, I'm "a crier") especially when saying goodbye to my 6yr-old host brother. He wouldn't say anything, and I'm sure he didn't really understand what was happening. I mean, how would you feel if some girl walked into your life when you were six, you called each other brother and sister, and then after four months she left forever? My whole family, and my whole village, showed me so much love, and I will never forget that. I also realized that although the Georgian language may not be the most useful, it is the most AWESOME. I love that I can communicate in this crazy gobbledygook, and that I can share it with others who ALSO think it's pretty cool. Most of all, I've realized that I want to go back. Yes, teaching in a village school was crazy. Yes, host-family situations can be stressful. Yes, 6yr-old boys are annoying to live with. But I love them. And I love Georgia. It is beautiful and crazy and cultural and messy and fun and I want to find myself there again someday. And when I do, I will be able to speak with people, I will have connections, and I will have places to stay and friends to meet me. Sweet.

Everyone should go to this awesome place. That's all.


Check out the new blog if you still feel like keeping up! www.SiberianChaos.blogspot.com

Love,
Sarah

Last Week in Paradise

Vardzia/Borjomi: My last full weekend in Georgia, and perhaps the best one of all. Some of my favorite TLG friends and I went to Vardzia, an ancient cave city in southern Georgia, and stayed in Borjomi, a small city famous for its sulphur springs and mineral water. To my amazing friends who spent this weekend (and all other weekends) with me, thank you for a great four months in Georgia, and I hope we meet again soon.

Living off the land: Georgia is warming up, everything is blooming, and the first fruits of the summer are already ripe for picking. In my spare time these days I  just pick fruit at my house/the neighbor’s. It’s early, but we already have plenty of strawberries, cherries (big, small, red, pink, and white), bushmala (my favorite thing, I’ve never had anything like it before), tkhemali and alucha (green and red plums). Later on my host family will have lemons, oranges, citrus (like a small grapefruit), peixo (quinces?), grapes, peaches, and apricots.

This is a bushmala tree. I want one.

Other things of note from this week: I went to the swimming pool (who knew there was a pool in Samtredia?), saw a free concert of my favorite Georgian band Mgzavrebi (again, in Samtredia? Who knew?) and ate a lot of cake (because there is always an occasion for cake in this country). 

My suitcase has been mostly packed for days. I'm so ready to get out of here.

Love,

Sarah

Field Trips

I'm sorry everyone, I'm losing steam on this one. So much of sitting in a village with a consistent and slightly boring daily routine will do that to a  blogger, I guess. But I've been going on some field trips with my kids, which have been awesome!

9^th grade field trip: Ruins of Vani, Vani Archeological Museum, Galaktion Tabidze House Museum

6^th grade field trip: Dadiani palaces of Zugdidi, botanical gardens, Martvili church, and an awesome waterfall.

TLG trip: Racha, although most of this one was spent on a Marshutka (minibus).

Guria Weekend: Village-hopping around Lanchkhuti, staying with the most amazing woman from Ukraine, and eating Pizza with some guys from New Jersey.

On another note, I made chocolate-chip cookies with my host brother and they were DELICIOUS. I’m also totally ready to go home, which is why the blog has been so slow. One week and one awesome weekend left to go!

Love,

Sarah

Just some Updates:

I don’t think there will be a may review, because there are too many things I want to post about right now instead of later. Here are some.

As I walked home from school the other day, I saw no fewer than 12 huge military helicopters fly extremely low right over my village.  I was a little worried for a minute, but my host mother set me straight --- “Chveni Mesoblebi!” (Our neighbors!) Apparently we live next to a Georgian army air-base, and the warm weather means flight drills.

Kutaisi day: I forgot to post about this when it actually happened, but Kutaisi day was really cool. May 2^nd is a special holiday just for Kutaisi, and different areas of our region (Imereti) gathered in a wooded park outside the city. Each group brought dancers and singers and their own supra spread. After all the performances, there was a huge fair in the park square, where they had finally finished a beautiful new fountain and set up a grandstand for Music. I stayed out with some friends to see the fireworks and a famous Georgian singer who I only know as “That rock-star lady on TV with the long ponytail.” Maybe one of the best days I’ve had in Georgia: Georgian culture, great friends, good times. 

In relation to Kutaisi day, we found the best hot chocolate in Georgia: It’s in a bar called “Bar” next to a casino called “Totalizator.” Oh, Georgia…

The cure for my stomach flu seemed obvious to everyone but me.

Host grandfather: “What? Sarah’s sick? Well, just give her a shot of cha-cha [homemade vodka, remember] mixed with a SPOONFUL OF SALT.”

Host Dad: “Yeah, that’ll fix you right up.”

Neighbor Lady (yelling from the next house over): “Drink it, Sarah, it’s good for you!”

Host grandmother: “Here’s a boiled potato to chase it with. Drink up!”

I feel better now, but I'm still (as always) avoiding my creepy, smelly outhouse. You can't win 'em all, Georgia.


Love,
Sarah

April Review

I forgot to keep track of things during the month of April, so this month’s review will be a little bit shorter. Sorry!

1. There is no real spring in Georgia. There is winter, which is terribly cold and relentlessly snowy, and there is summer, which is hot, dry, and completely cloudless. I have sunburn. There were a few strange weeks in-between which I would sooner call “Puddle Season” than spring... We had some doozies.

2. My neighbor continues to tell me that I am not as thin as I was when I arrived. She tells me that I should exercise, but when she sees me going for a walk she tells me I’m crazy. In the meantime, everyone else still attempts to force-feed me whenever possible (thanks, guys).

3. I am afraid of going to my outhouse. Now that the weather is warm there are giant attack spiders living in the door. They scare the bejeezus out of me.

 

4. Every household has an abundance of hazelnuts, and I LOVE that.

5. Everyone in my village is so preoccupied with my leaving that I can rarely make it through a conversation without anyone mentioning it. Some of them have even counted the number of days I have left. They also have me COMPLETELY booked up until the moment I have to leave for Tbilisi: Excursions every weekend!

6. I can now go 4 days without showering (though I usually shower after 3, just to be safe).

7. Georgia is ridiculously beautiful right now. 

I've got 23 days left --- stay tuned. Love love love.

Sarah

Conference?

I woke up this morning to go on a Teacher’s excursion to Tskaltubo, a town which I knew nothing about. I asked my host mom over our hurried breakfast:

“Where are we going, again?”

“Tskaltubo. It is very beautiful there.”

“And what will we do?”

“I’m not sure, (insert some Georgian I don’t understand), our president, Saakashvili.”

“Misha is coming?” I asked, because everyone here calls the president of Georgia by his first name.

“I don’t know…”

“Should I dress up?”

“Well, I guess. The teachers always dress up for these types of things.”

“What types of things? Is this a Conference? Should I wear my new skirt?”

“Yeah, wear your skirt. It will be something like a conference, I guess.”

I had bought a new skirt the day before, a teacher skirt as I think of it. Really it’s the dressiest thing I have here in Georgia, so I was basically going all out for this “Conference.” We met all the other teachers in the street, and my host mother was having second thoughts about her own outfit when our bus arrived. Combined with teachers form other nearby villages, we filled every seat. Apparently no one knew exactly what we were doing at this conference, but they were all happy to be dressed up and on a bus that was going somewhere. A man in front started talking into a microphone, but it was all in Georgian so I understood almost none of it. All I understood was the word “Excursion.” We drove through the city of Khoni and then turned around to head back towards Kutaisi, in the direction of Tskaltubo. Before I knew it, we were on a dusty forest road and surrounded by fields. Are we going to a supra in the woods? Are we going to a fortress or an old castle? The answer came when the bus stopped in the middle of an ordinary field: No. We are not here for a conference. We are here to examine the irrigation system of some blueberry plants. I was surprised to see that everyone looked really interested in the topic of our excursion, and my host mother had lots of questions about the hoses running underground to water the blueberry plants. Why was this so fascinating?

We got back on the bus and continued on to Tskaltubo, where we stopped this time to walk through several greenhouses filled with Dill (above), Cilantro, and Squash. Once again, everyone was amazed. Why?? Everyone stole a handful of herbs to bring home, and we got back on the bus. The scenery was beautiful, but our next stop was a common cool storage unit. We walked in, walked out, got back on the bus, and drove on. We had made a giant circle now, and our last stop was in Abasha (also really beautiful, from what I saw out of my bus window) where we parked in the middle of nowhere to see a row of silos and watch corn being shaken loose from the cob by some simple farm machinery. As we walked up to the silos, my director looked to me and said “Come here, Sarah, they are going to tell us what these big things are!” I didn’t know how to respond. Was she joking? I asked her if this was the first time she had seen something like this. Yes, she said, this is the first time there had been anything like this in Georgia. The designs had come from America, she said. Now everything was making sense… Georgia had never utilized so much agricultural technology before. A farmer from Abasha told me with pride that the operation had begun the year before and that they had already begun exporting corn to Armenia. Anyway, I don’t know much about Agriculture, but it was kind of cool to see all this agricultural development. Georgia is a developing country, after all, so I shouldn't be surprised that the development of agriculture falls into that category. I wanted to ask where the funding came from, and what the influence on smaller farms would be now that large-scale farming was taking place, but the language barrier made that impossible. Rats.

After the silos we were taken back to Samtredia where everyone basically attacked a room full of sandwiches, shashliki, and khachipurri. Then the ministry gave each of us a gift bag of freebies with the Georgian Ministry of Agriculture emblem on them (pens, notepads, calendars, etc.) The gift bags also came with a bottle of red wine because, after all, this is Georgia.

Getting ready for another field trip tomorrow, this time with students. Once again, I have no idea where we are going or what we are doing, so you'll just have to wait for the post. Wish me luck!

Love,

Sarah

Best Worst Day

Sometimes when I arrive at school in the morning, I find out that one or both of my co-teachers is absent. I am not, by contract, supposed to teach alone, but since there are not enough teachers at the school I usually just fly solo if my co-teachers are missing. These classes are not very productive...The students see me as the fun, cool teacher who likes to play games, talk, and laugh with them. With my co-teachers everything is great, but if I am alone in the classroom this can cause huge problems. Everyone wants to talk to me at once, to tell me about the game they want to play, to show me their homework so I will draw a heart on it, or else to talk to/fight with their peers in class because they don’t see me as an authority figure. This is not for lack of trying --- I’ve tried encouraging and rewarding good behavior, speaking in Georgian instead of English to get their attention when they aren’t listening, giving the silent treatment and waiting for the class to be silent, clapping my hands, separating students that are fighting, taking away items that they are hitting each other with, even yelling (which I am never proud of, but it’s the only way to make my voice heard above everyone else’s). To be fair, usually there aren’t too many issues, and eventually I can get everyone to do what they need to do. Today was not one of those days. Today was seriously awful. One of my students even started bleeding after being hit by a girl with an uncapped pen in her hand. I asked them, BEGGED them to be good, in English and in Georgian. I explained that I only had one month left and I wanted them to be good, and later on I even told them that they were being so naughty that I wanted to go to America today instead of in a month. They all cried “No, no, teacher! Good children, good!” but they didn’t change their behavior at all. I walked out of the classroom after 45 minutes of hell, while the three decent children in the class literally kissed my face and hands with apologies, almost crying. I walked into my next class, stared at the fourth-graders that I loved, and felt myself beginning to cry as they smiled and said in unison “Sarah! Hello, teacher! How are you?!” I managed to give a thumbs-down in response, and when they all asked “why?” I gestured that I would be back in a minute, and went to hide in the teacher’s lounge and chill out. My host mother and brother were there to ask me “What’s wrong? Are you sick?” to which I responded in tears and broken Georgian that my class had been awful. Koka tried his best to make me laugh and used my scarf to wipe the tears off my face, then walked with me hand-in-hand to my awesome fourth grade class. I love kids, but teaching is hard. It’s hard enough even when you speak the same language.

After school things almost completely turned around. I made myself a huge cup of coffee, talked to a good friend who could empathize with my bad day, and went on a walk down the dirt road that goes through my village. I ran into one of my 4^th graders, who joined me in my walk. I love this kid --- he’s crazy as I’ll get out, but he’s #1. Extremely funny, and #2. Extremely adorable. We passed the house of his cousin, one of my favorite 6^th graders, and she joined us as well. We kept walking and talking in Georgian/English until we reached another student’s house where we played hide-and-seek. They asked for help studying their English, so we all practiced together, played some more games, went on another little walk, and ended up at my 4^th grader’s house again where we picked cherries and I braided the girls’ hair. Then my 4^th grader brought me an album of photos on his mother's command. It was explained to me that his little brother had passed away 4 months prior. I went through the album filled with photos of two happy, beautiful children and we all shed a few more tears… I gave my students another round of compliments and they gave me a fresh batch of I-love-you’s as they started to walk me home (I had been gone for a few hours by now). We passed another student’s house, whose family invited us all inside. I sat and spoke Russian with my student’s parents and neighbors, I ate the best khachipurri I’ve had yet, and my students brought me a huge bouquet of roses from the garden. We finally made it home, where my host mother made us all coffee and I learned some more Georgian dancing from my students. Tomorrow I leave at 6am for “Kutaisi Day” to watch my host brother sing and see my friends teaching in other villages.

That’s all I’ve got for now. So happy to have good friends, great students, and an amazing host family.

Love,

Sarah

Big Fat Easter Post

It took me three hours to get back to my house once I arrived in my village after my week off. Why? My neighbors practically attacked me on the short dirt road to my house. I was hugged, kissed, and fed to no end, although at each  house I kept saying “I can only stay for a moment, I have to go home!” When I finally made it to my front gate, my host brother and I literally ran at one another screaming and then jumped into each other’s arms. If we had kissed each other’s cheeks any more, I’m pretty sure our faces would have fallen off. It’s good to be home.

I purposefully came home early so that I could be in Georgia for Orthodox Easter. It really begins on Good Friday (Red Friday, in Georgia) with egg-dying (which I missed). Eggs are only dyed red, no other colors allowed or considered, and cannot be broken and eaten until Easter Sunday. On Saturday night we went to the Easter Vigil service at the Orthodox church in my village --- There were so many people that not even half of us could fit inside the building. Service began at 11pm and went on until after 1am, all the while we chanted “Kristi Aghzdga” (Christ is Risen) and responded with a much longer version that is too hard for me to remember, but means “He is truly Risen.”

 

Easter Sunday was celebrated with lots of dancing, eating, and drinking which began early in the day. I was woken up at 9am by my host mother and brother saying “Kristi Aghzdga” and handing me an egg, which I had to use to try and break the shell of another egg. We did this many times throughout the day, and if an egg went through many matches without being broken it was a “Magarii Khvertsi” (good egg) and most often stolen by my brother Koka. He also had a trick egg that was actually made of wood, and he managed to break my Magarii Khvertsi before I realized his tom-foolery. At 9am we packed up some food, wine, eggs, and Paska (special Easter cake/bread that looks pretty but I’m not especially fond of) and went to the cemetery. It is Georgian tradition to gather in the cemetery near the graves of relatives and friends, drink to their memory, and pour them a little wine as well --- It was literally poured onto their graves so that they could celebrate as well. Later on we went back home where we had another feast, much more wine, and therefore much more dancing.

The next day, Easter Monday, I was again woken up early by the sound of Georgian music and laughter from my family. Breakfast was Easter cake and Easter eggs, and although we had plans to visit my host mother’s parents in town, the weather was too beautiful to be bothered about going anywhere. We sat outside all day, kept on dancing, and then decided to fire up the Toneh: A traditional Georgian oven, basically a cylinder of 10-inch-thick cement. It is heated by a fire in the center, and once the fire burns down the coals are covered by bricks to keep everything toasty. Then globs of sticky bread dough are pasted onto the sides of the oven, fighting gravity as they are baked on both sides from the hot cement wall of the Toneh and the brick-covered coals in the center. I got to make one myself, and I’m proud to say it looked better than my host mother’s attempt (we’re both amateurs --- my host dad’s cousin is the pro). When they were done we had a feast of hot bread (called Lavash or Shoti’s Purri), fresh onions and herbs from our garden, and home-made Georgian cheese. Commence more wine-drinking and Georgian dancing.

Little did I know, Easter is a continuous thing here in Georgia, and a week later was "Old Easter." My neighbors and I made a special cake called "Pakhlava" (not to be confused with Baklava, which is totally different but equally delicious). The next day was the Easter Pageant at school, which meant lots of decorating, long rehearsals, and a beautiful performance pulled off by some of my students. Here are a group of my 2-5th graders:

After the pageant was the Supra: My host mother is very proud of this one. She organized the whole thing, we had TONS (probably literally) of food, I heard several different songs all entitled "Sakartvelo" ("Georgia") and we partied in the school until late at night. There were many toasts made from a severed soda bottle since there were no rams horns available, I showed off my Georgian speaking and dancing skills, and I met a Canadian and his Georgian wife who were visiting their family in the village for Easter. Hurray for English speaking!

Til next time,

Sarah

Batumi No-Reading Photo Post

Batumi is in south-western Georgia, right on the coast of the Black Sea. I like it there. Here are the groodest pics:




Easter is next!

So much love,
Sarah

Problem Yok (No Problem)!

Here's a nice day-by-day outline of my Turkey, just in case you're tired of reading about Georgia. Hope you enjoyed the call to prayer in the last post (I didn't take it for the visual, but the audio --- just fyi).


Day 1: Monday morning we left from Batumi to the border crossing at Sarpi (Thank goodness I just happened to save a $20 bill in my wallet, because I needed it for my visa). From there we made our way to Trabzon with no maps, no plan, and an incorrect phone number for the place we were staying. I only know a few words in Turkish, but with them we were able to find directions to the place we were staying. Cut to us completely exhausted and sweaty from climbing endless hills, ordering Turkish pizza (lahmacun), and passing out before 10pm. We were woken up early by the call to prayer which sounds five times a day from every mosque in the city --- B-E-A-utiful.

Day 2: Still map-less, we decided to explore the city on foot. We asked passers-by what direction the center was in, and each one told us to take a mini-bus (dolmush) but we hoofed it instead. It was about 4 kilometers away, but at the time it was fun! The city is practically made of hills, so we got lots of exercise as well as some awesome views of the city. We met a shopkeeper who spoke Russian and invited us to sit for tea --- This is when I noticed that there are men carrying tea-trays all over the city, going to and from shops and restaurants delivering cups of Turkish tea. From the market we got directions to the Hagia Sophia (not the big one in Istanbul, but the baby one modeled after the big one in Istanbul) and walked all the way there as well (What’s another few kilometers?). We made it home before it started to rain too much, and I got an impromptu percussion lesson from our host… I’m not very good at it (Surprise!)

Day 3: Field trips. We reserved this day to explore some sites outside of the city of Trabzon. First we hit Sumela, which is a beautiful ancient monastery tucked into the side of a mountain. We got a ride most of the way up, but then hiked back down ourselves (my legs are still refusing to forgive me for that one). We also found a nice waterfall, so we followed that up as far as it was climbable and had a nice sit. We met a Turkish couple touring the Black Sea coast, and they offered to take us with them to Uzungol, a natural lake in a mountain valley. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a good lake. Water, shore, rocks, all that jazz. It’s the best place in Turkey, everyone should go (wink, wink) …Actually, we spent about ten minutes there, laughed a lot, skipped some rocks, and then decided to head back. We had a nice car ride, though, joking about how exciting Uzungol is.

Day 4: Tired from the day before, we slept in and decided to take it easy. After a brunch of Turkish kebap and ayran (a salty yogurt drink) we made it to the view-point of Trabzon called Boztepe. We drank tea from Samover, which is a giant silver hot-water heater with a place to put a small pot of very concentrated tea. We drank tea and enjoyed the view, did some more walking through the city and the market, and sat on the beach. P.S. I saw a Dolphin in the wild for the first time in my life, I’m pretty sure I screamed. It was awesome. That night we had what our host calls R&B: Raki Balik. Raki is the Turkish national drink: Anise flavored alcohol that turns white when you mix it with water. Balik means fish, which we got fresh from the sea-side fish market and then grilled over hot coals on the balcony. Throw in some Turkish music, that drum that I can’t play, and a few more Turks and you get a pretty good party. We sang a LOT --- Turkish people love singing as much as I love listening to them sing.

Day 5: Although we planned on leaving early, we were pretty beat and slept in again. I made American breakfast (eggs, toast, hashbrowns and ketchup) and we sat around for a while before heading back to Batumi. A successful trip, some new stamps in my passport, and minimal sunburn.

…AND my travel-buddy and I didn’t even strangle each other.

Back in Georgia now, Happy Orthodox Easter!

Love,
Sarah