Appropriate School Behavior?

I understand that all schools have different rules; I thought some things were pretty standard. But, now it would take something big to shock me. I have been here for a little while now. I don’t really remember all of the things that surprised me when I first started teaching at the school.

 As I have said in the past, my school has two different sections: Russian and Georgian. From what I have seen, the way the students behave and the way the teachers act differs greatly between the two sections. Most of my experience is with the Georgian sector, which does seem to be a little more laid back and far less structured than the Russian section.

            I work with III form through XII form students (8 to 18 years old) and I really don’t have a favorite class. Each has its ups and downs. Some things are consistent throughout all the grades.  For instance, homework seems optional. The same two or three students always do it in each class. There is really no consequence for not doing your homework. We go over it in class and you can write down all the answers if you want them, or you can just sit there and listen. More than once I have heard the excuse, “I had to go to a party last night so that is why my homework is not done.”

            The attendance rate, by both students and teachers, is much lower than I would estimate it is in American schools. By IX form, coming to school seems even more optional. I lost count of the number of times I have gone to teach the IX form class to find the doors locked and the students gone. They normally do come in the morning, but between classes they leave and don’t come back. Sometimes they say they forgot they had anymore classes, even though the schedule is the same every week.

One time I did see the entire XI from class get in trouble for skipping school. I remember the day that they skipped I was told they were probably all hung over because the day before had been a holiday. The school director came in and started yelling in at them in Georgian. Of course, I didn’t understand. Several students stood up and then things (such a keys and metal padlocks) were thrown at them. They all did a good job of dodging the looming flying objects. After the school director left, my co-teacher told me that they were in trouble for skipping school and as a punishment they all had to clean the schoolyard.

            The skipping school incident was not the first time that I saw the school director yell at students. The first time I thought her yelling was even a slight under-reaction to the situation. I was standing in front of the IX form class when she walked into the room and called out a boy’s name. He came to the front of the room and she started yelling at him and pushed him one time, not very hard. He just put his head down. At the time this was happening I did not understand and thought this was pretty harsh. After she finished yelling at him, he simply went back to his seat. I actually don’t know if that was his only punishment but it seemed like it. When the director left, I was told that the student had beaten up one of his classmates and that the classmate was now at the hospital. Then class went on as normal.

I guess teachers do normally just look the other way when students are rough housing in the hall. And almost everyday I take away a book or a ruler because a student is hitting another student pretty hard with it. This just seems to be normal.

            Georgia in general is a culture where most people drink heavily and most men seem to chain smoke. Drinking and smoking starts at a very young age. When I told one class about the age laws in the U.S. regarding drinking and smoking, they said that was enough of a reason to not travel to the U.S. My students have asked me to get drunk with them, to which I replied I don’t drink more than a few drinks at a time (having a few drinks in this country is not really optional but I will talk about that in another entry).

I have never seen students drink in school, but that would not surprise me at all. I have seen students light cigarettes in class and try to hide them under there desk. I found these attempts humorous. They did not get in trouble. They were simply told to put them out. Smoking in the bathrooms seems to be okay, though. The bathrooms have no main doors and during breaks there are always groups of boys smoking by the windows.

            The VII form Georgian class is one of the smaller classes, and apparently has a reputation among the teachers as being a crazy class. I was told it is not just one student but the entire class that causes problems. I had not been to the class in a while and I was led to believe that was because their behavior was slightly embarrassing. It was my first time in the class in about two weeks and the students genuinely seemed excited when I walked in.

Later in class, I was standing in front of the students talking about when, in English, we call it a watch verses when we call it a clock and how an alarm clock is still a clock because in Georgian they are the same thing. Then, all of a sudden, from the center of the class, there was a large boom and spark. Someone had set off a firework.

The other teacher stood up and said, “Sorry Meghan. Give me one minute.” The class was going nuts, and I was left alone with them. One student told me to hammer on the teacher’s table to get their attention. When I did that they all just clapped and cheered for me. I eventually got them calmed down and in their seats. Then they asked me if I could teach them a new game. I said no and told them that only good classes get games. Then I attempted to go back to the discussion about clocks when the other teacher came back in with reinforcements, including the head teacher and the VII form’s homeroom teacher.

The students all stood up to be yelled at. One girl went over to all of the coats, picked up three, brought them to the front of the room, and emptied out all the pockets. Inside were tons of little firecrackers. During this process, another girl kept apologizing to me and telling me that I could sit down. She even moved her chair for me to sit in. I had to turn away from the class because I thought the whole thing was very funny. I don’t know if there was any further punishment other than the confiscation of the fireworks. After they were done standing and getting a lecture, the class was basically over and I was told again that they are a bad class.

            None of these things might seem that abnormal for seasoned American teachers. I even told a teacher here that kids in America are the same and the only thing different is that teachers’ reaction and American school buildings tend to be a little nicer. 

(group of students in a class posing for a picture)

(looking out a window at school)

International Club

Some days it is a little frustrating. I don’t understand the people around me and I wonder what I am doing here. Then, I show up at school and I am greeted by shrieks of “Hello Megi!” and “Good morning Mega!” My mood is immediately uplifted. 

One Wednesday afternoon I was handed an invitation to a club meeting. Two English teachers had been talking to me about coming to their clubs, so I was not surprised when I was asked to come. But, the formality of the invitation kind of surprised me. A note was hand written on a Cinderella card asking me to come, the following day, at one-thirty in the afternoon.

(My Invitation) 

            Thursdays are my shortest day at school in terms of class time. The last class I teach ends before noon. But I didn’t mind waiting around for a while in the teacher’s room for the meeting. The organizing teacher came in at one-thirty and asked me to wait ten more minutes. I said of course. An hour later, I was on my way to international club.

I was the special guest, along with the school director,is like the principal, and who, from what I can tell, is second in charge--kind of like the principal and vice principal. I was informed that the subject of this meeting was going to be the state of Virginia, in particular the town of Fairfax, because I was the special guest. I was such a special guest that students tried to sneak in a pretend they were part of the club, but they got kicked out before the meeting officially started. The teacher also said sometime along the lines of, “We know our special guest will stay the whole time.” I am sure that, sometimes, by their standards, I do things that are probably considered rude. But, I don’t think I would get up and walk out of a meeting where the subject is in my honor. Through the entire meeting I had a smile on my face. I just couldn’t help it.

            Each student had memorized something to say, but they tried to act like it was all just things the student could recall. The teacher would ask a question, and one student would raise their hand and come to the front and say something in English that was obviously memorized. The topic of the meeting included the economy, history, geography, and climate of the state of Virginia. I did learn some things, such as the fact that Virginia has an average of five tornados a year, and that it rains somewhere in Virginia, on average, one-third of the year. 

I was surprised that they found enough information for five different students to talk about Fairfax. They talked about things such as the Chocolate Festival (I was glad I could say that I have been).  I also learned that Northern Virginia Community College is the second biggest community college system in the U.S. and that George Mason used to by part of that system. A boy actually made me a handout about the Colleges in Fairfax. I really didn’t know these things-- who would have thought I would learn them in classroom in Akhaltsikhe, Georgia?

After all the students had presented I was asked to say a few words about the climate, but they had covered is pretty well so, I just pointed out on the map where the different regions were located.  

(This is a picture of a picture of me speaking to the Club)

Making Khinkali

One Sunday, my host grandmother was in the kitchen cooking up a storm, which is typical when she comes to visit.  I was feeling guilty about being lazy so I looked through my phrase book and attempted to ask how I could help.  My younger host sister went to the phone to call someone who speaks English to give me an answer. The answer was “You can do anything you wish.” The grandmother then took off her apron and put it on me, I tried to say that wasn’t necessary, but how could I refuse.  We were going to make Khinkali.

Khinkali are meat filled dumplings that Georgians would say every good Georgian woman knows how to make. How many Khinkali you can eat is basically a measure of one’s manliness (as is how much alcohol one can drink).

(the dough)

              By the time I was in the kitchen ready to help, the grandmother had already ground and seasoned the meat and started to make the dough.  She wanted me to taste the meat. So far on this adventure this may be the first time I have been rude enough to turn down food. She had a wad of uncooked meat on her finger and she tried to shove it into my mouth. I had to turn this down; I am just not sure I can handle that much raw, unknown to me, meat.  I have adjusted well to unpasteurized milk, and the apparent optional refrigeration for many foods I think should be refrigerated, but I have to draw a line somewhere.  My line is unidentified, raw, ground meat.

(the meat)

(the rolled out dough)

So now I was in the kitchen, dressed to cook, and told I could do whatever I wished. My lack of Georgian was not a huge problem in helping in the kitchen. In fact, my nine-year-old host sister got kicked out because she couldn’t do it right, and I got to stay.  We kneaded the dough, that’s pretty standard and the same for many things. It always reminds me of my college pottery class, even though I was cooking before I ever took that class. 

Next we rolled out the dough, and turned a glass upside down to cut out the circles that would be used to hold the meat.  On every circle we spooned some meat mixture. I am not sure I can use words to describe how they are folded together. I was never told with words, but just shown.  You pick up an outer edge of the circle and press it together little by little with the dough right next to it, until you have completed the circle, and have a little knob on top. Then you hold it by this knob with your thumb and pointer finger, and make circular motions with your wrist. Then the khinkali is formed.

(stirring)

(finished products)

            After all the khinkali were made we gently placed them knob side down in highly salted boiling water.  Stirring occasionally with the handle of a wooden spoon--spoon end is too big and could break them open. My understanding was that they are done when they float.  After they were done we feasted. They are great with a little black pepper. They are finger food. They are very juicy. And you don’t eat the little knob. 

A Six-Minute Car Ride

A Six-Minute Car Ride

            Last Saturday I went to the town of Vale, pronounced Wale-ay, with some teachers who also live in Akhaltsikhe to visit two TLG teachers who live in Vale. Saturday around noon, we piled on the very old looking bus with a sign that said Vale on it. None of us knew exactly where we were going, how long it really took, or how much this bus ride was going to cost.  After about fifteen minutes, we noticed that the sign had changed. So we were fairly confident we had missed the town of Vale. 

We contemplated getting off at the next stop and hope a bus came along on the other side of the road to take us back. But the next stop was by an empty field and one intelligent person suggested we wait for at least a few buildings to be around in case no bus came by on the other side of the road. Five minutes later at we were in Vale. So it’s a good thing we didn’t get off in the middle of nowhere.

As we got off the bus we each dropped one lari in the basket to pay, one lari is about the equivalent of 60 cents in the U.S.  Nothing in Georgia is that expensive because no one here has money. For example, a full time teacher makes less than 400 Lari a month and they are happy because they have jobs.

            Once we were in Vale, we were greeted by our friend who lives there and shown the village. We went back to our friend’s house where his host mom prepared a feast for us (picture below). After we ate we went on a mission to find some fruit, but apparently that is not possible to do in the village of Vale on a Saturday.  Then we went to our other friend and TLG teacher’s house. There her host sister, someone that taught herself to speak Spanish and play guitar, serenaded us.

We rushed out of the house at twenty-till-six in order to catch the last bus (that we thought left at six) for Akhaltsikhe. We were walking down the side of the mountain and I was taking pictures of the mountains on the horizon in Turkey when a man, who happened to have all gold teeth and spoke some English, stopped us and asked to take pictures with us. This is something a foreigner gets used to in this country especially when there are four of you together. 

He explained to us that the Peace Corps volunteers who used to be here taught him some English. He also said he wanted to be our friend.  Then we asked jim where the bus was and he said we were too late. We were trying to figure out what to do about it when our new friend told us not to worry. He said for three lari he would find us a ride back home. Here, many of the unemployed men put a taxi sign on their car and drive people around. It would cost us more than three lari to get a cab so we didn’t contemplate it very long. A bit hesitantly, we got into the car with someone that our new friend said would take us home.

            There was a guy driving and his friend was in the passenger’s seat.  Neither of them spoke more English than we spoke Georgian. They refused to take our money because they said they wanted to be our friends. I know that the idea of getting into a car with a stranger goes against everything you are supposed to do, but here it is not that different than getting into a cab, especially when you are in a country where cabs are in no way regulated.  I didn’t do it alone and I am obviously still alive to talk about it.

            So I think the driver was trying to impress us, but I don’t personally find fearing for my life all that impressive. We were flying down the mountain, sometimes going around curves honking because we were on the wrong side of the road. We were passing people and I am pretty sure at one time we were part of a race. I am not going to lie: I started to pray in the back of that car.  Approximately six minutes after we left Vale, we were in the center of Akhaltsikhe. I was very grateful to get out of that car and walk the rest of the way home. 

You Said What?

            I have a feeling that this may be a reoccurring blog topic because sometimes people say some pretty crazy things to me.  They are probably not crazy by their standards, just not things I would expect people to say. Everyone asks me as soon as they meet me if I am married, I guess being twenty-four and uncommitted is making me pretty old (that is suppose to be sarcastic), but that’s not too weird of a question. What is slightly weird is being asked if I have a brother then being asked if he is married, and when I say yes, having a group of girls sigh with disappointment.

Today at the park my groupies told me how my white skin is “awesome.” This is a sentence I never thought I would say, but it’s true.  There is a wonderful group of girls who basically try to follow me around and they scream with excitement when I talk to them. They are in the 6^th form, kind of like 6^th grade I guess, they just don’t call them grades here.  Below is a picture of me at the park with my groupies. I don’t think much about the color of my skin and I am in the Caucasus Mountains, which is where the term Caucasian came from. So, the people look pretty white to me, but it was pointed out to me that I am whiter. This is not a surprise. I am used to being the palest one. I just have never been told that as a compliment.

(At the Park with Some "Awesome" Girls)

            So, in my classroom setting, English is a second, third, fourth, maybe even fifth langue to some students.  Many of the students' intelligence amazes me; they all know at least two alphabets very well. The 7^th form class can play and understand Madlips and the 12th form can read and understand Catcher in the Rye.  They can read out loud, they can understand what they read, and they can write. But, they can’t talk, or understand that much when being talked to. This is not their fault--they have never had an English teacher that speaks English fluently, or at least not until now.

            I am amazed by their intelligence, and fairly certain very few students in the U.S. have that firm of an understanding of a second language, especially in a public school system that can’t afford to turn lights on in the building. Oddly, the teachers here constantly tell me the school is full of lazy students. Today, a teacher even told me the students were stupid—in front of the students. Maybe the teacher did not realize that this is a pretty harsh criticism of her students.  Whenever a student’s work is not done well the teacher says, “You are a lazy pupil, shame on you, shame on your family.” I don’t really like this approach to teaching kids; I personally am a fan of positive reinforcement.

            One of the techniques that is supposedly left over from soviet style teaching is having the students memorize poems and such, often something they do not understand. This is an example of something students in the 3^rd form memorized—before they even know the alphabet:

            Hello Master

            Hello Pussy, how are you?

            I am fine, and you?

            I am fine, thanks, goodbye.

            Goodbye.

The teacher corrects them if they deviate at all from this, even if what they are saying makes sense.  This memorized script has resulted in seven-year-old boys walking up to me in the hall and saying, “Hello, Pussy.” I am not sure how I should react to this, but I just laugh and say hello back to them.

            Other direct quotes that I copied down from a Russian, English textbook make me laugh. The Russian school’s English textbooks seem like they were written in the 1960s, even though they are brand new books. Students are called pupils and the main occupations seem to be a driver, pilot, and doctor. The students constantly read, “I am a Soviet.” Other direct quotes give me the impression that the books were written under a government that didn’t like the U.S.

One day I was sitting in a 7^th form class and I had to copy down some quotes from the book, because I was simply surprised and amused by them. The unit was on nuclear war, not a topic you would expect to find in a foreign language book for twelve-year-old kids.  Here are just a few key sentences that gave me an impression of an Anti-American, Pro-Russian textbook.  Keep in mind that, while it is a Russian school, currently Georgia does not have a good relationship with Russia. 

The first country to use a nuclear weapon was America in 1945.

No one wins in nuclear war.

I would like to see a nuclear free Europe.

What countries have nuclear weapons?

The only country mentioned in the book as having nuclear weapons was the U.S. This kind of bothered me because I felt that it painted the U.S. in a negative light, but I might have read in to it deeper than the twelve-year-old kids. Another couple of sentence in a row made me kind of laugh at the book. “Moscow has a large population. The population of many Western European countries is growing.” First, it makes it sound like Moscow is in Western Europe, which I don’t think anyone would agree with. Secondly, out of all the places in the world, Western Europe is not exactly known for their population growth.

            Despite what I find to be poor textbooks and teachers that might not have the best grasp on the language they are teaching, many of the students do a great job of communicating with me. I have been asked if I smoke and if I drink. I said I don’t smoke and I don’t drink very often or very much.  I explained that in the U.S. we have a drinking age of twenty-one and that you can’t buy cigarettes until you are eighteen. This was enough to make some 12^th form boys say they didn’t want to come to America. I shouldn’t be surprised that a drinking age is a crazy idea in a country where my eight-year-old host brother out drank me at dinner last night.

            The people here are normally so friendly and thus far anything I have read or heard that surprised me I found entertaining. I am looking forward to being surprised a few more times.

My Name is Megi and I am Kind of a Local Celebrity

            So maybe you’re thinking one little kid calls me Megi and kids at school are giving me lots of attention, but it’s a little bit more than that.  Whenever anyone asks me my name, I say my name is Meghan, and then they call me Megi. Megi is apparently a common name in Georgia and I am okay having a name people can remember and pronounce.  I have yet to introduce myself to anyone as Megi, but it doesn’t matter--this is what I am going to be called.

            So when I say I am a local celebrity I mean no matter where I go or what I do, people point and stare. Kids run up to me in the park and say, “Hello.”  I don’t really mind any of this, I love that kids find me interesting. Hopefully being able to talk to me will be an incentive to learn English. But on Friday I had to hold back tears as I was dealing with my celebrity issues. I would have wanted to cry even if the video cameras were not following me around.

            Let me explain a little bit about my first week of teaching that led to Friday’s near break down. Monday morning I was sitting in the principal’s office with one English teacher. I told her I only wanted to work with two teachers to start with and then maybe go up to three.  School Number 2 has five English teachers. They all want me to come to every one of their classes. The Ministry of Education gave me instructions to work with no more than three teachers. Even if I wanted to, there is literally no possible way for me to go to all the classes of five full time teachers. I am very bad at saying no, so I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday going to every class I was asked to with every teacher who asked me to go. 

The school is half Russian with a high Armenian population, so I have three languages I don’t understand being spoken around me and no organization or directions as to my job responsibilities.  Most of the English teachers seem to know what they are saying when they are teaching, but it is obvious they have memorized scripts because they all have a hard time carrying on a very basic conversation with me. 

Thursday I told the two teachers who work in the Georgian school that I wanted to work with them. I asked them if I could write down their schedules.  They both agreed.  I asked them which one wanted me to go to what class when they overlap. They said I could choose.  I left school on Thursday feeling like maybe I had made a huge step: I had a basic idea of the schedule I wanted and the teachers I wanted to work with were happy with it.

            Friday morning, I came in and went to a few classes. I was starting to feel comfortable in front of the class and was even starting to think about the possibility of leading a class for more than a few minutes at a time. During a break between classes, I was sitting in the teachers’ lounge when the school director came in and had someone tell me that a news crew was coming to watch me teach.  I said okay, when? I was told they would start in about 30 seconds.  I didn’t know exactly what to say or do, so I just said okay and put on a smile.

At this time, every teacher who could speak some English was trying to walk with me to class.  I was led to a class I have never been to before that had an English teacher I had no memory of meeting. I thought I had met them all.  I was handed a book I had never seen before and told to teach, while four English teachers stood in the back of the room with the news crew. 

I am told to write something on the board, to engage the kids, to look like I know what I am doing, and every time I make a tiny mistake it is pointed out to me by one of the teachers standing in the back of the class. I remained fairly well composed even though I did want to cry.  After one class I was interviewed and led to another class that was slightly less stressful because at least I had worked with the teacher, met the students one time, and even seen the textbook before.

            Someone else in the TLG program told me she saw me on the news and that I didn’t look very happy. I told her that it wasn’t the most pleasant experience for me because I didn’t know what I was doing.  I asked her if it looked like I knew what I was doing, she said she didn’t know because everything I said was dubbed over, but she thought it looked good other than I didn’t look over excited about it.  Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t look excited--because of that whole Georgian culture don’t smile without a cause thing.

            So, when I say I am called Megi I mean everyone calls me Megi. And when I say I am kind of a local celebrity, I mean me just being in the town is worth at least a few minutes on the evening news.

            

School Number 2

I know, School Number 2 is not the most creative name for a school, but at least it translates very easily. In Georgia all the schools go by numbers, every city and village has a school number one. I am not sure how many schools there are in Akhaltsikhe, but I know that there are people in the TLG program teaching at school number one and school number five, so there must be at least five. Also all the schools seem to be very close together which I don’t understand, they aren’t exactly neighborhood schools, I am not sure why students go to the school they go to.

            School number 2 is a big, old, and cold building. My original understanding was the school use to by a soviet military building, now I am not sure, maybe it was just built as a school during soviet times. Stories seem to change every time I hear them, I am not sure if it is because the people telling them speak poor English or if it is because culturally in Georgia it is accepted, and commonly practiced, to embellish stories to make them more interesting. You can see from the picture below it is a pretty big building, it looks boring from the outside, when you get up closer you can see the school has been graffitied with the names of American rappers such as Akon and Eminime. The front stairs of the school are all lose or seem like they crumbling, the outside of the building doesn’t look that bad, but it certainly is not a picture of an ideal school.

(School Number 2)

            When you walk in to school number 2 you are welcomed by a large, cold, dilapidated, empty, and dark corridor, if there were not so many people running in to the building it would be easy to believe from the hall that the building had been abandoned for years. Some classrooms are in much better shape then others. You can see that the school use to have electric lights in every room and central heat. I was told they stopped using the central heat when it froze so hard that everything broke. Now every room has a wood burning stove, which does a good job of keeping the rooms warm as long as no one opens the door to the hall for to long and it has less parts to break then central heat. Some rooms do have light bulbs in them but I have never seen one on, most rooms just have wires hanging from the ceiling where lights use to belong.  Almost every classroom has the wood floor boards coming up in at least one place to reveal the concrete beneath, in some rooms the missing wood has been replaced with concrete in what I assume is an attempt to level the floor. Most the desks and chairs are broken in some way or another. Many of the chairs don’t have backs and if you lean to hard on some tables they fall over.

            Despite the seemingly grim picture I have attempted to paint you of school number 2 it is a happy place. You can hear children laughing and screams of joy in the hall. The kids don’t have recess time but every 45 minutes they have a 5 minute break where they run up and down the halls. This time is chaotic and there is very little care from the teachers about what happens. School 2 is also unique compared to the other schools in Akhaltsikhe because it is both a Georgian and a Russian school. The Russian and Georgian sector don’t really mix it is kind of like 2 schools in one building. I am not sure how many students school 2 has because first I was told 250 then I was told there are 300 students in the Russian sector alone. The teachers at School 2 all want to be my friend, but the students are what made me fall in love with the school almost instantly. 

Welcome to Akhaltsikhe

I now live in Akhaltsikhe, which is the capitol of the Samckhe Javakheti region of Georgia. I can write that down, but please don't ask me to say it.  

Last Friday all the families and school directors came to Tbilisi to take their new English speaking “teachers” home. I put teachers in quotes because many of us only have about 2 or 3 hours of training on teaching and little to no classroom experience. I am not sure how much my experience making preschools run around to wear them out counts as real teaching experience. I could tell right away I like my  host mom, she presents herself in a way that is easy to like. The first question she had someone ask me was if I smoke. She seemed happy when I said no. The next question she asked was if I eat meat and drink red wine. I said yes to both and she kissed me.

 From the hotel we piled in to a mini bus, called a Marshutca in Georgian, with my host mother, little sister, three other TLG volunteers and their host families and took off driving about halfway across the country.  We stopped at a restaurant were we had traditional Georgian Khinkali, which are meat filled dumplings. They are full of flavor and juice. You have to eat Khinkali with your hands, which isn’t an easy or neat task. We non-native Georgian’s required piles of napkins and I personally had the meat fall out a few times so I ate that with a fork. At the restaurant we also had several toast I didn’t understand and sipped on some Georgian red wine. Georgia produces over 200 kinds of wine, and they call themselves the birthplace of wine. All the wine I have had is very sweet and has a strong flavor, I like it, but it requires a bit of a sweet tooth. During our drive we passed many people who were herding their animals. We also passed what to me looked like trailer parks type neighborhoods, I was told they are refugee camps for people who left Russia due to the wars between Russia and Georgia, or at least that was our understanding, the language barrier causes constant misunderstandings. 

My new home is a lovely place. It is in the heart of Akhaltsikhe, which is a city of about 60,000 people. When I arrived here I was greeted by my new host brothers and grandmother, and what I believe is the mother’s cousin and her son, who also live in Akhaltsikhe. We has Khachapuri which is another loved and traditional Georgian food, it is bread with a salty cheese baked in to it. The house I live in is attached to my host mother’s furniture store on a main street. I was pleasantly pleased when I learned I had running water AND a western toilet. 

(Pictures of My Room)

Training for a Unique Life Experience

Life at my parents’ house is far from shabby in fact it’s very nice, but a five star hotel in any country is an upgrade.  Every morning we had 4 tables of scrumptious food spread before us, and a great view of the city. Dinner and lunch consisted of 3 courses of delicious and beautifully plated food.  The rooms were nice and the water pressure in the shower made it feel like you were standing under a waterfall.  If you are ever in Tbilisi and you don’t want to give up your western comforts, money isn’t an issue, and you don’t care about not being down town I would recommend the Sheraton, but that is a lot of ifs. 

(the hotel)

(typical dessert)

(view from breakfast)

            The days consisted of Georgian lesson’s in the morning and culture lessons in the afternoon. Language has always been hard for me; I had difficultly speaking English when I was little when it was all around me.  The Georgian langue has 36 letters, which sounds like it would be harder then English, but those 36 letters always make the same sound.  The thing that is hard about the 36 letters is I can’t hear the difference between some of them and others I can’t say, they have one letter that phonetically we would spell out QKH, it sounds like a hacking throat clearing sound to me.  I almost have the alphabet down, I just can’t speak and my vocabulary is limited, hopefully total submersion will help me distinguish the difference between sounds like a hard t and a soft t.

 Culture class was not exactly what I expected from a title like culture class we spent most the time learning about culture shock and being told not to reject things we don’t understand.  We did learn some interesting things in class, like not to smile with out a reason, and the word boy/girl friend doesn’t translate.  You can smile if you are happy and able to explain what is making you happy, if you smile at a stranger it is taken as an invitation to talk to you and girls are not suppose to smile at guys unless they want to date them. As I said girl/boy friend doesn’t translate, you are dating someone with the intention of marrying him or her in a pretty short time, or it’s not really culturally accepted.  

Overall training was a good experience but I didn’t feel like I left the U.S.. It was like joining a club about Georgia, with a higher then average number of people speaking with British and Australian accents. 

The Trip

            I left my parents comfortable home with all the modern comforts I could dream of on Friday afternoon. Both of my parents took the afternoon off of work to take me to the airport.  The adventure started at the check in counter.  While checking in the lady working for the airlines refused to give me a boarding pass, because I didn’t have a visa to stay in Georgia for over a year.  I explained that I was coming back in June, but she said my word was not good enough with an open ticket. I showed her my contract that said I was working for the Georgian government and she still didn’t feel that it was good enough. She went to talk to her supervisor and told me multiple times that she was not going to lose her job over me. My mom kept telling me to calm down, but I was staying pretty calm, I was just frustrated. After standing at the ticket counter for over an hour with both my parents trying to help me, calls to the Georgian Embassy, me almost completely breaking down, and my mom having to walk away out of anger the women gave me a ticket and told me she would let me get on the first flight, but to be prepared to turn around in Amsterdam.  I left the counter about 35 minutes before take off of an international flight at a pretty big airport.  My parents walked me as far as they could with out tickets. My dad gave me a hug and told me he loved me, my mom gave me a hug and told me not to cry, then told me I didn’t really have to get on the plane if I didn’t want to. I told her I wanted to go, gave her another hug and said good-bye.  Looking at my watch in the security line I questioned if I would make it but I did.

I was one of the last people on the plane I got a great aisle seat in an exit row.  I was to the point of a harder more expensive return if I don’t carry through my contract.  The plane ride was incredibly uneventful.  I landed in Amsterdam ahead of schedule and had a 4-hour lay over to occupy.

In Amsterdam I met other people in the same program. I wandered around the airport with someone else who happens to live in Virginia too, we looked for a cheap authentic Dutch experience but we couldn’t find anything practical.  We saw many tulips, clogs, and expensive cheeses but settled on conversation for entertainment. When I checked in at the KLM counter to get on a Georgian Airways plane I was not at all surprised that I didn’t have issues with my lack of visa because the law clearly states you don’t need one if you’re an American citizen staying less then a year. Yes, I am still mad at the lady who works for United Airlines who almost made me cry. I met several more people in the Teach and Learn with Georgia (TLG) program by the gate to go to Tbilisi, the capitol of Georgia and the only city with a large commercial airport.

The plane ride from Amsterdam to Tbilisi was unlike any other plane ride I have been on. I tried to count the number of plane rides I have been on, I gave up but know it’s well over a 100 if you count each leg of every trip. The plane it’s self looked nicer then I actually expected. It was the warm stale air in the plane that was a slight turn off, but still not bad. Nothing was really bad; I am not use to a plane full of flies and feeling like you are constantly swatting them away.  I am also not use to people taking out a bottle of liquor singing and passing it around, or someone turning on music and dancing up and down the aisle. I thought this was a taste of what to expect once in Georgia. 

Once we landed we filed off the plane and went through customs. I have not done extensive international travel but it was far simpler then what I imagine is your typical customs checks. I spoke no Georgian; I don’t know if the agent spoke any English. I handed her my passport and smiled she smiled back, stamped it and took my picture.  She probably scanned it or something, but I missed it. There was no declaration of what I was brining in to the country. 

After customs we went down to baggage claim. We were greeted, as we were told was possible, by TV camera crews who didn’t really try to talk to us but were just there.  We then met the very friendly staff of TLG as promised. After getting our nametags we crowded in to mini buses and took off to the place where we would have training.  None off knew before we landed where we were going for training, There was not a single complaint from us when we showed up at the Sheraton in Tbilisi, I think we can all handle a 5 star hotel for 5 days. 

Why I am Doing What I Do

If you can’t tell by the Title, I am in Georgia. No, not the U.S. state, but the country. Georgia is located between Turkey and Russia, it is a former Soviet State, but does not have a good relationships with Russia today.  I am here, as a volunteer, to teach English in the public school systems through a program called Learn and Teach with Georgia (TLG). The program was started in March of this year and the first teachers arrived in late summer it is run by Georgia’s Ministry of Education and Science (MES).  I know that background stuff is a little boring but it kind of explains why I am here.

 A year ago I was certain I wanted to be a teacher and had started working on classes I need in order to get certified, then I realized I am not sure what I want to do and I feel like I want to live a lot more before I settle in to anything. I knew I wanted the opportunity to live in a country other then the U.S. and I wanted more teaching experience before committing to a grad school program. At first I was thinking about going to Korea, because they employ a high number of native English speakers to teach in both public schools and private academies. I had taken steps towards going to Korea when I learned about the Learn and Teach with Georgia program, but I still thought I wanted to go to Korea.  I am not sure when or why my mind changed from getting paid well to teach in Korea to volunteering to teach in Georgia.  But what I wanted didn’t change, to live in a new country and to gain teaching experience.