Sunday school

We had school today. While I resent that, it was mitigated by the fact that almost no one showed up and we got to leave 2 hours early. I can't say that if I were in the US, I would have gone to school, so I don't hold it against the students. I'll state publicly that I do hold it against the teachers who didn't go, since I had to race back home after a funeral in my training village to be able to make it to school yesterday, while most teachers live within 20 minutes' walking distance. Perhaps this is irrational of me, especially since everyone knew in advance that nobody would be there. I stick by my irrationality.

Finally, I have work to do! Other than cranking up the communicative activities in class (which about doubles the planning time), we had an all-volunteer meeting last weekend in Tbilisi where all the secondary projects were handed down to G6s, so now I have responsiblities! Yay! My favorite responsiblity is as Director of the Writing Olympics in Georgia, which doesn't entail as much stress and work as director of GLOW or Eco Camp, I don't think, but seeing as my school wants the English department to put on Fiddler on the Roof next spring, and they want to see me take Georgian dance lessons, and I'm on the application committee for GLOW, and I'll be contributing content to the Alternative Handbook, and running a couple sessions for Teacher Training... I think I'm set for now.

I saw two death events in Georgia recently: a funeral and a tslis tavi ("year's beginning"). The funeral is pretty self-explanatory, though there's one difference that shows up at both events: Georgians mourn loudly, wailing and yelling at their dead relatives. It's very painful to hear, but it's a little easier when you see some hints that it's partially out of ritual that they do this; the grief is genuine, of course, but it seems to be part of your duty to the other attendees to say as much as you can as a family member of the dead. Overheard as said by mourners:

"You lied to me! You said you'd throw me a party on my birthday!" (her father died the day before her birthday)
"Why did you leave me, little brother?!"
"This is your fault! The doctor told you!"

On a lighter note, the tslis tavi begins at the grave with this kind of mourning, but it marks the end of the mourning period for the family, so by the end, everyone moves on to a supra with cakes, just like the family should move on. Seeing as I spend much of my time in a rich town drinking Coca-Cola and watching Russian MTV, I was fascinated to see something so genuinely cultural... though let's rephrase that. All the travel books say that too many travelers think of culture as the ancient ritual and customs of a society which is being ruined or erased by Westernization or modernization, when actually those are just parts of a changing culture. So watching "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake is a part of Georgian culture. Or so they say.

I'm going to Turkey for New Year's! The hostel reservations are still a headache, but we know that we (me, Heidi, Nicholas, Van) will be flying to Izmir and then later going to Istanbul. Sounds like awesome. I may write something about it here; I may forget for weeks and then write a sentence of summary later.

How's that for a post? I'd do this more often if school were cut short every day...

Midterms!

Not for you, of course. If you're at the age where you take midterms, you're probably done. My younguns took their midterms last week, and it was the worst day I've had in Georgia, mostly due to rampant cheatery. I could have done without that. The following should be read in a deeply menacing tone: It won't happen again.

It's cold again. I kinda expected that would happen, as it seems to every year, but it was really warm last week and then all of a sudden this afternoon I had to bust out my next level of coat. Gotta save the big poofy down coat for whiteout conditions.

In other news, I'm out of clothes. Here's the timeline--

12 days ago: Requested to wash clothes by hand; rejected because following day, washing machine was to be installed

9 days ago: Washing machine installed

7 days ago: Family realizes that they have lost the English instructions and cannot read the Russian ones very well. This would not be a problem if this were a normal washing machine, but it is not. It has about 10,000 buttons and is side-loading, though I have the feeling that it's a simple matter of putting it on one setting and leaving it there for the rest of its existence.

2 days ago: I ran out of clothes. Fortunately, it was pouring rain on my way home from a supra, and the outfit I was wearing was cleaned that way. Wore my host sister's clothes as mine dried.

Today: Am attempting to find English instructions on a German web page.

We'll see how it goes.