AAAAAAAA!!!

So, school started.

1st day: Not bad. I gave a speech, there was a big party/celebration/opener thing with dancing and singing and poems. Because of schedule distribution and general chaos, I only got to watch one class, which was my host sister's 10th form class. There's only 8 of them, and they were pretty well behaved as a result. No text books yet, so my counterpart had to sort of wing a lesson about summer vacations.

2nd day: I could have died. My counterpart had to take her granddaughter to the hospital, and apparently the school knew but didn't tell me. This = problem because 1) I'm not trained to teach by myself, and 2) I'm not supposed to be teaching the first week anyway, just watching. So the first class comes in, the 10th form with my host sister again, and I made a half-attempt to get them to play the name game. To their credit, they were very patient. THEN... 7th form. If you've ever seen on tv when there's an unruly class with a substitute, that was it to a tee. They were screaming and beating eachother with notebooks and throwing pens and OH MY GOSH and they didn't speak enough English to even know what I was saying long enough for me to tell them to BE QUIET FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, but eventually that class ended, as all classes do. As the 11th form class filed in, I called my program manager, who called the principal and within 10 minutes, I had been replaced by an actual teacher. In later situations, I'll be informed when my counterpart will be absent, and on those days told not to come in.

Perhaps on the third day, all will be right with the world. I note here that I only have to teach 15 hours, and my counterpart has 22 hours which includes 4 hours of that 7th form class... perhaps that's where some hour-cutting could take place on my part...

Other than that, things are great. Honestly, having been a waitress off and on for 6 years, I've been way more stressed out in other work situations than I was today. I do look forward to when the students and I have gotten used to each other and when I'm able to make my teaching chops. Until then, I'm hoping my counterpart will be able to come in tomorrow.

By the way... is there anyone who can send Halloween candy for my students? Yes, if it gets here late, I will eat it. And if there's more than I need, I will eat it. The thing is that they don't have a lot of American candy here in bite-sized form, and I'd like to do something fun for Halloween. Mom sent a lot of little presents, so there's no need for those. But seriously. And it could be like one bag in a box, so shipping wouldn't be that much... we have here Snickers and M&Ms and Twix, but not much else. I was thinking like Starburst, Jolly Ranchers, Hershey kisses, Reese's cups, things that are individually wrapped. Let me know! No pressure, just because I'm a lonely volunteer, 8,000 miles away in a foreign country, with little money and no family...

Still not doing anything

But school starts tomorrow! I'll be watching classes for a week (and giving a speech on Monday... eep), and then I'll pick up my role as Ms. Jennifer, teacher extraordinaire. Actually, I'd accept a role as Ms. Jennifer, teacher adequate if it comes down to it. No sense in burning out early.

Fyi, the house is still said to be getting internet soon, but in the meanwhile, they're installing a shower with radio and building a new bathroom for the jacuzzi. Yes, jacuzzi; why wouldn't my Peace Corps home have a jacuzzi? Satellite tv won't be here till November, so it's just Georgian and Russian tv on the flatscreen till then. You know how it is.

If I think of anything else surreal, I'll post it. I guess since I'll be working soon, I'll actually be able to start writing about the volunteering and effort and improvement stuff, so that'll shine this blog up a bit.

I'm still here

Welcome to my life in Georgia, waiting for school to start. I believe the last post also had something to do with school not starting yet, but at least I had the summer camp to run and make something of myself with. For the next 11 days, I have approximately zero to do. Don't get me wrong, I've been signing up for future things like crazy, but NOTHING is going on right now.

Among the future things: FLEX program (which sends 50 Georgian kids for a yearlong study abroad in the US), a run/walk for cancer awareness in Kutaisi, Georgian lessons for myself, the search for viable book donors for our school library... that's about it, I guess, but it'll equal out to a relatively full plate later. I hope.

In the meanwhile, I guess I'll have to reconcile myself to the fact that getting an internet connection in our house tomorrow will be an effort liberally appreciated through the winter...

Settling in, hunkering down

Hey all who still check, I'm in my permanent site and am an official volunteer now! Hurray! Now I settle in to do NOTHING for a month. School starts the 18th, and my sitemate and I are running a summer camp during the mornings this week, but other than that, there's been lots of reading. And visiting internet cafes (hey-- I might get DSL in my house, and then I'd have enough spare time online to start putting esoteric Georgian anecdotes here instead of perfunctory updates!). On that note, I recommend the book "1776," which I read in its entirety yesterday.

My town seems quite wealthy, which to me suggests that Peace Corps has no faith in my abilities to withstand the village life of gardens and fresh fruit and squat toilets and bucket baths that I had strangely grown attached to. On the other hand, other volunteers seem to think I'm not going to quit, an opinion which I share (though we have lost 9 or 10 by now, 4 of those to un-Georgia-related medical reasons). I had my first parasite a couple weeks ago, but aside from losing all the carbohydrate-based weight I gained from being here, I came out of it okay.

In the meantime, I'll get back to reading...

The occasional update

Hello all,

So this whole blog thing is starting pretty slowly but brace yourselves... at my permanent site, there's a slight chance that I'll have internet in my house! Yay! And there's a high chance that my newly-renovated, English-cabinet-having, computer-having, internet-ready school in my well-developed, culturally-evolved town will leave me time for ample blogging while I'm contemplating what I could possibly contribute to the community. Oh, and my counterpart teacher has worked with a volunteer in the past, so she's all up on the communicative teaching methods we're supposedly "teaching" the teachers. Guess I'll start a Rotary Club or something.

But all in all, things are still great, and training is over in less than two weeks. I'm pretty bummed that I'll have to leave the people in my training village, especially my family and the other 4 Americans, both groups of which I'm really close to. We'll see how it goes, and hopefully someday I'll update again.

Miss everybody!

Not the greatest blogger

In my defense, I would update a lot more often if it weren't so difficult to get access to my blog in this internet cafe... there's some shenanigans going on with the security that makes it so only one person in the whole room can sign into a Blogger account at a time. What a fine choice in blog hosts I have made.

What's going on? Well, we have language and TEFL training almost every day (except Sunday, hence why I am here), we have a 4th of July picnic coming up on Tuesday, in what will be our one and only day off of classes, and then August 18th, we get sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers and then get sent off to our permanent assignments. Ideally, I'll be able to update before then, but just in case, that's how it is.

You know what I'm noticing? It's a lot easier to avoid homesickness here *because* of the fact that we're so disconnected from the rest of our US friends and family (although we get free incoming phone calls, so they can call us all they want...) and the fact that we'll be here for so long. It's like our life back in the US is on pause, and we'll resume missing it only at certain times, like those winter months that Peace Corps says are big for homesickness or during the weeks leading up to a visit home (I'm still gearing toward July 2007). Of course, this could lead to issues when we get back to the US and find that our friends and family have not been on pause and that lots of things have changed, but until then, I'm happy to avoid homesickness. Not that I don't miss everybody, which I definitely do, but the Georgians are definitely hospitable and kind enough that the homesickness isn't an impairment. I could only be so lucky as to get another great host family for my permanent placement... that's really my primary concern right now.

So yeah. I'll post when I can, but if you really wanna know something, just shoot me an e-mail, and at least until permanent placement, I should be able to respond within a week, which is sweet and much better than what Peace Corps volunteers in some countries have access to...

Another airport!

I know these frquent updates must be less than interesting, but I#ll miss the internet at some point,# I#msure. We#re in vienna, about to leav e for Tbilisi (apparently pronounced 'Bilisi') and this keyboard is terrible, so I#ll go now.

At the airport

Well that sounds like the beginning of an exciting post, doesn't it? Kinda like today... how we checked out at 8 AM, sat around for two hours, rode a bus for three hours (why do staging at Philly if we're flying out of JFK? Maybe it's better... NYC staging would have consisted of me hanging out with existing New York friends instead of all this networking stuff), and now have sat around the airport for 4 hours. At 6:15, we will sit on a plane for 10 hours, have a layover in Vienna for 14 hours, sit in another plane for like 4 hours, and then hopefully Tbilisi will bring an end to the waiting. Training doesn't technically start till like Tuesday, but there's gotta be something we'll be doing... like learning the language perhaps...

On another note, I'm happy to point out that I'm way less miserable than I was when I first left for Philadelphia, and I'm actually excited to be going now. Maybe I like waiting...

Training commences

So we don't leave till tomorrow morning, but I'm thinking the whole traumatic part about leaving friends and family is over, soon to be replaced with chronic homesickness, which is hopefully more manageable. Maybe.

As a surprising turn of events, I seem to like most of the people here, which is always a plus. Everybody seems nervous, but even the general Peace Corps-based training without specific information on Georgia makes us feel a bit better. We're actually supposed to be taking a lunch break now, but it's the only time I feel like there's gonna be nobody trying to use the one computer in this giant hotel.

I don't know when I'll be able to send any more e-mails or make any calls or post on this or anything, but as default, just assume I'm okay.

Bienvenue, bienvenidos, wilkommen, etc.

You'll notice not one of the title "welcome"s is in Georgian; that could be because I can't distinguish between letters of the Georgian alphabet yet, much less speak the language. This blog's here for the benefit of you who wish to casually follow my Georgian Peace Corps adventures while you're bored at work, with the benefit of avoiding spam-my, impersonal e-mails with few relevant updates ("I still don't speak Georgian. Today it was cold.").

I hope this blog will capture your mild interest, and I promise here and now not to turn it into a publishable Peace Corps memoir when I get back.* There seems to be a market glut of those, and I think I'd only publish one if I had the notion to sell even fewer copies than Laveidem did.

I don't know how often I'll be able to update, nor where I'll be, nor much else... but I would appreciate comments on posts. Or letters. Or Swedish Fish. Or consistent access to electricity.

*Note: if something really cool happens that makes a memoir unavoidable, like me coaching the Georgian taekwondo team to world championship or becoming a star on Georgian reality TV, then this promise is null and void. I'm just saying that the likelihood of a book about "personal growth" and such is fairly minimal.