and so it begins.

well, it’s been begun for 5 months now (whoa. 5 months). but school has started! no more lazying around the house! but, alas, no more getting up at 10. the first day was wednesday the 15th and, my, what a day. there was some slight confusion with the scheduling, mostly on my part because i’m just dumb and thought it was monday.

my counterpart’s new room wasn’t quite ready yet, i.e., no chairs or desks. the other english teacher’s room is much nicer (many peace corps grants have contributed to that) but both of us have some classes at the same time so it was just one big english party! ha.

my primary counterpart (margo) didn’t show up to classes. now, she is pregnant and due in early october but i expected her (and i think our director did too) to at least come on the first day. oh well. i have been told there will be a substitute coming…eventually. until then, i’m hanging out with the other english teacher (gulico), watching her classes and we’re team teaching margo’s classes.

yesterday, i got to hold my first classes in my/our new room! it’s sparse (to say the least), but it’s home for the next 2 years. i’ve started making some posters to hang on the walls to make it at least look like a classroom instead of just an english language torture chamber (which, i’m sure, many of the students think of it as).  i’ve got 3rd, 6th, 10th, 11th and a group of 12th graders, 3 times a week, for 45 minutes each lesson. not too shabby.

the classroom in which english is spoken. sometimes. it will look cuter, i promise!

animal update: the turkeys keep getting lost. it’s really stressing my host mom out and there have a been a number of search parties called. if you see a pack/gaggle/group of 12 turkeys in your backyards, they’re ours; we have a blind chicken. according to my host mom it was not always that way; efron, the budding casanova, has figured out how to get corn from the metal bin it’s stored in: there’s a hole at the bottom; instead of going around the house, the hen and her chicks have taken to walking the halls inside the house.

the paparazzi shot of the chickens taking the short cut.

new fun fact: i’m getting better at killing mosquitoes with my bare hands. take that blood sucking monsters!

i spent my last weekend in the fabulous city of kutaisi. it’s the capital of imereti and about an hour and a half away. PLUS, it has a mcdonalds. what? yes. a mcdonalds. therefore, the city was awesome before i had a chance to visit it. i stayed with my host cousin (who, follow me now, is my host mom’s niece and lives with her aunt, my host mom’s sister, and her family). anyway, the city is fantastic. very modern, almost western european. and it was georgia’s first capital city (back before the soviets did their thing). friday was shopping day (there’s a mall…certainly not an american mall, but it’s a mall) and saturday was culture day. culture in georgia usually centers around churches…we saw 4. i’m church-ed out.

kutaisi.

bagrati. under construction.

st. giorgi's #1

st. giorgi's #2

gelati.

and those are the most recent happenings. i leave you with the funny story of the week (or how kaitlin is just dumb): i came home after school one day this week and my host dad was frying potatoes. i really wanted some crispy ones like the ones my mom bakes in the oven, but i didn’t know the georgian word for “crispy”. so, i looked it up in my handy-dandy georgian-english dictionary. now, there have been times this dictionary has been wrong. actually, on many occasions it’s been wrong. this is one of those occasions. so, i ask my host dad in georgian to please make the potatoes crispy. it turns out the word listed in the dictionary doesn’t mean crispy, it means curly. and not as in arby’s curly fries. it means curly hair. 1 order of curly hair fries please!

wish you all a happy weekend!