Roller Coaster of the Caucasus.

The Hygeine Poster Contest Award Ceremony is taking longer to accomplish than I thought it would.  Reasons?

1) Everyone at school has gone through their cycle of being sick for a week or so.  Including both my counterparts and the teacher I was doing the contest with, so last week was especially fun.  Cough.
2) It's Georgia.

So, I'll give you a draft I found lurking in my backlog (because much of it is still relevant/the same old), and prep another blog post later this week about what's been going on.

First order of business:  Giving Thanks.

I gave thanks multiple times this year.

• Once, I guess, at the All Vol conference in a huuuumongo group.  That was more of a period of not sleeping and drinking too much (every night.. not used to this) and talking about ridiculous things and philosophy and whatever else is a topic of great importance at 2 in the morning.

• Second Thanksgiving: I baked two pumpkin pies in the pechi this year.  One I shared with the 8th graders after they wrote an e-mail to my World Wise Schools correspondent about how they celebrate Christmas and New Year and Giorgoba.  The other I sent to the teachers lounge for them to enjoy while I sped off to Thanksgiving number three...

• in Tbilisi.  Good conversation, good people, good mood, good food.  Not all my axloblebi, but a couple good friends (one who's a good cook) and a good group of people and a 13 kilo turkey, not to mention an awesome girl who shares an odd kinship with me.

• Last Thanksgiving this year: in Telavi.  I still didn't get to help make pies, but Jeff and Tina helped me make PEANUT BUTTER (!!!!) and I helped Barb make pumpkin bread with a little of the leftover pumpkin.  The peanut butter is delicious, albeit a little... dry.  But it's chunky and au naturale, baby!  And not bad with apples from the backyard. (as long as I cut out the bad parts.  The apples are au naturale, too.)  But, anyways, it goes without saying that the people who were in Telavi are awesome people and a good time was had, despite faking sick on the marsh there so I didn't make people mad for having to pee, and my typical moody self flaring up, and not being able to shower. ("It takes a lot of money to heat the gas.  If you can be quick, go ahead.  But everyone will want to shower.  I'm sure you understand.")

 Things that annoy me:

Working seemingly all the time but never really having anything to show for it.  It's not like I have THAT MANY hours at school or a million (really, any) afterschool clubs (I guess the computer training counts) or other projects or keep in touch with friends back home or other volunteers.  Where does my time go?

Advice from "experts":

•  "You run on the stadium, right?  You should breathe only through your mouth when you run.  I'm a sportsman.  Just so you know."
• "Your hands, they're so dry!  You should use special lotion.  It's in drugstores.  It's got glycerin in it.  Then wear gloves all the time."
• "You should stay here for the rest of your life.  Don't you like Georgia?  She doesn't want to stay.  That means she doesn't like Georgia.  If she did, she would stay.

/end backlog

I think I will start a blog logging only the 3 things I'm thankful for each day.  That way, when my notebook runs out (both the paper one and the one I'm typing on, I guess) it'll exist somewhere.  Kinda like myself.

Now, back to work!  I asked my director for the off--and the initial reason, being a guest trainer elsewhere, has been (surprise!) postponed.  I'm still taking the personal day to get some work done, because heaven knows I need it!

The little things.

ese igi,

During the glorious vacation described in the previous post, I realized my depressing tendency to be depressive all the time, and I got-- well, you know.  It's a cycle.

So, to combat the Lamenting Linda syndrome, I decided to write each day in my little notebook (gift from the English teacher I don't work with anymore) 3 things I'm thankful for from that day.  I'd like to start either another blog or maybe twitter or something to keep track of these updates.  I haven't decided yet.  But, bottom line is, I have been feeling better about things.  Also making goals helps.  Stress eating bread and honey and not exercising does not.

Not that this time of the year has been the greatest time of year for me before.  As the one-year anniversary of my last and closest grandparent not being alive came and went, I found myself having a terrible week (at least I knew, in part, why) and escaped to my friend's place in the next town this weekend, and I was telling her that I'm going to buy some flowers when I get back and go visit Grandma's grave, because I haven't physically gotten to say goodbye yet, and the same thing happens to my friend one year later, when I just so happened to be there talking to her about my grandma.


In other news, I'm going to go to school tomorrow to work on the computers with Ana.  We need to fix them up for the technology training that's going on now.  Well, we didn't have this week because we had a SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!

Now, I know what you're thinking, Iowans.  No, snow days here do not consist of waking up at 5 in the morning and listening to the radio, praying that enough snow will dump before the deadline for the supervisor to make the call that the roads would be too dangerous for school buses to make the journey.  Think without the waking up early, without the warmth, without the planning ahead of time, and without knowing that school will be canceled until right after 1st lesson happens.  BUT!!! My Georgian snow day still consisted of making snowmen (and women) and chilling out with friends.

And I know what you're thinking, PCVs in the Greater Caucasus.  You don't have shortened classes anyway, because of heat/kids not coming/sickness/whatever excuse they're using today?  No, because our school has hot-water-pipe heating that's firewood fueled, and it's actually on ALL day until people want to leave.  Amazing, huh?

We also, thanks to Appropriate Projects, have 4 places with running water in our school.  I'll post more appropriately on that later, with the results of the currently underway hygiene poster contest.


Anyway, I'll leave you with a ponder pondered by one of my students while learning the word "thirty":
"Paula Mas and Magda Mas, why is there no "th" in Georgian?"
Most schools in this country teach kids how to memorize, not how to think.
Oh, and he's 9 years old.