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.

Back to life, back to reality... (plus! Bonus: Dreams of Christmas, passed)

or Georgian reality, anyway.
I just got back from vacation!  I've experienced some interesting things here.  And it's about time I took a vacation.  I didn't leave the country my whole first year of service, which means I was home (my second one) for the holidays.  All of them.  But this time I decided to forego the supra-a-day-til-February and got outta dodge just as the holiday season began.  The adventure went thusly.

Zeimis and the Great Escape:
Befor I left, I had to oversee the Christmas "zeimi" or event that Madga and I cooked up for our kids.  All our classes participated (3,4,5,8).  You'll wish you could have seen the 3rd graders memorizing groups of sounds that, when recited, eerily resemble the first verse of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas".  You'll also wish you could have tasted the delicious homemade cutout cookies I made, complete with frosting.  But don't regret too much; you wouldn't have been able to squeeze in the room amongst the parents and other kids who talked through the whole thing.  The 4th graders' "Some people sing songs to people in hospitals or go to church," was lost in the void that is lots of Georgians attending an event.  Indeed, there was only chaos as the 5th graders raced to complete their Christmas Crossword.  The fireplace didn't make an appearance, either, due to projector impertinence.  I gave up.

At least the kids had fun singing their songs in class every day for the previous two weeks ("Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas), and the 8th graders pulled together a hilarious scene of a family prepping for Christmas (complete with a short, sunglassed Santa).  Even the weaker students shone as Georgian emcees and dancers.

The next day I was coerced into serving as the 3rd grade's "Christmas Around the World" slideshow attendant (which I'd shown their homeroom teacher how to create :] ) as well as 8th grade's zeimi's DJ, until the time of the last marshutka to Tbilisi, when I HAD to find a replacement and cut out.


Birthday bash and Christmas Eve:
One thing I didn't get cut was my hair.  Host sister-in-law said she'd cut it Thursday night but forgot.  Instead she offered to straighten in the next morning before I left.  So, with my freshly straightened mullet, I partied it out with the PCVs in Tbilisi.  We got Indian food and had drinks at the classiest bar in town.

Scene: Radisson Rooftop Lounge.
Me: I'll have a... umm... uh... White Russian!
Jeff: Oh, me too!
Waitress brings glasses.
Jeff: Umm... a White Russian has Kahlua in it.
Waitress takes glasses, brings glasses back.
Me: It's... lumpy.

Lesson learned: even if you pay out the nose for a drink, the bartender might have no idea how to make it, so you may have to spend the night stirring out the chunks.

Whatever.  We got to enjoy the lights of the most famous street in town by walking down the middle of it in the middle of the night.  And a lady at the Mariott gave us glasses for our cheap Georgian champagne, and free peanuts.  Little America knows customer service!

Christmas was cool, too, with eggnog and White Elephant gift exchange and a party at a friend's place with interesting people who work at the embassy and as Fulbrights and cool stuff like that.

Before leaving the country, Cara and I triumphantly found a French restaurant in the middle of nowhere that we'd wasted hours failing to find before.  I wasted money on some skinny jeans, contributing to my now-impending freaking out about my finances.  (They're a little too big, and the bottom button broke.  And they'd have been half price in Turkey.  Live and learn?) But "NO BUYER'S REMORSE ALLOWED!"


Istanbul (not Constantinople [unless you look on the Greek map]):
Barring a bomb threat at the Tbilisi airport when we arrived, causing us to freeze our toes off and have our flight delayed half an hour, we finally got OUT!  And what a wonderful and mysterious land we landed in!  Filled with yummy Turkish delights such as doner and hummus and Starbucks, but not real "Turkish delights"... nobody likes "Turkish delights."  They're icky.
It was also cool to be in the land of mosques.
In Georgia the culture is certainly different from America.  But in Georgia, the churches have familiar images: Jesus, Mary, and Saints (especially St. George).  In Istanbul, throughout the day, you could hear the call to prayer in Arabic ringing from the minarets everywhere you turn.  And, although you could wander into a dozen Burger Kings, you could look for a bacon cheeseburger on the menu and never find it.  Visiting the mosques is a process: as in Georgia, women must have their heads covered and are recommended to wear a skirt.  Everyone must be dressed modestly (no shorts!).  Before entering the mosque, you have to wait outside for the tourists to finish taking off their shoes and stuff them into a plastic bag to carry inside and leave a space on the ledge so that you can rush in and do the same.  Once inside, you're free to marvel.  Every millimeter is decorated with intricate geometrical patterns in blue and red and black and gold and purple and you pad along the carpet and take in every millimeter by the light of chandeliers with electric candles.

Istanbul is very tourist-welcoming, too.  In the Grand Bazaar, as you walk past the stalls you are enticed with "Yes, please, come in," "Madame," "Guttentag," as the multilingual stallowners try to guess your nationality and earn your business.  One carpet-seller in the city greeted us with an enterprising, "Let me help you spend your money!"

And the Authentic Turkish Bath we found on the nontouristy Asian side was one of those Unique Cultural Experiences, with captial letters.  We found it floundering about, asking various Turks who didn't speak English, "Hammam (bath)?" and trying to understand their pointing.  When we finally got there, we had some help from a lone French tourist, which was nice because the ladies who ran the thing didn't know English and we didn't know Turkish.  We got more than what we paid for, dumping water on ourselves until the lady scrubbed away the first layer of our skin with a loofah and instructed us, via hand motions, to keep dumping.  ...And then we got some delicious, drippy bakhlava!!

New Year's was pretty chill.  We had some drinks at a bar and then had some drinks at another bar and line danced with some Turkish dudes and watched people set off fireworks in the street.  No Cozy Bar or 17.50 lira margaritas, though, sorry Jim. <3


The 70s Come Alive:
The night train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki was pretty cool.  It was an olive green relic from the 70s, making me feel like some sort of James Bond movie reject.  But we got to hang out with an awesome girl we met at the hostel in Istanbul, who's teaching English in Slovakia and was on vacation with her mom.


The Night When Dive Hotels Didn't Make The Best Stories, Just Higher Blood Pressure.
Staying in Thessalonika was a mistake.  We walked to the hotel we'd found on hostelbookers that was near the train station.  We went up to the 4 person room.  When we opened the door, it was as if we'd just turned the key of a forgotten can of sardines, stored next to the formaldehyde in the morgue for 340 years after the plague.  And whose fault was it that we stayed there?  The poor sap who booked the room.  Cough.  So I was responsible for talking to the clerk and not getting us gypped into paying extra for two inhabitable rooms.


Athens!
The first time I went to Athens during study abroad, I thought it was a big, kinda dirty city with lots of ruins.  This time, I thought it was a medium, kinda clean city with lots of ruins.  One night, we hung out with an awesome girl we'd met at the hostel in Istanbul, gone to the Turkish baths with, and ended up taking the same train to Thessalonika and staying at the same place in Athens.  Weird!  The new Acropolis Museum was especially neat, showing the famous Parthenon in all its glory.  Well, glorified not as an exact replica but as a reconstruction, with modern, black columns and plaster casts of the incredible sculptures that adorned its roof (many of the original pieces belong to the British Museum).But a couple days of walking around and eating delicious gyros and moussaka and looking at old things, we decided to make like Spartans and get on a ship outta there.


Island Chills:
On the Blue Star Ferry to Santorini I learned what a Muster Station is, I lost many games of spades, and I resisted many urges to buy special Blue Star souvenirs from our gift shop, now open for business (every hour and a half or so).  We were then picked up by our hostel dude and driven up the volcanic island to the set for Mamma Mia!  Well, it was actually filmed on a different island, but it sure looked like it.  We rented a car and explored the island's black and red beaches, were disappointed again and again by the Greek desserts that look better than they taste, and tried to watch the sunset by the windmill in one of the eerie off-season ghost towns.  It was great!


One thing that amazed me is that we got by in all these places only using English.  Even travellers we met from Germany and France and Brazil used English with the hostel clerks and in restaurants.  But learning a little of the language goes a long way-- when I said "Kali mera!" (Good morning) to one of the street artists in Athens, he stopped me and talked to me as he made a cute metal pin with a treble clef and a heart, which he gave to me as a gift.


I didn't miss all of the holiday season when I got back to Georgia.  It was still happening, because they celebrate two Christmases and two New Years, according to the old calendar.  We had guests and supras every day the first week I got back.  Although it's a happy, celebratory time, for me it means I'm waiting for warmer weather and longer days so I can start running again and get back into shape!

Yesterday I was feeling especially bad.  There's no space of my own here where I can work without feeling like I'm imposing on Shorena's cleaning habits of sweeping and mopping the floor 2-4 times a day, and that doesn't make my hands stiff from the cold after 3 seconds of being away from the one room in the house with a pechi that's only warm sometimes because everyone leaves the door wide open.  Also everyone has been telling me that I've gained weight and my face looks fatter, multiple times even though it's obvious I'm not flattered by the comment the first time.  Thanks for the sensitivity.

So I wanted to run.  I gambled that the stadium would be free and put on my running clothes, extra-chilled.  When I got there, there were kids playing football (soccer).  They don't play football for one or two hours here, they play it until they can't see the ball in front of them.  So I was frustrated, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.  I headed the road toward the river.  Seeing the way completely soaked with mud, I thought I'd try running on the street.  Ten seconds later, I had three dogs barking and chasing after me, who didn't respond to me turning around and threatening them with a rock.  So I was done.  I fumed and took an hour-long walk.  Then I went to ANOTHER supra and had some VEGETABLES and FRUIT which compared with my past two days' food (rice and muraba, bread and butter and honey, bread and matsoni, bread and butter, pickled cabbage, and a bowl of "veggie" soup featuring potatoes and beef bits.. yum...) was a FEAST FOR A MEPE!!!!

Although I love living in Georgia, I'm looking toward the future.  I'm going through the book What Color Is Your Parachute and trying to figure out my "skills" and "abilities" and trying to see if I actually have any dreams.  I'll keep you updated.  Any advice would not be ill-taken.

So now you've gotten through this book-of-an-update!  What are you going to do now?

Please say sitting freshly showered in your nice, warm, central-heated haven with hot chocolate and a salad.  That's what I'd do, if I could.


Love!

Because everyone else is doing it.

First off, I totally believe in doing things because everyone else is.  It's a great authenticator and makes you feel good about yourself afterward, especially if the crowd mentality persuaded you to do something against your guiding principles or even just something you didn't really want to do.

From a Spanish soap: "Paula is not a happy person, she is a depressive person." D :  And I thought there was no truth in these stupid things!

Although I'm working for change.  Little by little.  I keep thinking about how our habits really are who we are, because if we do something enough times, we and others abstract it into a permanent personality trait.  Continuity of self is an interesting concept, but I don't quite buy it.  Thus, it's a hard battle to change who I have been, because the more something has been built into me, the more likely I am to do it in the future.  In other words, the more times in the past I get frustrated and put myself in a foul mood and don't enjoy a day, the harder it is to simply tell myself to be in a good mood, because it's probably not a big deal anyway, and people don't actually find me annoying (except when I'm in a bad mood.  oops.).

Also, it's hard not to worry about the future when you don't know what you enjoy doing most of all.  Hm.  Even thinking about it makes me want to curl up into a ball and ignore the rest of the world for the rest of my life.

Maybe I can get paid for being a Renaissance Woman.  Alex, that totally has already worked out for you, right?  <_<


In current events, I got to be in the same room as the Secretary of State yesterday for like 15 minutes after being locked in that same room for like an hour and being free to move between that room and the hall for about 2.  WIN!

Also, it was 50 degrees Celsius yesterday.  For those of you too lazy to get out your converters, that's 122 degrees Fahrenheit.  On top of that, we didn't have water for a couple days.  Fun.  And good smelling!

At least the Fourth was filled with fun and freedom. I got to watch the Georgian girls softball team play some 'mericans.  Others have better accounts of how intense this was, but let me say they're the only softball team in the country.  And the victory was an easy one.  About as easy as learning how to conjugate the verb "bring" in Georgian, taking into account giver, receiver, tense, and whether the object being brought is alive or not.  After the game was delish salad and Turkish coffee and Hearts at the Bavarian place.

Much traveling has been going down to Borjomi and back again these past few weeks, one of which included a stay at an "orphanage," many which included walks in Borjomi Spring Park, and all of which made me want to stay there in the relatively cool temperatures and mosquitoless nights.  One also included a four-hour train ride from Borjomi to Tbilisi, after which I tried to meet up with partiers celebrating a volunteer's birthday.  When I got off the metro, feeling pretty low after anticlimactic events of the weekend, I pulled out my phone to ask about the location of the bar everyone was at that I'd never been to and didn't remember the name of, only to discover that it had died.  Fantastic.  I walked around in a tizzy, weighing the option of going back to the hostel before the public transportation stopped going for the night, and finally asked the clerk at the local Populi supermarket if they had a charging station (found at some of them).  Failing that, she arranged for her coworker to charge it on her personal charger for five minutes while I waited at a table with a sketchy Georgian dude.  I finally met up with the others, and went for a stress-shwarma run.  There, when I ranted to a curious young Georgian couple about the ludicrousness of conjugating the verb "to call", they bought me my shwarma!  Win!  Also hanging out with the birthday girl was pretty sweet.

With a cross-Georgian and Czech Republic trek with the parents coming up, it's pretty safe to say I'm PUMPED.  Can't wait to see you, mommy and daddy. <3  Modit!!!

Okay, off to do my second attempt at yoga at the stadium.  First time, last week: no constituents, so I left.  This time, I'm doin' it, whether other people are interested or not.  Gotta keep my weird American status, somehow ya know?

Peace!

Have you ever peed on a bee? And other tales of a Georgian summer.

Aaaand it's like a week later again and I never finished my blog post.  But I think that's an accurate representation of what I've been feeling lately: bits and pieces cobbled together, seeing how long I can hold out before going to the bazari again for a 40 tetri screw (since I'm missing a few of those) to make me last for a few more weeks.

So it goes.

Speaking of which, went to a samdzimare (wake) this month for the 10th grade homeroom teacher's husband.  He was only like 60.  I also helped with food prep for the neighbor guy who died a week later, former friend of my host grandpa and grandpa one of my 5th graders (and probably one of my 4th graders?)

To clarify: when I say I got robbed at the Nike store, I'm referring to the criminally high price.  No actual forceful taking of money by guns has happened to me.

The "job shadowing" last weekend went okay.  I feel like I really live up to being called "Mas" after Friday: 5% CP support
+ 0% CP informing on where students are in book ever
+ 30% concrete followed lesson plan
+ 100+° F weather.

You can imagine how much learning went on.  The one redeemable thing from the lesson, which featured an attempted future-with-will fortune-teller roleplay:
6th grade boy: "Will I be womens' liker?"

Good things from the visit include:

• pizza, brownies, and ice cream cake.  For breakfast.
• wine tasting.
• chillin' and morale talk on Ilia's Gora (hill).
• Polish horseshoes in the Kwa park.

Not Desirable Things Ever include:

• Truth or Dare
• Bustin' a move with the seniors on their banqeti (banquet) on Friday and hurtin' my left foot.  It's hurt for about a week and a half.  Daily ibuprophen, muscle gel, and an ankle brace later, I think I'm finally ready to run again.

In other news:

The students of this village are incredibly talented, dramawise.  4th graders had a "zeimi" (event) for their graduation today, which was cute.  And we had a "kaveini", sort of like a variety show, in Kvareli a couple Thursdays ago.  Bless the 10th graders' hearts, they don't study English worth a damn, but their comedic timing is amazing.  The first schools' piece was also better than Kvareli me-2 skola and Shilda, which was mainly a couple-kid-spotlight with the rest just there.  Which goes to show how things go down here:  One or two star pupils, who know all the answers in two seconds, are encouraged and participate in the lesson, and to hell with the rest of them.  The strong get stronger, the weak get weaker, and the teachers wonder why they're cursed with stupid children.  Betcha can't resolve that apparent discrepancy.

Sorry, I'm starting to try to study for the GRE.  Can ya tell?  I'm thinking maybe linguistics, something about how we use different language for stories, aka we have some kind of a "storytelling mode."  You can tell when someone's gonna launch into a long-winded anecdote.  Usually even if you don't know the language they're speaking.  I think that's cool.  So I wonder if there's something universal to it; tribes used to have master storytellers and stuff.  And today there are still people in every neck of the woods who haz l33t yarn-spinnin' 5killz (and those who don't).  Hmm.

Also, health translator sounds like something I could get into.  That or maybe Fulbright.  Or maybe going back to school for nursing.  Or maybe going to school for computer things.  Or maybe just being a student for life.

I'm interested in health, but I'm kind of feeling sickly all over.  Gimp ankle, sore throat, digestive things, mosquito bites complementing my tattoo and everywhere, and just a general feeling of blah.  I think it's the I've-just-spent-a-whole-year-in-Georgia-and-what-am-I-gonna-do-this-summer blues.

Speaking of which, I've finally let it slip to my host mom and counterpart teacher that I've got a tattoo.  Responses varied from "People have those in the capital and not here, but don't worry about hiding it," to "Hah!  And the older teachers think you have ankle problems because you always wear socks or tights."

I'm gonna keep wearing socks to school because it's a professional setting (relatively speaking) and you can't show off tattoos in the states in professional settings, either, generally.  But walking around the village is fair game.

Speaking of which, I'm pretty much done being cordial to everyone I meet.  Whoops.  While at first conversations like the following are charming:

Georgian: Are you Georgian?

Me: No. I'm American

Georgian: Do you understand Georgian?

Me: A little.  I'm learning.

Georgian: Maladets (Good job, in Russian.)  Why are you going to Akhalsopeli?

Me: I live there.  I work as a volunteer; I teach English to children.

Georgian: Wow.  How much is your salary?

Me: I get a stipend, for my host family.

Georgian: You should get married and stay here.

etc....

Now, they go more like this:

Georgian: Are you Georgian?

Me: No.

Georgian: Do you understand Georgian?

Me: (NO. I CLEARLY AM NOT RESPONDING TO YOU RIGHT NOW.) Yes, I know what's necessary.

Georgian: Maladets.  Where are you from?

Me: The U.S.

Georgian: Ah.  You should marry a Georgian.

Me: (Because that's the only goal one should have in life.  Especially foreign women here.) Nope, not interested.

Georgian: You don't like Georgian men?

Me: (I LOVE misogynist drunkards who can't pour a glass of water for themselves.) I'm not interested.

Georgian: (clearly offended) Oh, be careful what you say!

Me: (WHY are you offended?) I'm not interested in Georgian OR American men.

Georgian: (astonished) Well, how old are you?

Me: 22.  I have plenty of time.

Georgian: Oh, how small! (Her clock is a-tickin'.  She'd better get on that before her childbearing years are over.)

Why are you going to Akhalsopeli?

Me: I'm going home.

Georgian: You live in Akhalsopeli?!

Me: Yep.

Georgian: What do you do?  Teach?

Me: Yeah, English, to children. (When they show up.  With one out of two partner teachers.)

Georgian: What's your sal-?

Me: (REALLY?) I'm a volunteer.

Georgian: -ary. But you have to have money.  How much do you get?

Me: (PLEASE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!)

You get the picture.  I'd like to be a good diplomat, but unlike Cara, who has the patience of a rock, I just don't have it in me anymore.  So maybe a future in foreign relations isn't for me.  Fair enough.

I know I'm leaving you with a novel, but I have one more item of disgust to be discussed--  the title of this post.

I do not want to find out what happens if you pee on a bee, but I am scared to death that I will be privy to this knowledge by the time the summer's over.  Seriously, guys, what is so tantalizing about our outhouse that you have to be buzzing around from early in the morning 'til the sun don't shine, filling me with fears of stings in the place of the same?  I am trying my best to not upset you, so please don't get riled up if I make a mistake.  I'm not perfect.

Love, Paula.

Top 10 Ways to Occupy Oneself During Medical Leave.

10. Sleep.
Although this is difficult with a gash on back of your head and lovely bruises on both elbows and your gluteus growingevermoremaximusingeorgicus.

9. Read.
This improves your morale when you think, "Wow, Vanya Denisovich was thankful at the end of HIS day, and I haven't frozen my butt in Siberia slathering mortar on concrete blocks for 6 oz. of bread lately."
Also may build your desire to go to India after service (sans the joining-the-Indian-mafia bit).

8. Eat.
Compounding on last reason.  However, remember to tell the hostess that you don't like meat (lest you get meat and noodle soup and chicken sticks for lunch), and don't try to go out for dinner with visiting PCVs, as this is a stern no-no.

7. Catch up with people back home.
Lots of get wells for you guys who are concurrently recovering from surgeries and various ailments.  And it's sweet to hear you're doing things like learning knitting and working at book publishing companies and having senior recitals and jazz.  Also, BIG thanks to Kayleigh for my new theme song.

6. Waste time on the Interwebs.
The final frontier knows no bounds.

5. Listen to some new music.
Kyle would approve, and Steven Flaherty would be proud. (?)

4. Resolve to demand dance lessons.
Time to take a stand against the winter blues and that gluteous growingevermoremaximus.

3. Take warm showers.
Neck down or full body, enjoy it while it lasts.  Also the sit down toilet, now only seconds away from your bed!  Also central heat, when it doesn't go out for some unknown reason.

2. Reassure Akhalsopelians.
I'm okay; I'll be back Tuesday; yes, I'm taking medicine; I'd love to go walking with you when I get back; and thanks for the wish to find big and nice love in life.

1. Thank those who are that big and nice love.
Chemebi.  You know who you are.  Happy Valentine's Day, guys.