Two Weeks Notice

Thus begins the countdown of goodbye and farewell songs.

Well, I guess I don’t have to give two weeks notice, they know when I’m leaving, but yes, today is two weeks from my last day at school and in the village.  Insert the obligatory ” I can’t believe it’s time to go home already…” bit here.  Soon I’ll be back to the states doing who knows what to earn a living.  Will I be back on the road again next year, ex-patting it up.  Will I convince my friends to join me this time.  I don’t have those answers.  I’ve applied to a few jobs but haven’t heard back from anywhere yet, typical American job market.  Remember the days of being able to get a job just because you had a degree?  Yeah, me neither, but my parents do.  Should I go for a PhD for funsies?  I admit I miss school, a dissertation is such a huge thing though.  I have a hard enough time just trying to entertain you folks less than 1000 words at a time.  Only time will tell.

I have bad news however, the talent show is dying.  Many kids signed up but then after a few days they started crossing their names off the list.  I asked them why.  Peer pressure.  Some other kids were laughing at them for putting their names up.  How sad is that.  Kids making fun of other kids because they have no talent to share.  I’m trying to get the kids back into it, but have had no success so far.  I’m incredibly irritated that this has happened.  I guess children are the same all over the world.  I hope if I ever become a parent I can teach my kids that fitting in isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Sure there are a few societal norms that we should follow, but I could definitely go for less than most people want to push on others.

One societal norm I wish was bigger here was a little more regularity in bathing.  I hate getting on a marshutka here because I know the smelly guy is going to sit by me.  I don’t know why, but it happens without fail.  Usually I’m just sitting rocking to some tunes with my eyes closed, and then I get a whiff.  I open my eyes to see the man looking straight at me, coming for me with his odoriferous aura trailing him.  I would close my eyes again but alas, that only serves to make my sense of smell stronger.  Actually, I know exactly why I always get stuck with the smelly guy.  It’s because I’m the foreigner.  No one wants to sit next to the foreigner on the marshutka.  Everyone wants to stare at the foreigner, but that is hard to do without being just completely and obviously rude while next to me.  And what would we talk about?  I’m sure more of them know more English than they let on, but while the whole marshutka may laugh at a joke the driver makes, I’m stuck there wondering what the punchline is.  So when Odi McSmellishvili (an Irish Georgian) comes onto the bus the pariahs are joined together in an unholy matrimony of stench and alien dress.  Alas, poor nose.  I blew it.

And this post is what happens when you just follow your wandering thoughts.

The Weekend and Farm Life

Well, it would appear that my last post didn’t blow up the interwebs as we know them…yet (something something something darkside). To celebrate our continued existence and perhaps an American holiday, I will be making tacos today (It’s NON SEQUITUR!!).  Okay enough with the erroneous albeit funny youtube links.  I’ll be good.  This weekend has been a good one.  Friday I was able to kick back and relax, just enjoying the Georgian weather.  Saturday I went to Batumi and ran into some fellow TLGV’s and said good bye to a friend here as I will be leaving soon.  I picked up cheese and meat for tacos and then came back home.

Usually my host father picks me up from the main road as it is 2km away from the family farm, but he was real busy out there today, so I had to hoof it myself.  About halfway there I see him comin’ my way though.  He’s a great guy.  We then headed into town and got some cigarettes, cokes, and ice cream for all the workers.  They were really busy and I got to spend a few hours watching them work.  In case I haven’t mentioned my host father owns a fairly sizeable farm.  He has about 10 acres of corn, another 5-8 or so of hazelnuts, and then several fish ponds that take up maybe 100 acres along with some pasture for horses and cows.  He used to have more but the government is building a new highway that transects the property in between the ponds and the corn fields (the government has also yet to pay him for part of the property they expropriated through eminent domain).  I watched as they plowed the corn field with their 25 year old tractor of which they take great care.  Then it was to the big pond where they were constructing a dam between the big pond and the adjacent creek.  This dam makes it so that they can then drop the dam and the water level will drop significantly making it much easier to harvest the fish at the end of the main growing season (I’m sure there is a better name for this like levee or monk or something).  After that we went around to another pond tossing ground up corn in to feed the fish.  They use the nuts to feed the other two species they have on site.  This year they expect the nuts to really begin producing and should yield a 1500 kilo surplus they can sell off.

I asked my host brother about the farm, and he said that it wasn’t always this big.  They have had it for about 15 years and then it was just the 2 ponds and the pasture, but they were very successful and bought up surrounding properties and added on the corn and nut fields as well as the pasture and two more ponds (this could be a little off but between what I can recall and possible miscommunication it is close).  We got back to the house about 10pm.  Oh did I mention yesterday was Georgian Independence Day?  These people work hard and don’t take many breaks.  The only holiday I have seen really celebrated was Easter, and I have been here for several major religious and government holidays.  I’m sure in the towns more people can afford to celebrate but here there is always something that needs to be done.  Weekends are no exception.  I think this may be why when Georgians do celebrate they do it big.  They feast, they drink, they toast, they argue, they sing, they dance.  They celebrate daily life.  I hope their development doesn’t change that too much.

Why Does it Matter?

The Man has silenced me!!!  Actually, I knew before I sent this in to the official blog it would never see the light of day, but I thought I would try.  After about a week of it languishing in limbo, I finally got the email I was expecting letting me know that they would not be publishing this piece.  However, I also got the most stern of emails in the repertoire which also advises against me posting it on my own personal blog for fear of repercussions from the Georgian public at large.  So, of course, I’m going to post it here.  In all of its original glory (glory is probably too strong a word).  If this does somehow blow up the internet as we know it, at least it will mean I have more than my normal low double-digit readers for a couple of days, and I might even spark some useful debate (read: trolling and flaming).  What could go wrong, right?  Here is a little background on the incident I mention.  And without further ado…

“Here I am in my sleepy little village.  I am far away from Tbilisi, so I did not get to see what happened first hand, but the TV that my family and I watch every night was covered in the images.  A peaceful procession in Tbilisi by anti-homophobics was blocked by the Orthodox church and its followers today leading to an exchange of blows.  I must ask, “Why does it matter?”  I know my job here isn’t to comment on the social, political, and religious lives of Georgians, and I don’t think I’m very well placed to do so, but I find it against the very reasons that I am here.  I am here not just to teach English, but for cultural exchange.  I am not here to tell you what is right or what is wrong, but as an American I am here to share my culture which includes the ideals of democracy.  Every person should be able to live their lives as they want as long as what they do does not impede upon the rights of others.  I am not saying America has it right.  Far from it in fact, especially in their being equal rights for LGBT minorities, but I believe that we are on our way, and it is only through acknowledging our mistakes that we are able to progress forward. I do know that in any state, if a group wants to gather and express themselves they are more than free to do so and may even be met peacefully by rival groups.

The problem I have with the recent events is that democracy was not preserved.  Police were oddly absent during the time that the peaceful procession met with the antagonistic homophobes (in a particularly popular part of the city).  It is every persons right to express themselves, regardless of their position, in a peaceful and nonviolent manner which does not impede upon the rights of another.  This is where I feel that democracy failed today.  Members of the Orthodox Church, of which Georgians belong to in an extremely dominant manner, were allowed to express their views in a way which interfered with a minority group’s ability to peacefully express theirs.  I don’t care about their reasons, whether the majority feels they were in the right, they violated the rights of others this day, and it is for the minority I am writing this post.  I believe in equality and democracy, and I think that many would agree with me, but these thoughts and ideals mean nothing if we allow actions like today to stand without condemnation.

The only thing I ask of my readers with this post is to fulfill the Georgian dream of democracy.  How is a government expected to have clean and fair elections if its people do not hold themselves to a higher standard of democracy?  Georgia can be great, I’ve seen the greatness of its people firsthand.  I live with some of the most gracious and wonderful people I have ever met.  I have constantly been met with smiles and greetings everywhere I go.  I refuse to believe that what happened today was the will of the majority of Georgians, because I believe that they love each other unequivocally.  I say that sexual orientation does not matter, neither does race, religion, status, gender, ideology, or age.  I hope Georgia agrees with me.”

We Are Legion!!

I know what you’re thinking, it’s been over a week.  He must be dead.  Well I have to tell you it was a close call.  You see the last week I have been battling the demons of the Burning Hells a few particular ones stand out such as Belial, Azmodan, and of course DIABLO (3)!!     Yes, even here in Georgia I am getting my Blizzard fix.  Fanboy at its greatest.

It’s provaocative!!  It gets the people goin!!!  Seriously, if that doesn’t affect you I don’t know how you live with yourself.  But instead of turning this into a Diablo 3 commercial, I suppose I should tell you about my week outside of video game land.  I slept.

 

Ok, there was more to it than that.  Nothing really happened until Thursday.  Thursday my students were just terrible.  My second graders decided to completely forget the forms of “to be,” so we just drilled that the whole time and it ended with a pretty serious tongue lashing at the kids from my co-teacher.  I can’t say I blame her.  Later, in the third grade two kids were just straight copying answers from the smart girls book.  The first one I caught and made him sit somewhere else.  He’s not the brightest kid and he probably needs as much help as he can get so I helped him a little personally.  The next kid is a pretty bright kid though, and he was just copying out of laziness.  I warned him once, and then a minute later he was doing it again, so I picked up his book and threw it on the ground telling him that if the book was full of nothing I was going to treat it like that (paraphrased of course, one of the few times it was nice that they didn’t know what I was saying).

Georgia has a very lax educational culture, and it is sometimes quite irritating.  Cheating is tolerated and even encouraged to a degree.  Kids that don’t know the answer to a question will just stand there mute until another child answers for them.  The kids that learn the most are the ones taking lessons outside of school, school is usually just a chance to show off what they know already.  The teachers aren’t motivated to teach well in school because they don’t make much and by doing so they ensure that they keep their business of out of school tutoring thriving.  It’s a bit of a problem, and in order for it to stop, teachers would have to be disallowed from teaching their own students outside of class.  The annoying thing is that we TLG volunteers are not allowed to teach our own students outside of class because this would take money out of the hands of our co-teachers.  It’s an interesting predicament and one that probably won’t be remedied anytime soon.  When I give a test I know there is going to be a huge gap in the scores.  There will be the students that know it all, a couple that know most of it, and then the ones that don’t know anything.  The scores usually go along the lines of 20% A’s, 30% B’s and 50% F’s.  I may occasionally get a lucky guesser that makes a C or D.  Another problem is that the teachers perpetuate this problem by inflating poor grades.  Most grades are given on a 10 point scale and it is unheard of for a child to get less than a 5 on anything.  On the last test a kid got two answers right and my teacher asked me what she should give him.  I said a 2/10.  She just looked at me in horror as if that would completely destroy the child.  He got a five and went on about his day as if nothing had happened.  The teachers sugarcoat what they tell parents when they come in once a month.  I’ve never seen a parent not smiling after such a conference.

Oh well.  On to the weekend.  I played video games.  This school week my schedule has been weird because I no longer have the first graders to teach.  They are done with school for the year.  That means I get to sleep later on Monday and Wednesday I only teach two classes and one of those I’m technically not supposed to be in.  This means Wednesday is a tough day to motivate myself to get up for.  I literally am walking to and from school for just as many minutes as I am teaching.  So today is my Super Short day and I got home and decided to send out a resume or two in preparation for my return for the states.  I even got on my google calendar and set up a follow-up reminder.  Look at me being all grown up.  And now I’m here boring you all, which I have probably done enough of so far so I will leave you on a high note.

Natanebi’s Got Talent

What’s in YOUR head?!

For those of you that don’t know me and haven’t figured it out yet, I am truly a child of the 90′s.  Today’s video is further proof.  It doesn’t really have much to do with today’s blog though.  The best link I can come up with is that the last time I did karaoke I was going to do this song, but some other girls had already signed up for it.  I was bummed to say the least.  So instead I sang one of the greatest songs known to mankind that you probably don’t know about.  That’s right, this one.  If that doesn’t make you wanna party there is no hope for your soul.  Now where was I?  Ah yes.

I have begun a grand undertaking as my last attempt at greatness in Georgia.  No, not that.  I will be hosting a talent show, IN ENGLISH!!!  That’s right, Natanebi’s Got Talent!!  I have scheduled this on the last Friday of my stay here, in part so that everyone will feel obligated to attend and participate.  I have told the students if they need help with any of the English in their performances I will be glad to assist them, get lyrics, etc…  I expect there will be Georgian dance, but I have said that any music used needs to have lyrics predominantly in English.  When I presented this idea to my co-teachers they were very enthusiastic so we went to the Director and he loved the idea, he even told me I could use his printer to make an advertisement (that’s kind of a big deal).  So I made an advertisement and I have the rules and registration ready to go tomorrow.  I’m hoping for a decent turnout.  It would be great if family’s came too.  I am currently trying to locate a PA system, I have seen one in use for a wedding here, but I’m guessing that DJ probably doesn’t live in the village.  I also need to think of some good prizes for the winners, inexpensive but decent stuff.  I don’t think getting to have me over for dinner one night would count.  Though the last guy here left a scarf for his favorite student (she wore it everyday until it got too hot to), perhaps I could do something similar for the winner.  I’m taking suggestions from the peanut gallery on this one.

One month from today I will be in Amsterdam with a friend for her birthday.  I’m looking forward to it.  Holland is my ancestral homeland.  The first of my family’s name is in a painting by Rembrandt there, so I am looking forward to seeing that.  I also found out today that Wednesday will be me last class with my first graders, they finish school this week, as do the seniors.  I’m trying to drill “How many”, “there is” and “there are” in their heads before they don’t speak English again for three months.  I made up a song that I think will do the trick.  I’m pretty sure they got the first part of it down so “How many” should be firmly in their heads now.

And that’s all he wrote.