Winter

Chillin' with my sitemate on Georgia's best proportioned bridge.

I guess I forgot about November and December, they flew by like this year has. Winter has fallen in large clumps of soggy snow, sliding off the roof at me every time I go downstairs to the kitchen or bathroom. It took about 3 days for me to get over the excitement of living in the snow for the first time ever - my first time seeing snow flakes! Understanding that snow can be soft, not the clumpy icy stuff that we visited on my middle school ski trip! I am now eagerly awaiting late spring, only 5 or so months away. The snow also seems to have scared off our relatively consistent electricity - during the summer we had occasional power outages, but lately it's felt more like we have occasional power. The lack of electricity has been one factor inhibiting my blogging (and working more generally). Without lights or my electric heater, my hands freeze and my computer dies and I just go to sleep and pretend that I'll wake up early and there will be power and I'll do my work then. That never happens.

Snowy days in Sataplia, just outside of Kutaisi.

On the plus side, the winter schedule started in mid-November, and now school starts at 9:30, a blessing for me, since I am deeply troubled by having to wake up before the sun. Unfortunately our school's heating also requires electricity, so when the power is out our classes are only 1/2 an hour each, because it's too cold and everyone wants to go home. On the first day it really snowed school was canceled at 12 because there were only about 6 students there, and 6 teachers, and we did shots in the school kitchen instead. Today I followed a student to the very crowded guard's shack in the yard (he has a petchi/woodstove) and made her speak English with me there, since I felt like I couldn't force her wet and cold self to come inside and actually attend the lesson and also catch pneumonia. I have a waterproof hood-to-ankle coat that I thought was absurd while purchasing it in the depths of northern California weather, but I have since changed my mind. Now all I need are waterproof shoes, and about 7 more pairs of wool socks. Apparently we have a school bus only when the weather is nice - when there're more than 6 inches of snow we walk.

But really, snow camping in a dinosaur park is something everyone who visits Georgia should do.

Sneaky pics of the GLOW Georgia Mother-Daughter Conference in Kobuleti.

Since October I've gone camping in the snow at a dinosaur park, been to a language training and reached "Intermediate High" level in Georgian, written my first real grant, been rejected for my first real grant, tried unsuccessfully to write an article about a scientist, been to a lot of meetings, visited Kvishkheti, Zestaponi, Kutaisi, Batumi, Tbilisi, Tserovani, and Kobuleti, lost my computer, had my computer returned to me by a very kind Giorgi, celebrated the prophet Muhammad's birthday with my host family (weeks after Muslims in other countries did...), helped organize a conference for rural mothers and daughters, helped organize a meeting on diversity issues in the Peace Corps community, quit the Peace Corps Georgia Diversity Working Group, attended more trainings, and eaten about 40 potato piroshki. More details about these events may or may not follow.

L-R my counterpart, me, and another teacher from Adjara at the Tyrell Corporation HQ in Tbilisi for training.

Feasting and singing and dancing with my coworkers at my counterpart's birthday party.

Fruits of November in Batumi - pumpkins, persimmons, quince, mandarins, kiwis, and guavas.

For now, I'm adapting to a new mode of life, working while sitting on the floor a foot from my electric heater (oh wait, I did that in California too, I just didn't realize how warm it was there...). Summer and fall's vegetables and fruits are gone - just a few last wrinkly grapes, and some persimmons and pears are left. I've heard that it's just cabbage and potatoes from here on out, but we've started eating the canned foods - canned salad, adjika (red pepper sauce), tomato preserves, pickles, jam, and compote, so far.  There's random cloth stuffed in the large holes in my windows, I put scotch tape over the smaller ones, and my host family re-did their roof so my plants are no longer self-watering. I've moved all of my plants and a few of my host family's into my room, which I think is nice but the fam definitely thinks is a little odd. Every week or so I go to the unoccupied section of the house next to mine with 14 beds and steal another blanket.

6th grade, very proud of their snowman.

Georgians celebrate New Years as the big winter holiday, and my school has been getting ready for an end of the year concert and I've been decorating my classroom with my students. I'm apparently a fun enough teacher that kids come to my classroom during breaks, and since I've struggled to organize after school activities at my tiny school, I've been working on utilizing those times for "cultural exchange" or whatever. When I was a kid, pre-Rugby thumb injury, I was a master snowflake artist, so I've been teaching any students that want to learn how to make them. Paper crafts seem very popular  here - my counterpart made a very fancy paper tree, my host mom showed me how to make some cool paper star decorations, and my host sister has been showing me endless videos of paper things that she wants me to figure out how to do with her. I'm content with snowflakes though, and delighted that students of all genders and ages seem interested in making them, though perhaps not quite as interested in cleaning up the tiny pieces of paper that are everywhere afterward. Sometimes when only one student shows up to class I make them make snowflakes too and teach them useful vocabulary like "I'm freezing," "cut," and "fold," since we'd have to re-do any book work once the rest of the students returned anyway. In addition to decorations, my director requested that I teach some students an English or American song for the Christmas/New Years show, so now I, the atheist English teacher, am teaching a predominantly Muslim group of students "Silent Night," because I try to make my director happy, and the students really enjoy singing. They also wanted me to teach them a song called "Last Christmas," but I had never heard it before and it has a lot more words in it, so we've agreed to postpone that for next year. Unfortunately Georgian winter break starts on the 29th, so I'm leaving early to celebrate American Christmas with my Thai father in Thailand and I will miss the show, but I will be warm.

My classroom.

The Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, Georgia's best known former UNESCO World Heritage Site...

Wild horses in the snow in front of my house, apparently if I want one all I have to do is feed it corn.

Me & the park rangers' snow dog at Sataplia.

**PS this post was written in early December & I forgot to post it but here you go