Happy Halloween!

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Monday was a good day. I wake up to ‘Happy Halloween!’ from Eka and the kids. We get to school and I’m sitting in the teachers’ room when Eka comes in and tells me to come to the library where there’s a little surprise party waiting for me! There are balloons and jack o’lanterns that the kids have made (one even has blonde hair). Those that couldn’t get hold of pumpkins have made them out of limes and they’re so cute. There’s also a big basket of fruit and sweets they’ve put together for me. I’m so touched I nearly cry. The teachers take a few photos of me with the display and then it’s off to class. After lessons I’m called into the Director’s office where I’m presented with a ring the teachers have bought for me. It’s a big owl and, although it’s not something I would have picked out myself, it does kind of go with the dragon ring I normally where and it’s obvious they’ve taken the time to find something they think I’ll really like. It’s all incredibly sweet but a little overwhelming; I’m starting to get the impression they’re not going to let me leave! I’m supposed to have my telephone interview for the job in South Korea but I wait for the call and it never comes. Eka and Maia tell me they are all happy because they want me to stay, which is a little harsh but I know the sentiment behind it is a good one. After my final lesson it’s back to the library to have lots of photos taken with all the different grades – I feel like a minor celebrity! When we get home Eka starts cooking and the men are outside chopping wood to see them through the next month or so but no one will let me help so I’m feeling rather redundant. Eka is making soup on the woodstove and the smell is driving me crazy. Every now and then she comes in and throws in another unrecognisable ingredient. Gio wants an English lesson but I say he must wait until Mari gets home from her violin lesson – I’ve tried teaching one-on-one before and it’s not easy! Eventually lunch is ready and we sit down to eat. The soup is amazing. It tastes like Tom Yum but with rice, meat and potatoes. There’s also and meat and nut sauce, pickled cabbage and, as ever, bread and cheese. Everything’s wonderful. I’d heard during training that in Georgia it’s considered rude to dip your bread in your soup and my family confirms that this is true although when I ask Eka why she simply shrugs (just to clarify, it’s perfectly acceptable to dip your bread in anything else, even thin stew, as long as it’s not classified as soup. Don’t ask me why.) Gala gets out the homemade vodka because apparently it ‘goes well’ with the soup. I now know for future reference that I can handle three, and that four will make me feel quite ill. On top of that we are drinking beer with the meal. After lunch Eka lets me do a proper big wash up for the first time and then, also for the first time, I go for an afternoon nap. As a rule I don’t like doing this because it’s not something they ever do and they all work harder than me but the vodka really has done me in. I set my alarm for half an hour and wake up and hour and a half later. Whoops! I’m feeling pretty horrible but I’d promised the kids an English lesson so I cobble something together. They pick up countable and uncountable nouns pretty quickly and, even though there’s no logical lead on from that, I decide to teach them how to tell the time (which is harder than it sounds because their way of telling the time is completely different from ours). After an hour they get it, which is really satisfying. I go to bed early but for the second night in a row I can’t sleep.
I could see my breath when I went outside on Tuesday morning. I have no lessons til nearly 11am and I think about asking Eka if I can start coming in later instead of sitting around in the staff room for two and a half hours in the morning, although I guess I should be taking the opportunity to practice my Georgian! Today was pretty miserable at school actually, for no reason other than I really needed to pee and the toilets were locked and no one was about, I was starving and the ‘tuck shop’ was closed and I was generally tired and grumpy. Some of Eka’s students asked her to help them after her lesson so we didn’t leave til after 2pm. I know this doesn’t sound late for a working day but it is if you haven’t eaten since 8am! I seem to have regained my appetite since arriving. We come home and have lunch – yummy leftover soup from yesterday and khinkali. Then I sat outside in the sunshine reading and watching my host uncle try to fix a chain saw. At first this was quite impressive but after I while I started to get the sneaking suspicion that he had no idea what he was doing. As I was sitting there Eka brought me these bunches of little berries. They were sour and made my mouth go really dry like a crab apple would but, as with absolutely everything that’s put in front of me, I eat them so as not to offend and they actually start to grow on me after a while. Meanwhile Eka sits beside me pulling tiny black berries off their stalks and packing them into a jar with sugar. I ask if she’s making jam or juice and she says that they’re not good for eating and that they’re used for colouring food, although maybe I misunderstood as this seems like a lot of effort to go to to colour food for no apparent reason. I spend the afternoon writing a test for the sixth grade, typing it up and then writing the sixth grade syllabus for Eka to use. I receive an email from my agency about my missed interview and it turns out, from looking back at previous emails, that it was entirely my own fault – there was a digit wrong in the number I gave them. The interview has now had to be rescheduled for a second time so I’m really hoping they don’t think I’m a complete cretin and hold it against me. I enjoy another scalding hot shower. I’m not sure what they’ve done to it since last week but showers have gone from being a minor, pneumonia inducing ordeal to an all too infrequent ten minutes of pure luxury – scalding hot and with a nice steady stream. It’s amazing how quickly you come to appreciate the little things in life, especially now it’s getting noticeably colder. In the evening I sit down at the table with Mari and help her with her homework. I like doing this because the way the teachers work here is to provide the students with the correct answer (or what they think is the correct answer) as soon as the student pauses to think, or often even before they do, whereas if I’m working one on one with them I can elicit the answers from them. It’s a really bad habit to get into – even now Mari turns immediately to Eka the second she doesn’t understand something whereas if she’s not available and Mari has a minute to think about it or I ask another question or two she always comes up with the right answer by herself in the end. Afterwards I settle in ‘my’ chair next to the woodstove, just as Eka pops in some Khachapuri to bake. It smells amazing and I’m all warm and cosy. I feel like I’ve earned my keep (for once) by doing an appropriate amount of extra-curricular school work and I know that at any minute Eka will call me into the kitchen to drink black tea with lime and eat khachapuri hot from the oven. At that moment I couldn’t be happier. Ok, so it actually turned out to be freshly baked bread which we ate with homemade, home-smoked cheese, but same difference. I went to bed happy and slept like a dream for the first time in ages.
Getting out of bed on Wednesday was rough. In fact it gets harder every morning as the days get colder. For once we walk to school and it’s a lovely morning. Lessons are the same as usual. I still enjoy the ones I share with Eka and find Maia’s frustrating and boring. Today I was given my own key to the staff toilets so I guess that means I’m now a fully-fledged member of the team! I feel like I’ve been through some sort of initiation rite and this is my badge of honour. Although, come to think of it, I’ve still got no idea what the kids do. Sometimes I see them disappearing round the back of the school so I suspect there are Turkish toilets back there somewhere. I decide on a whim to go to Zugdidi after school for no real reason other than for something to do. I’ve been out of contact with the outside world on account of having no money on my phone and people are apparently beginning to panic so I think I’d better top up, but I could have done that in Orsantia so I’m not sure why I go in really. There are a couple of things I could do with getting (an adapter, for example. It would be nice to be able to plug an electrical appliance in in my bedroom and have the light on at the same time) but I don’t even look for them particularly hard, just top up my phone, grab my usual ‘I’m in Zugdidi and I deserve a treat’ khachapuri and go to the American bar to grab a beer and use their wireless. It takes me ages to get into town – the marshrutkas remain a mystery to me. The one I get clearly doesn’t say Zugdidi on the front (not that I’ve got any idea what it does say) but I figure if it deviates from the route to Zugdidi I’ll just get off but it never does. Then again the one I get home doesn’t say Orsantia on it either but it still gets me back. I actually have an ulterior motive for going to the American bar – I want to ask the owner if he has an address that I can get my housemate back home to send me some stuff to from England as I need a lip ring and figure it will probably be cheaper to buy a camera from home and have it shipped over than to buy one here but the guy says that he doesn’t receive mail either. Luckily a bunch of TLG volunteers come in while I’m there (including the poshest person I’ve ever encountered who claims to be from Yorkshire) and coincidentally one of them has just that day received a package from Seattle to the DHL office here in Zugdidi so I proceed to send my housemate immediate instructions (after a few mins of online shopping on Amazon – oh how I’ve missed you!). Sam comes in while I’m there – first time I’ve seen him not ill since I got here. Fortunately I’m able to catch up with one of the other volunteers on the phone who’s caught some sort of bug so I still get my weekly dose of Americans moaning about the food and the hygiene standards. When I spoke to Eka earlier in the day she’d assured me there’s a marshrutka at 4.30pm and sure enough she’s right. God knows what happened last time I turned up at 4.15pm and was told there wasn’t one til 6pm – the fateful day I tried to walk home. When I get home at 5pm I’m immediately called into the kitchen to eat because they’ve been waiting for me and were all starving. I really wish they wouldn’t do this – it’s really sweet but it also makes me feel really guilty, particularly since I know I’ve been scoffing khachapuri and guzzling beer in Zugdidi! Eka and I then do some spring cleaning, by which I mean Eka cleans and I hover my room and re-fold everything in my wardrobe which has somehow morphed into one big pile of clothes. I then spend so long preparing materials for a lesson for the kids that in the end I can’t actually be bothered to teach it. Levani is staying with friends and Gala is working so the house is really quiet for once. I figure I’m going to be here all weekend so I’ll have plenty of time to teach the kids. I’m absolutely determined to stay home this weekend. I want to spend some time with the family and it will be interesting to see what they actually do at the weekend since I’ll have been here a month on Friday and have yet to spend a weekend here. I imagine it’ll involve a lot of lounging around doing very little and that is just fine with me; my poor aging body is aching for a weekend off. I am, however, incapable of staying in if I know everyone else is out having fun so I either have to persuade everybody else to stay at home as well or at least have a couple of people come here to keep me company. We shall wait and see what happens.
I don’t like Thursdays, as a rule. Every Thursday morning I come to school and sit in the teachers’ room until my first lesson at nearly 11am. I study a bit of Georgian, read a little, write a little less and maybe watch something on my laptop. Basically, I’m bored. It’s been kind of strange not having Levani or Gala around the house the last couple of days but at least it means I don’t have to sneak around in the morning cos no one’s sleeping in the living room and today I come so close to asking Eka if I can stay at home and come in in time for my first lesson. There would have been no one around so I could have just gone back to bed. But I know that’s a slippery slope. I start doing that and before I know it I’ll be spending 1.5 – 2 hours in school every day. I realise that any time I spend at school in addition to that is wasted and useless but at least I’m there. What I don’t get is that when I first arrived Eka complained to me that she didn’t understand why I can only teach grades one to six. I agree and last week I asked her if I could start sitting in on her 11th and 12th grade classes – I wanted to gauge their level of English with a view to setting up an English club but she seemed really reluctant and I don’t want to push the issue but it does seem a little contradictory – why complain I can’t be involved with the upper classes and then block me becoming involved with the upper classes? It makes no sense. I think after a month at the school I’ve developed the what could be described as slightly less than proactive attitude that I will do absolutely anything they ask me to (not like that those of you out there with filthy minds) but I’ve given up on trying to instigate anything. If they want me to teach the teachers, I’ll be happy to do so, if they want me to surreptitiously teach the upper classes, I’m more than happy to do so, if they want me to run extra-curricular activities, then I’d be absolutely delighted to do so, but I’m fed up of suggesting things and having them met with, at best, a luke-warm reception, and at worst outright obstruction. So, from now on I will do what is asked of me and no more. I just wish they’d bloody well start asking me to do stuff! Actually, Eka told me that in July they have to sit a test if they want to continue to be teachers so maybe I’ll ask if there’s any way I can help them prepare for that, But after that, that’s it! No more asking for stuff to do. Lessons were the usual farce today. The fourth graders have never been taught to read so, surprisingly enough, they can’t read. I consider suggesting to Maia that we start from scratch with ABC but I know she will only tell me they already know it because this is what she says whenever I ask if I can do anything with them. At least Eka is open to suggestions. I say to her that I would like to spend the next few lessons with the first grade teaching them how to write their letters. They try to copy them from the book but they do not seem to understand the concept of following the arrows in the book so that they are starting in the right place and writing the letters in the ‘right direction’. To anyone who was taught the English alphabet as a kid and has been using it all their lives you would not believe what a difference this makes to their writing. Half the time the letters are almost unrecognisable because they take their pencils off the page twice in order to form each part of the letter ‘b’. So, it’s good that I can catch them at this early stage; their supple little minds are mine to mould! Before my first lesson Maia and I, as usual, go to drink coffee, but they’ve lost the key to the kitchen. I ask if there’s only one key and Maia says they used to have three, but they’ve lost them all. In the end we go and sit in the library and I unsuccessfully try to master the underrated art of eating sunflower seeds without making a mess. Eventually we go to the deputy director’s office between lessons and drink coffee there. Maia has brought honey comb from her house which is pretty amazing. The only problem is they eat the actual comb as well so I feel like I’m eating candles dipped in honey and it actually makes me feel a little ill but I eat it anyway because I eat literally everything they do, whether I like it or not because…well, because it would be rude not to I guess. Eka and I wander home after school. It’s cold but the sun is shining and it’s beautiful. When we get home I do what I always do which is sit outside in the wintry afternoon sunshine and read until lunch is ready. Actually what I always do is ask Eka if I can help her with anything, receive a response in the negative, and then sit outside in the wintry afternoon sunshine and read until lunch is ready. I’m actually not sure what the highlight of my day os after this point, whether it’s finding out we’re all going to a wedding on Sunday or eating fresh baked bread slathered in honey dripping straight from the honey comb. Actually I think it’s the honey, I’m practically purring at the table and once I try it with bread I literally can’t stop eating it. Add in three glasses of homemade wine and all’s well with the world. I am really excited about going to a Georgian wedding, especially with my own family so I’m really glad I didn’t make any plans for the weekend. The only problem is that apparently there’s another wedding next weekend but I guess it won’t kill me to spend two weekends at home. Actually, that’s not the only problem. The wedding’s on Sunday night so I’m already worrying about what state I’m going to be in for school on Monday! After school I decide I fancy a walk but for some reason I can’t just say I fancy a walk. Last time I tried to use needing to top up my phone as an excuse for going to Zugdidi Eka said there’s a shop in Orsantia where I can do it so today I try to use needing to top up my phone as an excuse to go to Orsantia. I don’t even need to top up my phone, I just fancy going for a walk and seeing what our local shop has to offer, and maybe picking up some emergency snacks for when I get stuck at school with no food til 4pm and feel like I’m going to pass out. But Eka insists on coming with me. I think maybe she actually needs to buy something but no, we just get to the shop, I top up my phone and we leave. I ask her more about the border with Abhazia on the way. She tells me the border is a river with Georgian soldiers on one side and Russians on the other and that we will drive there one day to take a look. We also walk past the hospital and I find out that actually only one floor of it is used for medical services and the rest is used to house refugees. So I guess I’m glad she came with me actually, otherwise I wouldn’t have found any of that out, or that the monument beside the school in Orsantia is a war memorial. It just would have been nice to do a little exploring by myself. To get to the shop we have to walk past Nino’s house (Gala’s sister) so we stop in on the way back and Eka and Nino chat while me and her little boy go through his English book. He’s about the smartest kid I’ve come across so far. If all my third grade students were like that I’d be thrilled. In fact, if all my sixth grade students were like that I’d be thrilled. It’s not that his English is advanced or anything, he’s still studying at a grade three level, it’s just that he picks up concepts really quickly and he really wants to learn. He grasps counting from 12 to 20 in about 30 seconds and counting from 20 to 100 even quicker. I know it’s not their first language (otherwise we wouldn’t be here, duh!) but you’d be amazed how much they struggle with the concept that once you learn one to 10, counting in English is essentially putting all those numbers together in different combinations. And he can actually read. He’s the first Georgian kid I’ve come across who actually seems to stop, think about what sounds the letters make, puts them together and then has a fairly decent crack at pronouncing it. To cut a long story short it’s refreshing, to say the least.

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