Blog 6, The long awaited entry!

A lot has happened since my last entry, too much to squeeze into one entry, but I’ll give it a go.

School: Last week was my first full week of school, we started school the Thursday before that. I teach at the ChochK’ati school. It is the hub school for the villages, so as kids get older they leave their village school and come to mine. In my first – third grade classes I have no more than 8 students. About half of the 1st grade parents come to class with them as education starts in 1st grade. My second and third graders are brilliant and I love teaching their classes. My 4th – 6th grade classes get progressively larger and I teach about 22 6th graders. 1st-5th grades are all in English 1 (same books) and the 6th graders are taking English 3. The school probably has about 200 students grades 1-12. On Monday I was asked if I wanted to teach in a more remote village on Tuesdays and naturally I said yes, and now I am also teaching at Guliani school, which has no more than 50 students. Grades 1-8ish? I would say there is about 5 students in every grade and I teach 2 combined classes, and one solo. For some reason my combined classes are 1st and 3rd graders, and 2nd and 4th graders. Also one of my co-teachers was sick on Monday so I got to teach 5th grade alone. They were more rowdy than usually but I corralled them, and I think it was a successful class. Most of my students now have books, but I have no teacher book, or audio CD’s, so I just make up the stories. Today I was asked if I wanted to play basketball against teachers from another village, needless to say I was ecstatic.

Batumi: 2 weekends ago. I’ll call it the Batumi weekend. Batumi is kind of like Las Vegas and Miami compressed into one in Georgia. It is the “it” place to be in Georgia. Knowing what I know now, the wealth in this country is definitely in Tbilisi and Batumi. Anyways on Friday night I was eating dinner with the host family and a commercial for Batumi came on. My host father then says Batumi go? I’m thinking yea it would be cool to go to Batumi some time. (Batumi is about an hour and 20 minutes from where I live) But no, he meant go then and there, it was about 8:30 when he said that. So we went to Batumi drove past some of the sights, and then we watched the musical fountains while drinking Turkish coffee and eating Hacipuri. We probably got home around 2 am. Then on Saturday I get a call from TLG saying the President would like to invite us to the opening of the Batumi Opera house which he would be attending. So on Sunday I was dropped off by my principal my regional resource education center in Lanchuti. There a bus picked us up and took us to Batumi to watch the play/opera. We had great seats, the president walked within five feet of me. I unfortunately didn’t get to meet him, but I did get on national TV. They interviewed one of my friends, and I was in the background. We also ate at really nice restaurants and stayed in some of the best hotels in Batumi. I stayed at the Intourist Palace Hotel and many of my friends stayed at the Raddison Blu. All of us ended up missing the third day of school. But I mean, would you really say no to the president? The best part about the trip to see opera, it was all covered by the Ministry of Education, and in total I think I spent 1 lari on a bottle of water.

Ureki: Last weekend I went to Ureki again, to go to the sea one last time before it gets cold. It was epic adventure, I met up with Riley, Clare, Erica, and Ruth-Anne. I got there a day after they did, and they had met a guy who was the GM at a nice hotel. He gave us the works, nice rooms, made us delicious food ect. Then naturally we ended up at a supra. Some guys were eating and invited us over to their table, got all our food, busted out their homemade wine. Typical Georgian hospitality, no occasion needed. By the end of the night we had taught 2 Georgian grandpas pong, and flippy cup.

Pictures from my adventures are up on facebook, at this link -> https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2330479217402.2132669.1112370002&l=bcaba308ee&type=1

Blog 5

Hello all!

Its been an exciting few days! The TLG meeting in Urek was pretty pointless, I knew all the information already, and we didn’t get our books, in fact I still don’t have my books and school starts on the 15^th. Lesson planning without the material or a schedule is pretty difficult, but I am trying. After the meeting my school principal took me to the Black Sea to walk around for a little bit, and get ice cream! It was a swell day indeed. The next day I went to Poti (a port city about 20km from my house) where my host father works. We went to the propane distributing facility and then to the market which was comparable to something you would find in Kenya or Colombia. Then Erecle and Ana (host siblings) and I walked down to the port and watched some ships come in. The city of Poti itself is nothing to write home about, but it was nice change of pace. That night I was part of my first supra. It came out of nowhere; I was about to go to bed and then some cousins showed up and boom it happened. Copious quantities of food came out of nowhere and so did the wine. A supra is a series of toasts that range from toasting presidents to the family deceased. It was quite an experience to see one in person! The next day the whole family woke up early and we drove about 2 ½ hours to Kutaisi which is Georgia’s second largest city. We went to the market to get school supply, clothes, and miscellaneous items. We then drove about 10km to Gelati which is a church and monastery that was built in 1106! It was awesome. The academy and the church are just great. The church is perched up on a tall hill and the views are wonderful. There also was an active archeological dig site of the monastery’s wine cellar. Finally before going home we visited Monsameta monastery! The nearest road gets you about 1km from the church and then there is a nice path to the monastery. It is perched over a gorge of the Tskhaltsitela River which means red river. There was a massacre by the Arabs there in the 8^th century where bodies were thrown into the river. The legend goes that lions brought the bodies of two Dukes up to the church. The bones were later taken by the KGB, but unfortunate consequences followed them and the bones were promptly returned to the church, where they still are today, in a casket where you can see them. Yesterday was pretty uneventful, I hung out around the house, lesson planning, reading, studying Kartveli, ect. Last night though, we made wine. We started by picking grapes, de stemming them, putting them though a masher, and finally adding water and sugar. We ended up making about 20 liters worth. I also tasted the best grape I’ve ever had. It actually tasted like grape flavoring. Way better of course, it was just fantastic. I hope everyone is doing well, hopefully I get my books soon!

Click on this link for pictures of the previously mentioned!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2330479217402.2132669.1112370002&l=bcaba308ee&type=1

-Kenneth

My house!

Village life!

Hello everybody!

I have a good amount of free time, so I thought I would update. Life in the village is definitely a different pace then it is in the city, but so far I’m liking that. After I got home from school I spent the day playing soccer with my host brother and friends. We also got a big net and dragged through the water (fishing). It was an experience to say the least, but I had fun.

Today I took a walk with my host brother and sister to Leslie’s house. Her house is about an hour away walking. On the way we stopped at a shop and got some pepsi. We also walked past another lot of land my family owns, and it has corn and mandarin trees on it. I also met the family cow, of which my family makes milk, cheese, and butter from. We also eat the chickens that walk around the property. They also grow tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, nuts, pears, and lemons. Almost everything that we eat is grown and made in house. All that being said I think were a decently wealthy family. Im not sure what my host father does because he works weird hours. My host mom is a history teacher at my school. There are also a couple of home businesses, one of them being selling propane, and the other one being selling nuts. As I write this there are 2 old women are cleaning nuts and putting them into buckets to be sold. My host family has 3 vehicles, A large propane truck (that I’m not sure runs, it might just be used for storage), A old 1970’s? Russian car, and small 2000 Mercedes sedan. The power is a little flaky here, as it just went out, which makes it the second time in as many days.

Tomorrow I have a meeting in Urek where I will meet the regional representative for TLG, and formally meet my school principal and co-teachers. Hopefully we get our books tomorrow so I can start lesson planning and preparing for my teaching debut!

Tata for now

-Kenneth

Home!

Hey all, I am writing you from the school I will be teaching at in Chochkhati Georgia! The has Internet yay! Last night I met my host family and they are very nice. I'll have a host dad, mom, 2 sisters, and a brother for the next four months. They have a nice house in the country side and it reminds me of where knob creek, Kentucky... The landscape, not the town. The drive yesterday was long, but the scenery was beautiful. Naturally because we are in Georgia we had to stop twice for drinks, and countless other times to buy fruit and other food items. I got to my house at about 9 pm and my family had made a feast. kinkahili (meat dumplings), kachapuri (cheese bread) , normal bread, fish, chicken, homemade wine, tea, a dessert bread of kinds and Coca Cola. It was a great meal! The family had a soccer game (Georgia vs. Malta), so I was pretty excited about that. The house itself is very nice. My room has hardwood floors and a double bed and 2 electrical outlets!!!! Yes, the little things in life make me happy. My house also has a toilet, and a shower (with hot water!) I'm sure ill be posting pictures of it later!

-Kenneth

Family meeting

Hey all, I'm about an hour away from meeting my host family and traveling across the country to Village Chochkhati. It is located in the Guria province about 10 km from the black sea! If you want to try to find it online go to openstreetmap.org and type in Chochkhati, if nothing comes up the nearest city is Lanchkhuti and i'm about 5 km east of there. I'm very nervous as I don't feel I have learned enough Georgian to communicate effectively, but i'm confident I will be able to soon. Thank you all for your prayers and support, and please remember to keep doing so. I will try update as soon as possible, but I don't know if they have internet. I got my phone, and I will putting up that info later.

Love Kenneth

Almost done with training!

Garmajobat! (hello)

Im doing quite well, extremely busy, language and methodology lessons are intense. Ive adventured out a bit in the city and it is gorgeous! This video im posting was actually taken a few days ago, but the internet has been a little flaky so your getting it now. Tomorrow morning I will be getting my assignment and I'll know exactly where i am going. Tomorrow is also my last day of training (and the very nice hotel were staying at) so it will definitely be an adventure . Im sure ill update tomorrow with news on where ill be heading!

Video Entry -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAPJ6kaXLb4


Bye bye for now
-Kenneth

1st post from Georgia

Hey everybody!!!!

Greetings from Tbilisi

Ive decided to make a video blog for my first entry because I thought it added a nice touch.



Something I forgot to mention was that I had a great layover in Istanbul, we had about 7 hours there so we left our bags at the airport and explored the city! Here is a picture of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.