"We have gathered here today to mourn our good English grades. . . "

(Who can name the person who said the quote of my title? It's a fellow East Troy alumni)
Today my 10th grade class had a test. This wasn't my first Georgian test. However, it was the first one not with my Difficult Teacher. I had thought that all my problems with test taking here were due to my communication and philosophy problems I have with my Difficult Teacher. That theory was proven wrong today, terribly wrong.

Classrooms are already fairly crowed. When you pack thirty students into a medium-sized classroom it becomes very difficult to spread them out during a test. The desks are crunched together. A certain amount of looking over shoulders is bound to happen just because of the limited space. Somehow, the classrooms seem even more crowed to me during a test. It is impossible to give students enough space so that they aren't staring at their neighbors test. The staring isn't subtle either. Students lean over the aisles to look at another test. Sometimes, they will even hold up their test for their friends to see.

Of course, this isn't the only way students cheat. The classroom is just as noisy during a test as it is during a regular lesson which by American standards is just about at the yelling level. Students ask each other for answers or talk about what they are going to do after school. It doesn't matter what they are saying or how loud they say it. It never crosses their mind to stop talking during an important exam.

Finally, two methods of cheating just about blew my mind. I asked the co-teacher before we started what her rules were. She said "No books, no notes, to be quiet, a regular test." When students couldn't be find inspiration for the writing section she had them get out their books. The rule basically meant nothing. Well, not nothing, I guess. I certainly enforced the rule and took three books away from students before I saw my co-teacher look right over another student who had his book out. More shocking was the instance of one boy physically handing his test book over to another boy to finish. At that point I didn't really care what the co-teacher did or didn't do. That was too blatant of cheating for me. I took both of their tests away before they had finished. It won't hurt their score much since they were already basically done. I wish it would have, though.

I discussed all the cheating with my co-teacher after the test. I can't understand how cheating could be allowed in any way. If the students don't understand a topic but cheat off someone who does know, how will the teacher know she needs to review the topic again. Tests are just as important for teachers as students. They help show where weaknesses are during instruction time. They help show whether the class is successfully navigating the year-long schedule to be prepared for the next year. My co-teacher just said, "They couldn't survive without cheating." Well, maybe it's about time they tried. I know that many of the students who were cheating are more than capable of being successful without help. They need to have the confidence to do that.

I  know their are differences in the cultural mindset surrounding education for Georgians and Americans. This difference is just too much for me to bend for. I can't stand their and watch students and teachers rob themselves of a great opportunity to really asses their strengths and then improve. What to do, what to do?

House Slippers and Other Reasons I am Sick

Despite the reasons I might believe I am sick such as I work at a germy school that doesn't have soap in the bathroom or the maid, Dalika, doesn't cover her mouth when she coughs, really this is what the Georgians keep telling me.
I am sick because . . .
1. I don't wear my house slippers all the time. You are supposed to get home, take off your shoes and put on your slippers. Sometimes I forget and walk around in my socks. If I'm just in my bedroom I might even be barefoot. My host family will all look at me like I'm crazy when they see my naked feet and immediately demand I put slippers on.
2. I wear short sleeved sweaters. I have a couple sweaters that I wear on sunny days or when I know the school will be heated. For some reason this is not a good idea even though the outside temperature is usually in the 30s and even low 40s on those days. It always makes me giggle to think of what they'd say if they saw all the Wisconsin kids wearing flip-flops in six inches of snow. That surely makes you more cold than wearing short sleeves.
3. I take a shower in the morning. I don't really understand the reasoning behind this because I've only gotten the comment once. Shannon, the other Poti, volunteer says her family harps about it a lot. I guess having wet hair in the morning allows germs to infect you easier. I would like to point out that most Georgians don't have curly hair. They have no idea what trials I go through to tame my hair even a little while living next to the sea and in the humid air here.


The cold that I currently have seems to be the same one that everyone has been passing around for the last three weeks. The sinus pressure was bad enough for me that on Thursday I stayed home from school. When I arrived at school on Friday for my two lessons, my co-teacher first demanded to know where I was yesterday. I had texted her the morning before school started. The school was also contacted. I don't think this teacher has ever missed a day of school even when she was terribly ill. This teacher was also one of the first to get the cold earlier this month, perhaps it's her germs that got me sick. I told her that I was felling better and didn't want to miss school. Since I wasn't coughing anymore, I figured the potential for me passing germs had become more limited. Telling her I was still sick was a mistake. She kept telling me to go home and sleep and feel better. I couldn't tell if she just didn't want me in class with her or she really thought I looked sick and miserable.
I will continue to drink tea and orange juice and plenty of fluids (happy mom?). I didn't go traveling this weekend like planned so I could rest and recuperate. I think I'll be able to beat this nasty bug soon. All I'll have to do is buy some soap for the school.

A Wedding Supra: An Event Suprisingly Similar to the Packers Winning the Superbowl

I will first endeavor to explain what a "supra" is. This is not an easy task, however. Supra literally means table in English. It is a giant feast where Georgians toast anything and everything they can think of. At every toast an entire glass of wine is had. You start the feast with a table full of food. An American could relate it to the amount of food seen at a Thanksgiving meal. You take that amount and multiply it by six or seven. You pour wine (a cousin assured me that the alcohol content of this wine is more like beer, but I'm not so sure about that) into beer pitchers and sit a ton of people around the table. Then you make a toast every few minutes, eat some delicious food, bring out more food, make more toasts, sing some songs, make more toasts, bring more food, dance, more toasts, more food and it just continues like this for hours.

It sounds a bit overwhelming, and, frankly, it was. Yet, there was more to this adventure than just the supra. It started Friday afternoon. Gocha and I got into his car and picked up one of his cousins who had a small boy with her of four or five. We picked up another cousin and headed off to Tbilisi. The car was an SUV. They are big vehicles but not really meant for five adults (Gocha's car has a driver, Beso. I think it's his Valet. Language barrier has made this difficult to understand) and a small child. Tbilisi is four-six hours away depending on whether you go 80km/hr or 160km/hr. We stopped at the same restaurant in the mountains for dinner. We had khatchapuri, of course, some grilled meat and pickled vegetables.

We got to Tbilsi and sat out in a parking lot for 20 minutes before Nino and her youngest son came out. Her son told me in English that I would be spending the weekend with a family friend, Tamuna. Tamuna spent eight years in Russia with her family and spoke English pretty well. Her husband, George, did, too. They have two teenage sons that I met that night. They had super and then I went to bed. The next morning was a bit awkward. Waiting around for the family to wake up was odd. What are you supposed to do? Anyway, we went to Nino and Gocha’s apartment at 1PM. There I proceeded to wait some more. This waiting was mixed with short episodes of understanding the family was talking about me but not the details and having the cute cousins being herded towards me to entertain me since they spoke English. 

Finally, we went to the Church, the oldest church in Georgia. Beautiful doesn’t begin to cover the space. An Orthadox service was different but still held elements I could figure out despite it being in Georgian. I will admit that the crowning part was difficult not to laugh at. Both the groom and bride had to kiss each other’s crowns and then wear them for a bit. Next the best man and maid of honor took off the crowns to hold them above their heads. All four then proceeded to follow the priest in walking around an icon in the center of the church. I’m sure there is some great meaning in this symbol. But, it looked a trifle funny. Don’t worry, I didn’t actually laugh. I held on to some dignity and didn’t embarrass the whole family. 

After the service, we went to the restaurant for the supra. There was some more awkward waiting and smiling at strangers staring at the foreigner, me, while Nino found a cousin to pawn me off on. I ended up at a table right by the wedding party’s table. This table was full of male cousins. Most of them spoke some English and were pretty darn attractive. The family has some impressive genetics, let me tell you. They helped to explain the toasts and encouraged me to try the endless platters of food that were brought out. I was next to the dance floor and got to dance with some fun people. One dance was even with a very drunk guy who kept trying to dip me. I refused with “ara” (no). He didn’t seem to understand why I wouldn’t trust him. I don’t know, a drunk guy who can barely stand up straight doesn’t sound like the best person to trust to hold your head a couple feet from the floor. It was a great party. I just didn’t have the stamina of Georgians for the food and drink and dancing. It was exhausting. 

Georgians can party for hours. The young men love to show off how much alcohol they can consume. They are loud and cheer for the bride and groom. If you stand off to the side of the party you will see what must surely amount to chaos. The males wander from table to table drinking and chatting with everyone. It really reminded me of watching the celebrations of Packers’ fans after winning the superbowl. The hours of celebrations and the conversations for weeks later of the drunken escapades and game highlights were very similar to the longevity of the Georgian party.  I will admit that Georgians have us Wisconsinites beat when it comes to alcohol tolerance. I have a new perspective on what it  means to be drunk. There were no mean or weepy drunks to be seen. They were friendly and boisterous. It was an interesting evening. 

I spent the night with Tamuna again and met up with Nino and Gocha at the restaurant on Sunday. For four hours I engaged in another supra with the 30 closest family members. The Tamanda, the leader of the supra and toastmaster, was George. He and I had talked a lot during the weekend, and he seemed to adopt me as his own daughter. Therefore before I could leave after Gocha demanded that we be released to get back to Poti that day, he made a ten minute long toast about me and my teaching and my home state and how I was a part of the family now. (It’s not uncommon for toasts to take up a lot of time, this was just inconvenient) It was cute and quite the sendoff.  

The wedding supra was without a doubt the most adventurous activity I've done here in Georgia. 

Kissing Jesus

Today I went to an orthodox service with one of my co-teachers. There aren't any Catholic churches here in Poti, and I haven't been to mass since I got to Georgia. It has been difficult to find time and someone who will take me with them. This morning though I convinced and hounded my co-teacher to let me tag along.

The church is small but beautiful and fairly new or at least recently renovated. Poti is working on rebuilding both of their main churches. The walls were covered with ornate pictures of saints and religious work. No pews or seats were around. People just stood around and shifted as needed when more people entered. The front of the church included a wall with three doors. Two side door and a large center door that was often opened during services for the priest to walk through. On the other side of the wall lays an ornate alter. There was priest and seven men assisting. They ranged in ages from five or six to forties. I think it was a combination of alter boys and deacons.

It was a unique experience. The polyphonic singing is amazing. Four men stood facing each other to sing a beautiful combination of harmonies. Sometimes they all just hummed dissonant pitches while the priest was singing. The music had an uncanny way about echoing through the church. It would vibrate the walls and add even more momentum to the song. It felt like the music would echo through the walls and back into the souls of all those standing in the Church. While I would have loved to sing along or heard some congregation pieces, the amount of music was far greater than a Catholic mass. I'm a bit jealous of that!

I didn't understand much of what was being said in the rapid Georgian. I know that the gospel was the prodigal son. I know that the Priest gave an interesting and humorous homily. I also know that it took 4 1/2 hours! Standing for 4 1/2 hours while trying to decipher Georgian and follow all the signs of crosses was difficult. I could not find cues as to when everyone did the sign of the cross. I tried to be respectful, but I missed a lot of them. (So, Catholics go across their shoulders first and Orthadox touch the shoulder on the right side first. Is this why my first grade Faith Formation Teacher was so insistent about how we did the sign of the cross? Just so we didn't get mistaken as Orthadox Christians? lol) There was also a great deal of kissing icons and crosses as people were leaving the church. I know Catholics do this too sometimes. But watching all the sick people touching the cross was a bit too much for me. The Priest would have let me come up at the end in the line of everybody else, but I politely declined. I love Jesus; I think he'll understand me foregoing kissing his statue for remaining healthy.

The differences were intriguing. It gave me a lot of time to think about how much I take for granted during the services I attend at home every Sunday. Hopefully, I'll get to a Catholic service next time I'm in Tbilisi. I'm grateful for the experience but miss my own services where I know what's going on.

Mast'! Mast'! Mast'!

Mast'savlebeli means teacher in Georgian. And that is what I am here in Georgia. An English Teacher. (Cue song from Bye Bye Birdie. . .) I am working with 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th grades. I have about 21 lessons each week and work with three different teachers.

Despite the age differences, there are many similarities throughout all of my classes. The first being Georgian students are noisy! They whisper to each other. They practice the material "silently" to themselves. They check answers with each other. They even say "Mast'! Mast'! Mast'!" while trying to get the teacher to call on them. All thirty some of them do this at the same time. My ears are still protesting the sound. I'm sure in a couple more weeks I'll be used to it. Right now, though, I want to cover my ears in most classes. The noise, though, is just a sign of one of the best attributes of Georgian students. They are so excited to learn English. I can't speak about other lessons, but they seem to really want to be in school. They take their education more seriously than many of the Americans I know. These students also have a high tolerance level. The school is often without electricity and therefore heat. They only have chalkboards in the classrooms. No extra books or supplies in the rooms. There is a tiny library and a computer room that seem to rarely be used. There is also only one severely outdated science laboratory for the whole school. Yet, students think their school is beautiful. They appreciate the large classrooms and the things they do have.

The best part of getting to know my students is seeing their confidence emerge. I walk to and from school. That way I get to see more of Poti and burn off some of those calories they keep stuffing down my throat (seriously, Georgians never seem to stop offering me food!). This week I've had four different students approach me on these walks and speak in English with me. The fourth grader only got as far as "Hello, how are you?" but the smile on her face when I responded was resplendent. A seventh grader had a whole conversation with me about my computer. They are timid when conversing, but I take the signs of initiative outside of the classroom as beacons of emerging understanding and retention. 

Obviously, It isn't all or even most of my work. I've only been here for three weeks. There was a past volunteer here last semester, and their teachers have been here for years (one has been teaching for over 40 years). These people get the credit for giving students the opportunity to learn the basics of English. I'm just trying to give students another reason to be excited about the material and teachers the opportunity to improve their English with a native speaker. Two of my teachers have been exceptional to work with. They let me read a lot and are open to my suggestions of games and activities that get students speaking aloud. One, however, is difficult to communicate with. She doesn't seem to understand my accent. I have an even harder time understanding her's. She also has a teaching philosophy that is very difficult for me to understand. She yells at students all the time. Sometimes, it seems like for no reason at all. She corrects students in the middle of their attempts to sound out words. When students make a mistake, she screams that they should know it already. A topic is introduced and then reviewed a little the next day. No activities are given to practice or to use the new information in a practical way. The students are just supposed to memorize texts. I try to gently add my suggestions to class. We are still communicating with each other, however, slowly and painfully at times. I think her classes will be the best opportunity for me to challenge my own teaching style. I feel like I can offer those students more, more laughter and more interesting material. I also feel like I can really help this teacher improve her own English. She's obviously been studying a for a long time. She understands the basics but has had little opportunity to use it outside of regurgitating for a classroom. This is the challenge that I wanted. Let's see what happens in the next five months, shall we?

On the Vitue of the Color Black

Any where you go in Georgia, you will see crowds of people wearing only black. It is the basic color that every child, man, and woman resorts to when deciding what to wear. From head to toes Georgians cover themselves in Black. This makes monochromatic the norm.  There are those who dare to branch out a bit and wear navy, shades of gray, or white. However, the bright colors of red, baby blue, pink, or yellow are rarely seen. It can be a bit overwhelming to walk into school or through the market and just see rolling waves of black. I disturb this cloud of Georgian Black with my bright yellow coat and khakis. There is no better way for me to shout, "I'm a foreigner!" than to wear such vivid colors.  I just can't resist. I like color, and I like seeing the startled reactions of those who notice me.

You might be led to believe that the color choice reflects on Georgian personality. I suppose it does, but not in the stereotypical manner in which Americans think of Black. We see Black as a sign or mourning, hiding, or depression. It works well as a base for clothes but should be accented with something bright in order to negate this convention. It would be easy to assume that the Georgians dressed solely in such a dark color would be an unhappy lot or perhaps unwelcoming to strangers. In reality, Georgians are just bidding their time to embrace you. They are extremely welcoming and quick to laughter and generosity. The color needed in life comes out in their personality and reflects strongly against the color choice of their clothes. The person becomes more vivid.

An introduction to Poti

I would like to first mention that there are fireworks being shot off in the rain tonight. I have no idea why, but it certain makes you wonder about cultural differences, doesn't it?

Poti is an odd city. It lacks much of the juxtaposition that Tbilisi had. There is construction going on in a few areas. However, most of the city looks like the stereotype of a post-soviet city. There are buildings in ruins everywhere. Stray dogs run rampant. There are cows just hanging out on the street corners next to the chickens. Through all of this you begin to see the certain charm that such a city holds. You can easily walk down to the Black sea from my house. There is a long trail that runs along the port where you can find people biking or walking. Every house has fruit trees and grapes growing in their yards. The architecture is very unique. The city is begining to grow. Businesses are moving in. This means the standard of living is much greater here than in the villages.

A picture of my house in Poti

I'm very lucky to have the host family that I do. The mayor, Gucha,  is very busy but kind. His wife, Nino, is amazing and a cardiologist. They both know a fair amount of English and are eager to practice. I haven't picked up too much Georgian because they both want to become comfortable with English. Nino said she'd help me learn though. They have been very generous. My room is well furnished. I even get my own bathroom! They have two sons who are studying in Tbilisi at the University there. Some of the anticipated issues that were mentioned in training like lack of privacy or lack of luxuries have not been an issue for me. 

 

School has been interesting. I work with four different teachers and have 25 lessons every week. One of the teachers has been working for 40 years. You can tell by her yelling at students and the books she prefers to work with. It's this old book that just has a few boring texts to read and nothing conversation related. Thankfully, she can only use it with the sixth graders. I'm hoping to add a lot of games to that class. So many of students look like they are falling asleep in class. Ironically, this is the same teacher who was trying to correct my own pronunciation of words while I was reading today.  No it wasn't a "q" sound, it was the word mountain. I'm pretty sure I say that one correctly. lol We get a long fine otherwise, though. The students are eager but noisy in class. I could write a lot more about school, but I'll leave that for another day. 

I really want to make a small mention about driving in Georgia. IT'S TERRIFYING! To get to Poti, some men from the resource center picked me and the other Poti volunteer up in Tbilisi. We drove on only one road through the mountains. It was like being on a roller coaster. Imagine a two lane road winding through the mountains. Then add cars and trucks going over 140 km/hour. Cars pass each other all the time, including around corners and up hills. The only notice they give is the occasional honk. The cars are also driving three a breast for one lane. Oh, and add the occasional cow in the middle of the road. You have to be very brave to drive here and I give a lot of props to the man who got us here safely. Craziest part of living in Georgia so far!