Two Posts in One Day, Hey Girl Hey.

Some random odds and ends from various walks, day trips, hikes, etc. of late:

 Store I found in Osorno. They sell... lady things. Under my name! I'll take it.

Coffee. Real coffee. Clearly it loves me just as much as I love it. This particular cup came with a generous helping of whiskey. Hey! It was Friday, after all. But Cafe Rhenania, if you're ever in the Osorno way. Highly recommend. Very cute. Delicious pastries. Real coffee. Let me repeat. REAL MOTHERTRUCKING COFFEE.

Also from Friday, we had shortened class with the 8th grade (which I stuck around for, although they were just taking an exam. WOW is that boring to supervise.) because the school was celebrating the Police with an acto, or assembly! These kids pictured below were some of the ones who danced the Cueca, the national Chilean dance. There was also a really cute part that unfortunately I couldn't get up close enough to document, where the first graders reenacted little scenes, pretending to be criminals and carabineros (police). They had obviously memorized little scripts for their plays. Adorable!

 Small memorial tucked beside the highway on the walk home from my school. I've taken to walking home, because the time alone, listening to music, and just thinking and taking in the country is really great. Plus it saves me 500 Pesos (admittedly, not that much money, but I like saving money even when it's not a lot) and it's only 5K, all downhill. Every time I do it though, I get between 2 and 6 offers of a ride from driversby, often teachers at my school returning to Lago Ranco. My coteacher even asked me the other day, "Do you... not have enough money to get home?" When I told her no, I just preferred to walk, she seemed relieved if a little surprised.

Another picture from one of my walks. It was a cloudy day but you can kind of see the sunset reflecting off the sign.

Another view from my walks home. This view is directly across the street from the bus stop outside of Ignao school. It's almost comical how pretty it is.

My first English workshop! I basically have decided to run them similarly to my classes, although a little more relaxed, with a little less structure. We have the same amount of time as a regular class (theoretically, although not a single one of my classes has actually gone 45 minutes because the kids loooove to walk as slowly as physically possible and dawdle in every imaginable way on the way from their classroom to the one assigned to me). So mostly I just play a game with them. Last week we worked on numbers, and I had everyone count off starting from one and going to twenty. Anyone who got 10 or 20 had to sit down, and the last person standing won. It was kind of fun because the kids at first they were winning by getting to sit down, they didn't have to pay attention or keep counting but then... the last kid standing got a sticker! They paid A LOT more attention after that. After the warm-up game we played something that went over REALLY well, where I prepared slides with different numbers of things (butterflies, shoes, chairs, people, hamburgers, whatever) and gave each students a couple cards with the numbers one-twenty written out, in English. There were two teams and when I flashed the slide the first team whose member raised the correct number card got one point. If they could answer the question, "How many _______ are there?" with "There are # _______________" they got another point. They got pretty into it and we all had a pretty good time, so I consider it a success.

 Sunrise at the bus stop across from my street. Now that the clocks have turned back an hour, I probably won't even get this!! Sadness.

These are some of the views from Zach and my sunset walk up to Piedra Mesa from the other weekend. I didn't post them before for obvious reasons but they are really gorgeous and I wanted to share them eventually!

 Obvious scary movie trap- not falling for it. Nice try Piedra Mesa, I'm not that much of a dummy.

 Just so lovely. I'm going to make an effort to climb up there more often.

The next day, just rambling around in the countryside! Horses:

This is where the true adventure began. After hopping a fence onto what was clearly private property, we decided to push our luck even further and climb this (and several other) barbed wire fence to get up onto the hill we really wanted to be on. It was... an interesting afternoon!

 The view afterwards, when we'd returned to legal ground!

 On the boardwalk.

 Store I stumbled upon on Friday, in Río Bueno. I am kind of in love with Chile's love affair with The Cure. They were on the news for like 2 straight weeks before they played their concert in Santiago.

From this past weekend, getting some lunch at Las Vigas, the cute although not very efficient restaurant in my town. Sandy had accompanied my friends (Jennifer, Sarah, Zach) and I on our walk out along the lake, although we assumed we had lost her once we went to eat. But about 20 minutes into our meal she showed up, obviously pleased with herself for finding us once again and ready to curl up and wait for handouts! She really is one of my favorite street dogs in Lago Ranco.

 Another very cute street dog of Lago Ranco, who I call Street Sancho after my friend's dachshund.  A street dachshund! Who would have guessed! Lago Ranco actually seems to have a lot of pure-breed street dogs, I've also seen German Shepherds and various Spaniels.

So those are some things. I'm sure there are more to come, I have quite a lot of plans coming up for the next few weekends!

ინგლისურის გაკვეთილები (English Lessons)

“Quand tu veux construire un bateau, ne commence pas par rassembler du bois, couper des planches et distribuer du travail, mais reveille au sein des hommes le desir de la mer grande et large."

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I started the club in October, because I had so many bright students and I wanted to be able to spend some more time with them, in a less formal setting than the regular lessons during school hours. However, my school, Tbilisi Public School 192, was huge, and I didn't know how many students would be interested. I asked for help from one of my co-teachers, Nana. She recommended I start the club with the students of class 6b, who were fairly well behaved and very enthusiastic about English.

So I started small. The first week, I wrote out the lyrics to a couple pop songs (The Beatles, Elvis, Rihanna), leaving blanks for them to try and guess what was being sung. I remembered this activity from my Spanish classes in high school, and remembered enjoying it. It's not as though Georgia doesn't import its fair share of English-language pop (although if the marshrutkas and cafes are any indication, there is an equal demand for Russian pop), but I had a hunch that these kids, bright that they may be, were like many Georgians, in that they weren't really listening to the music for the words. How else could Black Eyed Peas and Maroon 5 have become as popular as they were? I played each song a few times, to let them really get comfortable listening to the songs for the words. They all laughed a little nervously at the first song- Elvis, Hound Dog, classic- but by the third time I played it, I saw the boys sneakily shaking their hips and the girls bobbing their heads. Pop music... what better hook to get them coming back for more English club?

The next week, I decided to try something a little more challenging. I created a memory game based on what they were currently working on, the future tense by way of intention. Specifically, the phrase "going to..._______". I created a couple others, including one that paired adult animal names with the baby names (dog/puppy, cat/kitten, etc.) which was quite the hit. The thing about Georgian kids, in my experience, is that anytime you make it a game, their competitive spirit comes out and they unreservedly, unironically throw themselves into it. They're all in.

The core crew can be seen here, plus on the right, with the yellow headband, Tamari, and leaning over in the striped shirt, Esma.

By this point, I noticed that all of the boys and a few of the girls had fallen by the wayside. Sure, Serge (the lone boy, as much of an outsider as any Georgian kid is) still doggedly continued to show up, but otherwise a core group of about five girls had become the basis of my club. So I thought, as a twelve year old girl, what did I love to do? What was interested in? How did I entertain myself?

And then I remembered the origami fortune-tellers we used to make in droves, entertaining ourselves in study halls and sleepovers by creating little elaborately folded, flower-like harbingers of doom and joy, husbands and cars, jobs and children. MASH was complicated and would require excessive explanations, and these girls' English wasn't that good. But the fortune tellers? That I could sell them on.

 From left: Ani, Mari, Tekla, Qeti, and Nini.

The club usually met on Tuesdays, after the sixth grade's final lesson. The next time I was with class 6b was on Thursday, and when I walked into the class with Nana I noticed the fortune tellers immediately. They were... everywhere. All the students had one. The boys were competing by making progressively smaller and  smaller ones, seeing who could effectively fold the smallest piece of paper into the little four-sectioned puppet. All during class that day, and during the next week, I was confiscating the damn things. And the kicker? The kids had taken the concept and run with it... in Georgian. They were writing out the predictions in Georgian. It was doubtlessly a success, although more for the cultural cache than the appeal of the English language.

This semester flew by. It seemed as though the time between my first disjointed, fittingly Georgian day of school (disorganized, a great show of kindness and curiosity, hectic yet at times extremely boring) and my last was only a couple weeks. So in the second week of December, I decided it was time to make some Christmas cards. I requested English language cards, although a few girls begged to write the traditional Georgian holiday greeting (analogous to the English equivalent, which wishes a happy Christmas and New Year), "გილოცავთ შობა და ახალ წელს!" (Gilotsavt Shoba da Akhal Tsels!) 

(Esma, who skipped a bunch of the sessions in the middle of the semester, can be seen in the blue sweater in the back. She made me a lovely card that I will probably hold onto for a long, long time.)

 They're just too cute to say no to. I wish I could describe the joy on some of their faces when I told them they didn't have to give me their cards when they were done, and could in fact make the cards for their family members or even make, GASP, multiple cards!

Finally, UNO. We spent a fair amount of afternoons (about 3, I believe) playing UNO. The game of UNO was treated by these girls like a high-stakes poker game. They colluded, they shouted, they agonized over slights and delighted in triumphs. They took to it with their typical Georgian fervor and I could hardly say no when they begged to play again, week after week. And in my defense, they learned a lot of game playing terminology (my turn, whose is it?, what does this mean?, etc.) It was also decent review for colors and numbers, which although elementary lessons, they have a tendency to forget. UNO was so beloved it even brought back into the fold students I thought had abandoned me for good at the beginning of the semester.

These pictures are from our last game, played on my last day of school. UNO, an American game with a Spanish name, popular with these girls (and Serge) as much for the fun of playing as for watching me shuffle the deck, and endlessly fascinating activity that I tried every week to teach them how to do without success.

I'll miss these girls, and Dighomi Public School 192, and Tbilisi, in a way that's hard to describe eloquently. This has been a rough semester: for much of it I was ill, my commute was arduous and often inconvenient, there were a series of ups and downs while Kayla stayed with me and trying to figure out what would be my next adventure after Georgia. At the end however, I found myself sad to be leaving, and sure that I would some day look back on my time living in Tbilisi with nostalgia. It was a bittersweet emotion.

Clockwise from the sole boy in the club: Serge, Nino, Esma, Tekla, Nini, Mari, and Qeti.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

So says Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I can only hope that I taught these girls to long for the sea, as my best teachers did for me. Time will tell, I suppose.

Didi Dighomi.

A somewhat far-flung suburb of Tbilisi: This is my soviet high-rise filled wasteland. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

The view from my room.

My elevator. I take the stairs as often as possible.

I continue to adore the English graffiti here for its utter incoherence and randomness.

My room.

 Somewhat confusing Cyrillic/Latin keyboard.

 Young masters Dato (3) and Gigi (7).

My bus stop.

The building side. It says: khatchapuri (cheese bread), gojis shetsva (fried something). On the right, almost as an afterthought: pitsa (pizza). Which is a lie, since most Georgian street vendors' conception of pizza includes mayonnaise and cilantro. Or it would be, if I had ever once in my month of living here seen this place open.

News stand/cigarette/candy store. Similar fare to those you see on the corners in NYC. By the way the pink and white writing on the front there says "jakpoti'... lottery numbers.

Mini market/dentist located around the corner from my apartment. The word for dentist seems to be "stomatologuri". So close to stomach. So upsetting. Also, I ventured into the market on right the other day out of curiosity (it's so small, it's always dark, the steel front is always 1/3 lowered like in the picture, and they have one of the heat/water/internet/telephone/miscellaneous bills kiosk located RIGHT in front of the door so you literally have to walk in sideways to get around it. Once you get around the kiosk, there's a freezer you have to basically climb over and then the shop has two coolers full of beer, a handful of random bags of chips, and a few boxes of crappy Russian candy/cookies. Not to mention about 6 employees, who all stare at you during said attempt to enter the shop and then spent the entire 35 seconds I was in the shop asking me what I wanted. I probably will not be frequenting this one too often, bless their hearts.

Giant neighborhood dog. Fairly sure this is one of the Georgian breed, the Kavkasiuri Nagazi. Wikipedia lists them as having several variants, and I don't know which one this is. All I know is he's big, I see his master walking him around on a chain (literally, a giant steel-link chain that he just wraps around the dog's neck and then holds onto), and otherwise he seems to reside in this yard. And he did not like me peeking in, not one bit. Here he is seconds before he went beserkers.

In the background: fairly well-stocked neighborhood market, Ori Nebitchi (This means two something, I don't know what Nebitchi means). I've found all the essentials in there: Yogurt, soda, fruits, vegetables, crackers, chocolate, booze. But they also have some intriguing stuff: peanut butter, chocolate cookies, corn flakes and a few other random and suspiciously American odds and ends.

In the foreground: a goat.

Among Ori Nebitchi's fare: this. Sex on a Beach bottled cocktail. At 3.95 GEL it's outrageously expensive, but then when are cocktails ever not? Not that I would get this because gross, but still. Strange place.

 Large neighborhood soccer field. I know what you're thinking. What're those brown dots?

 Cows. Naturally.

And a neighborhood basketball court.

 Petre Iberi's Street. One of the main roads, used by most of the buses.

Speaking of buses, this is not of my usual ones but one day I was heading over to Station Square (a big marshrutka hub as well as a metro stop and the train station) and grabbed the 15, where I saw this on the bus's front sun visor. In case it's not clear, it's a sepia toned picture of the Magnificent Seven. And yes, this driver drove like it was the wild west. But then again, so do most Georgians.

 Neighborhood bazaar. (The sign says, "bazari'.) A fair deal fancier than the old Khoni bazaar.

 "Berdzneuli Puri", or Greek bread. Popular fare in these parts.

 Amelie graffiti in one of the bus stops! Also, "FANKY". No idea on that one.

 A grape vine grows in Didi Dighomi.

   As do some rose bushes. This is the garden in front of my place.

 The sign reads, "kalak tbilisis (Tbilisi city's) sajaro skola (public school)". As can be seen in English below. School 192, my monstrously huge new professional digs.

 One wing, and the front yard. This ain't no village playhouse, there's two of every grade and I've yet to visit a class with less than 20 students.

Last, but in no way least: what remains of an old Soviet truck. Gone but never really forgotten.