Way Overdue Post!

At the end of February I had a very successful turnout at my writing competition in Borjomi (140 students came). This competition asked students to pick from three topics (questions like: If you could invite anyone in the world to dinner who would you invite? If you were president of Georgia what would you do?). Then the essays were judged based on creativity not grammar or spelling. This was actually quite a challenge for a lot of students I think. This was shown by my 9^th form having seven students write, “I would invite my best friend to dinner”….yeah…. Also, just getting students to understand the idea of not cheating during a competition was really difficult. It was amazing how many students just couldn’t get the concept of “Don’t Talk!” But, overall it went well and I think they had fun. Volunteers all over Georgia did this and they were judged regionally, nationally, and the national winners soon will be judged against the winners in Armenia and Azerbaijan (volunteers there are doing the same thing). Several of Borjomi’s students ended up being regional winners with one even getting 3^rd place at the national level!

I also traveled to Telavi to participate in our first Teacher Training. Seven volunteers travel to a site and teach local teachers some new methods or activities for teaching. It actually was quite fun and I think I like teaching teachers better than teaching students. My courses were on Critical Thinking Activities and Review Activities. I thought they both went pretty successfully and the teachers seemed to have lots of fun. Many of my activities involved a lot of movement and theater. At first most of the teachers were shy and put off by this (most of them don’t think a teacher should ever have to stand up), one teacher even adamantly told me “We are teachers, not actors!” But, by the end I had them all laughing, running around the room, and…. acting! So that was cool.

I took my cat to a veterinarian in Tbilisi last week because I decided she really needed to be spayed. This however is NOT a common operation here (because they think its mean) and for a while I was giving her this weird medicine that they give their pets to keep them from going into heat. After she got an infection in her uterus and I had to give her a shot every 6 hours for 3 days to keep her from dying, I decided it was time to go to a veterinarian who wasn’t crazy (the veterinarian here chain smokes in your pets face, doesn’t ask any questions before handing you random unknown drugs, and in his store he sells both pet products and a variety of nail polish and hair dye supplies. He also thinks that bringing your pet to him is an unnecessary part of the veterinarian pet relationship and that he can in fact diagnose a problem simply by knowing what species of animal it is… and nothing more…so scary) So, I took her to this guy that some other Americans have gone to and asked him to spay my cat. He was also very weird and thus I was really scared when I dropped my cat off in his tiny dirty smelly office with supplies that looked like they were from WWI. But, she seems okay and should be getting her stitches out in the next few days. I also got a cool little international animal-passport where you record when you receive all the needed shots for traveling internationally. Apparently lots of volunteers have taken their pets home and they said it wasn’t very hard at all so long as you have the documentation. I don’t know if I will bring her back, but it is good to have it anyway.

Promptly after returning to Borjomi I got really sick. I had this terribly high temperature for three days. I am definitely tired of being sick as this was now my 4^th or 5^th time being pretty ill in this country. Being sick is always one of the most frustrating times to deal with cultural differences. When I finally felt better yesterday and my fever went away I wanted to shower. My host mom blocked the shower door and said that I couldn’t shower because it would make my fever come back. I had been lying in bed sweating for three days and hadn’t actually showered for nearly a week at that point.

She didn’t let me and I only mildly flipped out… it felt like personal progress. It’s interesting because the attitude towards treating sick people is very different here. Here people seem to think that they should be around you all the time. People were coming in and out of my room every 10 minutes. Sometimes they would congregate in my room to have conversations… I would be trying to sleep because my head felt like it was going to explode. I also almost lost it when my host sister actually brought her friend by to see me and wish me to get well. Again, I hadn’t showered in a week, was covered in sweat, had a fever, and was throwing up. The last thing I wanted was for people to come by and see me and chit-chat. Not a lot of privacy here when you are sick and the food also gets worse. They force you to eat all sorts of really nasty concoctions and then put socks soaked in vinegar on your feet (which felt really disgusting). Also you get this stream of people (everyone in the house plus everyone they know who comes over) who come up to check on you and stick their lips on your forehead to see if you have a temperature and then announce their decision about what your temperature is. I kept showing them that I have a thermometer. I know what my temperature is… thanks. This of course all goes on no matter how many times you politely ask people to please just let you sleep. I know it also shows how much they love me, but it is hard to remember that in the moment. Again, there was only mild flip-outage.

Our phone has been broken for a long time, so that’s my excuse for taking forever to post this. I just finished my spring break. Basically I did nothing. I probably could/should have traveled somewhere, but I didn’t want to use my vacation days and I didn’t really have anywhere to go.

Sorry this post took forever! I miss you all.