Skolashi: Part 2

Yesterday marked the start of the second week of school for this new semester, and as such it's probably a good time to finish my thoughts from a post a long time ago, in a blog archive far far away...

As mentioned previously, I'm not an education major, or a trained teacher. These are all just observations as someone who made it out of the American public school system relatively unscathed, so you might want to take all of this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, geronimo!

Every single issue I've encountered thus far in my school can be summed into one nice and tidy word - culture.

What I mean by this is that it's not only a language barrier, lack of comprehensive books, or a strict adherence to a pretty meaningless timetable that render most English classes in my school as unproductive, because all of these play a huge part in the issue. Yet the cherry on top is the biggest problem I've run into, and unfortunately it's the one that I'm really incapable of changing. It's entrenched itself into the very existence of all my kids, their parents, and indeed the very infrastructure of this little country.

I'm about to blow all of your minds right now. Are you ready for this? Ok, here it goes...

Georgia's culture is super different from English culture.

Whoa. I'm going to let that one sink in for a minute.

You back now? Ok. Allons-y!

So, our dear MacMillan books are published in Britain, meaning that my kids are all speaking British English. They're learning words like "maths" and "lorries" and are being yelled at if they don't use "has got" in sentences. There are questionable uses of "so" as a conjunctive, and I absolutely hate hate hate that they say "rubbers" instead of "erasers." The dialogues don't really teach useful conversational vocabulary, and the CD's with accompanying audio speak so fast and are so heavily accented that there are times that it takes me, a native speaker, a minute to figure out what the fuck it is that they're saying.

But I can deal with these things. They're workable. What isn't workable is the apparent battle of east vs. west that is taking place in the more abstract sense. These books are written by British English speakers, probably white, and are mass produced only in English so that they can attempt to be universal in the teaching English world, which, spoilers, isn't really westernized...

You might be saying to yourself, "Jobags, this is all pretty obvious. You're not telling us anything we don't already know." I get that. You're a smart and educated person, and I'm not trying to belittle you.  I'm just trying to make sure you're with me when I tell you that before these books, my kids have never seen a multiple choice question, and that they've never seen a fill in the blank style activity with vocabulary words, and that word banks are something that haven't been in their scholastic lives ever until now. Things that you and I take for granted because we are part of a society in which we learn how to correctly use a dictionary to find the letter we want are exactly the things that make these books less than ideal for here, because none of those things are really taught or encouraged.

In America people that don't score well on multiple choice tests are considered "stupid."1 This is because from a very young age we learn how to navigate multiple choice questions. Every single class in elementary school has some kind of multiple choice element, and kids get practice with it constantly. We're taught the most effective ways of scoring points on larger exams, and that the results of these exams will not only dictate what kind of university we can hope to get into someday, but how much external funding for our future education we might be able to receive. On the whole, we're brought up to practically do multiple choice in our sleep. The same goes for a plethora of other activities to test our knowledge about a subject. Every textbook for every class in public schools will ensure that kids are able to properly apply their new found knowledge in a bunch of different ways. American schools are grade centric; every thing we do gets a score on it, and we have progress reports, parent teacher conferences to discuss how we're doing in class, and report cards on a regular basis. We lose points for missing class, for being disruptive to our peers, for not knowing material. There are a million little factors that constitute the letter grade we receive, and we're highly aware of all of them.

But that's not the case here. Attendance in school isn't really heavily enforced - I've got one girl in second grade who maybe came to class a third of the time before break, and I have yet to see her this semester. I asked my coteacher if she was ok, and Natia gave me a look like I was insane and said, "Yes, she is fine. Lizi is just a very lazy girl and does not like school, so she does not come." I wish I had that option growing up, because I definitely would have just stayed home and read and watched documentaries on the Discovery Channel. My teachers have gradebooks, but they don't write down numbers for each kid every day, instead only sometimes giving 9s or 10s for the students that participated a lot in any given class period. Forget homework scores, because I'm pretty sure if my teacher likes the student and they messed up a bit they will still get a higher number in their notebook than a less cute kid who might've gotten a few more questions correct. So homework scores are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless because the scores for these exercises don't get transferred to the official gradebook anyway, which beckons the question, "What's the point?"

Parent-teacher interaction is limited to teachers writing down disappointed feelings in students notebooks for them to show their family. Occasionally a parent will drop their kid off at class in the morning and they'll stay and chat with us for a minute, but it usually is to tell me I am a beautiful and good girl instead of any kind of interest in how their child is doing in class. I haven't seen a physical report card, or anything resembling an actual grade, and the only type of test I've seen my kids take, outside of the ones Lamara gives my older kids, was an optional standardized test which you a) have to pay for, and b) have to go to Tbilisi to take, which drastically cuts the number of children who are even eligible to take it down by an astronomical amount.

And speaking of tests, my kids are terrible test takers. Lamara will use examples pulled straight out of their workbooks, which means that the tests are, verbatim, exercises they've done, in formats that they've seen and familiarized themselves with for a few years now. With only a handful of exceptions who actually complete the tests, most of my kids hand in their paper having only finished a question or two. In a 45 minute period. I was really perplexed by this, so I started paying attention a bit more during their next test and found that this seeming lack of effort wasn't that at all - when one of my kids gets stuck, they just stare and stare at the question, hoping to think of the answer. If they can't, then they just never move on, resulting in only one or two questions having any kind of a response. It was a bizarre feeling, having to explain to my classes that if they don't know an answer right away to go onto the next one and come back later, since that seemed like just such common sense to my standardized test centric American brain.

But it's not common sense for here.

There are so many little things that I've done since I was young that just are not a part of educational life for my lovely, tiny Georgian kids. Simple things, like copying down full words or sentences, and paying attention to copying them down correctly, is probably one of the hardest things I can ask them to do, other than spell words on their own. It's really, really weird, and I've never seen anything like it.

Also hard for them are independent creative thoughts. And I'm not even asking them to write the next great American novel. All I want are simple sentences using the vocabulary or grammar that we JUST went over, and they look at me like I might as well be asking them to write the next great American novel. My kids are amazing and wonderful at memorizing things and spitting responses back to you so long as you follow the same script they memorized. The answer to the question, "How are you?" is always, "Fine thanks, and you?" Even if they're not fine. One of my first graders lost their father over Christmas break, and that was still the answer he gave me. And not to be culturally insensitive about this, cause I realize that it's a private matter and all, but YOU'RE NOT FINE!! Say, "Not good," or, "Bad." Hell, I will even take a, "So-so!" Anything, as long as it's not the bullshit, "Fine thanks, and you," that I am just so fed up with hearing. All of my kids do it. That's how they always respond to that question, and it drives me nuts. No variation. No deviation. Always, "Fine thanks, and you."

Once I realized that my kids just memorize specific sentences and phrases, I decided to check out a Georgian textbook for one of their other classes. I just happened to look at the one for their history class, and a lot of things clicked. Like how at the end of chapters there are no review questions. There's nothing that asks for any sort of recall on the material you just read, no questions that make you come up with your own thoughts that have to be substantiated by the prior material. I borrowed my host sisters biology book, and it was the same sort of deal - absolutely no questions at the end of chapters. The same is true in every book I've looked at, with the notable exception of math texts. Aside from not getting to speak a lot of English each week (we're still at about 20 minutes a week of class time where they get to actually speak), they also are only encountering these types of prompts in one of their books, so they're not getting any kind of decent practice and familiarity with these question formats, on top of the fact that the books are only in English with no kind of Georgian direction or anything. Can you blame them for being so confused? Because I sure can't. Especially when the way in which they learn every other bit of information given to them by school (i.e. memorizing) just doesn't cut it anymore for this ONE class in which they have zero idea what the hell is going on ever cause it's in a different language and it assumes a different basal understanding than what the kids themselves have!

And it's not even like the memorizing standard is unique only to my school. Numerous other volunteers have noticed it, and I've even seen it inside my own family, whose kids go to another school in town. Watching my host sister and brother do their [non-English] homework is very strange because they just read over something a bunch of times, and then start saying the text aloud, and then when they can recite it all to their mother from memory they're done.

...Uh...buh...? What?

That doesn't do anything! Memorization, straight up, is not the correct way to test your understanding of a subject! My kids can sit there and say the alphabet all day long and say it correctly, but independent recall of stand alone letters? Nope. They're lost. And it's great that they're memorizing whole phrases, but when we need them to make up a new sentence they're just hopelessly lost because they don't understand how verbs and adjectives and nouns all work, and what you change or anything like that, because the books just aren't built for it. So I'm sitting there in class, playing remedial grammar, in Georgian (you know, that language I DON'T speak!), so that my kids can see what all is happening in the English sentences. And even then, once I get them sort of on the same page as me, my host teachers get frustrated with them that they can't commit to memory the nine new words we gave them. I've tried to get them to use flash cards, but teaching my teachers how to do drills with them has proved pretty fruitless. I keep trying every so often, but Lamara insists that having Georgian on the cards is detrimental and that they should be able to just remember what the words mean immediately. The woman has been teaching for 47 years, and I'm her third English coteacher. I highly doubt I will be able to change anything with her.

This might seem like a highly critical entry at this moment, and it's really not meant to be. I'm just trying to paint you the picture of the kind of shit I'm dealing with at school so that when I ask this next question you might be able to help me out with finding an answer.

Given the numerous differences between Georgia and the English speaking world, why do we assume that imposing a western educational system on an eastern societal infrastructure will work?

I get that MacMillian's decision to sell their books only in English is a very smart move from a business perspective. And you know, these books would actually be fairly decent if the teachers were trained to use them. But they're not. My coteachers don't understand all of the activities even. They don't ever deviate from what's in the book. They're very focused on maintaining a certain amount of material to go through for each grade, and if kids are left behind then it's just too bad. And since kids aren't really motivated to do well in class unless their parents are really urging them, the ones that fall behind tend to stay behind.

Realistically, last semester made me understand two things.

1) The money for the program I am a part of, the program that brought me to this awesome place that I love, and is paying for me to be a part of not only these kids lives but also my host family's, would be so much better spent right now on Georgian teacher development. I understand the desire to have English speakers in schools for pronunciation reasons, but bring them back in a few years. Right now, focus on having the actual local teachers able to deal with these books in the correct manner. Give them ways of dealing with behavioral issues, question formats, and external activities that all can be applied to an eastern world instead of just trying to hammer the proverbial square into the circle over and over again. Also, if you are going to use a curriculum which is highly dependent on audio disks, make sure that you can supply all of your schools with electricity so that they can actually utilize these resources. In other words, as my friend so succinctly put it, "If you are going to demand western expectations, provide western infrastructure."

2) The story of the schools, and how things are run here, is in no way unique to Georgia. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of parallels to inner city underfunded public schools in America. Education (ready for a blanket statement to end all blanket statements?), in most of the world, is really a privilege of those who can afford it. The average Georgian is unable to afford it, so many families don't really put that much emphasis on it, especially when teachers just write off kids as being "lazy" or "slow" if they don't understand something right away. It's a really vicious cycle, and it's going to take more than anything I can ever hope to do to change it.

But at the end of the day, it's not really up to me to fix everything in the Georgian educational system. All I can do is try to work with my coteachers, who sometimes very handily regress in their English speaking abilities, and stay as positive as I possibly can with the kids. I just got all of them little notebooks, and I told them I want between one and three sentences that they come up with every single day. The sentences can be about anything they want - the weather, what they want, where they went, how they feel, a cat that gets superpowers and goes to fight crime. I don't really care what it is, so long as it's in English, and that they are slowly able to realize how much they actually know versus how much they think they know. The news of these journals has been met with both excitement and confusion, because I'm pretty sure no teacher in the history of their lives has ever asked them to just write silly little phrases five days a week, but there you go. I'm a weird American, who encourages weird American things, so if it will help them learn this stupid ass language which you and I are fluent in, then that's all that I care about.



1. And no, I don't agree with it. Personally, I'm rubbish with multiple choice tests because I get super stressed out about them and tend to just fucking forget EVERYTHING I EVER KNEW ABOUT ANYTHING except for obscure Star Trek history, or something else that's totally useless for my completing the exam with any kind of hope for a decent score. But on a whole, our "smartness" is usually boiled down to a stupid number that just means we chose a bunch of circles correctly.

Georgian Ingenuity...

...or as I like to call it, "Why I feel at home in this janky little country."

So I'm sitting here in the teachers lounge admiring the new TV they set up yesterday. I can't help but notice the picture is fuzzy, and I consider getting up to make sure the cable is properly screwed in (in case you missed the memo, I am a tech goddess here. Stop laughing, dammit! It's true!). Before I make this [foolish] decision, I take a moment to see how they've got it hooked up, and that's when I notice the cable. 

It runs from behind the TV, across the glass faced cupboards (to which it's taped), up the window pane (to which it's also taped), and ends at the curtain rod. They've stripped the end of the cable, and hooked it over the rod, and that's how they're getting cable to their tv. 

With a curtain rod that's acting as a giant antennae. 

How Ballpoint Pens Gave Me An Existential Crisis

I watched a really interesting little video yesterday on drawing with ballpoint pens. While most people walk away from it with a deeper understanding on cross hatching and other basic techniques, something about the video really made me uncomfortable. 

I realized shortly afterwards that never once, in the history of ever, have I questioned how these pens work. I mean, I knew the basics - tip, ink, pressure - but I never asked "how" in any sort of greater capacity. How awful is that? 

These pens have been a part of my daily life for years, and I couldn't be bothered to fully understand how it is that they function? 

There's actually a little ball in there (hence the name, you fucking spaz!) and it acts like those analog mice from the last generation of computers. The sides around the ball trap extra ink, and it all globs up until it gets knocked loose and that's why sometimes you get gross blobs on the paper as you write or draw. 

And know why artists who use these pens as their preferred medium never have blobs of grossness on their work? 

They're professionally trained and therefor their hands are just smarter than mine?

Magic? 

They sold their soul to a devil for the low low price of no blobs? 

No. None of these, which are all theories I've considered in the past. 

Its because they're constantly wiping off their pens on a paper towel. 

...why the hell did that never cross my mind? I've spent years - YEARS - thinking that I'm clearly just doing something wrong with my pens. Like I've got too much variable pressure as I use them, or maybe there's a lot of temperature fluctuation that others lack in their professional studios, or a dozen other technical reasons to rationalize why I sucked. 

No, Jo. You weren't using a fucking towel. 

So not only do I feel awful for never wondering how these tiny writing instruments work, other than "they just do," I also feel fucking stupid for never once thinking "just wipe it off" as a viable solution for the globs I've been plagued with since forever. 

And now I'm sitting here questioning everything else in my life. 

How many other things do I completely take for granted and not even wonder how they work? 

What other things can I fix with a proverbial paper towel? 

Why didn't I spend more time paying attention to simple machines in school? 

How come I never tried harder to understand physics and go into astronomy so I could figure out how the Universe was formed and how it works and where all we fit into it?

How can I sit here and say I'm an open minded specimen of the human species if I'm so blasé about something that's been an integral part of my life for like 20 years?

Ballpoint pens are the worst. 

I hate them. 

I want to light them all on fire and you might as well toss Small Minded Jo in there with them so we can spend all of eternity harassing each other in the glorious afterlife. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go ramble in my stupid notebook with my dumb ballpoint pen that is just constantly mocking me now. 

Honk If You Collect Baby Doll Heads

Or honk if you are passing someone.

Or honk if there's someone coming towards you.

Or honk if there is a person walking on the road.

Or honk if you're in a wedding caravan.

Basically, honk if you're a Georgian driver doing anything.

One of the first things I noticed about drivers here, other than they're fucking insane, is that everyone honks. Tbilisi is an endless stream of honking, and quite frankly, it was an alarming soundtrack for the city when I arrived initially. It only added fuel to the fire of my opinion that "every single Georgian is a shit driver and hence all of the honking - because they are all doing something stupid constantly." Which isn't fair, I admit it, but coming from a place where most people only honk if others are doing something stupid, I naturally assumed the same about here.

Except it just isn't the case.

I've tried for months to suss out just what it is that people honk about to little, or no, avail, because quite frankly everyone honks about everything.

Folks about to pass you will give you a small warning honk, in case their gut-wrenching tailgating wasn't enough of an indication that they are about to go around you.

Marshrutkas and taxis will honk at people on the side of the road if they're not paying attention, because they could possibly be paying customers and that's not an opportunity to be passed up!

There are instances of people honking when they get cut off, or if someone tries to change lanes with another car in the way, or any of the other reasons for which I'm used to people honking, but they seem few and far between on the Georgian thoroughfares.

Now, I understand all of those. They make sense to me.

The ones that are more abstract are the cases in which cars coming from opposing directions will give a small honk at each other, like an acknowledgment that they're there. Is this the Georgian equivalent of nodding and giving a small wave from the steering wheel that everyone just DOES when encountering another vehicle on a backwoods road in Michigan, only since it's Georgian it has to be louder? It also has no rhyme or reason to it, meaning a driver won't necessarily honk at every single oncoming car. But I have yet to figure out why some deserve a honk and others don't. I've thought that maybe it's because the drivers know one another, but they usually honk from a distance, and since everyone here drives some kind of black Mercedes or BMW or VW, the chances of them being able to identify friends from far away doesn't make sense. So what justifies the discrimination?

My other favorite conundrum is just the single honks drivers send out randomly while on a road alone. It's not around a curve, or a sharp turn, or anything else that would cause some kind of reduced visibility. No. Those all would merit an alert honk. But it's normally in a place where there are no cars anywhere, and no real impending crash zones, so why they feel the need to blast that horn of theirs is beyond me. They might just know something I don't. Maybe it was where there was a car crash years ago because of a herd of cows, so now everyone just honks to discourage any bovine crossings, and it's just become common knowledge that in this part of the road you honk.

This sounds ridiculous, I understand that, but that's kind of how information gets passed along here. For example, one of the most hilarious and/or irritating things about driving in this little country is that when your car is getting fueled up everyone will vacate it and stand a good twenty feet away. When asked why, I'm told it is dangerous to be in the car, and inevitably the Georgians I'm speaking with will make an explosion sound and hand gesture. So basically, the take away of this, is that one time many years ago, someone was smoking while fueling up their car and this, of course, lead to a big ol' ball of fiery gasoline powered inferno. Instead of suggesting that people NOT smoke while fueling up their automobiles - because let's be real, that will just never happen here! - it's much easier to blame it on superstition and that everyone will be much safer if they just stand off to the side since you never know when it'll blow! ....Even though you totally can predict when it will all ignite, but whatever. Georgia.

Anyway, back to honking.

After spending a few weeks in Telavi, and noting many instances of insane honking, I realized why Tbilisi is actually just one large never ending orchestra of car horns.

Weddings.

When you get married, between the church, and other churches you have to visit, and the location of the supra, everyone will get into their cars that are decorated with huge ostentatious ribbons and go careening down the roads, honking merrily all the way. Sometimes people will hang out of windows and shout and wave, and they are totally not discouraged by the ridiculous velocities at which the car is traveling. Nor are any observers remotely concerned about their safety, nor are they even phased by the amount of noise emanating from eighteen cars with whooping Georgians halfway out the windows getting drowned out by the noise of the car horns. They really are something to see. And hear. And there are so many weddings that you quickly become immune to all of the honking that is constantly going on. It's not so noticeable in Tbilisi, since all of the aforementioned reasons for honking on top of weddings are also in play, but in a smaller town like Telavi it's very easy to identify a wedding caravan.

I've honestly stopped noticing them. Or I had, until I went back to the seemingly docile in comparison streets of America for a month and then returned to the ruckus of weddings and taxis and general vehicular dumbassery that is universally worth a good honk. It was slightly jarring again, and I had to readjust myself to Georgian city norm levels of noise.

I'm sure that all the reasons above have legitimate reasons for Georgians. I'm sure a few of them are as obscure as us Americans flashing our headlights at oncoming cars to warn them of a policeman lurking ahead. Yet since I wasn't born into this place, and hold no drivers license of my own (although dear GOD I want one!), and don't even possess the linguistic prowess to ask drivers why they honk at a specific time, let alone understand their answer, I'm left to make my own guesses. And my guess is this - honk if you're a Georgian driver doing anything.

So when you come to Georgia some day, which I know you totally will because I've sold you on this place in the various charming blog posts I've written and you've read, don't be alarmed by the constant stream of car horns. Nothing serious is happening - it's just a way for Georgians to interact. There's absolutely nothing quiet about this group of people, and I love them for it. They're a loud bunch, always yelling or banging things around, or trying to make as much noise as humanly possible with whatever they have at their disposal. The sooner you can come to terms with that, the sooner you will start to feel more comfortable amidst the ensuing chaos of everyday life.

P.s. As to the title of this post, that's an actual bumper sticker available on the Internet. I haven't seen it here or anything, I just Google'd "honk if you..." so I could find something witty to call this write up, and I stumbled upon this gem. You're welcome!

An Excuse for a Photodump

I'm a big photography fan. I think it's an incredible medium, capable of freezing entire moments in time unlike any other human invention. 

While I wouldn't really count myself as an excellent picture taker (or excellent lexicon user!), I do tend to harbor a lot of happy feelings for all of my shots, especially kitchy ones. A friend and I once had a talk about how pictures aren't necessarily about capturing amazing shots, but more the memories they represent. Most of my favorite photos aren't the best ones - they're the weird few seconds that made me smile the most, or something completely random that caught my eye and made me laugh, or they're the ones that I use a crappy iPhone app to get. 

This is my favorite type of picture to take.

If you don't have Incredibooth, and you're on iOS, it's a pretty fun camera. Most people use it like you would a normal photobooth - a sequence of shots of themselves and other people making silly faces or trying to look all sexy. Unfortunately, the one person that I like looking silly with the most is on the other side of the country or planet from me usually, and my sexy face is pretty much...not... So I've reallocated this app as my go to panorama taker. Not ideal, for sure, but I always love how they come out, and that's sort of all that matters!

2012. Note how the first few are just ridiculous and I wasn't using it right at all. And then around San Francisco I get my shit together! We've got Yosemite, Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Harlow Lake, Lake Superior, Phil's, more Lake Superior, woods, Harlow Lake again, and another Phil's, all wrapped up in a neat little boxes.

2013. Lake Superior,  Lake Austin, Texas highway, Lake Austin, Yellow Dog River plains, Lake Superior, old abandoned mines, Lake Superior, Mskheta, Telavi, Prometheus caves, and the Black Sea. 

Anyway, this is the last photodump (if I'm friends with you on Facebook, I'm way sorry about the 145 pictures that I just uploaded and probably spammed your wall with!) for a while, as tomorrow I head back to Telavi and the land of tethering my 3G iPhone for internet.

It's also 2am and I really need to try to get back on a normal sleep schedule again, so I should probably do that.

And no, I'm not jetlagged.

Not a panorama at all, but a goofy bunch of memories. I got a red light ticket while living in California, and had to take a morning off of work to go to court and deal with it. I was annoyed about having to actually cough up the $400 for it, so I took a detour up to my favorite beach before I went in to work. So I'm on the beach, looking at the waves and freaking out about how I was going to pay this ticket when I got the silly idea to go running around the waves and try to get shots of them. So I did. For like a half an hour, it was back and forth in the surf with Incredibooth snapping away until I was satisfied with the amount of slides I got. It was a good way of forgetting about the massive amount of money I'd soon part with, as well as a wonderful little break before going in to work. I highly suggest it if you're ever feeling stressed or upset about something.

Deutschland and Other Stuff

I’m currently stuck in the Tbilisi airport, at 5 am local time, waiting until 7 for the busses to run, so I figured I might as well write something while I drink my wicked expensive airport coffee.

Break was good. It was exhausting, though, which is strange because I didn’t really DO that much. Being home for a month was deceptive – I kept thinking I had all the time in the world to see everyone and eat all the food I wanted, and it so did not happen that way. The polar vortex was pretty intense, and we didn’t even get it that bad thanks to Lake Superior and its awesome protective ways. Figures that when I had originally planned on going to Thailand Nature would be a dick and say, “Listen chick, this is what you get for wanting warmth. ENJOY YOUR SUB ZERO TEMPS, LOLOLOLOLOL!” Since weather patterns on a hemispheric scale totally revolve around me, didn’t you know?

My eight hour layover in Munich was pretty awesome. Lufthansa has now replaced Air Canada as my favorite airline, simply because they organized us into lines pre-boarding based on our seat rows. For some reason, it reminded me of Disneyland rides, and I got ridiculously happy about that. And then the equally ridiculously strong gin and tonic the steward poured also made me pretty happy, as did the two glasses of wine he gave me during the meal. If I could have that man just be my bartender for life, I’d be way ok with that. And maybe it was because I was a little tipsy, but I also got super happy about the pretzels they gave us which were a bunch of different shapes, including a hat, some lips, and hearts. Basically, Lufthansa encouraged me to be a snacking lush, so now I love them.

 

I was so stoked about the amount of gin this man gave me that I just had to draw a picture of it to remind myself later about how stoked I was! But really, I'm not exaggerating these ratios.

Unsure what it is about in-flight entertainment, but for some reason I’ve noticed international flights are full of two things – screaming children, and at least three people in my immediate vicinity watching the Big Bang Theory on their personal screens. It’s happened the last few legs of this increasingly long journey, so maybe I need more data to fully back up this claim, but for now my hypothesis is that the Big Bang Theory must be the only decent thing on airplanes that people can choose to watch. I don’t need more flights to tell you that screaming youngsters are obnoxious, however.

Germany is beautiful, especially down by Munich. It’s all forests with these weird trees that look like they’re made of frosted glass and green green farmland and the Alps looming over on the horizon. Every person I interacted with was incredibly friendly, which was not something I was really expecting. The only person who was unamused was the exchange teller, and me exclaiming, “Jesus Christ! Seriously!?” when he handed me my fewer-than-anticipated euro’s probably didn’t help. Whoops. But really now. Dollar. Holy crap. Step up your game! I want to come back to Europe in this life, and apparently I will need like $70,000 USD just to have a somewhat enjoyable time!

Well, that’s not entirely true. I had a pretty enjoyable time for the four hours I was there. The train between the airport and the town center took 48 minutes (German precision!), and was clean, quiet, and balls expensive. Ok, so 11 euro for a day pass probably wouldn’t be that expensive under normal circumstances, but given the current exchange rate it totally is, and like hell was I going to sit in some airport for eight hours! The Marienplatz (city center) of Munich seems pretty lackluster based on the dingy underground metro stop. It was actually more depressing than Tbilisi’s metro platforms, which made me wonder what I’d find above ground. Instead of equally shady and run down buildings, I was greeted with a cheery cherub and fish fountain surrounded by gothic and modern architecture in a weird conglomeration of local bars and major retail chains for electronics, clothing, and furniture.

Stop it, Munich! I can't handle you!

I spent a good two and a half hours just wandering around, exploring little side streets and alleys, and being almost dumbfounded by the sheer SIZE of everything. There were huge plazas every few blocks, and ostentatious statues of giant lions, fat gargoyles, and judgmental Austro-Hungarian leaders staring at you from each nook and cranny. Every building towers overhead, to the point where most of the streets are incredibly shaded until you come to the inevitable open plaza that is bound to be three minutes away from where ever you are. Due to the insane number of churches sprinkled around the Marienplatz, every 15 minutes there was a chorus of mismatched bells that would drown out the numerous street performers who were either playing solo or in groups of strangely combined instruments. Trombone, guitar, and upright bass? What? They sounded cool, though,  and I especially appreciated that the chick was not only playing the trombone but that she was a pretty big badass on it. There was an inordinately scary number of mimes in spray painted gold or silver trench coats, hats, and faces, who just honked a horn at people as they passed by. Ok, so there were only two, but that's two too many in my book.

Everywhere there are cafes and restaurants, most of which have outdoor seating on the sidewalk. It was an unseasonably nice day, with a high of I think 45ish, so I was able to grab a coffee outside and draw for a bit before striking out in a new direction again. The open air market down one of the streets was in full bustle, selling a huge variety of fruits, vegetables, cheeses, meats, breads, and beer. I ducked into one of the little restaurants in there which had canopied outdoor seating. For some reason it was decorated with really tacky garland, and a lot of scary clown masks, all of which I didn’t notice until I had sat down and ordered a beer. In fact, my exact words were, almost pathetically, “I just want a beer,” to which the reply was, “Well, you are in luck, because we have much beer!” Thanks, super cute German guy! I ended up getting a locally brewed brown ale which was beyond tasty. I don’t think the guy at the table across from me enjoyed my shit eating grin while I was drinking this beer and scribbling in my notebook, because every time I looked up he was just staring with the biggest stink eye ever. Sorry dude, I was having a good little time drinking beer and listening to some Rammstein, so you can just deal with it!

 

Took a selfie without looking like I was taking a selfie, due to previously mentioned unamused older German man glaring at me. 

Super tasty dark beer that super cute German boy suggested. Also, some of the [non] creepy clown decor at the bar. The stuff on the walls was way scarier! 

Munich is definitely a place I want to come back to, especially in the summer. Even today, mid January and not particularly nice weather, it was bustling with activity. Everyone was walking a well behaved dog, or laughing outside of the café’s with their friends, or taking pictures of the beautiful architecture all around them. It had such a good feeling to it, and I’d love to stay a bit longer next time.

 

German seriously cracks me up. Even something simple, like "bison meat" sounds like something a person would just scream at you. "Yes, hello. Welcome to my butchery. Would you like some BISONFLEISH!?!?!?" 

Child laderhosen. Adorable.

Every single window that wasn't for some posh clothing company was basically just a shitshow sampling of the items for sale inside the store. The one for the camera shop was insane. It was like a photography porno with all of the Leica lenses on display that I will never be able to afford!

A wide pedestrian avenue that wasn't really a pedestrian avenue. It was labeled as foot traffic only, but there were about five different vans and taxi's that rolled on down this stretch in the time it took for me to snap this shot and get to the plaza at the end.

I felt pretty silly most of the day. Not only was I super touristy with my gigantor DSLR around my neck and a goober backpack strapped to my shoulders, but I was also alone. It’s lucky that every person I encountered spoke English, because I was unable to think of a single German word the whole time I was in country. My dumb brain kept jumping to Georgian, and while that is awesome now that I’m back in Tbilisi, at the time it was very frustrating. I couldn’t even remember how to say, “hello!” I mean, we’re talking about basic 7^th grade German shit that I should know, aside from the fact that I’ve been listening to Rammstein for years! However, I was once again reminded how lucky I am to be an English speaker given its global presence. Is there any reason that a waitress at a coffee shop should know English in Germany? Not so much. Nor is there a reason for the random person waiting for the train to know enough English to answer my stupid question about the train. I was impressed with how well I got along today not being able to say a single word in German while in Germany.

And now I’m back in Tbilisi, with its nebulous timetables, infrastructure that is precarious at the best of times and nonexistent at the worst (for example, in the last two weeks I’ve gotten two emails from TLG – one to tell us that they’ve recently restructured the whole programs administrative staff, and the second to tell us that our insurance company has gone bankrupt and we do not have insurance right now. Actually, the email was pretty hilarious, so let me finish this thought and I’ll come back to this tangent in a moment!), and flocks of birds that live inside the airport. After spending a month in America, and dealing with all non smoking public spaces, it made me smile to sit at a table in the café next to baggage claim and see all the other patrons smoking like chimneys inside. Ah, Eastern Europe. I’ve missed you.

Ok, so this aforementioned email is basically a great introduction to the type of country Georgia is:

“Dear TLGers,

You know that TLG is providing certain types of services including health insurance. We are sorry to inform you that the insurance company taking care of our volunteers’ health has gone bankrupt. Due to this fact we cannot offer health insurance for some period of time.

We are writing to notify you that temporal improper fulfillment of obligations are caused by force majeure circumstances. TLG is working hard over this issue and we are trying our best to make health insurance active in a timely manner. New insurance will be available in some period of time.

You will be informed about the updates of this health insurance matter as soon as possible.

We hope all of you will stay healthy and won't need any medical services!”

Love it.

Almost as much as I loved watching a homeless guy hug a gigantic mean ass goose today on the street. It must have been his pet or something, because it was just chilling next to him until he decided he had to hug it like right then, so he was laughing and smiling and sweet talking it (or I assume sweet talking, because everything in German sounds like they’re pissed) while it was squawking and biting the shit out of his jacket. I smiled at him as I walked past the pair of them, and he looked at me and said, “Liebe!”

Liebe indeed, sir.

Why Georgia Is Middle Earth, Part II

Elvish music compared to Georgian Orthodox hymns.

Seriously.

Peace out, 2013!

Last year I got a little daily planner with the intention of drawing in it at least once a day. I wanted to see if I would be able to not only come up with something original every day for a year, but also keep at a creative habit for the duration of those 52 weeks.

It was my inner fat kids version of going to the gym resolution.

I'm happy to say that 365 days later, I totally succeeded! Sure, some days I got lazy and only scribbled a stick figure or something stupid, but I did it!

Looking back on it, there were plenty of times that I was annoyed [first world problems, anyone?] I had to draw something on any given day, but there are also a lot of little memories sprinkled within all of these that make me remember sort of obscure details I probably would have forgotten. Memory is a funny thing - how itty bitty doodles of completely random things are able to trigger such vivid recollections of tiny, often insignificant, moments. There are many times looking back through this notebook that I remember where I was when I drew something, or I know exactly what I was feeling when it was being made, even if it was totally unrelated. This is definitely something I'll keep doing in future years, and I've even purchased my next planner for the coming days (it's so much fancier than this one, too! I can like, put a photo in the clear front slip of it! So now I'm stuck in this huge debate about what picture I like enough to put in there and stare at for the rest of my life! Conundrums!)!

2013 was a pretty rollercoastery year, as most tend to be. There were many defining moments, huge emotional swings within the span of hours, tried lots of new things, and even failed at a few of them. It's nice to leave the year with no big regrets, though. It's a new feeling, and I really like it. I'm walking into 2014 with more confidence than ever before (I don't even get uncomfortable looking in a mirror anymore!), a keen understanding that sometimes you need to just say fuck it and jump, and that the fuck it and jump mentality applies not only to new experiences, but to people, too. 

I'm not really sure what the hell the second half of 2014 will entail, since that's when I come back to America and start dealing with big girl problems like "getting a real job" and "paying my student loans." But I'm pretty sure that if a single mom with three kids can work and go to school and stay afloat that I'll be fine, also. Especially now that I'm armed with janky developing world solutions to pesky problems like "having a lot of things." Thank you, Georgia!

Basically, what I'm trying to say is this:

Triumphant fist and everything!