How Plans Work

As mentioned in the last post, I've been pretty bad about updating this lately, and I apologize for that. I had a big master idea to get overly caffeinated tomorrow afternoon and do a proper update, but ha! Change of plans!

One of the things that is both enchanting and infuriating about this place is the way in which planning works. Meaning that it doesn't. There's no point really in nailing down specifics about anything, because there are about a dozen chaos factors working against you at any given moment. Broad ideas of how you want to spend your time are fine, as long as you're flexible give or take a day, and you're not too set on seeing something particular.

In other words, this place is an OCD's worst nightmare.

The good news is that no matter how your plan falls through, the resulting activities that rise out of its steaming pile of ashes are, much like a phoenix, about a trillion times better than what you had originally planned on.

So here I was, dicking around with a notebook, [re]watching some TV show for the umpteenth time, mulling over what I could possibly write about tomorrow when I get a text from a friend.

"Do you have class tomorrow and Friday?" He asks.
That's a weird question, Chris. Duh, yes of course I do? "Yessir. Do you not?"
"Nope not til Tuesday. I just found out."

In the middle of going to check my email to see if TLG sent something I missed, Sophia calls me, and informs me that there's been an outbreak of airborne meningitis, and throughout Georgia grades one through six are cancelled until next week. Because that's totally enough time to get the meningitis out of the schools, but whatever. The point is this coming weekend, which was already going to be a three day weekend on account of Monday being independence day, has now morphed into a glorious five day weekend. Naturally, hairbrained schemes were hatched within minutes, and we now have a nebulous idea of what we're going to do with our newly acquired free time!

Which means, dear reader, that while I would love to stay home tomorrow, and write about some weird Georgian shit, I'm going to be hitchhiking with a friend up through some mountains we've never been in to go visit another friend who lives in the upper elevations of this little place. Here's our route, so in case I go missing you can sort of know where to begin the search.

Kidding. I'm kidding. Isn't that a lovely shade of pink?!

Anyway. After the mountain stuff, and free wine festival on Saturday, and the weird Tusheti horse races in Sophia's village on Sunday, I will sit down and do a proper update, full of hilarity, pictures, and that adorable sass of mine. 

Unless plans change again.

Cause they always do.

P.s. In case you were wondering how the hell this chaos is worth it, this type of view is the answer. 

Still Alive

I'm still alive. I promise I'll write something tomorrow, if not today!

The Unsung Hero

I'm gonna take a few minutes and highlight a little devil that's been a pretty big lifesaver for the last three months - my Nook Simple Touch.

No, this isn't code for my ladybits, although I always want to write Barnes and Noble, asking them why the fuck they thought naming their e-reader something which can be easily misconstrued as a vagina was a good idea, but that's besides the point. This little e-reader is amazing.

I've resisted the whole e-reader phenomenon since it first came onto the scene. I thought it was stupid, because why would you buy one of these things when holding and smelling and feeling an actual book is so much better? And I'm still, at my core, of that belief. I think books are amazing little pieces of time made physical. Carl Sagan said it (and many other things) best:

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.

My biggest gripe with books, in their real forms, is the size. I'm a pretty speedy reader, able to plow through a thousand page novel in a couple days, and bringing a multitude of books to keep up with my velocity would have required a whole suitcase dedicated only to them. Which didn't sound like a horrible idea, except for the fact that I wanted to have like, a nice towel and some sweaters so I didn't freeze to death.  

And that's when I finally gave in and bought the Nook. The post-Christmas specials had it down to only $50 in price, and while it doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles, like a backlit screen, Internet access, or games, it's about as close to a book as I can get without actually having one. 

The screen, which isn't a color display, looks like a piece of paper. It's that off-white page color, and it's not difficult to read in the low light of a dim room or in the blinding blaze of sunlight. You can make little notes on pages, which also turn almost instantaneously - there's a fraction of a second of delay, but that's, to me, the equivalent of having to PHYSICALLY turn a page, so hell if I really care about that. 

I've heard a lot of people complain about Nooks for problems that I haven't encountered. Stuff like their battery life being terrible, or the internal filing of books being wonky, have been big sources of complaints on Internet forums. I charge up my Nook once every two weeks - and that's with reading at least an hour, if not more, on it every day. Unsure why we live in a world where that isn't adequate battery life, but there you go. As for the files, maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty anal retentive and go through and rename all my books anyway - if they're in a series the number is first followed by the title of the series, then author, then book title, and if it's a standalone book then it's just author, book title. I don't have any problem ever finding books, especially since there's that handy dandy "search" function in case I don't feel like going through 62 pages of book titles. An amazing ebook organizing program, called Calibre, is also Nook compatible, and quickly helps even the messiest libraries become manageable. 

Books are easy peasy to get, and since it reads .pdf files as well as .epub, I'm not pigeonholed into only buying books off of the Barnes and Noble e-store. Most of my collection has come from Pirate Bay, or the awesome website gutenberg.org. Since my friends here all have Kindles, which read .mobi (unsupported by the Nook), I use the aforementioned Calibre to convert them to .epubs. Womp womp my life is hard!

I guess a few days ago Barnes and Noble discontinued the Nook, which is a real big shame. If you're able to find one of these little guys (Reddit said that Target was selling their remaining Nook stock for $30), I highly suggest picking it up. It's superb for what it needs to do - let you read books - and with its simple UI, expandable memory slot, and ability to root it (overwrite the preexisting operating system and load games, access the Internet, etc etc) it is the absolute best bang for your buck!

Percy

The afternoons where I can just sit on our patio, reading and drinking coffee, are some of my favorite types of days. Now that the weather is improving, the frequency of these days are increasing. Yesterday was one such day.

I'd just finished my book, and was scrolling lazily through my other options (I wrote up a review for the Barnes and Noble Nook, an e-reader that I bought over Christmas, so I should really post that at some point), trying to figure out which story came next chronologically in the series I'm currently reading, when I heard a weird bleat.

It was definitely a goat bleat, but I was perplexed, since my family doesn't have goats, my neighbors don't have goats, and the only herds of animals I've seen in my neighborhood are some cows that used to trek up and down the dry riverbed behind the house. So I cautiously climbed down the steps to the grassy yard and there he was - a goat, with his leg tied to a post.

As soon as I saw him, my dumb brain of course gave him a name - Percy. Regret instantly hit me for naming him. "Oh you idiot," I berated myself. "Don't name the goat! You're probably going to eat him soon!" And then I thought, "Wait, we've never kept goats, and neither does anyone in the neighborhood! Maybe the family in the village is just going to come get him and take him out to the fields near Kvareli and he'll be able to lead a happy little goat life!"

I let this delusion continue, and indeed it grew once Bebo and my host mom came home and were surprised by the appearance of Percy. Neither of them seemed to be expecting it, and they didn't know why he was in our yard. My optimism for the future of this ungulate skyrocketed.

Later in the evening, Bebo informed me that we needed to take Percy to a neighbors house, because they had a shed for him. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a goat to go a specific direction, especially one that you want it to go when it doesn't want to go that way, but it's really difficult, and usually really counterproductive. The difficulty is almost exponentially more when there isn't anything around its neck that you can grab onto, and instead you're pulling it's leg, it's trying to run away, and it's screaming in pain because legs aren't supposed to bend certain ways. Bebo kept tugging at Percy, relying on the old standard of "just drag things if they won't willingly come with you," but I stopped this right quick and just picked him up. Goat screams are one of the worst sounds ever, and if Percy was ever going to go running through the grassy fields next to the Alazani River, he needed to have all of his legs.

I'd expect, in a place where people regularly carry turkeys on the roofs of Lada Nivas, and drive backwards down busy streets, and a whole plethora of other ridiculous shit, that a girl carrying a goat down the road wouldn't be that big of a scene. But it was. Bebo just followed me and Percy, laughing the whole way, and the neighbors were guffawing so much they couldn't do anything but take pictures. 

We put him in an old stable in the neighbors yard, and that was the last time I saw Percy. As Bebo and I walked home, I was pretty happy with the little life I'd constructed for him in my head.

And then I came home from school today to two fat, old, shirtless Georgian guys, chain smoking and cleaning out an animal that was hanging from a tree in the yard.

"It could be some other goat," a voice inside me said. "It doesn't have to be...oh, shit. There's his little head on the ground..."

Sorry, Percy. I wanted you to have a good little goat life, I really did. Instead, I think you're gonna be a damn tasty meal!

Hostel View

From the lofty second floor windows of the Fox Hostel, located right near Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, you can see the following:

7 pairs of shoes on the phone line
1 gay bar
3 restaurants to buy khachapuri from
1 cat on a tree stump
17 posters on the wall
5 graffiti on the wall
2 full dumpsters that were empty yesterday
3 very lost looking Europeans (Polish?)
3 parked cars - all with their front bumpers!
1 guy on a smoke break with green shoes who noticed me sitting in the window and is now staring.

Evolution

I have a notebook for school. Given my affinity for ridiculously specific notebooks and their themes, I'm sure this isn't surprising for you. I jot down little notes based on stuff we do in class, if certain kids had a hard time with something, general thoughts on the day. Pretty basic things. It started out as a highly organized, color coded informative system, and has since degraded to talking about how I want to punch some students in the face. Which isn't fair, I understand, especially cause they're in like second grade, but hey! I calls 'em like I sees 'em!

Anyway, I was taking a gander through this notebook today, and I figured I'd share a few choice entries with you.

Please note that I haven't edited these, except for changing the day of the week to English (since it's in Georgian in the notebook, but I don't feel like being pretentious to you today!).

9.23.2013 Monday
Grade 1 - book 1 welcome unit. hello, goodbye, my name is...
                vocab for a-f, writing Aa and Bb.
                *Katie has issues writing even with motor guidance
Grade 2 - book 1 pg 51
                happy, sad, pretty, clown, balloon, princess. lots of reading practice.
                sh/th --> trouble with pronouncing these combos
Grade 5 - pg 14 and 15.
                #s review #s next time cause whoa!
Grade 6 - does, do, likes, like.
                *find good way of explaining does with verbs!

10.18.2013 Friday
Grade 5 - a test! lots of confusion on directions.
                having an easier time than 6th gr. well, I lied.
                most v. rough also...lots of questions, staring off into space, etc
Grade 4 - lots of vocab - translating words and text. all read and translate today.
                think they got past tense! or at least in Georgian for translating purposes.
                I think I'm learning more Georgian than they are English...

10.29.2013 Tuesday
Grade 6 - red riding hood misc. bs questions. could and couldn't. explained "ou"
                in that word [could] was diff than cloud, sound, etc. GJ books on doing that...not.
                phonics --> u in put, bull pull.
                more past con't tense. sort of got it. nouns throwing them off.

11.6.2013 Wednesday
Grade 1 - for monday make lil test in notebooks.
                matching game with caps and smalls and then they write caps
                learned Yy and Zz (zed. fuck you British English!) alphabet, and color review, 1-10
Grade 4 - spent whole time with time (again). half past, quarter to, quarter past.
                WB and PB exercises using timetables. kids dunno this shit in Georgian, let alone English...
Grade 2 - vocab again. ages, dialogue. not much headway today...
Grade 3 - by myself...ran through possessive. pg 132 WB and pair work --> great success!
                terrible at spelling - if they could tell me the word I let them have it

12.6.2013 Friday
Grade 5 - pioneers, things we use in class pg 49-51
                kids were v. talkative today! it was awesome! even Levani and big Gio said stuff!
                still wanna punch little Gio in the face. everyone else was paying attention and trying.
Grade 4 - still playing remedial grammar. spent whole class on "to be" again, and threw possessive in.
                reminded them of -shi
                having to spend this time on grammar will hopefully expedite the rest of the lessons cause the
                kids will know what's going on!

2.4.2014 Tuesday
Grade 6 - only Gio and Tika today. Went over on, at, in again.
               Played remedial Georgian again and had to go over how to tell time (in Georgian)
               and months of the year (in Georgian). i refuse to believe they don't know months in their own
               language. i just cannot believe that. L wants to give test next week. haaaaaaaa...

2.19.2014 Wednesday
Grade 1 - primarily "what is it" game. read dialogue. learned song with "what is it"
                kids now know octopus but not chair. Hmmmm...
Grade 4 - L proposed teaching them new vocab before making them read texts.
               which is what I've been saying for a while, but whatevs. if it works that's what counts.
Grade 2 -  in class writing. lots of practice with -ing verbs. great for them to copy correctly

2.28.2014 Friday
Grade 5 - once again hardly spoke. i almost want to drop 3rd grade on Mondays to get into here more.
                reviewed alphabet with cards, then did verb game with cards --> took up most of the time
                went over homework, read their comps about swimming, and then done. super unproductive
Grade 3 - made mother's day cards today. i feel way bad, though. Dato was drawing a dragon and I
                loved it and got way excited and N and the other students laughed so he got all embarrassed
                and stopped...
Grade 4 - alphabet and verb cards - good review! had them make sentences with verbs they picked.
                rest of class not as productive. alphabet order, still get k and q confused.
                Gio stopped paying attention completely and turned into a little shit.

4.16.2014 Wednesday
Grade 1 - no test. super productive! got them talking a lot, Sopo actually did an entire WB page in class
                with some guidance. HUGE SUCCESS!!
Grade 4 - only Tatia in class. read a bit with her, did some exercises, and ended early.
                pretty big waste of a day honestly...
Grade 2 - no test. Sandro's Georgian Boy Shit is getting out of control. but he's a boy. so everyone
                giggles because he's soooo funny. ugh. little shits become little shits the same way
                everywhere...
                anyhoo. reviewed clothing from last time and talked a lot about it. read dialogue.

4.30.2014 Wednesday
Grade 1 - really good day! 10 mins of them gabbing at start.
                fox, box, fog, dog, log. worked in WB - didn't get underlining names and circling capital
                letter --> fucking rough to explain.
Grade 4 - ugh. my head. adverbs. ow.
Grade 2 - none of them (except 3) had books since it's some sort of holiday?
                reviewed clothes, and played "what are they wearing" game rest of time.

5.2.2014 Friday
Grade 5 - No Lamara today, so no class.
*Actually no classes at all, since 3rd grade got moved to fifth hour but no one told the kids so they all left....