Observations

So the other day, one of my co-teachers told me that the next day we would be observed by the principal. She informed me we were going to ‘back up’ in the curriculum and do a lesson from there.  (For you non-teachers, that basically means to teach a lesson the kids already know so they and teacher looks good.)

I was speechless. I had heard stories of coaching the students from other volunteers at other schools, but never here. My teachers even alluded to it before, but said they rejected the very idea.

We got an email at the beginning of the month from TLG saying they were going to observe all of us in school and interview our host homes in February. This announcement caused a lot of anxiety in the program because, well, no one likes to be observed or critiqued.

So my host mom cleaned the house like never before.  Either I’m getting used to the bathroom or it was cleaned and straightened up to American bathroom standards.

Having taught for several years before, observations are not that big a deal for me… usually. My worry now is which teacher they will observe me with. One is awesome. She integrates me in the lessons; she lets me do what I do best. Another seems to teach to me to try to impress me (or practice) with her English ability.  Yet another is trying really hard, but gets so frustrated with the overwhelming pressure to not only teach them English, but to do so at a very rapid pace. And the fourth, oh the fourth. Her classes are a shit show. It’s as if at times she is oblivious to students even being in the room. Zero classroom management…ZERO.  Once we walked in to a full-scale brawl in the room. They separated them, turned their backs and the kids started fighting again! It was bananas! And worst of all, she doesn’t use me. I feel like a very expensive, shiny, unused toy in her classes. So bottom line, if TLG observes me in her class, I’m screwed.

Which could have greater implications for my long-term plans. TLG just recently announced that current volunteers could request to stay an additional semester. Okay. I need more, but baby steps. However, if this observation goes poorly, it could potentially affect my extension status. Which would mean I would have to rethink my entire strategy (more on that in the next post).

I don’t mind the theory of observations, but in these instances, there is no standard method of observations. For example, just using the TLG observations, we don’t know what we are being ‘observed’ on. They aren’t observing us according the same age group. So since the objectives are unclear, it could be a skewed or biased observation, that for some (me) could have profound consequences.

***

He’s watching me watching you watching him
watching me.
I’m watching you watching him watching me
watching Stares.
He’s watching me watching you watching him
watching me.
He’s watching me watching you watching
the trains go by.
He’s watching me watching you watching him
watching me.
He’s watching me watching you watching him watching me.
He’s watching me watching you watching him watching me watching him watching.

Watching Me Watching You, Jethro Tull

Sushi

As mentioned before, I love eating fish. And the family knows it. Lado knew I also love sushi. (Lado hates fish. He is passionately opposed to the work one has to put into picking bones out in proportion to the amount of fish meat one actually gets to eat.)

I came down to eat second lunch the other day and on the table beside the fries potato slices and mashed potates was a plate of raw fish with slivers of raw onion on top.

…Okay.

I like sushi and all, but this was ridiculous. I sat down, but couldn’t help from staring at it. Was I REALLY going to man up and eat this? My mind started trying to do math equations to predict probability of getting food poisoning. I couldn’t even play it off. I needed assistance. I asked Lado was it cooked. He said, nope. Hmm…. I asked how was I supposed to eat it. Was there a method? Did I eat bones and all? He pondered for a second, then asked his mother. No, you do not eat the bones.

…Okay.

He had a little mercy on me and got a knife and cut a slice off the tail end. She said if I didn’t like it, go out back and spit it out. I peeled it open, deboned it, shut my eyes and popped it in my mouth.

It still had the sushi taste, which was good. That alone held back my hair trigger gag reflex. Actually…. it wasn’t that bad. If anything it was salty. I mentioned this to my host mom, and she says that’s what it was prepared in.  OH!!!!!  I get it, now. It’s not raw, raw, but more like a ceviche. I like ceviche!  But unfortunately it was too salty. I couldn’t eat it alone. I think they recognized this about the fish before I pointed it out, beside they served it with the assortment of potatoes.

I could only eat half a fish, which I thought was a huge accomplishment.

***

Still Lost In Translation

My lead co teacher is applying for an English teacher program held in the States.  She is super nervous about it. She also has virtually no Internet experience and it’s an online application. She is preparing and handwriting the answers to the questions and prompts at home and I am typing them up for her during the school day. That way, when all is done, we can just cut and paste into the online forms.

The other day, she shows me two of the parts she has completed. I read over them and find very few errors. If anything, they were simply words that didn’t read correctly and needed to be switched out. Towards the end, I noticed she used the phrase, English language and stuff.” I told her to just omit that phrase as its not needed. She protested and said that it was. We then got into a short argument about the word. She said that’s what they call her group. I suggested the idea of using colleagues. She refused, then tried to use the trump card of, “Well, it’s a British word and they said its okay to use British used words.” (They do that when we are at odds about teaching the kids various things; i.e., rubber vs. eraser, trousers vs. pants, have got vs. simply ‘have’.) But I responded this time that Americans will be reading her application and they will think she is trying to be informal and use teenage slang.

We both backed off for a while,  but came back around to the dispute. She asked me again what it meant. I thought for a second and said, a random assortment of items together. For example, ‘I have stuff in my bag’. or ‘Your stuff is in your pocket book’.  She paused for a second and took a second look at me. Then as a light bulb went off in her her she says, “Ahh, I understand! Stuff… things…!”  Then she says that maybe its not the word she thought. And she wrote on the paper S…T…A…F…F.

Yes!! That sentence makes perfect sense now!

And we laughed and laughed! She even told the story to the rest of the loosely assembled teachers in the room.

 

***

 

My Name is Sanchezi And I’ll Be Your Tamada Tonight

Friday night, I went to turn on the water pump in the kitchen so I could take a shower with hot water. I noticed there were some extended family members present. Which means one thing- SUPRA!

After my shower, sure enough, I was called down to eat.

Supras are truly amazing experiences. No matter how larger or small, they all have an energy that can’t be duplicated any other way. This was a small one. The visitors were only Eka’s niece and her husband.

One difference at this dinner was they broke out the Maker’s Mark. When I came to Georgia my gift to the family were bottles of Maker’s Mark and Jack Daniels. I chose these knowing that drinking was a integral part of the culture, so why not bring some from America. They put both of the bottles in the glass cabinet and haven’t opened either… until last night. I don’t know why, but I’m glad they did. Everyone tried some, but I think only the host dad liked it. He kept saying, “This is fantastic!”. The grandpa apparently didn’t like it (I don’t even think he tasted it) as he rapidly left to get the wine.

I was asked to be the tamada, which is a lot of pressure. You just can’t simply say, “Gamarjos!” and drink, you have to think of and say mini speeches every ten or so minutes. After four shots of Marker’s Mark  (I was afraid we were going to finish the bottle), we switched to wine. Needless to say, we were lit.

We had great conversation and great fellowship. Towards the end, they asked if I knew any poems. Nope. Then if I could sing. I think I can, but was too shy and they wouldn’t have known the songs anyway. I asked if they could sing, and after a rapid, ‘yes’, the grandpa broke out in a verse, quickly followed by the nephew.

Poly harmonic singing is just as famous in Georgia as is their wine. I hadn’t really heard it yet, but at the kitchen table, they gave me a mini concert. Two of the parts were sung by the grandpa and nephew and the third by the niece. It was extremely good. I couldn’t help smiling .

I think I made a pretty good tamada… with the assistance of my old friend Maker’s Mark, of course!

***

There’s too many things that I haven’t done yet
Too many sunsets
I haven’t seen
You can’t waste the day wishing it’d slow down
You would’ve thought by now
I’d have learned something

Many The Mile, Sarah Bareilles

Winter Has Passed

If you know me, you are aware that I am painfully opposed to cold weather. And coming to Georgia, I had to brace myself for the coldest, snowiest longest winters of my life. Last year, they said it snowed everyday during the month of February. Everyday.

But fortunately this year, it has been extremely mild even for my standards. I was a little disappointed, but I am NOT going to complain. The days are getting longer, the birds are chirping and the buds are blooming!

I bet you can actually SEE the smile on my face!

***

Winter’s cold spring erases
And the calm away by the storm is chasen
Everything good needs replacing
Look up, look down, all around, hey satellite

Satellite, Dave Matthews Band

Just Dance

Without further ado…

 

 

 

***

It’s like I’ve waited my whole life for this one night
It’s gonna be me you and the dance floor
’cause we’ve only got one night
Double your pleasure
Double your fun and dance
Forever (ever, ever)
Forever (ever, ever)
Forever (ever, ever)
Forever girl forever
Forever (ever, ever)
Forever (ever, ever)
Forever (ever, ever)
Forever on the dance floor

Forever, Chris Brown

Brooke’s Birthday Weekend: Beginning and Ending

Arrived in Tbilisi early Friday morning. I don’t know why they have the trains arrive into cities before normal business hours. Tbilisi was literally still asleep. I caught a taxi from the train station to my friends’ neighborhood called Vake. Word is, it’s a posh part of the city. It was too dark for me to tell. Fortunately my friends answered the phone and opened the door for me.  Everyone understandably was still passed out. I quietly asked a dude I had never met before to push over a little on the pull out sofa, just so I could lay down. He was nice enough to even share the blanket with me. Friends for life! Three hours later, we all were awake enough to start our day. First Stop- lunch. Followed by Natural Hot Sulfur Baths.

***

Friday night after eating great shawarma, we went back to the hostel to prepare for the nightlife. We met a girl at the hostel from Poland named Kesha. She had heard about Georgia and its hospitality and decided to hop on a plane and see for herself. She is a true traveller. Next month she plans on going to Japan.

We add her to our crew for the night and go hit the bars. We start at Canudos Bar (my favorite) first. It’s too smoky in the cold months, but in the warmer weather months, it’s the BEST hangout. After Canudos, we followed Kesha to a club she had heard about from a Georgian she had met earlier in the week. I loved this club as soon as I set foot inside. It played techno music but the DJ was amazing and got better and better as the night progressed. Kevin wasn’t feeling it, so he left pretty shortly after we arrived. Erin, my party co-pilot, put up a great effort, but faded too. I hit a wall around 4 a.m. and decided to not push through only because had to go skiing at 8 the following morning.

But that will not be the last time I see that club.

***

Sunday was a beautiful day in Tbilisi. Erin, Kevin and I strolled down Rustavili Ave. headed in the direction of an America chicken place, Texas Chicken. I was going to get a shawarma myself. But Erin suggested we go to the Hanger Bar and we detoured toward Old Town.

The Hanger Bar is an American owned bar with an Irish/ Pilot theme. The beauty of this place is that you can loose yourself and be transplanted briefly back to America. Especially with the hamburgers, chicken strips, fries, and beers we ordered sitting in a booth watching college conference basketball on ESPN.

Erin and me at Hanger Bar.

We stayed there for a good 6 hours. To the point that I was getting nervous about getting my stuff out of the hostel and getting to my train on time. I didn’t want to have another… nearly unfortunate situation. But Paula can speak great Georgian and got us a taxi to the hostel and then to the train station with plenty of time to spare.

It was a great end to a great weekend.

Goodbye Tbilisi! Happy Birthday Brooke!!!!

***

Sippin on coke and rum
I’m like so what i’m drunk
It’s the freakin weekend baby 
I’m about to have me some fun

Ignition, R.Kelly

Brooke’s Birthday Weekend: In Which Sanchezi Gets Naked

I remember starting Middle School and being so afraid of Physical Education, because in Middle School is when you had to take showers. Then I realized no one really took showers during school. The fear returned for high school… still nothing to fear.

We didn’t shower after football/ basketball practices or games… usually. I say usually because I do remember ONE time after a practice the varsity team actually did shower (or maybe it was one boy in particular. He was new to our school.) I don’t know what the specific occasion was to where he felt he had to shower… a dance? Whatever the reality of the memory, SOMEBODY got wet in that high school shower.

I thought it was the most bizarre thing. Someone getting naked in front of all those other people!

American television- the #1 cultural/ social conditioner of American youth was decidedly one sided on the subject. The cool kids were unabashed by being naked in front of peers of similar gender.  It was the weirdos and the social outcasts who had issues with nudity. And the cool, free spirited people were the ones who unashamedly went skinny dipping into the ocean.

But as I take a realistic unofficial survey of people, the overwhelming majority have modesty concerns about who sees their nudity. Even as adults.

As I have grown older, for various reasons, I have grown more and more comfortable with my body and have gotten to a place where I am not afraid or embarrassed about who sees it.

The capital city of Tbilisi, legend has it, was founded because of its natural sulfur hot springs. They are still in operation in Old Town, Tblilisi. Living in this country, one can not pass up the opportunity to experience the Hot Sulfur Baths.

Bath Houses of Old Town Tbilisi

So Saturday afternoon, after a great lunch we bought some beer, sauntered over to the Bath district and reserved a private room. We all took one last innocent look at each other and then stripped down to the birthday suits.

Once in the bath room, there is a sitting area with pine Adirondack chairs and table. Then immediately behind that area is a 25×25 ft. hot sulfur pool. To the left of that are the showers (hot and cold). Circling around still is a hot stone sauna. Completing the circle is the sitting room again.

View from inside the Bath. (The silhouette in the background is a marble statue.)

The first thing you notice is the obvious sulfur smell.  People have described it as ‘rotten eggs’. Our friend Paula described it as ‘earthy’. But it’s not an overwhelming smell and it recedes into the background after a while. The pool is a perfect relaxing temperature.

We simply lounged and meandered between pool, shower, sauna and lounge chairs. After a while, a Georgian man came in to do the scrub downs. This was done in the shower room on a marble slab. We each took turns first being abrasively scrubbed, soaped then rinsed by the professional. He made a note of showing us (unnecessarily) the dead skin that he pealed away.

After everyone had been scrubbed, we got in a final sauna and shower and called it a wrap. We had intended on only doing an hour, but ended up staying in there for three hours. We paid for it dearly. But it was an experience and memory I will never forget.

***

Sulfur Baths back in the day.

Do’s and Dont’s Of Skiing 101

Now I haven’t been to a lot of ski resorts, but I do understand there are things you just don’t do. Here are a list of things I saw that obviously CAN happen at Gudauri Ski Resort.

1. As everywhere in Georgia, there are no lines (cues of people standing behind other people waiting for their turn). Usually at other resorts, when people are getting on the lift, there are colored ropes staked out from the lift so people can start lining up at a manageable distance. This is logical, because you have a rough estimate of how long you have to wait, and its fair, because everyone has to wait in the line for an equal amount of time.  (I’m speaking of regular skiers. Not rescue patrol or skiers paying for lessons.)

Here it is a free for all. On approach to the lift, you see the mass of humanity pushing in total chaos toward the lifts. Result… shit             show. It was inconvenient enough just getting to the first lift. But then having to negotiate THAT before I even got a single run down a slope.

2. Usually you don’t take off your equipment before you get to the lift. This is a rational thought, because usually you must literally ski off the lift. And if you don’t have your skis or snowboard on, the chances that you fall exponentially increase. Doesn’t matter or apply in Georgia.

3. I saw a girl on the lift with her skis on, turned around, propped up on her knees. She was looking directly at me (in the next lift chair back), smoking a cigarette and dancing to her earphones.

4. There are no clear markers for the actual route of the slopes or indicators of their level of difficulty. So you have to just follow and watch the skiers in front of you. If they wipe out, be sure to understand why. Was it an ice patch? Too steep an incline for their comfort? Did they simply go off course? Fortunately there were no trees lining the course. But on the other hand, there were an abundant number of sheer cliffs. And what this also means though, is you can literally ski ANYWHERE. I saw skiers on the backside of a mountain apparently on purpose. How they were going to get back up or to a lift… still don’t know.

5. It is always a bad idea to have random uphill slopes on a course.

6. And lastly, the most underrated but indispensable person at a ski resort is the guide to help determine who goes on the lift next and potentially stop the lift in cases of danger, i.e. fallen skiers. They had one of these people at each lift, but either the skiers didn’t care the role he played, or the guide didn’t understand the role he played.

For example, I saw with my own eyes:  Four people prepared to get on the lift.  But as it swung around the corner, four other people jumped out of line and sat down in the chair!!!!  For a second I thought eight people were going to be sitting on the lift. The original four who were just about to sit in the chair, were fortunately warned by the screams and yells of the guide (and waiting  crowd). They just barely jumped out of the way in time.  Did the guide stop the lift? Did he make them get off? Nope, he just shook his head and the skiers left behind just shimmied on to the next chair.

Other skiers would be in position to get in a chair, but for some reason, they would side-step and not get on. Then they would wait for a spot to come up with fewer than four people and squeeze into that chair.

7. And it’s usually frowned upon to drink while working, let alone a ski resort. But that doesn’t apply at the ski resorts in Georgia (I doubt anywhere in Georgia). The people issuing the skis… drunk. The people operating the lifts… drunk. The people running and serving in the restaurants at the resort… DEFINITELY drunk.

***

Brooke’s Birthday Weekend: In Which Sanchezi Goes Skiing

This weekend was Brooke’s Birthday!!!!!

She decided she wanted to hang out in Tbilisi, go to a Bath House and skiing. A lot happened this three-day weekend (happy International Women’s Day), so I will break it up into several posts.

Skiing:

So FINALLY I would get the opportunity to ski in Georgia. I had brought my gear back from the States and everything. The group that had assembled for this weekend isn’t the most efficient decision makers as a collective. But it was decided that we would wake up early and get a private marshrut’ka to Gudauri and just ski for the day instead of going to Bakuriani. Although Bakuriani is less expensive than Gudauri, and we possibly could have had a place to stay, Gudauri was known to have better ski runs.

We planned to meet at the McDonalds for the marshrut’ka at 8 Saturday morning. That was painful because I had been dancing until 4 a.m. just a couple of hours before. But excitement and adrenaline pushed me out of bed and to the meeting place. Once in the van, I could sleep for the next two hours, which was easy because I had already seen the views to Gudauri.

We navigated the most annoying part of any ski trip- the rentals of equipment. Great patience is needed with this not only for oneself but also for the friends who are beginners. Once that was over, and everyone was laced up, it was obvious that the time had come for us to split up. Only two of us could ski with any competence. The others were either beginner or hadn’t skied in a VERY long time. So Kevin and I went our own way.

I was immediately annoyed, because we had to ski over an incline to the bunny lift, then ride up the bunny lift to ski to the main lift. By the time I got to the main lift, I was exhausted already. Then we had to deal with the baffling norm of Georgian culture- the lack of the concept of a line. There was a throng of people pushing to get on the lift.  Ugh!!!!

But once we got up to the top of that lift, things started to get immediately better. The resort is organized in a pattern similar to mall escalators. Once you reach the top of one lift, slightly to the left is another to take you higher, until you are at the highest mountain in the range. Also as you go higher, the lines for the lift thin out considerably.

The snow was also questionable at first. But that’s only because of the high volume of people slipping down and continuously using that first lift. It was grainy and had a lot of ice patches. Higher up was nice powder.

The base of the resort has beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. We had witnessed them in the fall. But the higher we went up the lifts, the views became impossibly more and more beautiful. Going up the last lift, we were so high and weather so cold, it started snowing, whereas at the bottom of the resort, it was so warm, I wanted to take my coat off. I even got a little afraid thinking of how high we were.

I had the best time. And hopefully can squeeze in another trip before the end of the season.

Thank you, Amy Sledge, for introducing this amazing recreational activity to my life.

***

“I was locking down straps on ridiculous shoes,
gazing on beautiful mountainous views.
I must have been crazy but I had been dared.
I couldn’t back down or admit I was scared.

My untimely death danced forefront in mind.
Any thoughts of escape I had left far behind.
A friend said, “It’s easy, just glide with the snow.
C’mon, the Black-Diamond is where we should go.”

With trembling hands, I looked over the crest.
Straight down it appeared as I tightened my vest.
Then somebody nudged me just over the top.
Behind me I heard, “Does he know how to stop?”

(Excerpt from ‘A Dope On A Slope’)