Georgia's Best

Before I left Georgia, I jotted down some of my favorite experiences.  Yesterday, I found this list and want to expand on and share each memory.  They are in the order I remember them happening.

First, some words I use and their definition:

Supra – a Georgian feast that is always accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol.

Marshutka – Minibus, a type of public transportation.

Chacha – Georgia’s national hard alcohol.

Bebia – means grandmother but is used to refer to anyone of grandparent age.

Hitchhiking

I had never hitchhiked before and starting in Georgia has probably ruined it for any other place I might try it (though I already know it’s equally amazing in Turkey).  The people in Georgia are so incredibly friendly that on a hitchhiking trip, you are bound to end up in someone’s house for a meal and some wine or even a full out supra.  Hitchhiking allowed me to experience the hospitality of Georgians time and time again.

One home we were invited into 

Anaklia supras

A friend of Blesssing and mine lived in a neighboring village and the evenings spent with Daniel, Lela and everyone else in Anaklia, will forever remain as happy memories.  It was nice to know we had yet another home away from home in the village of Anaklia.

Mestia cross

Svaneti is the most mountainous province of Georgia and has some of the most magnificent scenic views of mountains I have ever seen.  The most spectacular hike I took in Svaneti was to a cross about a kilometer above the capital town Mestia.  The hike offers a never ending view of mountains that are up to 5,000 meters tall and the view at the cross is the most stunning, as you have a 360-degree view of surrounding mountains with Mestia looking tiny, one kilometer below.  My pictures just don’t do the view justice.

Hiking in mukhuria

This was supposed to be a day-trip hiking in the mountains near Zugdidi.  Once we made the decision to hitch a ride on a logging truck, however, it turned into an overnight trip with an abundance of chacha.  We slept in the logging truck.  Unfortunately, the hangover is especially (but not most) memorable.

The logging truck

The morning after

Martvili police supra

Blessing and I made our way to Martvili to check out the beautiful waterfalls we had been told about.  We reached the village and asked some police officers where to go; they saw we did not understand their directions so they took us on a tour themselves.  They brought us to the waterfall and some other beautiful spots along the river, places we would never have found on our own.  Afterwards, they brought us to a restaurant for a supra (of course).  We drank, talked and laughed for a few hours before we realized we needed to get home.  At that point, the policemen offered to take us the 2 hours back to Zugdidi!  Once in the car, we were given a breathalyzer which immediately beeped loudly; the cops found it hilarious and insisted we keep doing it, with each beep came another eruption of laughter.  The ride home also included a rest stop at one of the officer’s homes so he could show off his foreigners.

Bebia watching music videos and infomercials

For eight months of our time in Georgia, Blessing and I rented a room from a bebia who lived next to my school.  We occupied a bedroom and shared the rest of the house with her.  She was an 81 year-old woman with a dark sense of humor.  It was hilarious to watch her watch TV.  She would just sit and watch crazy techno Russian music videos with half-naked women on screen or laugh hysterically at the show Wipe Out.  The most hilarious thing for me was when she was watching an infomercial, hosted by Mr. T, of an oven that cooked food really fast.  She was amazed at how fast the food cooked and when I asked if she wanted one she answered, “who wouldn’t want one?!” as though I were insane for even asking.

That's our bebia!

Camping in Chikhorotsku

This was mine and Blessing’s very first camping experience in Georgia, thus, it was when we learned that you can camp ANYWHERE in Georgia.  We hitchhiked to the village Chikhorotsku then walked to the outskirts of town and camped!  The next day we went for a hike and found ourselves starving towards the end of the day.  Of course we had food at our camp, but we wanted food now!  If you live in Georgia long enough, you figure out how you can put yourself into a situation to be offered food.  So, we went up to a house and asked for water, we were invited to sit down and drink the water and started some small talk.  We asked where the next shop was (knowing full well that it was a few kilometers down the road).  They asked is we were hungry.  We said yes.  Success, we were invited in for a meal!  After eating, we headed back towards camp but decided we wouldn’t mind having some wine to drink around the fire.  If you live in Georgia long enough, you figure out how to get some wine.  We went up to a couple of houses and asked if they had any wine we could buy, one house finally had wine and of course gave it to us free of charge!

Our first campsite

The family that fed us

Our sh*t backing up

In March 2012 Blessing and I moved into a house with our friends Aly and Adam.  The owner of the house never told us not to flush toilet paper but a few weeks later we learned our lesson as raw sewage started leaking into our backyard.  Blessing and Adam managed to clear the pipe using a really long piece of wire.  It was grossly entertaining.

At first they tried to stay clean, eventually they were knee-deep in sh*t

Walking to Anaklia

Anaklia is 30 kilometers from Zugdidi and Blessing and I decided to walk there for our friend Daniel’s birthday.  Even though we didn’t even have our hands out to hitch a ride multiple people stopped to offer one.  We were also invited into four different homes along the way for a meal. Georgia at its best.

One family that took us in

And another meal

Lagodekhi

This is a national park in the far eastern province Kakheti and we headed there for the beginning or our 2012 spring break.  We set up our tent on some church property in a village on the outskirts of the park.  We only did one hike and it was a great adventure!  During the previous winter, the rivers had surged and taken out all of the bridges on a hike to a waterfall, Blessing and I decided to attempt the hike anyways.  We managed to make to the waterfall by crossing the river at a number of strategic points along the hike.  The adventure of crossing the river and even making a stick bridge for future hikers made the hike truly memorable.

Surami

After Lagodekhi, Blessing and I had no plan but to hitchhike and see where we get.  Two young men picked us up and when our response to where we were going was “we don’t know,” they brought us to their home.  We spent one night with their family and had we not met them, we would not have gotten to spend Easter in Vardzia.

Our hosts

Easter in Vardzia

The cousin of the family that hosted us in Surame invited us to his village, Vardzia, for Easter.  We stayed at his childhood home with his parents.  Easter in Georgia is a day of feasting and remembering the dead; in Vardzia, the feasting is done at the cemetery.  In the morning, we packed up food and wine and headed up the hill, joining the procession of villagers to the cemetery.  At the cemetery we picnicked at the grandparents’ gravesite, placing red-dyed eggs on the graves and pouring out some of each glass of wine on the grave.  We proceeded to walk around with our host, stopping at different gravesites to socialize and drink wine with distant cousins and old friends.  After a few hours, we headed back to the house and continued the drinking and feasting with neighbors.  It was the best way we could have imagined spending Easter. 

The procession to the cemtary

Gravesite

A feast with some cousins

Hiking in Khazbegi

Khazbegi is just as magnificent as Svaneti in its mountainous views.  Blessing and I were able to set up our camp at the base of the hiking trail to Mt. Khazbegi; it was before tourist season so we had the place to ourselves.  During our first night, we heard rumbling thunder and took a peak out of the tent and watched dark clouds rolling over the mountain towards us minutes before we were pounded with a torrential downpour.  It was so cool to watch those clouds rolling so quickly towards us.  It was also the first test of our tent and she held up perfectly.  The next day was sunny and warm and we had a perfect hike along a ridge of the mountain.  (The background of this blog is a picture from that hike)

The campsite with Mt. Khazbegi in the background

Mt. Khazbegi

Hiking to Ushguli                                                                                  

Ushguli claims to be the highest inhabited village in Europe (the accuracy of the claim depends of whether Georgia is Europe).  The village sits at 2,200 meters in Upper Svaneti and is another beautifully stunning place to visit.  This trip makes this list not only because of its beauty and height but also because of the difficulty in getting there.  I don’t know when Blessing and I decided it, but at some point it was decided that we would never pay for transport anywhere in Georgia, this was no problem anywhere except for the road to Ushguli.  Tourism has led the native Svans to lose touch with the hospitality displayed by the rest of the country.  Every car we stopped wanted money; we were shocked, it was entirely out of the ordinary for Georgians to ask us for money.  I guess it’s inevitable for tourism to change the mindset of native people.  You should go to Georgia now, before tourism takes its toll.  In the end, we did get a couple of free rides and spent the night about ten kilometers from Ushguli.  The next day we hiked the rest of the way and it was beautiful!

Ureki beach

This was my last experience in Georgia and a beautiful way to wrap it up.    Ureki is one of the only sand beaches in Georgia, making it a very popular tourist destination.  Blessing and I did not realize just how touristy it was going to be; there was not a patch of empty beach in sight.  However, there seemed to be empty space on the other side of a pylon, so that’s where we headed.  There was a private beach on the other side and just past that, on the other side of a small river, was more sandy beach that was empty and waiting for me and Blessing.  We set up our tent and spent our last two nights on our own private beach.  We were even visited by some young Tbilisi tourists who came for a beach supra…you can never escape supras.

Teaching in Georgia

I spent a year and a half (2011-2012) teaching at a public school in Zugdidi, Georgia.  Today’s post is about that experience.  I would like to point out that what I am writing is purely based on my experience, I only know what I lived and saw and what I learned from fellow foreign teachers.

I’d like to start off by painting a picture of Georgian schools.  When I arrived in Georgia I had no expectation of what the country would look like, I had done absolutely no research and I never really thought about what a post-soviet country’s infrastructure would look like.  I now know: lots of box-like concrete buildings.  Schools, for example, are drab concrete boxes 2-3 stories tall.  The hallways are generally lifeless, colorless, and cold (the cold is a relief in the summer but dreadful in the winter).  The classrooms are similarly lifeless, though the color is a bit brighter and the temperature a bit warmer.   There is no child artwork decorating the walls but some classrooms have a few hanging posters, handmade by teachers.  Desks and chairs are usually made of a few painted boards nailed together and those nails are often jutting out, ready to be snagged.  Blackboards are boards painted black and there may or may not be chalk to use on them.  Some schools have broken windows and walls that are quite literally falling down.  It’s not an ideal learning environment but as the children and teachers don’t know anything different there is no complaining.  The country is in a process of renovating schools so some school buildings are being completely rebuilt and other schools are receiving new chalkboards or desks and chairs.  In my second school year, my English classroom received new chalkboards.

Students usually go to the same school from 1^st through 12^th grade, all 12 grades in the same building.  School lasts from 9am until 3pm, though the lower grades get out earlier.  For winter, there is no central heating that works so if your school doesn’t have wood burning stoves in the classrooms, like mine, the school often shortens lessons and school ends earlier.   To keep warm throughout the heatless winter months, students and teachers wear multiple layers of clothes under winter coats, along with scarfs, hats and gloves.  I do not miss seeing my breath while I teach (though Korean schools are not as warm as I hoped they would be).  There is no lunch break; rather, there is a 5-10 minute break between every lesson when students can run (literally) to the lunch lady and buy a khachapuri or hot dog or whatever quick and unhealthy snack food the lunch woman made that day.  Lastly, it is the teachers that do the moving, the students remain in the same dreary classroom all day (some schools have English classrooms, like mine, but all of the other teachers did the moving). 

Zugdidi Public School No. 11

Hallway

What about teaching?

While living in Georgia, I often went back and forth in my mind debating my usefulness as a teacher there (I still debate this).  The education system needs complete revamping, from improving the school buildings to improving the education of the teachers themselves and providing schools with resources.  When I stop to think about the amount of money spent on me by the Georgian government (thousands of dollars on me alone), I feel that there are obviously better uses for this money, such as providing students with free books.  However, on the other side of the argument, I know my usefulness was not only to help teach the students English but also to help teach the teachers.

In Georgia, teachers are not taught to be teachers; there is no teaching degree or qualification necessary to become a teacher.  In order to teach math, English, history, physics, or any other subject, you study that subject at university then you are ready to be a teacher.  I often felt more apt at teaching than my Georgian co-teacher simply because I was taught by trained teachers.  My education gave me instinctual knowledge on how to manage a classroom and how to motivate students.  My co-teacher was open to learning from me so I was able to pass on little bits of teaching wisdom (though not all teachers are willing to hear constructive criticism from a foreigner).  Moreover, many Georgian English teachers have a low level of fluency so we foreigners help to increase the fluency of the teachers while simultaneously teaching the students.  In this way, I can see the efficacy of importing foreigners to co-teach English.

Then there is the other side of the argument.  While the public schools in Georgia are completely free, books are not.  If a student comes from a poor family or a family that places little value on education, that student will not likely have books.  I have friends who described classrooms where twenty students shared two or three books and I never taught a class without at least a few bookless students.  This poses a problem not only in the classroom but also outside of the classroom, as there is no way for bookless students to complete homework or to study at home.  Moreover, in the USA a teacher would be able to photocopy important parts of the book if there were a bookless student, but in Georgia there is no such option.  Some schools have computers, other don’t.  Some have printers, other don’t.  No schools that I know of have a Xerox machine or paper that is free to be used.  Whenever I made worksheets or tests for students, I had to buy and use my own paper and hope that there was ink in the printer.  Because of this scarcity in teaching resources I can’t help but think that the money spent on me could be better spent on buying books for students or providing schools with paper.

Another incentive to having foreigners in Georgia is not related to education, but the economy.  Our advantageousness inside the classroom put aside, we foreigners help boost local economies by spending money.  The government pays foreign teachers a higher salary than local teachers but that money doesn’t leave the country; it supports local bars, cafes and restaurants.  Pretty much every cent of every month’s salary is put right back into the hands of Georgians.  Furthermore, our own money is also added to the economy; when our salaries are too low to support our drinking lifestyle we dip into savings from home.  Moreover, having foreigners in the country boosts tourism, an industry the country is trying desperately to exploit.  All of my friends and family now know that Georgia exists, where it is and that it is truly beautiful and worth visiting.  We foreigners act as living advertisements.  While I can name many downsides to the increased tourism, such as ruining beautiful mountain towns, the country needs the tourist dollars to continue improving.  So maybe we are beneficial.

Back to the schools…what about the students?

In high school there are two types of Georgian students, ones that pay attention and are self-motivated to learn and ones that have given up and just sit during class.  The latter is the more prevalent one, especially for boys.  The Georgian teachers label these uninterested students “lazy” and there are really no efforts made by teachers to instill motivation in them.  They generally don’t disrupt the classroom but it was painful to watch them be allowed to obviously not care about school.

In elementary school, where I spent most of my time teaching, students are eager to learn.  So eager, in fact, that when a question is asked you get twenty students leaping out of their chairs waving their hands in the air begging to answer the question.  Forget about the silent hand raising that you know from back home, in Georgia students shout “teacher! teacher!” as they frantically try to be the one you call on.  I tried so hard to stop this behavior in my classroom (can you imagine how annoying it is to hear teacher being shouted at you all day?) but it’s nearly impossible to stop because every other teacher in the school allows it (including your co-teacher).  Elementary students also have a habit of shouting “I have finished!” when they finish a given exercise; they are obviously competing with each other on who will finish first.  This habit was equally annoying and impossible to stop.  Oh well, they sure were adorable!

Teaching in Georgia was bittersweet.  I was allowed a lot more flexibility (taking days off just to travel) than I am here in Korea but the scarcity of resources made teaching more difficult.  Maybe next time I will have the best of both worlds.

My English classroom

Adorable 2nd graders

Speaking a different English

I have spent about three of the last four years living abroad.  Over the course of two years, I lived in Durban, South Africa for one year, I spent about a year and a half in the pseudo city Zugdidi in the Republic of Georgia and I have been in Jecheon, South Korea for the last four months.  This life abroad has had a great impact on the way I speak.  The places I have lived and the people I spend my time with have altered not just my accent but also the words I choose to use. The most notable influence on my speech comes from South Africa and his name is Blessing.  If we did not travel and live together I might have retained more Americanisms than I have.  My fellow UK, Aussie, and Kiwi (all 3 of them!) English teachers have also (maybe) influenced me, however, the RSA will always be the dominant force in altering my speech. 

Without further ado, here is a list of ways I have adapted my speech:

I no longer have a winter or summer vacation.  Now it’s a holiday.

I often find myself using a bin instead of a trashcan.

I also find that I have rubbish to throw away instead of garbage.

Instead of calling you, I will phone you.

When we part ways I will tell you cheers.

I often respond to something I didn’t know by saying, “is it?”

I will often sound Canadian as I put “hey” at the end of my sentences.

While it is not unheard of to ask, “who are you speaking to?” in the States, it is certainly more common to ask who you are talking to.  These days, however, I am always speaking not talking.

I find myself spelling realize with an s.

I sometimes catch myself referring to fries as chips.

I have given up the USA’s stubborn use of Fahrenheit and miles and now use Celsius and meters.

Instead of going to college, I went to university.

At university I was never a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior; I was a first, second, third and fourth year.

Instead of asking, “how much money do you have?” I find myself asking, “how much money have you got?”

I often have showers instead of taking them.

Sometimes I will be in the car park instead of the parking lot.

I have heard myself refer to gas as petrol.

Once or twice a flashlight has been called a torch.

A traffic light has been referred to as a robot from time to time.

If I want something from someone, I ask, “How’s the _______.”

            Example:        I want the glass of water in Blessing’s hand

                                    “Blessing, how’s the water?”

                                    He promptly hands me the water.

I will often be somewhere “just now.”

I sometimes say shame to express my sympathy for a crappy situation.

The letter “t” has entered my speech; I no longer use the innernet, rather I use the inTernet. 

My pronunciation of “a” has become much softer and less nasal.

Believe it or not, gas stations have become garages.

Keen has entered my vocabulary for when I want something.

While I have allowed my manner of speaking to change in some respects, there are certain things that I never want to change:

I never want to wear a vest instead of a tank top.

A boot will never be a part of car, nor will a bonnet.

Color will never have a u.

A light bulb will not be a globe.

Jelly will always be something I put on bread.

A tomato will never be a toMAHto. 

The letter “r” will always be strongly pronounced.

Hooting will always be for owls, not cars.

A cell phone will never be a mobile.