One Year Anniversary (Part 2)

So, what have I actually been doing here?

That's a very complicated question. I am still teaching English. Well, not currently, it's summer vacation. But usually I am, 5 days a week at my school. I also taught 2 days a week at an NGO in Batumi, but that has ended now as well. I'm not sure if I'll pick that back up again in the fall.

I do various other things in my community as well. I host an ECO club, which promotes environmental education and conducts some trash clean-ups in the community. Additionally, I am involved in a larger ECO projet, which conducts 6 week-long camps in locations throughout Georgia over the summer for Georgian youth who participate in ECO clubs in the villages, towns, and cities.

I also conducted several teacher trainings over the past year as part of the Teacher Training Project. One of these took place in my village, and I also conducted two others in Ozurgeti and Chiatura. An average of 20 Georgian teachers of English attend these trainings and each volunteer presents 3 sessions about various topics relating to better and more communicative teaching methods.

My friend and I are writing a new textbook for beginning English students. It will be the first textbook written in both Georgian and English by a native English speaker. So, this is what will occupy most of my summer.

I've written 3 grants and all 3 have been approved and fully funded. So that's cool.

I have also read many books. Just to amuse you, here is the list. They aren't exactly in order.

1. A Voyage for Madmen
2. Angels and Demons
3. Vagabonding
4. The Kite Runner
5. The Best American Sports Writing: 2002
6. Life of Pi
7. Georgia Diary
8. The Best American Non-Required Reading: 2006
9. How Soccer Explains the World
10. The Bureau and the Mole
11. High Fidelity
12. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
13. Blink
14. The Perfect Store
15. Linguistics: an Introduction
16. A New Religious America
17. Emotions Revealed
18. The Mother Tongue
19. The Cassandra Compact
20. The Bourne Supremacy
21. The New International Dictionary of Quotations
22. Georgia: a Sovereign Country of the Caucasus
23. Notes from a Small Island
24. The Culture of Fear
25. Rick Steves’ Europe through the Back Door 1999
26. Icon
27. Skinny Dip
28. Digital Fortress