School Holiday Celebrations

My school recently executed its first English-language Christmas party. My students sang songs, recited poems, told jokes, and described Christmas traditions in both America and Georgia. I think everyone had a good time. Here are some photos of the event.

Vazha dons the ugliest Santa mask I have ever seen (let alone purchased).

We even teach shapes and colors!

The singers.

The students wish all of you a happy holiday season.

The author - looking festive, as always.

Even more excitingly (at least for me), was meeting with several intrepid students on the first day of winter vacation. They gathered with me in my classroom to make Christmas cards, take some Christmas candies, and receive free of charge the most sought-after gift of this holiday season - the Happy Holidays Verb Packet!

My intrepid students and me.

My students browse our English library (thanks to all of you who have sent books) for some holiday reading.

Nino and Vazha, my favorite 8th graders.

If your monitor has extraordinary resolution capabilities, you can even see part of "happy new year" written on the board, as well as our classroom rules. Although you might claim to be uninterested, I can see you squinting!

Happy Holidays!

Tim

Photographic Evidence

As I now have a camera cord, I can more easily post pictures for your viewing. Enjoy.

It had been a while since I'd seen a one-horse open sleigh.

Taken only 4 days ago! It's like yesterday!

David sleds uphill with assistance from the rope-pull.

Primed to cascade down the hill dangerously.

Evidence that I did, at least, put on ski boots in the vicinity of other skiers.

A Georgian wedding. (from August)

How I don't get around.

A Georgian man decanting his homemade wine into the Fanta bottle for my purchase in his cellar.

A garage full of mandarins in my village.

The crates the mandarins would eventually fill.

Latrines and Links

First, I would like to draw your attention to some new links that have appeared on the left side of my blog. Two of my friends are serving in Peace Corps Ukraine and St. Kitts and their blogs appear in the Links section. The new group of Volunteers arrived in Georgia in June and a few of them have set up blogs as well. They appear towards the bottom, inthe G7 (because they are the 7th group in Georgia; I am in the 6th group) section.

When I was a counsellor at ECO camp I gave in to my most basic Peace Corps instinct and dug latrine. Mosey on over to Amy's blog for the exciting pictures.

Georgia is sometimes a very strange place. My friend rents an apartment in Batumi, the regional center. His refrigerator (an old, Soviet model) recently broke. He called to have it repaired. This is where the process ceases to be normal. The refrigerator repairman does not come to your defective refrigerator; you must bring the incapacitated refrigerator to him. After facilitating it down the narrow, unlit stairs to the street, you must hire a cab with a large trunk to take it to the repairman's place, where he begins to deal with it. He calls you when it is again functional (apparently refrigerator repair takes two weeks) and the process must be repeated, this time dragging the fighting refrigerator up the stairs and back into the apartment. Luckily, it worked once returned to its place atop a wooden piling in the stuffy kitchen. If it happens again, however, I will recommend that my friend not repair it so I am not again enlisted to transport it.

I have uploaded some pictures from ECO Camp (the first week of August in Racha, a mountainous region near the Russian border)...

Shovi town center.

I tried to be artistic.

Nearing the tree-line.

The hills are alive... (yodel yodel yodel)

Here I am at the zenith of our hike at the ECO camp in Racha.

A mountain shrouded in clouds.

It's not my house, but I wish that it was.

Miss Nature 2007.