School Days

So I just finished my first week of school. (Whew!) I've been looking forward to/dreading this day but it was actually quite fun. The first day of Georgia as I have now learned is a day of celebration. It is far from the typical American first day of school where we go into our homerooms, have book lists, syllabi, and supplies lists handed out. Not here. Georgians, if you haven't figured out from my many posts of food, dancing, and supras, love to celebrate! They are very good at it and the first day of school was no exception. All of the parents, students and teachers gathered on the front lawn of the school facing the school steps to watch the Back to School Program. There were speeches given by teachers about their goals for the new year as well as speeches from my director about how well academically the school did last year. Afterwards there were a series of traditional dances performed by the school's students. After the program was finished the students, teachers and parents alike went to their students' classrooms in order to pick up the new textbooks for the year. I wandered around the school looking slightly confused (my permanent face in Georgia) greeting excited students that would run up to me and yell Hello. After talking to a few of the students I finally found my sister's classroom (on the third floor...need to remember that). I was greeted by a dead chipmunk on the floor as well as a group of 11th grade boys who would a min later pick up the chipmunk and dangle it in front the girls seated next to the door.

Well after all of this school excitement I decided to return home and take a 2pm nap (a practice that is slowly developing into a habit). I was however informed that my mother and her friends were planning a back to school supra at our house later that evening. Five women rushed into my home around five and commandeered my family's kitchen. They brought beer, pickled peppers, sausage, eggs, cake, beer, wine, onions, tomatos, pork, sauce, xinkali, and even glass plates. Within 30 mins we had ourselves a full blown feast.  We ended the night with a good ole fashioned Disco party!

The rest of the week I observed my counterparts' English classes. This really boiled down to me answering a few questions about myself to my students (Do you like jewelry? What are your parents names? Are you married? Do have friends?)  and then creepily lurking near the back of the class to take notes about each individual class and my counterparts' teaching styles. I will continue observing classes next week and then come Friday I'll sit down with my teachers and pick which grades I want to teach. I need to at least teach 18 hours to meet PC standards but I'm thinking of teaching a little extra and doing a full 20 instead. When I told my counterparts about this plan to teach 20 they thought i was crazy. My counterparts here teach about 18 hours each. They were astonished that teachers back in the states teach full time. Apparently 18 hours is pushing it here, how else could they have their day off in the mid of the week. Strange world Georgia.

Below are some pics from the week.

Everybody gathering for the celebration

Celebration banner!

My neighbor/student performing a traditional Georgian dance

More dancing

Cute students singing a song about rain and umbrellas

Poor Chip...or is that Dale?!

Back to School Women's supra...these are the best!

Shake it like a Polaroid picture!

Summer Camp Sagarejo Style

So if you’ve been following along, one of the activities I have to do before I start school is plan and implement a summer camp for my community. Not an easy feat when you lack materials, money and oh I don’t know…basic communication with vendors, students and others alike. However my camp ran really smoothly thanks to the help of my two counterparts and my sister and her friends. They helped me out with translation and guidance when I needed it.

The camp was 5 days long with each day being a different theme. Themes are as follows: Introduction Day, Sports Day, Arts & Crafts Day, Pop Culture Day and Nature Day.  I would open each day by passing out an attendance bead to each of the campers…this served as an incentive for the campers to come back each day. By the end of the week the campers who attended every day of camp would have enough beads to make a summer camp bracelet. After the bead passing and roll call, the students and I would warm up by dancing the call and response song called “Funky Chicken”.  After “Funky Chicken” I would give the day’s vocabulary lists to the campers and go over each word to make sure that they knew them. Afterwards we would do various activities and games that involved the words from the words list of that particular day.

I tried yet again to teach kickball to another group of Georgian students….just as hard as the first time but by the end of the hour they had a pretty good grasp on the rules and such.

I think they activity the kids loved the most was the clothing relay game. I brought some articles of clothing for this activity and asked each student to bring one article of clothing for this activity as well. I divided the clothing into two piles, each pile having the same amount of shirts, pants, hats etc. as well as equal numbers of colors and patterns. I would shout out an article of clothing or a color and each time would have to find the item and then run to the other side of the room and dress their other team member. They got so into it!

The other activity that was a huge success was the making of God’s Eyes. This was a craft that my family and I would do when we would go camping. All you need is two small sticks and some yarn and presto a cool craft and as I have come to realize from my memories of family camping… a way to easily keep kids occupied and in one place.

Besides god’s eyes, the clothing relay game and kickball we also  did the hokey pokey to learn body parts, made collages from magazines (each student had to spell their name, I love Georgia, include a picture they liked and spell out one new word that they learned that day), wrote poems with 3 new vocabulary words, went on a nature scavenger hunt, a human treasure hunt (students had find other students in the classroom who had something in common with something on their list…asking questions in English of course), watched and English film (Finding Nemo), made team posters and team songs, and had a celebration picnic at the end of our last day of camp

Though the camp had a lot more work/planning/improvising than I had originally anticipated…it all worked out in the end.

Below are pictures from my camp…my counterpart Zaira took most of these photos

Playing Everybody who has...

Maka, one of my students, and her collage

I know you all are jealous of my beautiful handwriting...

Just a sample of some of the god's eyes made...my students picked the craft right up 

Checking off the Nature Scavenger Hunt list...(and for your information I'm thinking...not picking my nose)

Last day of camp supra picnic 

The infamous clothing relay

Learning body parts and action words with the help of the Hokey Pokey

Kickball! The sheets of my summer camp schedule also doubled as bases

Nature hike exploring

Pictures and collages time!

One of the team posters...We had team Funny Children (poster above) and team Smile

Woot Go Sagarejo's 2013 Summer Camp!

Lost in the Mountains

I've been pretty busy the last week and a half and its about to get even more hectic with school starting in less than three weeks.  Let me bring you up to date with what I've been busy with:

A few weekends ago I went on a overnight camping trip with some of the other G13 and G12s here in Georgia. Our training manager Tengo planned the trip and took us to the Khevsureti area of Georgia. This area was one of the most beautiful most unreal places I have ever seen! The mountains are so tall and numerous that you feel like they could easily be swallowed up into them. Also it is impossible to capture such a sight on camera though I did attempt to do it. I left on Friday and stayed the night in Tbilisi so I could be ready to meet our tour marshutkas that were leaving around 7am on Saturday. On our trip we saw some of the oldest establishments in Georgia. We saw Shatili and Musto….those were the biggest highlights of our trip. Shatili is this old fortress from the medieval century. It was so cool because it was like a maze trying to explore all the building because they were all connected to each other in some form or fashion. Mutso is an old fortress with more than 30 something fortified towers

Below are some pictures of Shatili  and Mutso and a Wikipedia link about each of them too.

Shatili Info and Mutso Info

Datvisjvari Pass (the area that separates Southern and Northern Khevsureti)

Lebaiskari (small abandoned village)

Shatili, an old town-museum, built between 
the 7th and 13th centuries

More Shatili pics

Anatori crypts (a dead village with the history of the Black Death)

Our campsite for the night...we hiked up to the abandoned village in the top left of this pic

Mutso, 30 medieval fortified towers arranged on vertical terraces and overlooking Mutso-Ardoti gorge

After this weekend trip I went to Lagodekhi Nature Reserve with my sister Mari to go explore the park's hiking trails and waterfalls. My friend Aaron works at the park and he was kind enough to be our trail guide for the day.

My sister Mari on our day hike

Aaron proud of his falls

Woot made it!