Heavy

Saturday night my host sister came home. She’s been in Qutaisi (also spelled Kutaisi) living and helping her relative that recently had a baby. I’m pretty sure that’s where she’s been anyways. It was nice to see her again. Everyone was excited to have her back.

Sunday was another quiet day. The most exciting thing that happened was watching the junior Eurovision contest with my family. It’s a yearly singing competition for, obviously, juniors. The Netherlands, Georgia, Russia, Belgium and Latvia were a few of the participating countries, there were 13 total. It was a lot of fun to watch, especially since they tallied the votes at the end and we got to watch as Georgia won! Their song was called Candy Music, and was certainly more age appropriate than some of the other songs sung by other countries. Most of them were sung in their native tongues, so I didn’t understand, but when the staging is like a love ballad, it’s probably a love ballad. One of the lines I understood from Candy Music was gemrieles Schokoladis. I don’t guarantee the spelling is correct, but it means delicious chocolate. Who can resist a song about candy?

Tuesday I taught the first form class. It more or less didn’t go quite that well. They didn’t understand me, and they still have trouble with their basic letters, even though we’ve moved beyond it. Things are very difficult when they don’t understand what you want them to do, and are still having trouble with their letters. Oh well. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t the best lesson.

Today was exciting however. I got to go visit Natalie’s school since she came last week to visit mine. It is quite different, most of the rooms have electricity, although the building is only a bit nicer. The classes are also much larger, most of them being about 20 students per class. (I forgot to count.) Natalie said their biggest class is 32! I taught part of the first lesson in the morning, and then the two classes after. Natalie works with two co-teachers, and their English is better than my co-teacher’s. I helped teach the fourth class as well. It was really nice to be able to teach. The lessons went fairly well, and both co-teachers encourage, or at least allow, stepping away from the book, and doing additional activities to help learn the material. After those classes, I sat in on an additional class, one of Natalie’s teachers had asked her to come to the seventh form and read a story for them.  It was interesting to experience.

After school, Natalie and one of the teachers at her school took me to meet a private English teacher in Samtredia. Both of the teachers are Jehovah’s Witnesses. We had some cake, and tea, and right after we started eating, it was time to watch a video in English. It was all about how Jehovah’s Witnesses had caused a change in the way the medical field did blood transfusion, and the move to not using blood transfusions. Of course there were plenty of surgical scenes. L Blech! It was informative, but boring.

It’s been a heavy week so far, although not a lot has happened. I fly home in 13 days. I am excited, but at the same time I feel like there are weights settling on me. My co-teacher and I are having some communication issues that finally just kind of fizzled this week, and talking through them is difficult due to her limited knowledge of English and my limited knowledge of Georgian. German isn’t helping that much right now. Then there’s the weight of parting. My host family is quite dear to me, and I will miss them when I’m gone. Add to that weight, money. It’s something I should avoid thinking about, but now that going home is nearing I keep thinking about paying student loans, and other things. It’s just left a heavy feeling.

On the plus side, I fly home in 13 days! Much love!