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Oz Concert

I was told that today after classes we’d all be heading down to Ozurgeti to give “the poor peoples” mandarines. I sorta chuckled when they said this, but I suppose for Georgia, many of the families in my village have enough to eat and drink and live a comfortable life. We loaded up in the [...]

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6th Grade SURPRISE!

Today was the big day! (Read this page first to find out why I have been fundraising to get my entire 6th Grade class new English Level 3 books!) So, I was able to catch a ride in a car all the way to school so I didn’t have to carry all 21 books and [...]

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To and from T’bilisi in a day

Our train took all night and we arrived in T’bilisi at 6:30am. It was still dark outside so we grabbed a taxi and headed to a hostel where some of his friends worked. We were allowed to take showers and change, get on free wifi and make some coffee. As the sun came up, others [...]

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Tchanieti Village

Tchanieti village is just 5 minutes outside of Ozurgeti and is where Cajun has been teaching all semester. I was invited to stay because he was having a goodbye supra to celebrate his time teaching. The school is much different from Shroma in many ways. It’s about as large as mine, but there aren’t nearly as [...]

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Picking up the books!

Last week while I was in Batumi I ordered the English World Level 3 books for my 6th grade class so this weekend they were ready to be picked up! I grabbed those along with the maps for this class…plus I found a donor to match the Grant amount we received so I ordered 4 [...]

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Chalkboard Supra

After school today we celebrated the arrival of the chalkboards! In Georgia, a Supra, or large party with food and drinks, accompanies any celebration you could think of. From weddings and birthdays, to funerals and anniversaries and even anniversaries of funerals! All of my teachers add something to the event, their signatures dish, cups/plates/forks/and napkins, [...]

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Chalkboards in Transit

If you all remember I applied for the GreenHeart Travel grant to purchase new Chalkboards/Whiteboards for my school in Shroma. We were awarded $250 USD which equals about 400 Lari. I found out this week that there was one more place I could check to see if we could buy Chalkboards rather than the more [...]

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Batumi and a Mountain Village

I took the morning marshrutka to Batumi today to do one final search for chalkboards instead of whiteboards. Cajun and Kanise joined me there and showed me the market called Hoppa….and yes indeed: We found chalkboards! I ordered them from Emzari, the owner, who said they’d be there tomorrow. So we all went to meet [...]

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Mandarini Season

Toma had to miss school the past two days because he had to help Nino and Medico and a bunch of the neighbors pick the mandarins off the trees on their land. I came home to find the garage packed full of them. I’ve never seen so much fruit in one place before – and [...]

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No electricity for how many days?

So…when I did finally arrive home…there was no electricity…and there hadn’t been for the past 4 days….. Excuse me, What? In the end we didn’t have electricity for 8 days total. This means no showers, everything in the fridge had to be thrown away, and all my electronics died. Not the end of the world [...]

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Gori

Well after a fun-filled weekend in T’bilisi one would usually head home but because I had a few extra days off of school I decided to head to Gori to visit some friends. Gori is known as the city Stalin came from, and no matter how you may feel about this historical man, Gorians are [...]

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Thanksgiving Abroad

Thanksgiving coincidentally coincides with a holiday here in Georgia called St. George’s Day.  So that means we all got Friday off work! I left Thursday after class and started walking towards Ureki when Kanise and I finally caught a ride down the tropical mountain. We hailed a T’bilisi marshrutka and were on our way by [...]

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Love Graffiti

I’ve always loved “Love Graffiti” as I call it. Anytime a heart or the word Love or I Love You is painted onto the side of a wall, I smile inside and out, and feel a bit lighter for the rest of the day. So, when I woke up this morning and started walking towards [...]

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Western Weekend / Wedding Surprise

This weekend was filled with more fun-packed-bar-hopping-adventures with the crew in T’bilisi….durning the days, I ate another real pizza (yummy), I took a bubble bath (oooh, aaah), and I even watched movies with popcorn (wow – no way). Yes, I’d say it was a Very-Western-Weekend with all the amenities, electricity and wifi one could ask [...]

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On Expectations

Note to self: Never accept a ride to town with the host family ever again. I guess a more accurate “Note to Self” would be this: Have no expectations whenever I do accept a ride to town by the host family. I say this after four failed trips to town over the past few months. [...]

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