Khertvisi Castle, Khertvisi, Georgia

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Yet another day in the life

We've had some talk on the Peace Corps Georgia Facebook group about trying to give a rundown of a typical weekday-in-the-life. We've done a couple of "day-in-the-life" entries before, but here's another one. This is how a typical March Thursday might go for Sam.

7:40 am - Wake up to alarm and go for a run with Melissa. We've been pretty consistent about this, but the winter was tough. We usually run 3 miles, braving snow and ice, mud, cars, bewildered pedestrians, cows, and (especially) angry dogs. We have three usual routes, straight out and back along the highway leading to the Turkish border, out the dirt road toward the village of Gumbordo, or down and up the hill toward downtown. Along with the mud and the slowly melting mountains of snow, the spring has brought my favorite hawk back. He sits in a tree just about the point where we turn around.

8:15 am - Stop at the bakery for bread. Roughly 50% chance of bread on any given day, depending on whether we get there before or after the guy fills up his car to go sell the bread elsewhere. Glasses fog when I go inside, but it smells really good.

8:20 am - Back home, try to force myself to do push-ups and sit-ups; clean up as best I can and head out to put on water for tea.

8:30 am - Breakfast is tea and oatmeal, with a piece of bread to sop things up, because how can you sit down to a meal and not have at least one hunk of bread?

9:20 am - Head out to school; it's a 20-minute walk the way I do it, which is more like moseying. Listen to a German or Russian lesson or music on the way.

9:45 am - Eighth grade class starts. This is my most difficult class. Terrible textbook apparently assembled by Dadaists, originally 40 kids finally split into two groups of 20, but still too many. In general we have 3-5 girls crowded up at the front paying attention, and the rest of the class busy with cell-phones, origami frogs, and so on. I have real difficulty getting my own parts of the lesson in, and too often, sad to say, I do next to nothing in a given class period. That makes the successes--a lesson on family trees, a "Wheel of Fortune" game--all the more rewarding, but, on any given day, odds are that this is a rough one.

10:30 am - First grade class. We've got some characters here: a little wiggle-worm dude who I don't believe has sat still for 10 seconds since birth; twins who have obviously picked up that it is cute when they scratch their heads and rub their chins when called to the board to point to a picture of a car; a know-it-all girl who is continually screaming out answers, which are half the time wrong; a really studious little guy; a girl who ought to be in the gifted class; and the girl who mostly stares at her shoes. My counterpart for this class is really good with the little ones, and we do a lot of games and activities. We've hit a bit of a plateau with the alphabet, so I'm trying to work in some more conversation.

11:10-11:20 am - 10-minute break. Try to read, or sometimes practice my Armenian with the other teachers. One vice-principal in particular has made it her mission to get me to speak Armenian, which is all the better for me.

11:20 am - Fourth grade class. 18 kids crammed into what ought to be a supply closet, and when the windows are closed and the heat's on, it's a heady experience. Although the kids have some real discipline issues, I think I like teaching in this class best--of all my classes, I have the most responsibility and am the most active here. I earned some credibility with the kids for teaching this class alone for a couple of weeks last semester when my counterpart got married, and for some reason I can speak Armenian with them ten times better than any other class.

12:05 - Twelfth grade. It was pretty early on this year that we learned the word "Senioritis." It's a pretty relaxing class to end the day with, since we more or less sit down and try to do conversation, but it's frustrating that they're not willing to take any risks with English and just turn to my counterpart to translate for them (and more frustrating that she continues to do so). Most of the kids are good and checked out of school already, and, to be honest, by the end of a long Thursday, so am I.

12:45 - Finish up; plan quickly with counterparts for next day

~1:30 - Get home. Relax and read for a little bit.

2:00 - Have something between a snack and lunch; usually a cup of tea and buckwheat, vermicelli, or beans.

2:30-3:15 - Play guitar if our host sister isn't sleeping, check the computer otherwise. Make sure I have all my ducks in a row for the eco-club. Melissa usually comes in just about as I'm coming out. Thursday's a coming-and-going kind of day.

3:30 - Eco-Club. I work with a friend and her mother to put this on; it's become something rather different than my original intention, with children much younger (1st-graders mostly) than I had expected. Because most of them don't know Russian well, and because my Armenian is not at a level where I can speak intelligently about the environment, a lot of the work is left to my counterparts here and I'm there for moral support, computer games, and films.

4:45 - Get home. Play guitar, read, write, fool around on the Internet. Do the written part of my German lesson; try to read some Russian. Melissa heads out for her fitness club around 5:30.

6:30 - Dinner. Our host dad has been working late, which means it's often just me, Melissa, and our host grandmother eating, but we'll be eating more as a family as the spring comes on and a lot of his clients at the pharmacy will be back to work in the fields.

After dinner, I try to sit out in the common area while reading or preparing. Lately, grad school and travel plans have meant a lot of Internet time, and this (as well as plain old fatigue) has meant more time in the room. Often Melissa and I will watch a TV show. If my host brother has English homework, I'll sit and work with him for 45 minutes or so.

10:30 - Tea. A host family tradition, but lately it's been just Melissa and I drinking, because the Armenian soap operas are running later than we go to bed, and they don't want to have tea until the shows are over. When we do sit down as a family, it's a good opportunity to talk and catch up.

11:00 - To bed.

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