Teachin the kids howda talk rite, and mingling with president and Prince of Monaco

You know you love your job when you’re disappointed when you don’t have to work. On Wednesday, I accidentally overslept because I forgot to hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. Nana had to come to my room to wake me up. I dressed quickly, and rushed downstairs to stuff my face before school started. When I finally got to school, the principal told me “Reni (that’s what they call me here, they just add an ‘I’ to the end of everything), no English.” “So, do I just go home? Home?” “Yes, you go home.” I was devastated. The only good thing that came out of Wednesday was using the internet in Madonna’s computer lab. I never thought I would say this, but I love the hell out of these little kids. They’re not like the monsters back home. My favorite grade so far has been 2^nd, although the other ones are pretty badass too. I’m not entirely sure what grades I’ll be teaching yet, I’m just going with the flow. All of my students copy my hand motions and other weird body movements. Now, when they say the number 10, they throw their hands out in front of them and wildly wiggle all their fingers. They learned a few vocabulary words too, and when they say “bag,” they put their backpack on top of their head, because that’s what I did. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to act like an idiot, and using all my energy to my advantage. I walked around on all fours barking, to show the kids “dog.” Oh, and don’t even get me started on the meowing. I don’t know why, but one of my students in the 10^th grade thinks I know how to swing dance, and already decided that I need to teach the class. They were ecstatic about this. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to swing. I’m going to have to YouTube it and come up with something. I can’t not teach them…they’ll be devastated. 

My school

Our only sign

For my 12^th graders, I taught them the names of articles in clothing, by putting on a fashion show. As students came up, I would explain what they were wearing, as if I was a game show host, and then, as they walked away, I sang “you better work, covergirl!” The teacher-student relationship here is completely different than back in the States. Students give their teachers flowers and kisses and hugs. Some of my students studied my translating book, and found the word “homosexual.” They started giggling when they saw this word, as if it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. Homosexuality is very taboo here. Both of my English co-teachers have pretty much given me total control of the classroom, creative control that is. They translate everything I say and give me suggestions as to what should be taught for the day. The cooperation is a success. Perfect even. Throughout the day, I went to the teachers lounge to grab a drink of water. Over the course of three hours, I drank four glasses of water. The cups that were available were only a bit larger than your average shot glass, so I drank a perfectly acceptable amount of water, especially when you consider that there’s no air conditioner in the school so it was exceptionally hot. They don’t drink much water here, and one of the teachers asked why I drank so much H2O. The obvious answer would be, “I’m thirsty, why in the hell else would I drink water, so much?” Of course I didn’t say that, although I wanted to. I just said, “we love water in America.” It seemed simple enough, and the perfect thing to say to avoid a convoluted answer in English that they wouldn’t understand. Sometimes you just have to give bullshit answers like that. It makes life less complicated.  

In other news, the President of Georgia invited all of the English teachers, minus the crew in Gori (how depressing to be without Martin, Jen, Rob, Jacob, Justina, and Mark) to an opera in Batumi at the new opera house. The opera house was beautiful, but the security staff was a bit lacking. They told us they were going to check our bags before we came in, to check for weapons, due to the presence of a few very important attendees: the President and the Prince of Monaco. They never did. For all they knew, I could have been packing several glocks and a few hand grenades.

There he is, just two rows behind me...oh yea, that's the Prince next to him

President of Georgia, Misha

TLG took care of the food, transportation, and the hotel room. How fabulous is that? The hotel even had internet, a nice bathroom, sheets with a high thread count and normal pillow! To top it all off, the President and Prince sat two rows behind me.

Lastly, in completely unrelated news, the goat (the one that I caught) is always staring at me with his devil eyes. I think it’s going to kill me.