Zacho Falls Off a House

           I woke up angry on Sunday, though I’m not quite sure why. Tomorrow will be 24 days in the village without a break; 24 days without speaking in complete sentences, 24 days of eating questionable food, and that’s 24 days with only two unsatisfying showers. I’m not complaining, this is what I signed up for, what I live for in a lot of ways, but I’d be lying if I said I was certain that it didn’t factor into how I felt.

            I think what mostly put me into a foul mood was the epitome I had the night before. I was staring off at the mountains, looking without seeing, when I realized that this is the first time in my life that I’ve lived in a state resembling poverty. I was fortunate enough to be born to loving parents that did (do) everything in their power to keep me fed and comfortable. That makes me the minority in this world. There are entire continents full people that are trying to eat, and I come from the only continent full of people that are trying to stop.

            And then I realized that I’m just visiting. In two months time I’ll go back to buying 5 dollar coffee and this unsteady world will persist into the twenty-first century. It was a cripplingly somber thought, but I vowed to forever be conscious of my actions.  

Up in the Mountains

            The next morning, I rolled off my bed, slouched over my morning chai, and was informed that today I was going on a ‘holiday’. I am by no means a veteran of this country, but I’ve been here long enough not to ask what they meant, the answer would only leave me more confused.

            There’s an expression with the expats in this country, when you ask somebody what time an event is at they always add the appendage GMT: Georgian Maybe Time. I sat on the roadside for over an hour waiting for my holiday to begin, just as I was about to leave the marshrutka (van) picked me up. I was heading deeper into the mountains.

            Along the way I peppered my fifteen-year-old host brother with questions, my eyes scanning the countryside for familiar landmarks so that I could walk home. A copy of The Brothers Karamazov was burning a hole in my bedside table; I desperately wanted to curl up.

            After an hour, we finally reached our destination high above the valley. I finally received some answers too: my holiday was to a sixteen-year-old girl’s first wedding anniversary. Go back and reread that last sentence.

            Zacho was going to his first supra.

            A supra is a Georgian feast, a celebratory event, instantly recognizable by its tables loaded with food, wine, and chacha. A supra always has a tamada, a toastmaster, who spends the night hanging onto the end of a table giving long, rambling speeches about every five minutes.

Party Central, the Bride in the Red

            Fifty of us silently filed into a room, I tried a few cheery gamarjobas (hellos) out on a couple of people, but I was met with faces of unwavering stone. We sat down at two long tables overflowing with beef, chicken, bread, vegetables and fruit. As soon as we took our places, people began to eat without speaking. At small intervals along the table were plastic Tupperware pitchers that I assumed were filled with water. Almost choking to death on a chicken bone, I asked the man beside me to fill my glass. When I put the cup to my lips, I choked again on the sickly-sweet taste of Georgian wine.

            As soon as the tamada took his place at the head of my table and gave his first speech, the party began in earnest. Georgians pride themselves on their speeches: long, confusing affairs that can last over ten minutes. When Georgians finish giving a speech, you cheers (gamarjos!) but only with your right hand, and only after the person giving the speech has drank. It doesn’t matter if you’re drinking beer, wine or moonshine, you always finish your drink in one gulp.

Talking Champagne Showers: Bubbly and Baklava for the Happy Couple

            I thank the almighty Allah that I was sitting in the wine section that night, because the speeches piled on, increasing in frequency and decreasing in length. At one point, the men around my table stood and took turns toasting the happy couple. On a whim I too stood up and thanked them, President Saakashvili, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper and the Sedin twins. When I sat back down, a stupid, shit-eating grin on my face, I was met with wide eyes. Nobody in the room had understood a word that I had said but they sure were shocked that I had stood up. Almost imperceptibly, something changed and my table erupted in laughter, my back stung from the good-natured slaps it received. I had done exactly the right thing: I had returned the honor that they had given me.

            The clouds of bitter Russian tobacco smoke forced me to go outside, but not before I two-stepped in a sea of gorgeous women, egged on by the irritatingly high eyebrows and wide grins of their patroni’s (chaperones). A few mothers informed me that they had designs on me and I thought it best to slip outside before I woke up married.

            I reached a little wooden balcony, brought out my trusty Nokia, and called a friend to tell him to call the government if he didn’t hear from me for a couple of days. I held the phone to my ear with my shoulder, my arms fanned out in front of me in a casual manner, my hands gently sought the railing and I fell off the goddamned house.

                        It was only 6 feet, but it was onto rock, and the three extra summersaults I did down the slope sure didn’t help. When I later talked to my friend on the phone, he said he had heard a thud, followed by nothing but Georgian voices. I can’t believe he didn’t hear the sound of my pride shattering.

My Moonshine Bandage and My Awesome Georgian Slippers

              I picked myself up, found my phone, critically   weighed the pros and cons of crying, thought better of it,  and called Papa Corey, the grizzled Canadian leader of our group. I could not put any weight on my right knee, my hands and elbows were bleeding, and I honestly couldn’t tell if I had hit my head. Corey kept me calm, talked me through it, and gave me some pretty sound advice. By a small miracle, I crawled into the only marshrutka that was headed towards my village, somehow got back to my house, and crashed heavily onto the couch, laughing like an idiot the entire time. Host mom took one look at my knee, and went and grabbed a bottle of chacha. I cringed, the room was already spinning and I doubted that more moonshine was going to help, but she pulled out a rag, doused it with the clear liquid, and wrapped it around my knee. The pain was so great that I had no choice but to laugh even louder. What a spectacular holiday.

            At some point in this adventure I talked to my father on the phone. When I woke up, he had sent the following to me in an email:

"perhaps you should send along a couple of contacts there – just in case you take in the wrong combination of chacha, palinka, wine, beer, vodka, bad meat and schnapps, and decide to go live in the hills for a while, chasing small furry animals, and we have to track you down."

Too late, Dad.

Kargad!

Zacho

I Have Seen the Face of Dog

            The sickness that had met me with the weekend had all but vanished by Sunday. I woke up feeling chipper but anxious, outwardly calm yet wracked with inner turmoil. I needed something to do.

Bardnali shrouded with cloud

            Entering the third week of my month long self-banishment to the mountains, I’m starting to go a little crazy. Long periods of inactivity leave you restless, and any interaction with the people of Kvatia is often unsatisfying for both parties. Neither of us ever know what the hell the other person is talking about and even the sign-language of the Caucasus is as foreign to me as their tongue. When I say that I am the only person for miles and miles that speaks English, what I’m really saying is that I’m the only person for miles and miles that does not speak Georgian. You have to learn to be your own confidant, your own psychiatrist, and your own best friend.

            When Sunday morning crept around, it was time to climb that damned mountain that had been mean-mugging me since I first got here two months ago. I stuffed my face with melted cheese, slurped down a Turkish coffee and hit the road at the bleary-eyed hour of 12pm.

            My family did not want me to go on this little hike at all. One of the purposes of the TLG program is to facilitate a cultural exchange, yet this is entirely one-sided. My eyes widen when I learn of the intricacies of Georgian culture, my mind plays host to little debates as I argue with myself over the logic, historical context, and present-day consequences of getting drunk on moonshine at 10am or yelling at a person who is standing two feet away from you. When my family recognizes things that are important to my culture, such as maintaining a certain level of physical fitness, hygiene, and spending all of my money on useless gadgets, they just laugh in my face and shake their heads. They seriously could not understand what made me want to climb that mountain.

The range behind me curves across the border into Turkey

             I waited until they were collectively bent over a bucket of grapes and then I made my escape. I immediately felt better: the pent up frustration from work, the homesickness, the physical sickness, the confusion over my life and the lives of those around me, it was all expended in the sweat that dripped down my face or in the vapour of my warm breath as it hit the chilly autumn air.

            I made my way down through the village, tipping my ball cap to smiling young men and women, wrinkled old babushkas, and screaming children who kicked empty beer bottles around the street. I crossed the valley and began to climb for the next three hours. The meandering switchbacks of the dirt road gave way to narrow, snaking lanes of rock and gravel. Nothing but the stoutest of Russian jeeps would make it up here, a place the locals call Bardnali.

The valley

            An hour went steadily by. I broke up the climb with short water breaks or opportunities for self-portraits, remember what I said about being your own friend? I stumbled around sheep, danced around cows, and jumped over fallen logs, but there was one barrier that was not so eager to be conquered: a frightfully rabid dog.

            My route took me through a cheerful meadow, complete with a herd of lazy cows who were taking advantage of the pleasant afternoon the only way that they knew how: eating grass. If I didn’t have my headphones in and cranked to the new Mumford and Sons, I probably would have noticed the barking, but alas, I was jamming.

            The dog came flying around a disinterested bull and stopped before me, all teeth and matted fur, barring my way. Saliva dripped out of its fearsome jaws, its eyes mere slits filled with an unmistakable hunger: the hunger for Canadian flesh. I looked up towards the top of the mountain and then back down to the valley, I did not want to turn around; I wanted to keep this good feeling going.

            It was a Caucas dog, bred over thousands of years for one purpose: to fight wolves to the death. I pulled the headphones out of my ears and implored my bovine brethren for assistance but they politely refused to become involved. If I hadn’t been eating nothing but cheese for the past 8 weeks I probably would have messed myself. This was dire.

Almost there

            I am a great lover of dogs, I think they make terrific companions, and I’m always the first one to walk up to strange canines and give them a good scratch behind the ears. However, during our orientation in Tbilisi, the government informed us that a sizeable proportion of Georgian dogs have rabies. No big deal, rabies won’t kill you.

            Then they told us that after taking the rabies vaccine, you weren’t able to consume alcohol for six months.

            My right hand reached for my knife while my left searched the ground for a big enough rock to brain this beast. Dog lover or not, I’m not about to go down without a fight. You aren’t supposed to make eye contact with an angry dog but screw that, I thought, I’m gonna stare this thing down while I walk right on by it.

            I began a slow shuffle towards my fate, muscles tensed, arms locked, jaw set. Cerberus stood his ground, growling and snapping at the air, a strip of black hair on its back standing straight up. Five feet (more snapping), four feet (its weight shifting to its back paws), three feet (black eyes starting to roll back), two feet (I begin to shake). As I closed in, right when I was certain that the dog was about to spring towards my neck, a shrill whistle filled the crisp afternoon air. The dog sat back on its haunches, its tongue came out, and it blinked agreeably at me.

Finally made it

            Another blast and the dog jumped up and trotted away. I looked up towards my saviour and found an eight-year-old child, a student of mine, who was giggling while the dog was eagerly licking his face. The headphones went back in and I crushed the rest of the mountain, when the adrenaline wore off my pace slackened, but I made it home before nightfall in a state approaching bliss.

            My family later informed me that they could hear me talking in my sleep on Sunday night; I bet I was still thanking that boy.    

            On a side note, it has dawned on me that perhaps the readers of this blog would enjoy a perspective on Georgia other than my own. There are fifty-eight people in my intake and fifty-eight blogs to go with them, but I enjoy my friend Sanchez’s quite a bit. He has a down to earth, no-nonsense style that I believe contrasts quite nicely with my own, so you guys should check him out at http://sanchezjohnson.wordpress.com/, particularly his article entitled “I’m a Grown-Ass Man!”

Kargad!

-Zacho

Pickniki, Kvatia behind my bag

Giorgi Had a Squeeze Box

Hey all,

            I hope this post finds you well, the same can’t be said for me. Unfortunately, I’ve been hit by a debilitating case of “white boy syndrome”. This condition affects the countless middle-class suburbanites across the world who are foolish enough to travel to developing countries. Symptoms include, not being able to travel farther than 20 feet from the toilet (hole), severe gut-pain, and a visible loss of colour whenever the word ‘khachapuri’ is mentioned.

            This morning I rolled out of bed, put on a clean shirt and tie, tried to get my hair to flatten in the sink, and trudged to the kitchen. Host mom was there, making breakfast whilst chattering happily at me in Georgian. I usually talk right back to her in English, neither of us understand what we’re saying to each other, but it’s just nice to have someone to talk to. Today, while I was telling her that the Canucks are losing more than just money in this lockout, she placed before me a pot of red, oily water with bits of chicken gristle floating in it. I used my baby Georgian to tell her I just wanted bread that I can put my life-saving jar of peanut butter on, but she used her superior language skills to guilt me into spooning the wiggly chicken into my unhappy mouth.

            Here we are, not 12 hours later, grimacing in pain and regret. With anything resembling a pharmacy, doctor or clinic hours away by jeep, I am just happy I know what’s wrong with me. With morale at an all-time low, I decided to cheer myself up with a little mindless activity. Before I explain, here’s a picture:

             A couple of months ago, I spent a few nights even deeper in the mountains than I am now. After a long day of haying, a couple kids invited me to share their fire and their vodka with them. Even though it was late August, the mountains were chilly and the allure of heat was too strong to pass up. I was there for several minutes when this young man appeared, squeeze box in hand. This guy was the very definition of badass, between shots of Russian water he would roar out Georgian folk songs, his fingers fighting to keep up.

            Tonight, flipping through some photos to pass the time between trips out back, I came across this marvelous image again. I immediately decided that he had the power to make every moment a decidedly festive occasion, and I sought to re-write history.  

Somehow makes me look cooler?

The hills are alive with the sound of vodka

Boogie down in the Caucasus

The band Radiohead

Vancouver riots weren't all bad

Wouldn't be the first Georgian in Space

                      If my family is reading this and starting to get worried about my sanity, try not to worry too much, I’m still several weeks away from talking to the livestock.

Kargad!   

            

Brief Musings on Reality

            Every day, on my unsteady walk to school, I walk past the grave of my host-families father. He passed away two years ago from an illness and the family has all but recovered.

            Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have a real experience, a deep moment in which we feel truly alive. These instances are often derived from intense feeling; a burst of great pain or sorrow, an instant of deep anger or regret; a moment of careless love or vulnerability.

            I feel like in our innocuous 21^st century lives, we don’t leave ourselves enough time for raw emotion. We are just too busy with our work, our families, our relationships, our hobbies, our telephones and our televisions and our telenovellas. We love the idea of a real moment, we can recognize them, yet we seldom experience them for ourselves.

            I’m a firm believer in few subjects, yet I enjoy a little semiotics now and then. I am also the first to admit that I seldom feel real. I have been in a few situations in life: break-ups, fist fights, deaths etc, where I had absolutely no idea how to behave. These occasions give you the opportunity to stop being a walking billboard, finally find your spine or your soul (or your balls) and start acting like a human being. What did I do in these moments? I recognized the familiar pattern (domain) around me, the signifiers and the signified, and I acted like the protagonist of the last goddamned movie I had happened to watch. What a tool.

            I would bet that you, reading these words right now, have had a similar experience. Maybe you didn’t act like Bogart in Casablanca (I certainly didn’t) but I’m sure you felt awkward, I’m sure you couldn’t believe a lot of the words coming out of your mouth, maybe you couldn’t even figure out what to do with your hands. These moments suck.

The solution?

Practice.

            Do whatever you need to do to get yourself back in the saddle: love again, go fight a bully, jump out of an airplane or some other cliché-ridden activity. The more awkward situations you put yourself in, the more opportunities you have to fight your way out of them. These moments define us, the memories of which keep us going when the clouds start to form, the legacy of which makes us all the more human.

            I took a chance, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I am a part of some noble undertaking, but it was a chance nonetheless. Instead of stepping off an airplane at 10 thousand feet, I stepped off an airplane and into a developing country. Sometimes I think about the former, at least it wouldn’t have taken me 4 months to hit the ground, but that’s a different story.

            When I see that gravestone in the morning, when I see my host-mother clutching the portrait of her late husband, when I witness that fleeting moment of agony, I feel confounded and I feel awkward, but at least I feel real.

            Apparently the mouse I saw this morning while I was eating my breakfast khachapuri was a “family friend”. Oh yeah, those special moments can come from laughter as well.

The Little School That Could

           For the past couple of months, Georgia has been many things to me. Georgia has been fun, it has been exhilarating, scary at times, unrelentingly interesting and unbelievably frustrating. Yet I am an ‘Inglisuri mastsavlebeli’, an English teacher, and Georgia can be everything or it can be nothing, but it must be productive.

            I have an obligation, both contractual and moral, to give the children of this country the best education that I can give. I am not a teacher by profession; besides a 120 hour TEFL course, I have no formal training. What I do have is sixteen-years of primary, secondary and post-secondary education that I fought tooth and nail for from the Government of Canada. Does this qualify me for a plane ticket and a salary? If only you knew what I was working with.

            I am a native English speaker and I have been moulded by the western educational system into what is, almost unfortunately, a capitalist. Because of Stalin and seventy-years of Soviet oppression, what I posses has become a precious commodity to the Georgian Government. If you want to modernize, westernize, and distance yourself from the legacy of Joe Steel, what better tactic than to strike at your countries youth?

            I am here so that the students can hear my voice, so that their little ears can be exposed to the subtle pronunciations of our overly-complex language. I’m here so that I can bring some of my own education into these schools and perhaps influence some Georgian teachers to adopt western methodologies in the classroom. Also, I’m here so that these wonderful people can see a real live foreigner up close and in the flesh. 

For Queen and Country (consulate in Tbilisi)

            My school, a small building with less than 100 students, is in a state of disrepair. I believe it was constructed from the same trees that they cleared the land of before building it. Each room has gaps in the walls, ceiling and floor. If you wish to look outside, forego the window and look to the corners of the room, above your head, or at your feet. The effort that they put into this building, if indeed this is the best that they could do, is both noble and touching, yet it falls well short of anything I’ve seen in Canada or indeed much of what I have seen in the larger cities and towns of Georgia.

            My school has no heating besides the wood stove that the teachers use to heat their morning coffee. Perhaps this is safer, for it also has no sprinklers, fire extinguishers, or axes either. It is October and I am cold; I weigh 175 pounds and I have trouble understanding what these little 80 pound kids are going through right now. The snow starts to fall next month; could somebody send me a parka?   

            The desks and chairs are both miniscule and older than I am. The chalkboards are tattered, scratched and hang limply from the walls. The maps on those same walls don’t have enough countries on them, I don’t recognize the contents of the jars of pickled creatures in the science room, and if another raindrop falls on me while I’m teaching, I’m going to lose my well-crafted teacher’s demeanour.

            My school is dark and there are no light bulbs. I struggle to see the board that I am writing on or the book that I am reading from. Sometimes I struggle to keep myself from yawning. Yet even if there were lights, seldom is there electricity.

            

My school, wonderfully free of cows that day

           The teachers subscribe to the Soviet-era practice of dictation and memorization. Teachers will break the cardinal rule and interrupt the children midsentence to correct them, often incorrectly. It is not uncommon for a teacher to yell at a student for making a mistake, be it a minor spelling error or a mispronunciation. I have yet to witness any physical punishment (besides a little ear-dragging) but I have recently been told by a fellow TLG’er that a little girl in his school took a textbook to the face from a disgruntled physics teacher.
          There is a low level of professionalism. Teachers arrive minutes before class and leave seconds after. There is no lesson planning and there are no office hours. There are no extra-curricular activities, no detention, and no tests. There are no grades, progress reports, or opportunities to reward improvement. I said earlier that I owe it to both myself and to the Government to give these children all that I can give, though I’m not sure how many of my colleagues feel the same way.

            Yet here I am.

            I know it sounds an awful lot like I’m complaining, but it’s important that we, as westerners, understand the reality of the countless children (those who are fortunate enough) who go to school in developing countries. Though I would not be lying in saying that sometimes this school makes me want to find a quiet little corner, clutch my head, and rock gently back and forth until I fall asleep. However, those days are becoming fewer and farther between. Some other TLG’ers have already packed it in, folded their tent, and fled back to the West, but I have barely considered it. The bad days are bad, but I have family and friends, both in country and out, that help me through those. The good days are unbelievably good.  

My little brother and sister on the first day of school

            I never knew it was possible until it happened. Standing in front of a class of eleven-year-olds, eager hands reaching skyward, shouts of “teacher!” filling the air along with laughter from both the students and myself. I jump and I slide and I dance and I sing and I chuckle and I scold but I never yell. They badly want to impress me and the feeling is completely mutual. We are successful together, we make mistakes together but most importantly, we are here together and we have to keep trying our hardest. 

            A chorus of goodbyes signals my exit from the classroom, an even louder chorus of hellos signals my entry into the hall. I walk the short distance to the teacher’s room, I get handed a cup of Turkish coffee and they motion me to sit down but I cannot. I’m too amped.

            I never knew it was possible until it happened; I never knew that teaching could give you a high.

            Over two hundred people have looked at this page so far and with only 4 posts, I’m pretty impressed with you guys. If anybody has any questions, comments, or simply wants to point out some bad spelling, please reach out to me here, over social media or email.   

Kargad!

   Zacho

            

It Must Have Been the ChaCha

             It’s been two weeks since my last update and I sincerely apologize to those who have been following along. I promised a thrilling play-by-play of our Trap Zone adventure, but I feel I must explain what’s been going on. I’ve been pretty busy with school, some personal business, and sickness, both of a nefarious, self-inflicted nature and otherwise.

            I, like many other men do, was enjoying a personal moment this morning. I was sitting with my elbows resting on my knees, contemplating life and all of the subtle and interesting turns it so often takes. Unfortunately, this moment took place on the hillside on the way to school, the bottom of my months-salary-worth of slacks soaking up the morning rain and thus the morning mud. I picked myself up by the straps of my teaching boots (the hikers that are required for my commute) and continued on to spread the good word, quite literally in this case.  

How I've felt the past couple weeks

               If you ever get the opportunity to travel to this wonderful country, I pray you will never inform anybody when your birthday is, be they a local or expat. When Wednesday the 26^th rolled around, I had forgotten that twenty-three years previous my wonderful mother brought me into this world. I was quick to remember, as nearly every man, woman and child in my village tried their best to wish me a happy birthday...somebody had loose lips.

               I went to my classes as on any other day, but somewhere in there a couple of the older students stopped me in the hallway and unceremoniously offered me a small plastic bag. Inside the bag was the single ugliest hat I had ever laid eyes on in my life. Their thoughtfulness made me want to cry.

            Soon after I was whisked away to the teacher’s room. I found all of the staff assembled, sipping Turkish coffee and chatting. I had made it half-way through my own coffee when I heard a few hushed voices practicing “happy birthday” in the hall. They set before me one of the largest birthday cakes I had ever seen, a knife that was equal to the task at hand, and a touching reminder of what hospitality really means. I had only known these people for a couple of weeks, but they went out of their way to make me feel special. It was a moment I won't soon forget.

The birthday boy

            Soon after leaving school, I was grabbed. When Georgians grab you, you have little chance of escape, their nails dig into your forearm and they pull with a force that threatens to knock you off balance. On the end of this particular arm was another teacher, he led me to a meadow behind the school where fresh-cut pieces of timber were arranged around some tomatoes, pickles, flat-bread and a bottle of chacha. The Georgians will tell you that they invented wine over five-thousand years ago, yet so many of them prefer its ugly cousin. Chacha is moonshine, made from distilling the remnants of the grape harvest, and it has so often knocked me on my ass.

            Chacha comes in many different forms; some of it (most of it) is bitter and tastes like gasoline, while other kinds can taste like brandy. I think it all depends on the type of bathtub they make it in. On this fateful afternoon, I was given chacha of a pleasing nature, it was smoother than the Russian vodka that permeates this land and it went down far too easily. There I sat, with a small group of teachers and farmers, chasing moonshine with pickles and trying not to fall off the ground.

My Georgian birthday party

            They toasted to my health, to my parents health, to Georgia, to Canada, to friends, to women, and to young men like us. They also poured a shot of the chacha onto my stool and lit it on fire, mesmerising me with the snaking blue flame and the image of what it was doing to my liver.

            Two bottles gone, I begged them to let me leave. The pickles were doing nothing to soak up the clear, bubbling demon in my stomach. I was becoming pickled. Finally, they stood up and we stumbled back onto the dirt track that makes up main-street Kvatia. I was standing off to the side of the road, head bobbing back and forth like an agreeable horse, when a man came up to me. He smiled, shook my hand, and spoke a few words to me. I smiled back, showing all of my teeth, and stuttered out “bodishi, arvitse Kartuli” (excuse me, I don’t speak Georgian). He gave me a strange look and turned without another word.

            A few minutes later, I spotted a villager that knows a few words of English and I inquired as to whose hand it was that I had just shaken. He looked at me, smiled with all of his remaining teeth, and informed me that it was the minister of education, my boss.

Downtown Kvatia

The incredible hangover I experienced the next day turned into a sickness that threatened to derail my weekend plans. The reason that brought the minister to my town was the same one that took me out of it. I travelled to Batumi to celebrate my birthday with some friends; we had the following Monday off because of the first free elections that this country has ever witnessed. With our typical level of professionalism and all-around classiness, we brought in this new era of democracy with both the style and respect that it deserved. I only woke up face-down on a balcony once.

The crew in Batumi

            I’m going to put a lot more effort into this blog in the coming weeks. I’ve spent the past two weekends in Batumi and so I’ve banished myself to my village for the foreseeable future. I’m also going to try and prove to you that I am actually doing good work here: it’s not all debauchery and difficult mornings. Again, I apologize for the delay but check back for updates concerning school, village life and some other adventures. 

Kargad!