Sick as a Dzagli

The only dzagli in Georgia I wouldn't mind
getting rabies from

 To those of you who are irregularly checking the blog from both here and around the world, I'm not dead yet. I've been taken down by yet another sickness, my sixth in four months, and I have been unable to do anything other than read and cough. I tried updating this blog a few days ago but writing when you're sick is like playing solitaire when you're drunk, its lonely and you often miss the point. It's a brutal existence here when you feel like crap, I sit on the couch with a book and a cup of tea and my Georgian mother yells at me for being sick...this has gone on for four days.
        Here are the top 5 reasons, no joke, that my host mother has given me for my current illness:
1. I read too much
2. I'm on the computer too much
3. I have cold hands
4. My socks aren't thick enough
5. I went outside without my slippers on...once
   Of course, it has nothing to do with the schools communal water cup. Now before this trip I had never been around children much before, but did you know that they are always sick? They constantly cough and sneeze and drool and put everything within an arm-length in their mouths. That's all well and fine, some people back home have told me that this is completely natural, but never, ever have I ever heard of a communal water cup.
   There are perhaps 100 students in my school, plus ten or so teachers give or take. At the front of the school there is one hose jutting from a concrete slab and on top of this slab sits the cup. During each break, children of all ages come to slurp greedily from this little wooden chalice. This is either the most foolhardy, ridiculous thing that I have ever seen in my life, or it is genius in its archaicness. One child in the village gets sick, they all get sick. One child builds up the antibodies to a certain virus, so must all the rest.
  The only problem is when a fragile little Canadian comes over, touches a book or a pencil, and then accidentally sticks his finger in his mouth like a complete jackass...six times. 
Kargad!