I know, I know. I’m basically in the running for Peace Corps Georgia’s most prolific blogger with my two whole posts since becoming a Volunteer. I’ll be honest–when the decision is between writing about my life and staying buried beneath several layers of blankets and sleeping bags, the latter is going to win almost every time.*

I suppose you would like to know what I’ve been up to since late December. In the almost-but-not-quite month break we had from school, I did a little bit of traveling. Where to, you might ask? GHANA! Also, ISTANBUL! You can read all about it** in a guest post I did on Katharyn’s blog here.

As for life in my little mountain town? Cold, with a side of business as usual. After ten months in Georgia and eight at my permanent site, my life has become a strange mixture of Things I’ve Learned and Things I Still Have To Figure Out.

Things I’ve Learned (the slightly abridged version):

-How to speak and understand Russian in ways that aren’t frustratingly incompetent for everyone I interact with. As a teacher at a school where the language of instruction is Russian***, I often try to explain how to grammar works in Russian. While my success rate is probably somewhere around 50/50, that rate has vastly improved since when I first landed at site. Most days include both boosters and downers about my confidence in my Russian abilities–in the same class period I will have students tell me “Mr. Christopher, please just say in English, I don’t understand your Russian” and “Wow, your Russian is so much better than before! We can actually talk to you now.” I get a lot more compliments on my “pure/clean” accent now than I did when I first came to Georgia, but that is compounded with the many times I still don’t understand what my students are trying to say until my counterpart translates for me.

-Check how tight the lid is on your soda before you put it back in the fridge. This caused quite the incident in my house a few weeks ago, as I didn’t tighten the lid enough on my 2-liter Coke bottle before laying it on the top rack of the fridge. The result? Coke EVERYWHERE, including a nice little Coke bath for all the cheese, carrots, and garlic sitting in the bottom drawers. Whoops. I offered to both clean the fridge and help make new cheese, but was waved off by my host Mom, who muttered something akin to “You’ve done enough already.”

-I actually do make a difference in my English teaching, even if those changes are small and seem insignificant. This semester, due to a gamut of Ministry and schedule changes, I ended up dropping a few of the classes I had been teaching last semester and picking up a few I hadn’t taught before. My 9th grade class was doubled in size, combining a section I hadn’t taught with one that I had. And while that class isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs, I can see a difference in the speaking skills between the two classes–even from the students who spend most of their time playing with things that I eventually take away. Even if the only tangible improvement of their English skills over last semester is their ability to respond to me when I say “How are you? What did you do yesterday?”, I have to hold on to progress any way I can.

Things I Still Have To Figure Out (the extremely abridged version):

-How the washing machine at my house works. All of the settings are in Russian, and I’ve been warned several times by host Mom that one of the settings will make the thing barf water all over the bathroom. These two factors, compounded with the fact that host Mom willingly does the wash for me, mean I am still afraid to tackle the monster on my own. I’ve seen the number of steps it takes to coax the beast into actually working (one of which includes moving a barrel of water in front of the machine, for reasons that are still unknown to me) and have been hesitant to learn, but I swear I will… eventually.

-How to toast in Georgian. Those of you who have read anything about Georgia should know that Georgians are famous for their long, flowery, long toasts during supras. Although my own host family is Georgian, nearly all of our houseguests are Armenian, especially the men. As a result, I’ve become accustomed to the Armenian style of toasting, which is more typically just a stating of theme and then the drink–”To our meeting”, “To our friendship”, “To good people”, etc. My host dad usually says these toast themes in Georgian too; as a result, I’ve learned all the themes that Georgians usually toast to, but not how to properly expound on them after that declaration of theme.

* = Those times when it won’t win? The brief window of summer that lasts in Ninotsminda sometime between mid-June and late-August. But then, of course, blogging has all sorts of competitors: fishing, eating watermelon, picking raspberries… it doesn’t look good for you, my faithful readers, during the summer either.

** = The post is only about my Ghanaian travels, not my Turkish ones. Suffice it to say that my time is Istanbul was also totally awesome, worth it, etc. If you ask me nicely I may even tell you about it. Actually, that’s a lie. If you show any smidgen of interest whatsoever I will probably talk about it until you leave, and probably a little bit after that too.

*** = Although Russian is the official language of instruction at my school, the actual languages I hear throughout a given day at school differ significantly. In the teacher’s cabinet, the language spoken is almost always Armenian. Exceptions include when the few Georgians who teach at the school show up, when people try to talk to me, or when official school business is being discussed by the Director or Deputy Director. In the lessons themselves, the students almost always speak Armenian amongst themselves, in Russian or (sometimes) English to me, and in Russian to my Counterparts. Exceptions to that include when they don’t understand something in Russian, when my Counterparts are forced to explain in Armenian, or that moment during every lesson when students ask me how much Georgian and Armenian I know.