Snow!... Well, at Least a Little Snow.

Woo hoo! Finally a little bit of snow to make winter interesting!
Here's some pics I snapped on the way over to my newfound internet spot. :D

Much to Catch up On, Part 4: Back in Georgia

Of course, as all good things do, the vacation in Germany had to end. Not without the obligatory tears, which of course happened at THE worst time possible. My first flight from Munich to Istanbul was great. I had a whole row of seats to myself, and everything went smoothly. One would think if I was going to cry, it would be as I left Germany, but no. That would be much too convenient. It happened on my flight from Istanbul to Tbilisi, while surrounded on all sides by either Turkish or Georgian women, who, if you were unaware, are MUCH more nosy than Germans. One woman offered me a tissue, one guy leaned up from a couple rows back to ask me what was wrong with me... it was lovely. Hahaha. But I made it back in one piece at around 2 in the morning. I stayed in a hostel for a couple days, just to ease back into Georgia and to be surrounded by people for a couple days so I didn't get too lonely. Met some egotistical Americans I wasn't too fond of and a lovely Australian woman who was visiting her mom (who was TLG), who I suspect I have met before, but am not quite sure. Good times.
THEN, everything kind of goes crazy from there. I left to go back to Rustavi on Friday night, and upon arriving at my apartment, discovered that my host family has left for the weekend, taken the key to the door that is normally hidden there, and have failed to tell me ALL this information. So in a blind rage, I called TLG and my host sister and pretty much demanded this situation be remedied IMMEDIATELY. My host family claims they told me they were going to be gone and that they thought I wasn't coming  back yet, which was total crap. So after several frantic phone calls, TLG decides they're just going to take me to my new host family instead of making me go all the way back to Tbilisi to stay in a hostel overnight with my 20 kilos of luggage from my Germany trip. As bad as the situation was with my other host family is about as good as it is with the new. The place is WARM, they offered me a hot shower  pretty much the second I got there, and they're just in general completely lovely. My host mother is a proclaimed chocolate and tea addict, and I can tell we're going to get along juuust fine haha.
However, one would think it couldn't get any weirder with my previous host family, and they would be wrong. I went back to get my stuff, and my host sister told me her mom just left for Italy for the next THREE YEARS. I was like "Excuse me, what!? Three YEARS?" and she was like "Yea, 3 years..." like it was no big deal!? So I have no idea what is up with them, but I'm glad to be outta there. They just kind of do their own weird thing. As my own passive agressive revenge for the fact that they locked me out of the place I was supposed to be living in, I'm eating the chocolate I bought for my host sister. Take THAT.
And just because this post is all text, here's a picture of some of the Christmas/New Year lights in Tbilisi.

School starts up again on Friday, and I've already been told I don't have to go haha, so maybe I'll go, maybe I won't. I haven't really decided yet. As of now it'll be my last semester in Georgia unless I decide to renew my contract for another one after that. So far, it's off to a good start, and if I can reconnect with some of the people I met right before I left, I think it'll definitely be an excellent one.

Much to Catch up On, Part 3: Return to Freiburg

Christmas was spent in Munich, and New Year's was spent back in Freiburg!
It was really, really strange for me being back in Freiburg at first. I think Freiburg in general and anything attached to it has reached this place in my mind that is almost like a dream. When you think about it from far away, it can seem so incredibly awesome and untouchably happy, that it pretty much seems like it can't exist. But alas! It does! It took me a good day or 2 to finally feel like I wasn't just dreaming about Freiburg, that it actually did exist, and I was actually there. Me and Ben stayed at our friend Claudia's house for a little under a week I think it was.

The picture is the view from Claudia's house. It's a view I like a lot and has a lot of fond memories attached to it. So I thought I'd take a picture of it. I did a pretty awful job of taking pictures to document my time in Germany haha, so I've only got a few pictures to choose from to post on here. Woops. Luckily for me Ben is a MUCH better photographer than I am and took some more pictures.
Anyway, while back in Freiburg we also visited a good friend, Judith. That was pretty fantastic as well. We made sushi at her house and it was a HUGE success. Yum yum yum. It was really nice for my mental health to actually see some of these people in person again. Made me feel much less crazy for comparing everyone I've met to them and being sorely disappointed by it. It was a nice reminder that I don't just hate everybody. They are, in fact, just not as awesome as the people I know, like Judith and all the others. : )

Giant pencil in the ground we discovered while on a late night walk. Had to try to exercise at least a little bit of the food off ; )

Much to Catch up On, Part 2: German Christmas

As I said earlier, my Christmas was spent in Germany with my friend Ben. I was there a grand total of almost 3 weeks and it was exactly how I hoped I would spend my vacation. Watching movies, taking hot showers, doing a little bit of sightseeing, catching up with Judith and Claudia, and of course, eating as much chocolate, lebkuchen, and cheese as I could fit in my stomach. It was heavenly. Of course I think I probably bored the bajeezus out of Ben, but what can you do.
The first thing we did in Germany, and pretty much the extent of my sightseeing (haha) was the Christmas markets in Nuremburg. They started there, so they have the greatest Lebkuchen and Glühwein. This I can attest for. It was amazing.
Then Christmas was spent at Ben's house with his English friend Alistair, Alistair's mom, dad, and brother who came to visit him, and his Argentinian friend Felipe. It was a nice worldly Christmas, but of course the conversation ended up being about America nearly the whole time. Haha. Oh well. Can't seem to escape it. Either way, Ben made pretty much the most impressive Christmas meal of all time (sorry mom). There was a chicken, a duck, some ridiculously delicious gravy, potatoes, veggies, and plenty of wine and Christmas sweets/cheeses. I'd like to say I totally helped make the meal delicious, but in reality I sat at the table drinking wine, whining about how I felt useless most of the time. But I did provide some Christmas music for good cheer! Maybe that counts for something?
For those of you that don't have facebook, here's a picture of the Christmas crew, minus Ben who was taking the picture.

It was actually pretty nice having SOMEONE'S parents there for Christmas. As much as I do like living on my own, parents in general are nice to have around on holidays
: ) It made the whole shebang feel much more home-y.

Much to Catch up On, Part 1: Christmas Program

So finally I've gotten settled down with all of my things moved out of my old apartment and into the new, with a host family I adore thus far. They don't have internet right now though, so I'm where else but Prospero's in Tbilisi so I'll catch you up on what happened around Christmas. In a nutshell, I helped put on a Christmas program at my school, got a present from the president of Georgia, and left the country for a nice relaxing time in Munich, Germany with a friend I met on exchange in Freiburg.
Here's a picture of me blogging. This is the most western spot (aside from the Goodwill grocery store I just discovered) in the whole of Georgia. So naturally I flock to it all the time for some good old internet usage and french presses of coffee.

The Christmas Program was a huge success. We decorated the choir room and put up a Christmas tree, as well as a whole bunch of Christmas/New Year's cards the students made. New Year is a bigger holiday here than Christmas is, so most of the cards were New Year themed. The kids recited poetry, did a couple cute little skits, and sang Christmas songs, all in the cutest manner humanly possible :D It was pretty much the best Christmas Program of all time. Afterward, the Director of Curriculum at the school got up, addressed me for like 15 minutes, I think thanking me for being there and talking about how there have been positive changes in the school since my arrival, but I can't be sure because the whole spiel was in Russian and the only thing that I got translated to me was the only part of the speech I was certain about. Hahaha. After a 15 minute speech, all they told me was "He said thanks a lot". Hahahaha. I'll just leave it up to my imagination all of the nice things he was saying about me. Basically that's all I can tell ya about the Christmas Program, I'll leave you with a copious amount of pictures though, because those describe it MUCH better than I can! 

 First one is a picture of the kids in one of my 4th grade classes singing.

 This one is a mishmash of different classes, but the girls were all reciting little poems we gave them to memorize. Quite impressive for little kids, if you ask me.

 Don't tell the others, but this was my favorite haha. It was a little play the 4th grade class put on about a little Christmas tree who doesn't get picked to go home with a family so all his little animal friends decorate him in the forest. This class has outrageously awesome English pronunciation. They're WAY cute.

And finally the obligatory picture of me and the other English teachers. I think I might have a video somewhere around here of the kids singing Jingle Bells or something. I'll hafta look for it and update you if I can find it. 

Supraze, Part 2

I'm always afraid my internet is going to go out, so I broke up the supra post into to to avoid losing everything if the internet goes.
So basically supra = eating eating eating, toasting, drinking, talking, and a general good time. It's a really wonderful atmosphere and one thing I really do love about Georgia. They value their friends immensely and you can really feel it at a supra. Fun times indeed.

So then after the eating and the drinking and so on, a traditional Georgian band played some different types of Georgian music, corresponding with the different types of Georgian dance (haha wow this post is just filled with fun cultural facts!). Each region in Georgia has its own distinct type of dance, depending on its history and geographic location, etc. For example, the mountain region dances are much more manly and intense than the more mild terrain-ed regions. Georgians LOVE to dance too, so when the band started playing it's not like in America where everyone just kind of stares at the dance floor longingly for a while until some brave soul is the first one to dance. No. The music starts and everyone just goes for it and has a good time.
Svanuri
Acharuli
You can see a good example of Svanuri from the Svaneti Region and hear some pretty legit singing. A note about the different dances- pretty much all Georgians just know all the different types and can whip them out at a moments notice. Now obviously the whole restaurant isn't all dancing choreographed like the video, but they all know the styles and steps and just sort of ad-lib it according to the steps that are a part of each type of dance. IT. IS. AWESOME.
If you skip to about the 1 minute mark in the Acharuli one, you can see a good example of the way women dance in that particular dance. It comes from the Achara region. Haha surprise surprise.

Here's a picture of the teachers getting their Georgian dance on.

Then, my favorite part of the night I think (or at least most fun for me haha). The teachers requested a song for us all to dance to, they called it "rock-and-rolli". Luckily, the Georgian band did not play this on their traditional instruments haha. Rather, it was this crazy mix of old music, starting with In the Mood. You can imagine my excitement when In the Mood started playing and everyone was dancing. I could have died. Haha. And it went from there... apparently Georgians love old sock hop style dancing (Elvis, swing, the works) and we did that for quite some time. It was REALLY fun. And that, in a not very small nutshell, was St. George's Day.

SUPRAZE

(At the supra!)
So this post is a little late coming... I've been busy wasting time on the internet instead. Haha, but seriously, I've been crazy listening to Christmas music and working : )
So, I would like to write a post on the concept of the Georgian "Supra". It is VERY important to Georgian culture and it's how they celebrate major events. Births, deaths, marriages, holidays, birthdays, etc. November 23rd was St. George's Day, who, as you could have guessed, is the patron saint of Georgia. Shocker, I know. So to celebrate this auspicious of days, we had a supra with some of the teachers at my school. They invited me out and I was more than eager to attend, mainly because most of the teachers at my school are nothing short of awesome. I was hesitant at first (and I'm pretty positive they were too) but I am now 100% positive that I'm a huge fan of my fellow teachers. SO, the supra. The supra is basically a feast. I kid you not, our waitress was bringing us food for a good 2 hours. They started with cold salads and basically go from there. At a supra you eat as much as you possibly can, which I have a theory is because you need something to soak up the massive amount of alcohol you consume. Here is a picture of part of the table for an illustration.

You can see how the plates are stacked on top of each other because there's no room. Haha. By the time they got to the cake, there was just no room. So drinking at a supra actually isn't just one big everybody drinks as much as they want type deal. There is a method to the madness. At a supra, arguably the most important person is who's called the "tamada". The tamada is always a man, and is responsible for making the toasts. He makes toasts to several required things- health, family, friends, and at this particular supra there was even a toast made to me. Haha. You wonder what you did right in life when grown women raise their glasses and say "Lindsay, I very like you!" on a very important day : ) Georgians toasts are no joke too... they are LONG. According to wikipedia, the tamada must have great rhetorical skill and be able to consume a large amount of alcohol. Haha, which I would fully agree with. In Georgia, it is tradition to drink your WHOLE GLASS of wine at every toast. Men are expected to do this more than women, haha so if you hold out a little bit, no one's gonna make a fuss. However, when you DO drink your whole glass you are a hero. I personally save drinking the whole glass until someone calls me out for not "dalie"ing enough (drinking). Then I get to be the cool foreigner who's super Georgian because everyone is looking at me when I drink my whole glass. Haha. You gotta know how to do these things right ; )

My 3 glasses. One contains homemade wine, one contains pear soda (YUM, by the way), and one contains homemade cognac. Haha, guess which one is which?