An Interesting Week

So this past week was quite eventful. There was just a lot going on which is strange for Muganlo. I posted a video earlier so if you want to see that it should be the post right below this one. Not that the video has anything to do with this week, but I did finally get around to doing that.
Most of the week was rainy and cold, but we did have a few days of sun. It didn’t get far above 50 degrees all week and for the most part school was freezing cold. They say that they are going to bring in our wood burning heaters soon, so we’ll see how good of a job they do and how bad the school will smell of smoke as soon as they do.
Anyway, here is a breakdown of this past week:

MONDAY: Had a decent day a school with no major problems other than one teacher throwing a hissy fit about something in front of all the teachers during one of our breaks. I came home, did some lesson planning and then went back to school to teach my afternoon class to the people in the community. Only problem was the school was locked because the old lady that keeps the keys forgot about my class and neglected to show up and unlock the school. So, my students and I decided to call it a day since it was cold and raining and we didn’t feel like trying to go find her. Not a big deal, we’ll just pick up next week. I went home to find my host dad and little brother picking the last of our grapes and moving them to the garage. After I put down my things I decided to help them and we spent the next few hours smashing grapes and putting the juice into big bottles and moving them to the basement. We didn’t have one of the grape smashers, so my little host brother had to do all the work by climbing into a barrel and squashing them with his new pair of boots. It was a lamb dinner then off to bed. Not too eventful of an evening.

TUESDAY: All went well at school despite a major leak in my 8th grade classroom until I got to my 9th grade class. I only have 2 students that care about learning at all in that group so when I try to help them all I ask of the other students is to just not get in the way. This was too much to ask on Tuesday. One of the hooligans in the back decided that this was a good day to eat sunflower seeds in class and at one point tried to throw one and hit the one boy in the class that I was teaching. He missed and hit me square in the chest with it. I was pissed. So, I left the room and returned with the director and the vice director and told them what had happened. They were equally pissed about it and made the students spend the rest of the class cleaning the room. I was not about to waste any more time with them that day anyway. After a chat with the director about possible solutions I went home, changed clothes and started my hour walk to the next town for my weekly Georgian lesson. At about 3:30 I was done and walked the hour back home just in time to meet my middle host brother, have some tea and head off to our cousin’s wedding. The wedding lasted from about 5:30 till 1 a.m. There were at least 300 people there and we were all crowed under this leaky tent that was only doing a somewhat decent job of keeping us dry. The wedding was fun though and there was a lot of dancing, music, wine and like any good Azeri wedding some fighting at the end.

WEDNESDAY: My Peace Corps regional manager and one of the other PC directors came to my school for their annual site visit. I was running on about 5 hours of sleep and only a small hangover but all went well with that. My 5th graders put on a good lesson for them and my director said nothing but good things about me. I didn’t think he would have anything negative to say, but it was still nice to hear it. The one thing that I took out of it was he said, “The level of enthusiasm for learning English has dramatically increased since Andrew has arrived.” That was cool. At least I know I’m making some progress. After school I went home had some lunch and then back to school for my 4:30 English class with the community. Luckily after my talk with the old woman on Tuesday the school was open and I didn’t have any problems. Again I got home afterwards just in time to hitch a ride to wedding night two. Azeri weddings are a two night affair. The first night is at the girl’s home and the second night is at the guy’s home. The second night was cooler since we had better covering from the rain and cold and there weren’t quite as many people there. Same amount of wine though. Also on the second night my host uncle made this really long toast to me in front of everyone and then I had to make a response toast thanking everyone. It was really cool and after that I truly felt welcomed by everyone. People know me, but it’s nice to know that people not only know me but accept me as part of the community now. Night two ended for me around midnight even though I’m sure it went on long after I slipped out and crawled into bed.

THURSDAY: The rain stopped. But the power went out sometime during the night and was out all day. School was ok and I didn’t have any issues from my 9th grade class which was nice for a change. (By the way, the power being out has no effect on school since our lights don’t work anyway.) I ate lunch afterwards and then went back for my after school class, this time with the kids from school who actually have motivation to spend an extra hour once a week to learn some new vocabulary and grammar. After class I went home and spent the afternoon reading while there was still some light out. About an hour into reading my host sister-in-law calls me down stairs yelling something about my cat. (Let me explain, this little kitten showed up at our house the day after I got here and I more or less adopted it since people here don’t really care about pets. Me and him were friends and I fed him and made sure he had water everyday. And, everyday after dinner he would curl up in my lap while I drank tea and fall asleep.) You’ll note all that was in the past tense because on Thursday afternoon the little guy tried to run in the house after my host sister-in-law and she accidentally slammed our steel door on his neck. So when I got downstairs he was still alive but in very bad shape and unable to breathe. I had to (now for the second time in my life with a cat) put him out of his misery. It was really sad, but I picked a good spot in our garden and buried him.

R.I.P. Little Buddy!

FRIDAY: Raining again but the power was back on. Friday is an easy day at school and I was glad to be out of there once my classes were over. I came home to find my dog curled up under the porch in a large bucket of walnuts. For some reason that made me laugh. I relaxed for most of the afternoon and when my host dad got home we did some random projects and then ate dinner. After dinner he killed me in chess 3 games in a row and then I watched a movie and went to bed.

SATURDAY: Got up, messed around the house and then walked down to the next town, caught a ride and went to another town about 25 minutes away to meet some other volunteers for lunch and general sitting around shooting the shit. After a few hours I went back to Tokhliauri to visit my old host family for a Georgian supra. It was a celebration for the first birthday of the little baby that lived there with me during the summer. It was a good party and there was a ton of food. (None of it was lamb by the way) I had a good time seeing some of the people I met over the summer and there were some people I had not met before who were very entertaining. Georgians however make the longest toasts and sometimes you just get bored waiting on them to finish. This supra was no exception and in some cases worse because the guy who was our Tamada (toast master) was a history teacher and every toast ended up being at least 10 minutes. I’m not lying I got up and left at one point when I saw that he was about to make a toast and went to the bathroom, washed my hands, had a smoke and then went back in. He was still talking! But, it was a fun night and I had a good time seeing my old host family and eating some better food.

SUNDAY: Got up and ate a huge breakfast with the family and then came back to Muganlo. Helped my host dad cut up some apples, ate lunch and then took a nap. It’s not raining but it’s cold and cloudy. I’m sure the rain will start back up sometime during the night. After my nap I went downstairs and sat with the family and played another game of chess with my host dad. He made me bet on the game that the loser would drink a horn of wine. (A horn of wine is just what it sounds like. A large horn hollowed out and filled with wine). I lost. I’m getting better, but it kills me because he talks trash while playing and I know he’s way better than me. I think it was Tuesday that he told me he was our region’s champion chess player for four years in a row. Anyway, I’m 1 win and 10 losses against him at this point. We’ll see how next week goes.

Hope all is well with all of you. I’m going to call it a night and hope that this next week is somewhat less eventful. Peace!