I Saw the Sea!

My final days in Georgia are flying by at an astonishing rate. It’s as if yesterday I had plenty of time left, and now I feel like I’m leaving in just a few minutes. This will most likely be my last post from Georgia. I’ll be heading to Tbilisi tomorrow afternoon, in order to be at the airport in time for a 5:00 am flight to Munich. From there I fly to Newark, then Dulles, and finally Burlington (that’s what happens when your flights are booked by a Georgian travel agency). Because of the time difference I will manage to do this in one very, very long day, after which all I’ll want to do is sleep, but probably won’t be able to because it will feel like the middle of the day. But I suppose that’s the fate of a world traveler!

At school, we’ve been in wrapping-up mode for a while now. On Wednesday we devoted the final third grade lesson to a Christmas play/party, complete with costumes (Santa Claus, Cinderella, and a number of fairies). In return for their Christmas presents from Santa, the kids sang all the songs and said all the rhymes they’d learned over the course of the semester. With the classroom was decorated with garlands and posters, and a handful of teachers and parents forming a small audience, the end result was pretty cute.

Meanwhile, the tenth and twelfth graders have finished their last textbook units, the younger grades have reviewed their vocabulary from the whole semester, and in the middle grades (where we left the textbooks aside), we’ve worked our way through my final outside materials. These are two one-page handouts I made, one about the story of Johnny Appleseed and one about winter holidays from different cultures. As I’ve said before, the kids seem to be more interested in the non-textbook stuff we do, probably owing mostly to its novelty. I also get particular satisfaction from discussing the winter holidays handout, since I feel like it’s my one small contribution to widening these kids’ cultural worldview.

Today was the last day of school, and so after an abbreviated class schedule, we had an all-school assembly. The younger grades had all prepared songs and poem recitals, which they performed to thunderous applause. In addition, students from English, German, Russian and Georgian classes made short presentations on how Christmas and New Year’s are celebrated in each country (for the English presentation the third graders reprised “Jingle Bells” from their Christmas play, and for the German one a girl sang “O Tannenbaum,” which I had taught to her).

Outside of school, I’ve been slowly going through the process of saying goodbye to Tsaishi and Zugdidi. This has included doing things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but somehow or other haven’t gotten around to. So, for instance, I baked banana bread last week, which was by far the most popular of the “American” foods I’ve made here (both Marika and Kravasha have asked me for details about the recipe). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to try my hand at any Georgian dishes, but at least I got Marika to give me recipes for some of the most common ones. I also took advantage of the warm weather to go for a long walk on Sunday, all over the village (and well into the next one, I think). The highlight of this was getting up high enough on our local mountain (really a glorified hill, reminiscent of Mt. Philo, for you Vermonters out there) that I suddenly realized I could see a stripe of sea against the horizon. Seeing it reminded me of my first weekend here, when we went to the beach with our next-door neighbors. I haven’t been back there since, but I’ve gotten to know the neighbors much better, which I think is much more important.

There are lots of people to say goodbye to as well, but that’s not as easy as saying goodbye to places. I had dinner last Friday with a bunch of my fellow teaching volunteers, knowing that I would most likely never see any of them again. Saying goodbye to my Georgian friends and neighbors is even harder, especially since our actual conversations tend to be pretty limited, given my lack of Georgian. I had a nice evening last night, though, teaching rummy to Paata’s brother and a couple of neighbors (all in Georgian, too—Paata and Marika had taken Nikolozi to the circus). I wish I could tell all these people how much I’ve appreciated their warmth and their hospitality, but in most cases the language barrier makes this impossible. So instead I smile, and when they ask if I’m coming back, I say, “Yes. I don’t know when, but I will.”