God loves education.. & possibly birthdays

Shortly after I finished my previous blog entry, which I completed after class on Monday, I came home to change clothes & eat.  On my way home, a young Georgian man stopped me to converse.  He spoke English that was comparable to my 9th graders so I could understand pretty well.  He told me he wanted to give me the publication he was holding which read, “Need More Time?”  I recognized this, but I couldn’t pin it.  I asked if this was a religious thing.  he didn’t comprehend.  I opened it up, fanned a couple pages, & sure enough, there was a reference to a scripture in Ecclesiastes.  I asked again more slowly, “Re-li-gion?”  He understood.  “I-am-Jehovah’s-Witness.”  “You’re him?”, I said.  He didn’t get it, but it made me chortle.  Then he inquired of my faith.  I told him I was a Latter-day Saint to which he responded with a perplexed expression.  I then said, “Mor-mon.”  Then, the young man made a joke of his own without even knowing.  He said simply, “This I know.”  as if he could tell that I was LDS by looking at me.  I’m pretty sure he meant that he knew of the religion.  I took the publication & thanked the man big-big.  Who knew there were J-dubs in Georgia?  :p

Class is becoming more progressive.  Slowly but surely.  I’m still learning how teachers have planned their lessons in the past so that I can work with them & not introduce something so foreign that it hinders the students’ progress.  I think they’re all doing a great job.  Especially compared to the schools in the villages.  I’ve heard many a complaint about some teachers not being able to speak English much better than their students.  My case is the opposite.  I’m so lucky.  My co-teachers speak wonderfully & as long as I speak no faster than a medium speed, they understand me very well.  I want to get these kids speaking & conversing.  The little ones need to take it slow, but older children focus too much on reading & translating.  They don’t comprehend the words they read.  I think the ‘read & translate’ method is good to some extent, but the students need to practice aloud more.  I want to get them sharing & caring in English.  Ship says he refuses to learn Qartuli.  “You’re not gonna get this old dog to speak Georgian – not when I’m goin’ home for good at Christmas.”  I don’t disagree with his approach because when you get right down to it, we’re here to teach English, not learn Qartuli.  but as I’ve said before, I feel that the more Qartuli I learn, the better I can teach English.  This way I’m not wasting time in class trying to get small points across.  I don’t study every chance I get because I have other things I like to do, but I put in a couple hours a day at least.  Right now it’s mostly vocab because I have no text references for tenses.  I basically speak in present tense only, even when I’m talking about the past.  I know a little future tense.  Beginning next week, I will take formal Qartuli lessons from one of my teaching companions.  I know it’s not applicable outside of Georgia, but you have no idea how exhaustingly frustrating it is to not be able to communicate.  I’d jump on learning Russian if there were resources for studying it English to Russian, but alas, I’d have to study it by way of Qartuli to English to Russian.  So I might as well learn me the Qartuli.  An interesting thing about Qartuli language is that word order doesn’t matter & they don’t really use infinitives.  This makes for quite a challenge when learning English.  Word order/agreement is a must if you want to be correct.

I’ve added some more teaching hours outside of school.  I made some friends at the local mall & they’re very serious about learning English.  I might start a club if I don’t get too busy with other projects I’ll be involved with.  One is Tinico’s (my main companion) English grammer text book that she, herself, wrote.  She wants me help her finish & be the editor.  I’m honored.  The other endeavor is an organization of which she’s the chairwoman called S.O.S. Village.  The objective is to provide the same quality education that well-off children receive, to those that may be homeless or whose parents are unemployed or what have you.  More on those later.

Tuesday night was fun.  It was Jon’s birthday.  He turned 29.  After dinner we headed to where we stayed during orientation week because the 4th group of volunteers were finishing their orientation & it was their turn for a question & answer session.  “The panel” is what it has been dubbed.  It was a fun time.  Everyone else serving on the panel is very well educated academically speaking, and boy did they love to show it.  Some folks’ answers went on for 5-10 minutes.  I tried to keep it simply by sounding off specific info the group could retain.  I told them my host father makes wine for a living.  Someone then asked if I had been to a ‘suphra’ yet (this is a special party with a toastmaster.  They get wicked drunk).  I said I hadn’t, but that I’d experience enough suphra anyway.  In fact, I avoid my host father as much as possible because he’s suphra’d most of the time.  My final advice to the group was to have preferences, not expectations.  A lot of people in my group have had expectations & have spent most of their time here looking for an escape when they’re not met.  One kid has had it tough.  Between his host family & school, I haven’t heard a positive word from him.  He scrambles around Georgia spending all his money, drinking himself silly, & trying to get laid. Because he’s out of control, he’s hostile.  So I tried to subtly tell him to have preferences instead of expectations, but I don’t think he wanted to hear it.   I was getting anxious listening to him vent so I hailed him a cab, hugged him goodbye, & let him know he could call me for anything (except to complain).  Whadayagonnado? :/  I think the next group of volunteers will be better off with preferences, especially if they’re here because they want to serve & teach English, not because its a neat place to visit free of charge with some occasional English teaching in their spare time.

One final thing.  A storm-the scariest thunderstorm I’ve been under since I was just a boy & my sister had to comfort me (I hated swirling clouds & thunder).  It was the talk of the teachers the next day at school.  Apparently nobody got any sleep.  I was thankful for the few hours I did receive.  During the portion of the night when it was loudest, I was curled up in a ball plugging my ears.  I think God was celebrating Jon’s birthday.  Perhaps I should enlighten the young Georgian man who apparently does not need more time.

This was supposed to be longer but I’ve had some interruptions.  It’s midnight and I’ve been in this chair for 4 hours already.  I still have some other tasks I want to finish & then I think I’ll call it a night.  Happy Sabbath everybody.

LINKS:

http://www.tlg.gov.ge/index.php?lang=eng

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