I promised a blog entry (and I owe many of you e-mails), and I hope this one is nice and long, but I’m tired and I’d rather enjoy the warm, spring weather we’ve been having. Well, I guess that’s a lie, because it’s pushing 6pm, and it’s cooler, so I’m probably just lazy. So I’ll put on some Family Guy, continue my Gmail conversation with Erin, and write this blog. Basically I’ll watch Family Guy, ignore Erin, and write jlkkkkk re ally bbaadddllly. So I promised to talk about a lot, but I’ll focus this one on teaching, because it’s what I’ve been thinking about the most. But first, I want to talk about what I’ve been up to.
So our conference in Kobuleti was really interesting. My counterpart didn’t stick around for the whole thing, but I learned a lot of new and interesting information about writing grants and coming up with a secondary project. That was cool, but the best part was the hotel we were staying at. It was called the Georgia Palace Hotel and all our rooms faced the beach, which gave us some awesome sunset pictures. Our rooms were large; we had our own slippers and bath-robes. It was hard to leave, but I knew I’d be heading to Kiev, so it was okay.
On the 19th I got up nice and early (2am) for the driver to take us to the airport. In the car I met the two Teacher-Assistants (FLEX alumnae) who I’d be working with. We got to the airport nice and early and I thought, “Okay, cool. We have plenty of time.” So we played some cards and listened to music. Well, we didn’t have time. Our plane was supposed to board at 4:30, but then at 4:15 the two girls (who know English, Georgian, and Russian) heard the announcers say in Russian something about last call. We hadn’t even gotten through the security check (which is at every gate). Basically we jetted as fast as we could and made the little bus that takes us to our plane. I can’t really tell you about the plane ride, because I was sleeping, or in a deep snore at least with Radiohead on my iPod.
We got into Kiev around 5am, and drove to the American Councils office in Tbilisi. An interesting car ride, as I sat in the front seat trying to sleep, while the driver and the two girls argued about something. As we got out of the car one of them goes “you were pretty quiet”, to which I responded something to the effect “Well, I was TRYING to sleep, but instead you guys decided to have a verbal wrestlemania in the car.” Still, it was 7am at this point, and I hadn’t slept in 48-hours, but we decided to walk around Kiev a bit.
Well, nothing was open, and we had no money anyway for coffee, and it was cold. Nonetheless, our walking brought us all around Kiev (but not to the churches I would have liked). By the time we got money and some food in our stomachs I was forced to walk from one clothing store to another. I didn’t buy anything, but it did give me a good opportunity to people watch. I didn’t understand anything people were saying, but being in those stores was like being in one in the USA. There was even a mall! Basically, I got to see a ton of clothes, but no churches. Eh.
We met the rest of our group around 3pm (yes, 6 hours of shopping), packed up the cars, piled into buses and headed out. The first night I was exhausted and didn’t do much except sleep. The next day we had presentations and learned a little about what was expected from us during the TOT. For those of you who don’t know this was a Training of Teachers. In the summer we will host Pre-departure orientations for students accepted to go to the United States in the exchange program, FLEX. And our training was set up in the same way we’d run our PDO. We were split into different groups and then each Teacher and Teacher-Assistant had to come up activities and a creative approach to the predesigned lessons. Because I had two TA’s, and the other Teacher didn’t come (he went last year), I had two lessons to teach. Busy, busy me. I think the actual lessons went okay. They weren’t the best I’ve ever done, plus I don’t usually work well working as a team with another teacher (something I’ve learned since being here). I tend to try and hog all the talking, and then end up missing something I wanted to discuss. But we got through it, and I met a lot new and cool people. There’s a video of me and a TA from Moldova singing Opera style. It’s a little ridiculous and more than embarrassing, but I think I have a career path now.
Anyway, I’ve been writing this for too long and I’m bored. Plus, I haven’t lesson planned for next week yet (Bingo here we come). Oh, if anyone would like to help out my community with a small donation of a laptop computer, please contact me!
Now for your viewing pleasure…
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