Week 8 over and done with

Hello again sorry no pictures this week. Julien has been trying to capture some still lifes of Ateni, so you have that to look forward to and of course my opening at the Opera House or Rustaveli Theatre, the site for our swearing in in 10 days has not been set yet, but that as they keep telling us is "the Georgia Reality". There could be 500 people and a troupe of Georgian Dancers all at park somewhere in Tbilisi.
We only have about a week and a half left in training and I am really excited and really nervous for this phase to end. I will be glad to have a couple of minutes a day when I really don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to do my homework, or go to this place or that place, where I don’t have to spend 4 hours a day in a hot classroom learning a language I am now convinced was developed with the special intent of keeping people from learning it. (More on that later) I am nervous because this is when we really get into it. This is when I don’t get a text message every other minute telling me what to do and how to do it. This is the time when I actually am expected to know what to do and how to do it. That is what training is all about, right. I think that I will have free time, but maybe unbeknownst to myself I agreed to build a new gymnasium or rock climbing wall or a swimming pool, I do like swimming, at my school. Maybe I agreed to go to Southern Ossetia or Abkhazia (for those of you who are not in the know, these are restricted areas in Georgia and I can get administratively separated from the country for even thinking about going there for good reason as there was a bit of a bombing incident this week) I may have agreed to work in the fields everyday until school starts. I don’t know, Maybe this “smile and nod” thing is not the best mode of communication.
This moves us right into the language portion of this post. I would like to tell you why it is hard to learning Georgian if any of you were planning to take it up as a hobby. Firstly, there are confusing things called postpositions, these are little ending that you add to the end of a noun to indicate what you are doing with the noun because they do not have the following words, in, at, on, with, about, for, together with, to, from, until, till, than, towards, without, except, instead, despite, etc. It would be fine if there were different postpositions for different words or there was at least no overlap, but the postposition
–ze can mean on, at, to, for, about, and than and the postposition –shi can mean in, to and at. As you can see there is a bit of an overlap with some words that you use all of the time. For example if you say in the winter or in the summer you use the postposition –shi, ostensibly “I like to swim summershi” and and “I like to ski wintershi” but if you say in the fall or in the spring post position is –ze; “I like to rake leaves fallze” or “I like to pick flowers springze”. The only explanation I have received for such a gross oversight in continuity it that spring and fall are “transitive” seasons, as in transitional seasons, they are neither cold nor hot. And after you have been here for even a short time these sorts of explanations begin to make sense or you force yourself to make them make sense so that your head does not explode. And I made it seem sort of easy by using the English words which contain both vowels and consonants evenly spaced for easy pronunciation. Spring, summer, fall and winter are gazapkhulze, zapkhulshi, shemodgomze, zamtarshi. Which actually aren’t that bad compared to some others such as vvakhshmob (to eat dinner), davrbivar (to run), or gadasakhurdaveblad ( some form of to withdraw money).
And now for what you all have been waiting for, my plea for mail. Actually I have a class idea and I need some postcards, so if you out in the ether could please send me some postcards. The cheesier the better. Hello from …. Postcards would be great, so if you have some lying around at you house from some vacation you went on to the largest ball of twine or carhenge or the place where Napoleon ate dinner once, send them on over.

The address is
PCT Martha Wawro
110B Burdzgla Street
PO Box 66
Tbilisi 0194
Georgia

Last note for all you Poudre High School folks reading this post, guess who I ran into the other day, Caitlyn Ryan. She lives here in Georgia and has been for two years. It was really good to see her again. For all of you who don’t know, Caitlyn and I were in IB together and were good friends in high school and coincidence of coincidences she is here in Georgia. I look forward to seeing her again soon, well as soon, as I am allowed off leash.
Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for sending me some postcards.