I have grown accustomed to this place…

I will say it is a lot easier to like a place when you aren’t freezing and it is reinventing itself into the gorgeous Eden that I remember from last summer. As already mentioned several times to many people, spring is in full swing here in Georgia and while that does make for some uncomfortable times on the street with the turkeys in their full mating dance ritual (did you know they go deaf for the event?)it does make for some warm days and some beautiful flowers. For those gardeners out there, we are past daffodil season and well into tulip season and past plum blossom and into apple blossom and the forsythias are at the end of their bloom. We have some trees in full leaf and some and some just starting to bud. And most importantly we are sleeping with the window open and the last frost (though I am not totally convinced we had a first frost) has past, as is evident from the petchi (woodstove) removal from the kitchen this weekend.

On the work front we have had some guest this weekend, in for our first monthly (more or less) English Camp. It was great fun and I think that kids liked it, but most importantly I think that it allowed some of the students who are really good at English to stretch their skills. We actually had three camps in one day for; one for each skill level. We played games like animal charades and Simon says… with the youngest group. We had the intermediate group do things like play Pictionary and create their own English comics (luckily the only examples that we had were in French so no copying was possible). And with the advanced group we had them debate damming projects and write their own plays. All and all I think it was very successful and very tiring. I think that it may take me the full month until the next one to recover.

One thing that I noticed about having a bunch of Americans together in one place with a bunch of Georgians is that though we are teaching Georgians English and I think many of our students are benefiting from the presence of a native English speaker in the classroom, Georgian English is rubbing off one us. The most obvious change is the unnecessary use of the definite article. The most ubiquitous Georgian English phrase is, “The Nature, it is very beautiful”. I have caught myself saying things like “the Nature”. I can’t stop myself. After another year and a half some of my students may be close to fluent, but I will not be. It is very disturbing.

One final note. I would like to make a shout out to my father, who has saved me from a summer of feed corn consumption and contributed to the legacy of “the Americans” in Terjola by sending me some seeds. Julien and I have decided that 100 pound pumpkin that we are going to grow will be remembered long after our classroom magic has been forgotten. “Remember the Americans? They taught English…No? They also grew that giant pumpkin. Yeah, them”. So Dad, thank you. I hope that with some general farming principles and some luck I can coax life (in the form of tomatoes, peppers and giant pumpkins) from the soil. I’ll send you photo updates of the progress.