The vocational school turns out to be quite a bit different than what I had expected it to be. It isn’t really part of the public school system; it’s not a K-12 school like the other volunteers are placed in. It still is a public school (and there are also USAID signs outside the school),…
Around 11:15, my Georgian co-teacher showed up to the dormitory to take me and Pakistani host brother to the school to show us around and introduce us to the director of the school. We took the bumpy Marshrutka there. It’s only a ten minute walk so normally I go by foot. Marshrutkas are the primary…
8:10am, the phone rings. Hello Steven, this is the director. (I won’t name names or institutions I’m working with) I will be there in fifteen minutes. Okay, I respond. I’m still a little unsure of what my relation to this director is (I have four or five “directors.”) I believe he is the head of…
The Coen brothers really like using the Uncertainty Principle in their films. I completely lack the kind of mind to grasp the actual physics of it, but the way that the Coens use it in their films really speaks to me. All of their films are really about the nonsensical nature of the progression of…
During the week of the orientation in Tbilisi, I was given information about Georgian culture which would help me in my host family situation. I was prepared for a host father to hold many toasts in my honor; that, as a male, I would both be expected to drink a lot and that it would…
I’ve been in Georgia (Orthodox, not Baptist) for just under a week now. I have been doing a week of various orientation and training sessions before departing for x town in Georgia where I will be teaching in x school living with host family x. There are lots of variables in the journey I’m on…
My car often forgets that I exist. Every minute or so, usually. I am reminded exactly when my existence ceases to register with the ’93 Mazda 323 by a bright red light on the control panel and an annoying series of beeps. The infernal racket of the seatbelt beeping alert. Depending on just how long…
I am lost wherever I go. Perpetually lost. I never have any clue where I’m going. Ever. But I guess it goes beyond not knowing where I’m going, but I have to go a bit deeper and admit that I really never even know where I am. It hasn’t been until quite recently that I’m…
Here are notes from my journal entry that I wrote (mostly) in transit from Prague to Grand Rapids December 21 and 22: Once again, travel days make for the best stories. And what a travel day… Flying at Christmas time, when the major European airports are all under a blanket of snow and ice. I…
I’ve been thinking of two ideas recently. One is that of falling snow, a raging blizzard. The other is chess. Regarding snow, in an email, my friend Tara wrote:”I’ve been sitting and looking out my window at the snow this morning being blown around the empty space outside, 14 floors up. A dancing, swirling chaos…