I am done with hotmail.

My new account is:

soremule@gmail.com

Thankee.

Fresco, David Gareja

Our Group

Norio Sunset

Norio Moonrise

David Gareja

David Gareja Caves/Relief, Tbilisi

Freedom Square/ Sameba Church

Big Ben, Philidelphia

Host Family's Home In Patara Chailuri (Pre-Service Training)

Dead Mouse/Grvtaiba Monastery

Kartuli's Deda (Georgia's Mother)

Sighnagi (Caucasus Mountains in the Distance)

Joe Biden and Me (He has amazingly white teeth)

Word. All right, a quick note: so I flew out of Portland, and spent an entirely too long day flying through Atlanta to get to Philadelphia. Philadelphia smells of urine, and the cheesesteaks are fantastic. I liked the closeness of the streets and seeing New Jersey across the river. We had lots of meetings and left the next day for JFK to Tbilisi.A long day later, after stopping for a couple of hours in Istanbul, we arrived and had more meetings and language training. After three days of this, we met our Pre-Service Training host families, and we home with them. I stayed with a family in Patara Chailuri, surname Beridze, who were very friendly. PST was two months of language classes for four hours every morning and classroom techniques for the afternoon sessions.Time passes amazingly slowly, and I will refer you to my mother for a discussion of slow karma vs. fast karma. Anyhoo, after the PST we learned of our permanent sites, and were sworn in (August 21st). I now live in Norio, and there are some photos above. Norio is known for its monastery, and, in Soviet times there was a large chicken farm/factory.

My school has about five hundred students, in 12 grades, and, this semester, I am working with 3 of the 7 English teachers. I am teaching 19 classes a week for the students, ranging from third to twelfth grades. After school, I am teaching 2 classes a week for the teachers in my school, and doing 2 clubs for students--which will probably turn into 3 in the near future. This next week, I'll be starting classes for townspeople in the evenings, and intersperse those with my own Georgian lessons, which I have twice a week. Busy, busy.

My Georgian is coming along slowly, but I find the two Ts, 2 Ps, and 3 K sounds difficult to differentiate, not to mention the strings of consonants. Persevere, persevere. I get my point across usually, and can usually understand the low level Georgian that is spoken to/at me. A few observations: the food is good, if a little predictable; I'm coming up with some theories regarding genetic pools; the Soviet Union must have been pretty strange. Hmm, so yeah.When I get some more time, I'll put up some more pictures and ideas. Things are good at this point, and I hope you all are well, as well. And my permanent address is:

KWMc/o Peace Corps Georgia110b Burdzgla StreetPO Box 66Tbilisi 0194Republic of Georgia

Should you need it, here is my address for the first couple of months:

KWM

110b Burdzgla Street

0194, Tbilisi

Georgia

This is to directly elicit mail. And word.

Greetings all. As most of you know, I'll be leaving for Georgia on Tuesday to begin my Peace Corps involvement. In preparation, however, I'll be headed to Philadelphia on Sunday for staging and orientation. Throughout this adventure, I would obviously like to stay in touch and share some of my experiences, hence this blog. So here's some good information for you to start pondering, and I'll fill in as I'm able:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country)

http://www.geography-site.co.uk/pages/countries/atlas/georgia.html

Some photos of Oregon and a Georgian flag will have to suffice until I can get somewhere else. Anyways, word.

Sirkyl