Our schedule until next Monday consists of Georgian language classes for 4 hours in the morning, lunch, 4 hours of other classes in the afternoon (ex. safety, Georgian culture, teaching methodology...), 8pm supper and then "free time" until bed, which most of us use for studying. It's been quite grueling. Especially when the afternoon classes seem largely irrelevant and the power goes off causing the a.c. to stop working. Let me tell you, 25 people in a crowded classroom with no a.c. are 25 very irritable people. We've been so over-scheduled from morning til night that it's really hard to get even a moment to oneself. To make matters worse, almost everyone is suffering from some form of intestinal discomfort, though that should pass as we get more used to the food and water.
Things of note that I've learned over the past 3 days:
From the safety lecture,
- if a North American woman smiles at a strange man, she is offering herself to him.
- rural Georgia is like a weird cross between victorian England and 1950's U.S. as far as male/female relationships are concerned.
and,
- if a tiger attacks, I am within my rights to defend myself
From the "cross-cultural learning" session,
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That was a long 4 hours, let me tell you. Some people just like to hear the sound of their own voice, regardless of whether they have anything relevant to say or not.
Yesterday afternoon we took a field trip to see some caves. They were pretty cool. I took some neat pictures of the stalactites and stuff. The hour-long drive to the caves, was not cool, however. The cave, surprise, surprise was in the mountains, which meant a lot of twisty narrow and UNPAVED roads. I already felt like crap and had I known we were going to stop in the city for an hour and a half, I wouldn't have gone.
Last night my roommate and I went to bed right after dinner, so I'm feeling a little better this morning, though my stomach wasn't thrilled with my attempt to eat breakfast. I miss toast and peanut butter.
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