I'm sleeping better... getting up at 6:00 & running with one of the kids I met on my first day... a senior from the school that just graduated, Eka's nephew & one of the small group of teenagers that met me on my arrival...
By 6:45am, dressed in shorts, T-shirt and running shoes, I was jogging down a road by the river with Giorgi… a bit of exercise to stretch the legs and ready the mind for the day ahead. Giorgi met me again at 8am and accompanied me to the market to pick up some necessary items before heading to school. I arrived at school promptly at 9:00am, and met a Canadian teacher who is here on a program called TLG, Teach and Learn with Georgia. Eka was elsewhere, so Judy showed me around a bit, and I ended up going into class with her and a Georgian English teacher. After class, we met again in the teacher’s lounge and I met my host teacher at long last. She was very gracious and introduced me to several other teachers. She invited me to go to a workshop that was being held in a neighboring village. The city of Sachkhere has three schools, but there are many in the villages scattered throughout the Immereti region. At the conference I met several other Georgian English and TLG teachers and was invited to a supra, a huge meal with lots of traditional toasts and course after course of small plates loaded with Georgian cuisine… a fantastic way to begin my first school day. The workshop was led by Jenny, a fellow TEA program colleague who had extended her stay a couple of weeks and was using one of her days to come down and lead this conference in a school with the English teacher she had met in Nebraska.
Back at school, classes were wrapping up, so I spent the evening walking around with Judy who gave me the guided tour of town in English, the Georgian/English version having been delivered on Sunday when I arrived. Still seriously jet-lagged, I was in bed by 9pm.
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