Keti is Tall and sour.

Dear all,

The post got that name because I am cool. The post is going to be short and sweet, and I am tall and sour. Not actually sour, it just fit. I am borrowing my host brothers internet, and have already been on here too long, so just a few quick words:

I love you!

Also, I am with my host family, in the Village Savaneti. It is near a town called Sachkhere. Look it up id you want to, I have not yet so I have very little information. I do know it was the home of a very famouse Georgian writer whose name I cannot even remember, let alone spell/pronounce!

I will write as soon as I can, but I am not sure how soon that may be. Just know for now that I am safe happy and well!

Katie

PS:

Dear Ma,

I am alive still. I love you a lot. The weather is weird, and so is my email.

Love Katie

Keti is in awe!

Dear all,

I think I left off on Sunday midday? Let me go check. Yeah, I left off with some ramble about my noggin. I do in fact still have my head! Which is a good thing, because without my head I would not see all the amazing things I get too!

Sunday was a good day. Intercultural learning turned out to be a wonderful class, I just have two hours of it left, and then comes banking and contracts. I am not so excited about that. Anywho, on Monday (I think that was yesterday?) we got to actually go out of this prison/training facility. We have been allowed to walk around as much as we want, in our free time, but there is only so much of wandering these all but abandoned streets that a person can take.

We were taken by hot stinky bus to on of Georgia's most important landmarks. It is called Galeti, and I highly recommend looking it up on Wikipedia or some such thing. It is beautiful, and houses one of the most beautiful and famous representations of Mary and the baby Jesus from the 11th century. In one of the buildings is buried King Davidt the Builder, who commissioned the church, as one of the first academies in Europe. King David requested that He be buried at the entrance to the church so that the world could step on his chest. His tomb is still there, intact, but worn, form the millions of Georgians and others who have stepped on the chest of king Davidt. We went to the Monastery at night, and there was no one else present, but worshipers and monks. We heard them praying, and even though it was in Georgian, I could recognize the love and devotion that these men have to the Lord. They almost sing their prayers, and the monk who was performing most of the ceremony had a simply amazing voice. This combined with the awe inspiring acoustics of the building resulted in one of the most inspirational things I have ever heard. The whole situation was amazing. I spent the rest of the night in a state of amazement.

Today has been a long day. We had breakfast, and our all team meeting in the morning. When that was over Nino held some of us who are having IT problems back. I wanted to try to fix my computer, so we all went to a store where they sell and fix computers and things. They could not fix my camera, but they had a reasonably priced camera that I might try to get. We have had lesons and meetings literally all day, they only just finished now, at ten. I feel bad for missing two hours of Georgian class this morning, so I need to go study. I also am in desperate need of sleep.

I love you all!
Katie

Keti is tired!

Dear all,

I have been renamed. My Georgian teacher calls me Keti, and insists that I, as well as all of you, have been saying it wrong our whole lives. We say cady she says, and "Georgians cannot say." Jessica's name for me would be out right awful. Keti, said with an immense amount of force behind the t, is the only proper way to say my name. According to Marika.

I am halfway through the third day of lessons, and I am so tired. Georgian is a hard language, with so many extra sounds, many of which are sounds that americans only make when they are sick. One of them actually sounds like that noise that Anika makes when you stab her in the throat. I will get there eventually, the teacher says, but I am not ready to believe her. Instead I want to give way to a despair that would result in a three day coma. Yeah, that sounds nice. Three days of sleep. But ჯ, ჰ, ქ, and წ would plague my dreams I am sure. We finished Methedology yesterday, and are now ready to move onto intercultural learning. I, along with all my fellows, have very high hopes for this class. We are all praying it might be full of light and interesting information that will be automatically stored in the back of our minds to recall once we are at home again, that we might dazzle our families with our random facts about a strange land. That is what I am hoping for at least. If we are expected to takes notes and remember facts, I fear my head will simply fall off.

Yep, fall off. It will fall onto the floor, where, in a rush to give me aid, my sweet new friend Craig will accidently kick it out the window. Then Drew (The other Mormon here!) will volenteer to run down and grab it before it starts to get licked by the dogs. Then Nino (our current taskmaster/a super sweet and helpful Georgian) will tell me to talk to the doctor when she come tomorrow, and she will write in her book that my head fell off.

გამარჯობი = Gamarjobi = Hello!

Hey all,

So, to start things out, I love it here!

Ok, I left off writing on Thursday morning, and it is now Friday. Yesterday was basically a hurry up and wait day. We were rushed to the Ministry, where we waited for half an hour for the Minister to come in the room we were in. After a short speech, he left us. They gave us Georgian wine and Juice. I had some peach nectar (amazing!) and some cherry juice (which I have never had before but is completely genius!) . Then most of us who had lost our luggage were swiftly escorted over to a very expensive and fashionable shop. I bought no actual clothes, but I ran across the street to a store where they sold undies. Really expensive undies. I don't know if it is a Georgian thing, or if it was the store I was in. But then again I am comparing in prices of a Georgian Boutique to Walmart.

After this we rushed back to the Hotel so that the people who did have their clothes could change. It was around this time that I realized that my camera was busted! I think there is an inner mechanism that is freaking out because the camera turns on, but as the lens slides out it makes this wicked clicking noise, then it continues to zoom out as far as it can go. It will not zoom in or out according to what I do at all. And worst of all, it will not take pictures. Nothing. It would be one thing if all of my photos were super zoomed in, but to have no pictures at all! It sucks.

Anywho, we waited around the hotel for a few hours, finally leaving at 3:30 when we had been informed that we would go at 2:30, no matter what. We drove to the beautiful Marushka and had our first introduction to supra. Supra is a huge meal that is generally spread over hours and has many many courses. Usually a toastmaster is voted on, and they lead the festivities. During supra you can only drink when a toast is made, but it seems you would never go thirsty. Since our supra was for almost a hundred people and we had no toast master, we just ate and drank at our leisure. Our meal was sort of an imitation supra. At the end there is traditionally fruit, and I think I have never had such flavorful peaches, nectarines, watermelon, honeydew, and plums.

At the end of the supra one of our directors told us that some of the luggage had been delivered to us. I went to have a look, not letting my hopes get up. But lo and behold, there was my bag, sitting all lovely and green amongst the others! We drove an additional four and a half ours to the outskirts of the city Kutaisi. The school we are all in is a boarding school that was fixed up for government use, so it is really nice. We have great air con in our rooms and the whole building is very lovely. I took a shower and changed into lovely clean clothes, we had a small dinner, and after scriptures and prayers, I went to sleep.

I woke up fairly early this morning, after a wonderful nights rest. My bed here is like a cloud. After several weeks of Anika's couch, and many many hours on Airplanes and buses, I could not ask for something more delightfully soft. We had breakfast first thing, then had a meeting. It was long and boring, and closely followed by our first Georgian Lesson. Georgian is really beautiful and very difficult. It is one of only fourteen of the worlds alphabets, and it is very curvy and pretty. We spent hours at it, learning some really basic introduction phrases, and began trying to learn the vowels of the alphabet. There are five vowels in the alphabet. ა is a like in a sheep's ba. ე is e like in sheep. ი is written i but pronounced like eh. ო is o like in can't remember. უ is u like in blue. Georgian has no capitalization, so that's good.

After Georgian and lunch, we had methodology. It is one of those subject where everything is pretty obvious, but some one just decided to swing by and name it. Like positive vs negative feedback. I already knew it was a bad idea to tell students that they are idiots, but now I know what to call it. After methodology I went down the street with one of the girls here. Eairlier this morning me and a couple of people went for a walk and found this joint store that is like a gas station (without the gas) on one side and a ladies pharmacy one the other. It is kind of weird, but dead useful. Anywho, after that, I stood in the rain a while, wrote the first half of this, went to dinner, and came up here to write finish up. So now I am just sitting here rambling. I have one more meeting in a few minutes here, and then I am off to sleep in my insanely comfy bed!

I have decided to keep this blog as faithfully as I can for now, as a sort of journal-ish thing, so if you get bored of my ramblings, I give you official permission to skim.

Love you all!

Katie

Hear me whine!!

Hello all!

So, my flights were alright, San Francisco to Chicago was fine, then I got to sit in Chicago for a while. I was starving, so I had some pizza. I figured that was a good thing to do in Chicago. Once I found my gate, I happened upon a bunch of others who are in the program. It was nice to know for sure that it was real, or at least that ten other people had been similarly hoodwinked. We flew the eight hours from Chicago to Amsterdam, and then, since that flight had been about and hour and a half late, we had to run from one gate to the next. We ran through customs, and a bus took us out on the tarmac to this rickety little plane. It was awesome. I sat next to a guy who is in the program, and he is from Atlanta, Georgia, US. I thought that was cool.

I had a few hours of insanity at the end of the flight. I kept falling asleep for twenty minutes at a time and waking up, thinking I must have been asleep for hours. This drove me completely nuts, and to add to that I had no concept of when we would start our descent. Just when I was about to either force my way out the window, or start doing flips down the aisle, the Pilot told us we would begin our descent and land in twenty minutes. As if on cue I passed out for the last twenty minutes, and my little bout with crazy was over.

When we arrived in Georgia, we were met by the woman who is head of the program. She also has some fancy title in the ministry, but it was confusing. She told us that our luggage was lost, and we most likely won't get it back until Saturday. But, lucky me, I will wait even longer because in Amsterdam when we were rushing through customs, the lady at the desk never gave me my luggage tags back, so my lost and found paper work is incomplete.

We drove from the airport to the Bazeleti Hotel. It is very fancy. I took what I think may be the best shower of my life. And then we had dinner. There are about 50 people with the program here right now, and we all ate and chatted together. Then the woman in charge (I will tell her name when I find it out) informed us that we are meeting the Minister of Education and Science, at a formal reception tomorrow, so could you all please dress nice, except those of you who don't have any clothes. So I get to meet a high ranking government official in a pair of running shorts and my favorite green t-shirt. Cool!

This has been a very whiny post, but I want every one to know that I am having a great time and I am thrilled to be here. I love you all so much!

Katie

PS, Danielle, I don't know how to reply to you, but thanks! Can you give me any tips on this blog?

Heck must be a giant airport.

Dear everyone,

My journey has officially begun! Mom drove me to Derek and Rachel's house last night, and we said our goodbyes. I cried, she cried, Jessica cried. It was bound to happen. This morning at 3:45, Derek and I got up an hour later then we meant to, and drove to San Francisco at about 8000 miles an hour. I was to late despite all Derek's best speed racer moves. I had to pay a couple extra bucks, and everything is back on track. I am now officially exhausted, from my three hours of sleep, followed by about four hours of really bad nerves. I always find being nervous to be one of the most tiring activities in which I partake. Nerves are not as cool as giant tomato fights.

Speaking of giant tomato fights, I went to one of those on Sunday, and it was awesome. There is nothing like being pelted from all sides with smelly red Solanum lycopersicum. Afterward we went down to the Truckee and like the bright thing I am, I stepped on a piece of glass and sliced the bottom of my foot open. Anika said it was Sunday Karma, because I was involved in a giant awesome activity on a Sunday, but I think I would have stepped on the glass no matter what day it was, because thats just the way I am.

My free internet time is almost up, so I might write some more when I am in Chicago, or Amsterdam. Love you all!

Katie

Some more...

Dear all,

Don't worry. I am sure that as time passes I will become better at thinking up enticing and exciting names for my "posts." I am also confident that someday, most likely out of boredom, I will learn how to properly use this blogger deal. Anywho, I decided that since it has been over a month since I decided to start this thing, I should write some more. Read it if you want to, only if you want to though.

So, I have been formally accepted into the Teach in Georgia Program, and I am only awaiting information about when my flight leaves and such! I am ever so nervous! But also exceedingly excited and bubbly at the thought of going! I have been trying to gather all the information about Georgia that I can, as well as try to figure out what in heavens name I am going to take with me! I feel like this transient person, just sort of moving from one place to another, waiting to go. I already quite my job, moved out of my house, and sort of gave up my calling at church, so now all I can do is wait. It sucks.

As far as this whole cancer junk goes, I was blessed to be led to an awesome doctor. He has already become one of the biggest blessings of my life! I had my first appointment with him a while back, and he did a full body check. It was quite as embarrassing as you can imagine. Then on the 11th of this month he went in and removed a whole lot more tissue, so right now I have this nasty gaping wound on the side of my arm. I never realized how frequently people punch/poke/touch that part of my arm until I really did not want them to. I have one more meeting with the doctor before I go, so I will try to make an update about that. Maybe.

Oh, also, I guess I could tell all you people about this blog, since I am going to all the trouble of writing it. I think I will get on that Ole Facebook thing right now and let you all know. I really started this so that my Mom could have an immediate way to know whats up. I love you Mom. Also, now you are famous Mom, you are on the interweb machine!

Love you all, even though so far you aren't really anybody! But I still love you!

Love,

Katie