Let the Mash Cook Georgian!

It's about time I learned how to cook some Georgian foods. The first step to becoming a force of Georgian cooking is a handle on the right spices to use. Buying the right spices for Georgian cooking works like this: You go to one of the spice purveyors in the bazaar and tell her what you want to make. In my case, it was lobio (ლობიო, Georgian-style beans) and satsivi (საცივი, walnut sauce). She then takes a paper cone, fills it with the appropriate spices, and voila! You have a little package filled with what you need to get the beans and the walnuts spiced just right.

Mash, Persona Grata

Honestly? Sometimes it's just nice to be appreciated. Thank you, School 30!

Just Another Day in Kutaisi

The rain finally let up long enough this afternoon to take a walk. I hear that it's been unusually wet and chilly this April (nevermind the 90F day we had a few weeks ago). Today was definitely a sweatshirt and jacket and raincoat on top of it all kind of day. Brrrr.

Bagrati Cathedral (ბაგრატის ტაძარი)

I haven't been getting out nearly enough lately, so this afternoon I shelved work and went for a walk up to Bagrati Cathedral, which is fairly close to Kutaisi's city center. It was a lovely afternoon to be out. This morning's rain lifted a bit after noon and left us with a cool, clear, fresh afternoon. Sigh. I need to spend more time outside.

2013 Open Lesson Week in Kutaisi

Last month, some of my teachers participated in an Open Lesson Week in which they taught lessons that were based on what I've taught them, and these lessons were open for anyone to attend. I compiled their lesson plans into a booklet. They did great work. :)

If it's too difficult to look at the document in the viewer below, you can click here to be taken over to the document on Google Drive.




Of course, I made a map of participating schools, too!


View 2013 Kutaisi Open Lesson Week in a larger map

The Doors of Georgia

Here we have doors from Telavi, Tbilisi, Gori, and Kutaisi. These are pretty typical of the doors I've seen....most with multiple layers of peeling paint. (All of the photos are mine.)

A Rainy Day in Kutaisi

It's been a rainy, rainy day. It let up briefly earlier this afternoon, though, so I took a walk. I am working on making a CD cover, so I was on the lookout for doors (because I've been asked to do it of doors). Of course, it seemed like everything but doors caught my eye. Heh.

This last photo, I think I'd like to use it on the back cover. I love the color combination.

Certificate-Making Mash

About a month ago one of my colleagues organized a logo competition for the English Language through Civic Education Program. I think the winning entry was made by a 14-year old student. Today I used that logo to make certificates for the participants of Open Lesson Week in Kutaisi. I'm glad my colleague went to the extra effort to organize the competition, solicit submissions, and select the winner. His hard work, and the work of the student who produced the winning logo, definitely made making these certificates a bit more enjoyable.

School 14

On Tuesday I was at School 14. Here are two pics from where I was sitting at the teacher's desk to observe a class up on the 4th floor.

Extremely Early K

Yesterday, I misread my schedule and showed up over an hour early at the school where I was conducting observations for the day. Instead of just parking my butt in the teachers' room, I strolled around the neighborhood. Here are a few resident buildings:

2 Doors

Laundry Time!

It's been a rainy couple of days (this morning is grey and dreary as well), but the skies cleared and the sun came out just long enough yesterday afternoon for laundry to be hung out to dry.

Where are the schools in Kutaisi, anyways?

A huge chunk of my time is spent observing teachers teaching lessons. With the 23 teachers I’m currently working with, I have several schools to visit that are spread out all around Kutaisi. Because I didn’t initially know where any of the participating schools were, I asked my teachers to write down directions on index cards for me. I asked them to include, in Georgian, directions for a taxi driver and information for the marshrutka driver along with the routes that run near their school (so I could be let off in the right spot). These index cards have proved indispensable.

School 1

School 5

School 7

School 8

School 9

School 10

School 11

School 12

School 14

School 20

School 22

School 24

School 25

School 29

School 30

School 32

School 37

School 38

Kupradze Street, Kutaisi

This is what life was looking like as I left School 11 earlier this afternoon.

From Today

The front door of School 11.

A typical example of an address sign.

What's That K Up To?

Has it really been over two weeks since I last posted? Well....here's what I've been up to:

Looking at photos of Russian mafia tattoos at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

Taking snowy walks along the Thames.

Getting rolling with a new group of teachers.

I think I'll get along with this group just fine!

♪♪ At the Car Wash ♪♪

...also from my walk home last night, an empty car wash.

My Way Home

I snapped a few pics on my walk home tonight. The top photo is of a bakery. The mound on the left-hand side of the photo is the bread oven. It looks like there's only one "loaf" left; it's the ufo-looking thing in the window. The second photo is of a church I often walk by.

Mash Pad

I live on the eighth floor of my building. There is an elevator, but it doesn't work (in fact, I have yet to be in an apartment building that has a working elevator). On average, I climb up and down the 135 stairs twice per day. It's a bit of a pain when I have to haul drinking water upstairs, but I mostly like where I live. The apartment is small and my neighbors are fairly quiet (although the woman who lives below me goes on screaming sprees every once in a while). The main drawback is that I barely get a trickle of water out of the kitchen tap (although the water pressure in the bathroom is fine), which makes washing dishes a bit of a headache. There's a trash chute on the landing between mine and the 7th floor, but I'm always careful about the size of my trash bag because the chute is quite small. I think one of my bags got stuck going down once (I think this because I usually listen to the trash as it falls and I heard the bag in question stop), but nobody came upstairs to complain so either it wasn't a problem to jostle it so it went the rest of the way down or it wasn't "foreign" looking enough and whoever dealt with it didn't know it was mine. Sometimes I just walk my trash downstairs and throw it in one of the dumpsters that line the main road.

There's no light in the stairwell at night, so I always try to remember to have a flashlight with me if I think I'm going to be out after dark. Walking up 8 flights of stairs in pitchblack isn't much fun. Generally, there are 9 stairs between each floor and the landing between floors, but there are 10 stairs in a few places and I can never remember where these sets are, so going up in the dark is slow going. There's also a cat that likes twine around my legs as I'm walking up or down the stairs. I've stepped on it accidentally a few times and I worry that one of these times it will trip me. I've seen rats in the building a few times scurrying from floor to floor, too, which doesn't bother me too much...at least as long as I don't think about them too much.

Graduation Day!

Today was the last workshop in the series of 10 I delivered to this fine group of teachers. After I handed out the certificates, we went outside and took a few photos on the steps of the university where we held the workshops. I've spent nearly every Saturday of the past 3 months with these women and I've seen all of them in action in their classrooms a number of times. I'll miss working with them. However, we did hatch out a plan during lunch which will bring together past and current program participants..... I still need to nail down the details, but my time with these ladies is definitely not over.