christmas chores

it wouldn't be christmas without chopping a little wood. this is me and beso, mark and lisa's host father cutting wood to keep our christmas warm.

at lisa's school

me and paul went to lisa's class for her christmas party and it was great, her kids are awesome. the hit of the day was limbo, which i am sore today from, and the ball-under the chin-no hands-passing game. it was a great day.

christmas shopping

here is what it looks like when you want turkey for christmas dinner. notice the one lonely duck in the middle, poor guy.

Christmas in Georia

well merry christmas to all from georgia! thanks to the miracles of a rotating planet i am able to send you the pictures of our christmas before yours has really started. things here are great, i am in zugdidi with my friends (right to left in the picture) paul, mark, lisa and christy. we are staying with mark and lisa, a couple from new york state and they are wonderful! we all opened presents this morning (that mostly consisted of cheap crap we all bought at the same bazaar) and had a bottle of champagne together. now we are cooking a christmas dinner that has turned out to be vegetarian. we wanted to buy a turkey at the market, but they were really expensive, not that bit, and you have to kill, pluck, gut, clean etc. yourself, so the extra cost wasnt worth it to us in the end. we have a squash soup going, a baked ziti type pasta dish, and a creamy cucumber number, as well as eggplant with some of the non stinky type cheese that we found in the market. so life here in the big city has been great for paul and i the last few days. mark and lisa have cheap internet phone, so i was able to talk to a few people back home which was great. also we went to lisa's school to help with her christmas party with her classes which was so much fun. all in all, it has been a great way to celebrate christmas while not being in the states. i don't have too many funny stories but hopefully i wil get some posted up here soon. until then, marry christmas to all, and especially to my brother ryan and whitney and their new baby soon on the way. i miss you so much and am thinking of you constantly. take care, lots of love, merry christmas.

no comment

this is my final post for the night, and guess what it is, Bombora!!!! plus all the wood i cut for the winter in the background. anyway, i am realizing that there are more pictures of my dog on here, than my students, and that is not intentional, just that i haven't taken my camera into class yet. i have enough trouble keeping their attention as it is. but, just as a real blog type diary note, i am loving my kids at school, they are great. they seriously keep me going everyday, even when they are crazy. why? because i know i was crazy in highschool, and i know i still am a bit, so we get along pretty well. bombora fits into that catagory pretty well too. so, in conclusion, more to come in probably about 2 months when i will have the internet again, and sorry my blog is terrible. but, like the address says, i love you.

mountain town

this is my host dad Beno and my host mom Eliko, and out town and the Caucusus mountains, with the new winter snow fall. the town picture i took from the other side of the river up in one of the nearby villages, and that is just me beno and eliko on our living room couch, boring i know. so i am looking at all these posts and need to tell the world that it is 3am and i am just trying to get pictures out to the world. this blog is not funny nor intelectual, and i am misspelling so much stuffffffffff! iam an english teacher for crying out loud, forgive me. the keyboard is a foreign object at this point. forgive me.

picnic

my students and i went on this picnic/ hike in the summer. we were looking for a church but took a wrong turn directly up hill (i was in favor of that option instead of looking just for the church) and ended up with such an amazing view after a pretty tough hike, especially since i was totally out of shape and carrying the watermelon in my backpack as a surprise for the kids when we finally got to our picnic spot. turns out they didn't want much and i ended up eating myself sick making the hike down terrible. these guys are so great!

pics

This is the first time my friend paul and i went up into our mountain region and this picture is taken at a big lake in our region. paul is my closest partner in crime and luckily is one of my closes friends here, so we lucked out. other close friends include 4 hours on the bus or overnight hikes through the mountains (just kidding, that is not allowed! jess, how is your site?)

pics from home

back in the summer i was living with another host family, and this is their cow. she was named "condi rice", because my family watched a lot of tv and knew one english name in international relations better than the rest. she was darker brown than the rest of the other cows. hmm.... i swear she had this name before i ever got there!

teaching!

this is my teaching staff after our "Giorgoba" celebration which happend to fall on america's thanksgiving day. Giorgoba is a national holiday here celbrating St. george the patron saint of this country. my teaching staff is so wonderful, and i am really blessed to have this crew as my extended family at work! we went up into the mountains this day to feast and had such a great time with tons of food and wine and a whole calf for about 40 people, it was a trip. plus it was the first real snow of the year for me, but this picture was a bit down the hill so you can't tell. I love this place and these people.

pics

here is bombora and a bucket half full of blackberries up in the hills from my town one day in late september. there are lots of blackberry bushes around me and i left my house early one saturday morning with bombora (she was so much smaller when i took this picture than she is now) and picked blackberrys. this blue bucket was only about a half full after about 2 hours, because bombora was more concerned with chasing cows and rolling in mud puddles. what a punk.

grapes?

and of course in november we had to go in the yard, and pick the grapes! very fun with the blue "medicine" sprayed all over them. it is all good though, i think i now know how to make wine! we cut down 5 of the 20 year old vines in favor of some new white grape vines, which really hurt my soul and sense of asthetisism, our yard is now bare, but that is ok because everyone likes the white wine better. it has been quite a cool cultural experience being a part of this tradition!

some pics!!!!!

this picture is taken in Chiora, a village about 15 miles up the road from me towards the russian boarder. My town is on the other side of that high mountain range behind me in this picture. it is a very georgious place, and now all those mountains are covered in snow, and it will only keep coming.

me and dog and mountains

guess who these two are! this is taken in my town just up the block from my house, and the view of the Caucusus Mountains behind us. the peak behind me is about as high as Mt. Hood, and everyday as i walk to school i think, "that looks like a tough day hike, i just don't know where the ridges line up..." Anyway, i am blessesd as a NW kid ending up in this town, it is wonderful. my blog on the other hand, not so awesome...

First Post

Hey, here is my new blog, i am figuring it out, but first a picture of my hero, Bombora. She is my dog and we live in Georgia doing Peace Corps here in the country, and things are great. I will write more soon. Lots of love.
-Erik

Content

The content of this website/blog does not reflect the views or opinions of the United States Government or the US Peace Corps. They are my own personal views and opinions.