Safe in Armenia

Thanks for all the emails and notes of concern, and i am sorry for not being in better contact. my cell phone is not working now in Armenia, but all of the volunteers from georgia have been evacuated. The political situation for georgia is not looking very good, and many of us are having a difficult time being seperated from our communities while they are facing these challenges. I don't know at this time what is happing with regards to our return to Georgia, but i have internet now so i will be in better contact. i miss you all and hope you are well. take care and talk to you soon.
erik

random pictures

here are some random pictures. the first is of my foot, next to a dinosaur foot print! awesome. there is a place here with a bunch of dinosaur footprints fosilized into stone there, it is pretty awesome to be honest, and i have more pictures to show you later if you are interested.

the next picture is of one of my students in his village above my town (in the valley in the background) and he was pushing his brother around in a wheelbarrow, and i though it was cool picture.

the last is of course my baby girl. isn't she cute?

english concert

these pictures are from and english concert i put together to celebrate mothers day. the first picture is of my third form girls in their "flower" costumes. they each had a poem about a type of flower and the different colors. the bost were animals and had animal poems, then at the end they held up papers to spell "happy mothers day", you can see how that turned out for yourself in the second picture... the third picture is me, and my ninth graders, doing our acclaimed accoustic version of "twinkle twinkle little star", i would venture to say that it was off the hook. of course some sixth formers got to put on the oh so impressive "kittens who lost mittens" with painted faces in the fourth picture, and the last one is just some of my other class of sixth formers, i think that is a cool picture of my kids. anyway, the concert was great, lots of well wishes to mothers, said in english, and not understood by 99% of the mothers in attendance, but whatever, they got the idea. and nobody even mentioned the mispellings... i love this place

bombora, now seriously bombora

this is the most recent picture of my dog, if you don't like her you aren't my friend. (i can however excuse people with allergies or who were attacked by a dog as a small child and now have a fear of them, i was similarily attacked by coliflower and a freaked out by the stuff today.)

spring post

hello all, i am here writing a new post for spring, to let you know that i am ok, and my toes are unthawing! but really, simply put, here is a sweet picture of my 3rd grade class. they are rockstars. things are really wonderful here, except this blog. spring is hitting me better than the coming of any season ever in my life. the wildflowers are out in my little mountain town. plans are coming together for working on some great community projects, including some tourism development, hopefully so ecology projects with my eco club kids, and maybe even some women's health education projects. the possibilities are endless and we are coming out of winter into spring like mike tyson coming out of his corner in round 2 against, well, i don't know what, but something that he would crazily beat up merciously. lets get it on.(that metaphor is not meant to imply that i am going to beat anybody up, or that i have gone crazy, just that i am getting to work and it all looks good). so stay out of trouble, let me know whats up over there, sorry for not sending letters out, and let me know if you all need anything. i'll try to help. a special thanks to KT's classes for sending all those sweet christmas postcards, sorry i haven't sent you all anything sweet back yet, but i will one day, this late blog post is just the first. i will try to get my act together and send some stories out too.  you guys are awesome, and those cards made me laugh heartily, and also miss all the pictures of delicious foods that you included. including the rare cooked steak. thanks a lot! haha. peace!

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