No you can't.

Tuesday, May 17^th, 3:30pm

The sun is shining as I walk out of the schoolhouse with the half dozen students who stayed after class for English Club. The small mountains on both sides of our village are finally green and just begging to be explored. No one really wants to spend the evening at home, so we decide to go for a hike.

4:00 pm

By the time we are on the mountain behind my house, we’ve gathered a few more students and make quite a motley crew: myself, my little brother and sister, a girl from 7^th grade, a girl from 9^th grade and her brother from 8^th, the chemistry teacher’s son from 4^th grade, the 11^th grade boy she had just finished tutoring, and two other high school boys. One thing I love about these small villages is that all the kids hang out with all the kids. Sure, in the public school in my hometown a 15-year-old would be able to socialize with literally hundreds of other kids…but they would ALL be within an age range of a few years. There is something to be said for the sense of community at a school with not even 200 students in all grades 1-12.

As we are making our way to a 200-year-old bridge in between two hills, I get a call from the school director’s granddaughter. The girl is only 16 but practically home schooled herself into speaking English fluently, and I consider her a personal friend.

“Hey, I need to talk to you about English Day.”

Yes, English Day! It’s less than a week away now. I’ve convinced four of my TLG friends to come to my village on Saturday. I just need the director to open the school for me and for a couple of local teachers to come and help with discipline. We’ll do English workshops and games with the kids, complete with stickers and prizes. I’ve also been working with my English Club attendees through different levels in my Excellence in English Program, and while more foreigners are around would be the perfect time to present their award certificates.

“I’m really sorry, I don’t understand why, but now she says you can’t do it.”

What?

“She says the younger students can’t go because of the meningitis outbreak, and if you make it only for the older students, the younger students will try to come too…”

She knows as well as I do that these are excuses, not reasons.

“I’m sorry, I know you want to help us, but they don’t want the extra headache. You know how it is in the villages.” Yes. Unfortunately, I do. No good deed goes unappreciated.

After we say our goodbyes I catch up with the kids, who are hanging out around the bridge. If nothing else, at least I can enjoy hanging out with my students. One of the boys is sitting on it, a couple of other boys are walking on it.

Mets minda…I want to, too!

The phone rings and it’s my host mom, so I pass it off to my sister before trying to cross.

The kids freak out. The boys are literally holding me back. As I get free from one, another grabs my arm and another runs in front of the bridge to block me. “It’s very old, it’s dangerous!” they tell me.

“Come on, Levani was JUST on it.”

“Yeah, but he’s a boy.”

Oh. No. You. Didn’t.

During almost all of this, the girls are yelling for me to come back to them so my sister can relay the message from my host mother. Apparently it’s urgent, so I finally give up on the bridge. I’ll get back to that business in a second.

“What is it?” I ask, not masking my irritation.

“We must go.”

“What? Why?”

“It is only four girls and many boys.”

“But two of them are your brothers, one is a nine-year-old, and the others are our friends who our families know. So who is the problem??”

“Oh, I don’t know. But it is not good.”

Knowing I have no choice, I go with the girls, but not without fire in my step and a few choice words that they hopefully don’t know in English.

5:00pm

At the house, I use the little Georgian I know to ask the same questions of my host mother. “Is Levani a bad guy?” No, she doesn’t think so. “Is Giorgi a bad guy?” No, she doesn’t think so. So what is the problem?

“People speak maybe it’s boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Seriously? I can’t hang out with my students because people might spin the story for the best rumor material? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not even offended that they think I might crush on a high schooler. Most kids here graduate at 19, and I’m only 21. Between my only being a few years older than them and my outgoing personality, I’ve been aware from day one that I have to be conscientious about my interactions with them.

But for me, that meant not giving them uneven amounts of attention or being in a room alone with one. I had never considered how inappropriate it might be to go on a walk with them. And a mixed-gender group of younger children. In broad daylight.

No you can’t, because people are lazy and don’t care.

No you can’t, because you are a girl.

No you can’t, because people will talk shit.

It’s three stones for one bird, and this little American eagle is out for the count. I’m not used to being shot down like this. I feel tears coming. I don’t fight them.

It isn’t the first time I’ve cried this semester. And I doubt it will be the last.

But do I want to be one of the crazies?

But now I’m waffling. Is this really what I want?

Life in Georgia is hard. I mean, I have a great host family, and I have it good in my village compared to almost all the other volunteers. But that is a very relative “good.”

I am still surrounded by a constant gloom. A constant feeling of hopelessness. Because I know that even though I can help these kids speak better English than if I wasn’t here, it will still be remedial at best when I leave. With this education system, they have to take the initiative to study on their own if they want to succeed, no matter if I can give them a boost or not. And indeed, the students who can have even half of a conversation in English are the students who make an effort on their own time.

And if I go back, I can easily get a job as a sub in Arkansas. Still teaching. Still being a role model. Still encourage dreams. But with the exponential increase in effectiveness that speaking the same freaking language can provide. And with freedom over my own schedule, closeness to my family and friends, and with more opportunities to volunteer for archaeologists around.  

And I’ll also be able to make some money. Here we get a stipend, but saving is next to impossible. In the states I can live with my parents for cheap and save up for whatever adventure is next. AND because I’ll have some money, I’ll be able to have more choice about what that adventure is.

AND because I’ll have both more freedom over my own schedule and more money, I’ll still be able to travel and do cool things, if only in and around Arkansas. But it still might be more than I can do with my current situation.

I haven’t actually signed the new contract yet, so I can still change my mind…..

Anybody wanna give their two cents?

Am I one of the crazies?

I used to call them the crazy ones. To their faces, even. Jokingly, of course…but seriously. But I mean, after only a couple of weeks, most of us felt completely trapped. The language barrier keeps us from expressing our selves on a daily basis, and the cultural barrier is often there to stop us in our tracks should we get past the first.

And to make matters worse, our hands are all tied behind our backs as far as school goes. A bunch of adventurous souls wanting to make a difference abroad…and over half the time our Georgian co-teachers just want us to sit there and watch them lead the lesson, despite the fact that their methods of teaching have been tried and found lacking. And even for our English clubs and extra-curricular activities…organizing anything is a challenge when nobody understands anything you say.

By our mid-term training in April, I was confident that I wouldn’t be coming back for a second semester. I started dreaming up other possibilities for the rest of my year. I won’t be in my early twenties forever, after all. I should do more exciting things while I have this independence.

But then….

After training, I went back to school. Back to not being understood.

But also back to dozens of smiling faces rushing at me with smiles, stickers, candy, “I love you” notes with my name misspelled…anything to make me happy. How hard is it understand a child’s affection? How hard is to understand that as frustrated as I am, that affection is reciprocated?

And I went back to not feeling like I was making much of a difference.

But also back to ideas and possibilities that present themselves throughout the day and don’t ever fully leave my mind until it is asleep. I’m learning a lot about the problems of this educational system. I’m also learning a lot about what it needs. I could really make a difference.

And another semester seems like so long now…especially during this independent phase of my life. I mean, to spend a whole year on one thing….it’s a scary thought for me. But when I’m older, won’t I be happy that I stayed? That I came back and experienced the second semester?

So, what do you know, I became one of the crazy ones. I sent in my request to renew and was approved!

Riding the Roller Coaster

Sunday, March 30^th, 6:00pm

I’ve spent the weekend in Tbilisi and now it’s time to head back to my village. My host father is a marshutka driver so I get on his bus. About halfway home, a rather sociable (and possibly tipsy) woman from my village gets up and starts dancing. She motions for me to join. The next thing I know, I’m having a dance off in a moving vehicle and at least half a dozen camera phones are pointing at me. Our audience laughs and claps us on and a couple of boys from my second grade class even bust a few moves of their own.

Wednesday, April 2^nd, 1:00pm

I have a break during 5^th period on Wednesdays. I decide to spend the time outside chatting with students who are gathered outside, also enjoying a class off. Among them is one of the high school boys who attends English club. But doesn’t really know any English. He tells the students some story about his friend’s belt, then tries to translate to me, despite not knowing English. He keeps motioning to his belt, but I’m still not getting the story. So eventually I make a joke out of it and cover my eyes and say “me mastavlebeli!” Meaning, “I’m a teacher!” Everyone laughs, except for him. He then proceeds to apologize profusely throughout the rest of the day. That was probably not my smartest move.

5:00pm

The Irishman has come to visit and my host siblings, the director’s granddaughter (who can speak English well enough to communicate with) and a few other kids walk us to an old house in the village that has actually been excavated by archaeologists, and then to an old tower and church in a cemetery. It’s all cool to me, since I’m an aspiring archaeologist myself and I love old broken stuff. But in conversation, I learn that the kids weren’t outside because they had a break. They were just skipping. Furthermore, the other teachers assumed I knew this. Don’t get me wrong, a couple of them yelled out the window at a couple of the high schoolers, but teachers yelling at students is exhaustingly commonplace in Georgia, so I had believed the students when they waved it off and said “oh, nothing.”

Thursday, April 3^rd, 11:00am

When I arrive at school that morning, the boy who was telling the story about the belt is at the door. I at once try to confront him about the skipping class issue, and communicate that the teachers think I am a bad teacher because they think I was encouraging the students to ignore them.

2:30pm

As I prepare for English Club, he asks to speak to me outside of the classroom for a minute, and hands me a mislead (albeit adorable) letter that he made the director’s granddaughter write for him, apologizing again about the belt incident and explaining the story more fully, because he doesn’t want me to think as if he’s really rude and bad gue. And he is sorry for the yesterday’s happen and hopes the letter will give me the right opinion about him.

It makes me smile, but still…..it feels like my life is defined by language barrier right now.

6:00pm

The twins are turning eleven today. I’m at a table with them and a few of their friends. Some homemade liquor is brought to the table and we are all poured a shot. Yes, all. We take turns making toasts, but don’t worry, no one gets drunk. To their credit, one refuses refills multiple times just because he doesn’t like liquor that much, and another because he still has homework to do.

Everyone heads outside after dinner to watch the twins light heart-shaped paper lanterns. I’m still upset and frustrated by all of the misunderstandings from the past couple of days, but I force myself to drink this in. Because moments like these-seeing the light from the lanterns flicker over the smiling faces of my host siblings, running around with the kids to see if a lantern is going to land on the roof, and watching each drift further and further until it’s just another star twinkling in the sky-these are the beautiful moments. And they’re a lot easier to miss than the ugly ones.  

Tuesday, April 8^th, 8:00pm

The weekend was kind of relaxing yet kind of exhausting. I went with some friends to the seaside city of Batumi. It was beautiful, but a couple of freshman at their first party got too drunk and needed a lot of taking-care-of. And by freshman at their first party I mean adults who should have known better. But I still got to see my friends and the sea. And was able to speak in English and have people actually understand.

And tomorrow I leave for mid-semester training, which means I get the rest of the week off from school, AND I get to see my friends.

But now I get a call from the director’s granddaughter, the one who speaks English. She was a friend and more or less the English life-line of the volunteer before me, and she understands some of the differences between American and Georgian culture. She warns me that some of the things she has heard the other children and teachers say don’t line up with her perception of me, and that my outgoing behavior is read differently by Georgians, especially in regard to the high school boys. And the one mentioned by name isn’t even the one I made the belt joke to.

Right, I thought this wall seemed really thick. I guess I should have realized it was actually two walls…language barrier AND cultural barrier. Of course.