As of Monday I had 13 students wanting to come. One marshrutka hired to take us all there the next day at 8:15 am. I also spent a lot of time chasing down kids through the halls making sure they would not be late.
7:00 am I receive a few texts from students saying they don't have passport photos. I groan because my alarm was set for 7:05 but assure them it is ok, Telavi will have many places to do it, just bring their birth certificates.
8:00 I receive more texts from two students asking where I am because they are at school waiting. I only respond with "its not 815"
8:05 I leave the house to walk to school and it starts misting. In a few minutes it is raining.
8:15 I arrive at school to find 4 students there waiting, plus the mashrutka. 3 students have told others they are not coming which is not very considerate because it just makes the rest of us have to pay more money. 4 students there, 4 supposedly coming. current rate of success: 50% I ask them once more if they have their birth certificates, they all say yes and look at me like I am the most annoying person in the world.
8:20 The last 4 students arrive. One remembers though that another girl (we will call her A) wanted to come too. We call and she says she is on the way, so we all pile in and tell her we will come get her in the mashrutka. Now some back story is that my village is the center of a lot of smaller ones, and the roads are set up like a sort of N grid, so we start winding our way out to where she lives
8:22 We get to where A says she is but she is not there
8:25 We turn around and go back to school and a little past, but then decide to go back the other way. I am quickly losing my patience because my students for some reason don't want to tell the driver where to go, and want me to instead, despite the fact that I don't know Georgian well, or the names of the villages. there is a lot of "I dont speak Georgian!!" being yelled. They all look at me like I am the most annoying person in the world.
8: 26. We find student A. She piles in and I quickly calculate that had she walked the entire way she would have gotten to our meeting point in front of school at 8:45. fail for being on time, but plus because my other students are now thinking she is the most annoying person in the world and not me.
8:27 We are on our way and I am thinking that it was rather successful. Go me.
8:28 Student A realizes she doesn't have her birth certificate nor a passport, one is at school which is much closer but possible still locked, and the other is at home, much farther away. I make the executuive decision to go to school.
8:30 Because it is raining, we manage to pass the Deputy Director of the school and give her a ride in. This is important because she has the keys. She does not have the keys to the room with the certificates though.
8:35 We are heading back to school, for the 4th time. another quite funny student remarks that if she wanted a field trip of the villages she could do it without taking a test or paying for a ride.
8:40 We are back at school, having picked up about 10 students on the way wanting a free ride and escape from the rain. The deputy and my student jump out and race into school.
8:45 They manage to get the certificate, and we are really on our way.
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| i have been taking photos to put on the walls in my new English Cabinet. My students think it's annoying though... |
8:50 The driver randomly picks up people he knows on his way out of the villages, giving them rides to their houses. I silently fume because we are paying for the ride, not them, but I've found this is a usual occurrence in Georgia so I just live with it.
9:30 We get to Telavi in record time, life flashing before my eyes time, or probably more like life flashing before the poor old villagers' eyes time, many of whom were riding on horse carts as we careened past them . We lost our time to take photos though, so during the break times the girls have to run across town to get the photos taken. Which somehow they managed to do successfully. The testing is taking place at a school, and registration starts at 10am, so all the volunteers there are supposed to help keep the kids in lines and moving through the process, especially because there aren't two entrances, just a winding staircase where kids have to go up, register, and then come back down. Now Georgia's strong point is not lines. I don't really think it is possible to stress this point enough. They like to group, push, cut, and stampede, and trample.
10:00 We decide to make a 'human American chain" to keep the staircase separated between going up and going down. We decide to let in only 20 students at a time. I am near the mass group though and get nearly stampeded by shoving kids when we start letting the first ones through.
10:30 Still registering, and another volunteer and I have become FLEX bouncers, pushing kids back, using sandbags, and linking arms. It's really ridiculous how they can't just wait in line. I'm pretty sure out of the 270 students who tested, at least half of them accidentally felt us up somehow. The other half were caught suffocating in the middle. Some were even jumping over the staircase to go in early. Registration was just to get a testing time. Everyone just rushes to wait here! Really that was the worst part of the day though, and everything else was really smooth.
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| over my shoulder |
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| the fellow bouncer. this was towards the end when we had less kids to deal with |
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| 5 people in one taxi with 7 pizzas. And they say Peace Corps doesn't teach you anything useful |
After registration our jobs were pretty much done. We went to get lunch for everyone and then had to manage 7 pizzas without boxes in a taxi ride, and then some waiting around until 4 o clock for our students to finish.
So anyways, two of mine passed to the next round, and now I have to get them back tomorrow morning to take the second round. I texted them to bring their birth certificates, and one's response was "yes I already know that" We'll see tomorrow... =)
crazy.
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