Deck the Halls...

Last Thursday and Friday, I did “Christmas days” for my students at school. On Thursday, we talked about Christmas customs in America, and I got to use wonderful visual aids sent by my mom & Brenden's mom: a Christmas stocking, Santa Hat, and pictures of other Christmas decorations and traditions. Then, I had the students create their own stockings (for pictures, see below)--once again, thanks to red construction paper sent from the States. This was a huge hit—the kids loved making the stockings and decorating them, and while they decorated, I played a Christmas CD I created. After school on Thursday, we filled all the stockings with candy.

On Friday, we had more of a party—the children opened their stockings, I taught my 5th formers “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the 6th form already knew some Christmas songs, so we sang those and I taught them “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” and with my 7th form, we read (and they translated) a very abridged form of “The Night Before Christmas.” I had no idea, by the way, before looking through all the song lyrics how difficult the topic would be for non-native English speakers; not only if there a lot of obscure and difficult vocabulary (and also very specific vocabulary), there is also a lot of archaic vocabulary that your average middle-schooler in America probably doesn't understand either. Then I distributed 4 different Christmas pictures for them to color in, and finally, in the last 5 minutes of each class, the students who wanted to got up and we danced together to some of the more jazzy Christmas tunes like “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” (although some of my 7th grade girls also slow-danced to some slower carols). On Friday, all 4 of my classes were back-to-back, so I was exhausted by the end, but it was a lot of fun. I have pictures below from Friday:
1) My classroom
2) Christmas decorations made by one of my 7th grade students
3) The stockings made by my 5B class
4) A student opening his stocking
5) My 5B students dancing
6) My 7th grade students with their stockings

This weekend, we were in Tbilisi, and I think this was my favorite weekend yet. We met up with two of our PCV friends who also have December birthdays and went out to lunch on Saturday at a nice Italian place in Vake (Vake is the most upscale neighborhood, with many expat restautants like the best pizza place and two donut shops). We spent the most on one meal we had spent yet, but the food was excellent, and the tiramisu was to die for. We had a relaxing afternoon with nothing much to do, and Brenden went over the PC office while I curled up in our hotel room and read and rested for a bit. That evening, an expat friend of our PCV friend was hosting a small get-together, so we went over there and ate burritos (with real tortillas from the States!) and met a number of people, most of whom are English-speaking Georgians who are connected to Tbilisi State University (where our friend's friend is just finishing an exchange program). It was a really pleasant evening of swapping experiences and getting to know new people. My mom's friend of a friend told her that they knew an American couple in Georgia, so we were invited over to their house on Sunday. I turns out they live in the same neighborhood as the hotel we always stay in, so that was a nice surprise. Anyway, we spent some very pleasant hours with them, and then we came home.

So we've had a pretty fantastic few days, and now we just have 5 days left before our vacation, so I'm getting pretty excited. :)

“Happy Christmas to you, and to all a good night!”

- Carissa