I'm turning this beat around

Hey all! It's been a while since we've last "spoke," but I am here. All is well but I need to get a rant out of the way first.

Dear Dell,
Your computers are pieces of *insert blasphemy* I will be switching to mac in the near future. The fact is that your parts just don't work well.. right now I have a disk stuck in the dvd drive, and it's very noisy. Maybe you should make your faulty parts silent for the sanity of the people you can dupe into buying your products.

Disappointed,
Jefferson

Okay, so it wasn't that long of a rant, because I'm frankly over it. Now for the positives. I've been getting a lot of press recently. I'm almost desensitized to it all... almost. What has been most exciting was one of the largest news networks in Tbilisi, Imedi, did a segment of foreigners people volunteering/working in Georgia. This station is all over Georgia, and I would like to think of it as a mini-CNN. I choose CNN because I am not crazy about FOXnews... I wrote an email to two of my friends and hadn't spoken with them really since September. I was really shocked by how much I had accumulated in doing while being here! It gives me faith to keep on keepin on.

So my English club is in full swing. All of my afternoons of sitting around waiting for people to show up are over! I'm basically teaching an additional 2 hours a week, but I have faith it will take off the ground! My goal is to make sure it's sustainable by the time I leave. I need to start planting the seeds for that now.

My counterpart had given me two jars of fruit preserves ("muraba" in Georgian). I am feeling lazy, so I've just been eating the preserves. I need to jump in the kitchen and make some real food, which should happen shortly.

My counterpart also gave me some jars of supra food, which I'm almost positive are rotting in the jars.. as I haven't touched them. I'm sure it was good food, but I've been at supras... I know what happens there. That and mostly I just didn't like the types of dishes that were in the jar.

Today I wrote down a bunch of recipes that I can make. I'm hinging my hopes on buying an oven soon. I've been saying I wanted to buy an oven for over a month!

Georgia has been having some stunning weather for close to the past week! Pretty soon I'll be sweating the nights away! I'm so excited! So I'm gearing up for some good things to come. Specifically, I want to buy lawn chairs and start tanning on my balcony. Once I get hot water, I want to run at the stadium and tan every day! The reason for this, is that I have to boil my water to bathe...and I only have a small pot to boil the water which equals only bathing half of your body at a lukewarm temperature.

Here's an idea I have for my English club: recipe exchange! Students have to learn the cooking vocabulary, make something, and bring it in and explain how they made it. I will make something American, and it will be great. Then they can give copies of how to make it to their friends. I feel that the recipes everyone knows how to make are prepared slightly differently that it would allow for learning or at least a good activity for speaking. These are the students I want to see get into FLEX next year!

I downloaded a ton of new-to-me music, which is keeping it fresh en casa del jefferson.

This week kicks of conference week in good ol Peace Corps. Tomorrow is a Ronny's visit before headed to the expo fair hosted for the BSE folks, but of potential interest. Conference week = hotel = hot water = hot shower every day. Should I get my hopes up for a hot shower every day? Should I expect it? No. Chances are, there will be a power/gas outage to heat the water and there won't be enough for all of the volunteers. My only expectation is that I'll be able to take at least 1 hot shower though! If not at the conference, the Peace Corps office has a hot water heater and I can shower there.

Am I hella excited for my friends and her family to come in 3 weeks? Yes. It's good to set/frame rewards for your service here, little and big. If you have big rewards like trips or visitors, it allows you to push through. Apparently our 2nd year is going to "fly" by... if this is true, I look forward to the day. Time flies here of course, but I haven't been whisked away by the winds of time. I'm a leaf waiting to be picked up, watching the world fly by above and around me. You might could say, it just finished raining, and we're all waiting to dry before takeoff.

I put up my windchimes I brought from home. One of them is too heavy and keeps blowing into my window, but the other (from my sister's trip to St. Augustine) is perfect! I've been shifting into the need for having a feng shui'd apartment.

It is so windy!

Wish me luck! I've got you all in my thoughts.