Spring in Georgia is much like spring on the east coast of Canada.  It plays with a person's hopes, warming up to above freezing just long enough for everything to turn into slush and mud, making you believe that better days are just around the corner, then boom, you wake up Monday morning to a fresh foot of snow.  Disgusted by the discovery, and groggy and disoriented by your head cold and the 13 hours of sleep you had starting at 5 pm the previous evening, following a long weekend of late nights, drinking, snowboarding, sledding, too many people, and oh yes, pms, you struggle to get ready for school, accidentally putting on a second pair of pants instead of a belt...it's going to be a great day.

Your voice has only partly returned from the nothing it has been for the last day and a half, and you show up to school just in time to realize you misread your schedule, an you're an hour early...it really is going to be a great day.  

You waste away the first period in the teachers' lounge, then make your way through the juvenile anarchy of the hallways to your fourth grade classroom.  You then begin the lesson only to find that a whole 3 out of 12 students actually did their homework (and there's nothing you can do about it because detention doesn't exist and your principal doesn't care),  awesome...it's time to break out the sticker reward system.  With the exception of the grade twos, a class that boasts some truly exceptional students, your day continues in much the same fashion.  The grade fives, despite having spent a solid half hour on it last Friday and having been told to remember it as homework, are still calling grey red, drawing complete blanks for purple, struggling with black and white, and just throwing together random noises (some of which don't even exist in the English language) for brown.

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Close to thirty of us travelled to Bakuriani, one of Georgia's prized ski getaways in the lesser Caucassus, this past weekend.  The majority of us being first or second timers on the slopes, some of the down and up hill acrobatics were quite impressive.  I will however, out of respect and also in the interest of time, only speak for myself.

I got to the bottom of the bunny hill on my first go with little incident, only to find that I was unable to unlock my right binding.  I was stuck to my board.  I waited alone among the crowd of people and random things at the bottom of the hill til I spotted a familiar face, Sebastien and his teacher.  They tried freeing me, but to no avail. Andy had wandered up in the mean time, beer in one hand, camera in the other.  Having given up all efforts at learning how to ski after his first time down the hill,  he had  assumed the position of happy English photographer for the afternoon.  So I held onto him, and together we navigated through the crowd of people, vendors, and rows of gt snow racers for rent, back to the stand where I had rented my board. 

It took two men, a screw driver and about ten minutes to free me from the faulty binding. I was given another board, and headed back up the hill, on a slightly bigger run.  I got to the top and took a seat to strap in, only to realize that the bindings on my new board weren't properly fastened.  Excellent.  So back down the hill I went (I can now cross taking a round trip on a ski lift off my bucket list) slightly furious and feeling like an absolute fool. It seemed as though all the gesturing in the world could not communicate the blatant fault in the equipment, so I simply took another board, of my choosing this time, checked that I wasn't going to be trapped on it once I strapped in, and left.  Almost two hours after my initial start, I was finally able to get in a few consecutive runs before calling it a day.

My last attempt was, hands down, the most hillariously inglorious of the day. With a vast expanse of hill infront of me, naturally, I ended up on a four foot wide jump that some kids had obviously thrown together for their own amusement, and to the detriment of newbies like myself.  Luckily, although I am not able to direct myself at all whatsoever, I am quite good at stopping, or at least slowling down, which I managed to do, just in time to have a seat on the edge of the jump, drop gracefully over it, then slide off the side of the hill directly into the path of the ski lift. 

Thankfully, I was able to scooch backward up hill and out of the way just in time to avoid a low speed collision with an uncomming kid.  All momentum thus effectively lost, I then hopped my way to the top of the last major drop on the run, and, not feeling up to another one of those falls on your butt that you hurt in your head, I sat down and took it, like a two year old takes the stairs.

I left the hill for a late lunch with the other Andy (jam tea and vodka for breakfast Andy) who, having been away from home for over a day at this point, was entirely sober. Lunch therefore, was extended over a jug of wine, which eventually led to a walk to the kiddy park, where, having just discussed how much better life was at the age of four, we went sledding...on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle GT snow racers!!!

To all you folks back in Canada, note this is a highly effective way of nourishing your inner child, and of temporarily forgetting how much you hate our discouragingly long winters.  It was easily the funnest thing I've done in a very very long time. My falls on the snowboard paled in comparison to our high speed sleigh crashes, and we quickly realized why we were the only people starting from the very top of the hill. By the time we made it half way down, we were spending more time either in the air, or on our faces in the snow then on our sled. A significant portion of my right side is now green, brown, and red. 

A few miscelaneous things of note about Bakuriani.

-The streets, which are inches thick with ice, and have ruts a foot deep in many places, actually get sanded.  This is accomplished by two men who ride around in the back of a dump truck pitching out sand by the shovel full behind them as they go.  The result seems really quite ineffective, but the random smatterings of sandy clay every twenty feet or so along either side of the road must have at least a minor effect, otherwise I'm sure they wouldn't do it.

-You can purchase anything at the bottom of the ski hill.  Far beyond the items you might conceivably expect, such as sunglasses, beer, coffee, barbecued skewers of miscelaneous meats, hats and gloves, and equipment, horses and snow mobile rentals, there are booths selling barbie dolls, bouncy balls, action figures, and pumpkin seeds, and of course you can try your hand at a round of arcade shooting with the chance of winning a stuffed animal, becasue hey, you're in Geogia, why not? 

-Soviet era ski lifts still operating on the bunny hill.  Most people would probably call these death traps back home.  Words really are not sufficient.  I will try to track down a picture.

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I just changed my bed sheets this past week for the first time since arriving in Khashuri.  Most of my peers express shock at the fact that I have to do this myself. I consider this freedom quite an accomplishment (I have also been allowed to fetch water from the well on my own as of late, since we are once again without running water as our pipes are have been frozen since last Monday). The sheet and matching duvet cover have two big red roses on them, with the words 'Hope it was Happy'...no inuendo there. My guess is that these were an item that didn't do so well about 25 years ago in either the U.K. or North America.