I’ve been reminded by several people that I haven’t listed a mailing address. Here it is:

When your mail your letters packages and post cards, write this address, in this manner:

PCV Joshua King
Box 66
Tbilisi 0194
REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA

Letters usually take 4-6 weeks to arrive, packages longer, post cards arriver sooner.
Everything is usually x-rayed at US Embassy, packages are often inspected.
It will cost you $.90 to mail a one ounce letter from the states to Georgia

I don’t know how the regional postal system works, so I am going to have everything to sent to peace corps head quarters in Tibilisi. I’ll come in once a month to collect it.

The 17th was my first day of school. I was more of a “getting to know you” day. We sang the national anthem. The 9th graders welcomed the incoming first grade class. There will be 4 new girls this year. I was introduced by the director to all of the parents in attendance. There were several awards distributed, one of them was for superior athlete, the English faculty handed out the “linguist kangaroo” award. I don’t know how the students were selected, my counter part told me there was a national test. I’ll have to double check that. It looked official, but I dont know, I guess I’d be surprised if the linguist kangaroo was a national award.
Awards and introductions lasted for an hour and a half. Most of the students returned home with their parents, although some stayed for a game of dodge ball. The teachers retired to the lounge where we enjoyed coffee, cakes and rosehip liqueur. All in all, it was a very gentle start to the school year. More soon

ps. that is a picture of my training school.

Well, Akhalsitkhe has finally gotten an Internet cafe. Until this week I would have had to have to taken two buses, traveling 2 and a half hours for an Internet connection. Now it's about an hour walk into Akhalsitke, but then, who needs the Internet? I’m over it. The Internet is so 1998. Any how I’m posting a few photos. Truth is that I haven’t really been taking to many pictures. I am going to work on that.

So, I have made it to my permanent site. Every thing is going well. I am 'integrating' into my community.

Recently I have begun helping my host family around the farm. Right now we are scything grass and putting it into hay stacks. I am picking apples and pears, my host mother is jamming and canning like crazy. We have 7 cows, 2 small cows and 2 pigs. It is quite an operation.

I finished my camp. It ran for 10 days there were about 20 kid in total and on the whole I would say that it was a success. I enjoyed working with the kids although it was more difficult work than i had imagined. I taught my campers how to play ultimate Frisbee, it was a huge hit. We ended up playing it every day. They also enjoyed twister and most of them were very interested in painting. Capture the flag was very unpopular and nobody could understand why kick ball was supposed to be fun. They are a great group of kids and I look forward to teaching them for the next couple of years. I was a little unprepared for how noisy children can be. I was a child once and I don't remember yelling all that much. What funny is that it was discussions of what the rules are and whether every one being 'fair' which generated most of the noise. I don't remember being concerned rules when i was child, but then again maybe i just don't remember being 10.

My host father took me to work with him last week which was an adventure. He has a 1987 kamaz dump truck, it is orange. We drove down to the quarry picked up gravel and delivered it places. It was a good time.

How am I? Well, I guess that I am living the dream here in Georgia. That is to say that i dont understand what is going on most of the time but i am having a lot of fun and a lot of what I am seeing doesnt make much sense but I am seeing some incredible things. The people are wonderful and the food is amazing. This has actually caused a small amount of guilt. When entering the peace corps I was under the impression that i would face hardship and that there would be struggle. I thought that this was supposed to be intense. But instead I am teaching at a school of 45 students and my host family makes their own wine. That said, please send me things. I want books. I don’t really care which kind, I will read just about anything. I am reading more books here than I ever did at school. Also if you would like to send me an email, I like my Gmail account, joshua.w.king@gamail.com

Pictures are not loading very fast at all. I will put them up later.