Technology Makes the World Go Round. Or: A New Blog Addition Is Much More Personally Exciting if You Haven't Had Electricity Since Early Last Evening

Friends, the internet is a wonderful thing, full of exciting features that upwards of two people might find useful. At the bottom of the sidebar, I have added links for you such that you are now able, if you so desire, to subscribe to this blog in either a "reader" or by e-mail. A reader, if you do not utilize this technology, is a program like GoogleReader that gathers new posts from all of the blogs you read and allows you to read them in one place. I, myself, did not use it until very recently, when I set it up to gather new posts from all of the fellow-volunteer blogs I read. I quite recommend it, if you read many blogs. Or, you can have the FeedBurner service e-mail you new posts, if you prefer. Or, you can continue to visit the actual homepage of the blog, if you enjoy the neat graphics. Also, I don't think the footnote links work in the feed versions of posts. But we'll see if that's something I can fix.

As far as personal updates: things are still fine here, although a windy rainstorm destroyed a window in my office and left my village without power for most of last evening and this morning. It is, as you can see, working now, and I am quite impressed at the speed with which the electricity is usually fixed here, when there is a problem. Swift repairs are not something I would have assumed to be the status quo here, but they seem to be, and that's good news for everybody, because the power goes out relatively frequently. It is nearly always back on very soon, however. But I suppose the damage last night was greater than usual, so we were without power all night, which meant I typed emails on my computer using my headlamp to see the keyboard. Headlamps, if you've never seen one, are lights you strap to your forehead, much like if you were a coal miner. They make you look ridiculous, and I didn't want to bring one. But I did, and thank god, because they can be quite useful when there is no source of electricity for 30km except the freaking house down the street, which is completely lit, flaunting the fact that that family rented a generator for a wedding this past weekend. Keep flaunting, family. I don't envy your light. I have my dorky headlamp, and I can see fine, unless I need to go to the toilet.

Also, we remain on standfast, and are hearing from Peace Corps that our much-looked-forward-to All Volunteer Conference at the end of the month, which is usually a festive Thanksgiving celebration in Tbilisi with turkeys flown in from America (although I'm not sure why they fly turkeys in, because I have plenty of them in my yard, near the toilet), will not be in Tbilisi for safety reasons. This is Bad News. I need fast internet there to finally complete my organization's website. And, more importantly, I have a care package waiting for me in Tbilisi, which I cannot get to. This is like, when you were in college, getting a care package from home and discovering that nobody will be working in the mailroom for the next month. Oh, well. I'm sure the sweaters in my care package wouldn't be helping me now, as I freeze to death in the bitter chill.

As always, if you remain interested in the political situation in this country, which for the moment I am not allowed to comment further upon, you can utilize the website Civil.ge. There is also an article in yesterday's New York Times summarizing some further developments. More to come, friends.