Ruth:

I think your blog is missing a direct link to a good map of Georgia which shows its relationship to other countries in the area and actually labels those countries. In English. I'm a dumb American when it comes to that area of the world so while I know what direction you're headed in I still can't quite picture it. And I'm too lazy to look very long to figure it out.

Setting aside the troubling notion that the person studying to be a schoolteacher is "too lazy" to figure out world geography, I have provided a map of the relevant sector of the world with helpful "War On Terror" labels:


If you're still having trouble: Me = Georgia, the country that could be a sandwich = Turkey, the Black Sea = the Black Sea, the Evil Sea = the Caspian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea = the Pacific Ocean, Evil = Syria, Iraq, Iran, Chechnya, and the Russian exclave of the Kaliningrad Oblast, and the arrows = Europe.

P.S.

This, in case you have not yet scrolled down the page (SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE I HAVE CREATED IT FOR YOU AND YOU WILL GAZE UPON IT AND YOU WILL KNOW WHAT IT IS TO LOVE), is the Georgian alphabet, in case you were wondering or planning on learning it yourself. It is sort of cool, and sort of fun to write once you sort of get the hang of it (sort of).

Here is the online test that you can use to see if you've gotten the hang of it in the last five seconds.

Fun Things to Do When You Don't Have Work

I have had very little work since I have been back in Los Angeles. It seemed, initially, like I had an acceptable amount of work -- my teeth still hurt early last week and I didn't feel like working, which seemed like an acceptable excuse not to be, and then I had LOTS of work Thursday and Friday -- but, alas/alack/etc, I have had no work yet this week and have not been informed of any in the near future. This makes me feel like a lazy, unproductive asshole, especially when many of my still-school-bound friend are in 10th and finals week and have work out the proverbial ass (note: there is no proverb about asses that I am aware of, thus this is an invalid rhetorical construction and I should be flogged). The problem is that I'm sort of in a bind; I was out looking for other jobs to replace my current part-time quasi-freelance position a few weeks ago, but then I was hired to work full-time for 2+ weeks and I had no time to keep looking for other jobs (I also thought I might potentially not need one, since I had started to work full-time and thought that perhaps this might continue). Then I went home for nine days. Now it seems much too late to jump back on the jobhunting bandwagon, considering the rapidly more imminent imminence of my departure, and yet I currently have no work at my quasi-current job.

So I had to fill time the last few days -- had to come up with at least some sort of excuse for sitting on my couch and not leaving the apartment except to accompany friends to a fro-yo place a couple times. My time-filler has become learning the Georgian alphabet.

I discovered that there were several sites from which I could obtain the alphabet and at least a general sense of what the letters were called and sounded like (though I have also discovered that there are discrepancies, leading me to become worried that I will spend a lot of time learning this alphabet only to arrive in Georgia, overconfident in my ability, and learn that I learned it COMPLETELY WRONG). The alphabet either takes from or simply has a lot of similarities with the Greek alphabet, which I briefly learned in high school, meaning that it was pretty simple to get at least the beginning of the structure down -- but also meaning that I keep saying "alpha, beta" when I should be saying "an, ban." But the script is completely different, not to mention pretty complicated until you get the hang of it, so I've spent the last two days feverishly repeating the letter order in my head and scribbling the letters over and over and over on a piece of paper. Today I found a java "test" of sorts online that does a much better job of drilling the letters into my head than copying them down did. I am feeling by this point that I sooooooort of have the hang of it, at least from a beginner standpoint, but I will keep working at it until I have it down cold. Then my preparation for this journey will be complete!

Oh, wait....languages have words, too. And syntax and structure and pronunciation and MAYBE DIPTHONGS. Although I have no idea about the dipthongs. I'm still on Chapter One of "Learn a Funny Alphabet and Language That Only Like Five Million People Speak." Maybe Chapter Two will concern the dipthongs. Dipthong dipthong dipthong dipthong Olive Garden.

That is all.

It took me several hours to get this template to be wider

I just wanted the negative seven people who are reading this blog at this point to know that, just in order to widen it by 250 pixels, I had to find and change like eleven things and it took, honestly, hours. Good thing I was working on a Mandy Moore music video with nothing to do for hours at a time.

While standing around with other production assistants for hours at a time, you also get to talking about a lot of random things. Here are some things that we decided are funny under any circumstance that you could possibly conceive:

- the Olive Garden
- Falconing

I'm sure this will be an evolving list. And I'm equally sure that you're tantalized by it.

Orgies. Seriously. Read On.

Comment from Ruth:

I look forward to hearing about your escapades in Georgia. I know absolutely nothing about it.
Squat toilets are supposed to be good for your body, and uh, the process. But yes, as I'm considering teaching in China right now, that definitely is not an incentive to go there.
Tell us what you'll be doing in Georgia, when you're going, and all the important stuff!

So, I realized I hadn't summarized everything for people that I don't talk to every day and that maybe I should do that. I'm leaving for Georgia mid-June (the 12th, I think, though I don't have the paper in front of me), and I'm coming home a few weeks before that to prepare. So if you're anywhere near Champaign then or looking for a reason to come down, make "seeing Dan before he leaves for two years" that reason. I'll be there for 27 months assisting NGOs; I could end up doing anything from helping established NGOs get a better infrastructure going or learn how to use the internet as a tool or things of that nature to helping a start-up organization get basic equipment. I won't know until I get there. I also won't know where in the country I'll be until I get there. Adds to the anxiety of the entire endeavor.

Some interesting new facts, courtesy of New Friend Jenny Groza, who is in the Peace Corps in Azerbaijan (next to Georgia):

it's great that Georgians are hospitable but trust me, you'll get so sick of being forced to eat and drink wine. Guys especially…one GA volunteer I met over New Year's was saying that every time he goes to someone's house for dinner, he ends up being forced to drink bottle after bottle of wine (out of one of those sweet horns) until he's too drunk to speak.

To be fair, I have experience with this. Recent experience even. Though, in my experience, it's 17 year old female relatives of good friends doing the forcing. Take my (swear to god true) word on this: interesting as it may sound, you do NOT want a 17 year old Argentinian girl shoving alcohol at you and cussing.

you also might be interested to know that I heard the G5 (you'll be G6 I think) volunteers supposedly engage in orgies???? Ha. I'm a bad person for spreading gossip to you, but I just thought you'd like to know.

You're god damned straight I want to know if I'm in for two years of drunken carnal monkey sex. Who's coming with me??

Thoughts whilst stabbing myself for taking a job that will consist of 16 hours on a set on a Sunday

So, I figured I should perhaps start posting actual stuff about all this shiiiiiit even though nobody's reading this blog (yet!). Been dealing with the whole Peace Corps invitation for a couple of weeks now; I accepted it either a week ago or two weeks ago today (time accelerates when you're dealing with such a paradigm shift in regards to your life plans.....plus I haven't been working every day, and you lose track of what you were doing on your couch on which day after a while). Surprisingly, I've gotten a lot of hits as I've reached out to people on Georgia. A friend of mine from high school's college roommate spent a year there with Rotary, a friend of mine from work has a friend serving in the Peace Corps in the adjacent country (Azerbaijan),
a friend of mine from UCLA knows some Georgians through his family's church, and my dad works with a hospital technician who actually grew up there. So I have a lot of resources if I have any questions about different facets of the experience; the only problem is that it's going to be such a big change that I don't even know what specific questions I should be asking. At this point I'm just trying to be open to everything. Although I'm not going to be super open to squat toilets. So I hope Georgia is western enough to have a seat and do its business the civilized way.

From everything I hear, Georgia is an awesome place. Everyone harps on the hospitality of the people there and on their penchant for wine, food, and feasts, so I'm looking forward to that. But in terms of what it's like to actually live there, I feel like that would be difficult for anyone to describe in such a way that I would really have any better idea than I have from research materials. But I'm taking the glowing things people are saying about the place and hounding my friends, because I want everyone to move to Georgia with me. The people there need our HELP, friends! Many of them live in poverty, but they're trying to resuscitate their economy and integrate themselves into Europe's economy! Help ME help THEM. And we'll have some wine and it'll be DANDY.

Suffice it to say that if you do not move to Georgia, there is a strong chance that I'll never speak to you again.

Welcome to the all-new, all-NUDE blog

New blog URL, new blog title, same penetrating commentary (hehe...I said commentary).

This will be the Official Blog for the 27 months I'm in Georgia in the Peace Corps, so, seriously....check early, check often, send me e-mails, all that stuff. I'll try to get back into the self-absorbed self-analysis blogging groove by posting some over the next few months before I leave, but it'll become a more crucial conduit between ME and YOU once June comes around, and you'll want to know all about my Caucasian debauchery, every last lurid detail.

I expect you to make this blog your homepage. You must check it before you check the news, or the weather, or the sports scores. It shall be your muse, your confidant, your lover. Don't be scared. You and this blog are going to be BFF.