The “Let’s Speak English!” 1st Annual English Competition

After Saturday’s competition, I went to dinner with some friends who had helped out at the event and we were toasting. I toasted to the fact that nothing went too terribly wrong...

After living here for two years I have come to get used to and anticipate the...relaxed...nature of doing things. I had everyone meet two hours early just incase. My host mother was criticizing me for it until our driver was hung over and sleeping and we barely had enough time to find a new driver and arrive at the competition on time. Then, our lunch fell through. We had told the café a month in advance, two days in advance, and the day before that they would be needing to prepare lunch for 80 people but the day of they told us at lunchtime that they didn’t have enough ingredients. Thankfully we were able to pay one of the student’s parent’s to drive to Kobuleti and pick up some cheap khatchapuri and pastries. All things considered, I think it went pretty smoothly :)

There were 72 students from 6 villages surrounding Kobuleti participating. Each student’s final grade was determined by an essay and an interview judged by a volunteer. During their down time while everyone was being interviewed, we had each school make up a song or dance to represent their village. Then we had the awards ceremony/dance party/lunch.

There is a huge performance gap between city schools and village schools in Georgia. Usually in academic competitions the village kids get blown away so it was nice to give them a time to shine. We gave all the kids certificates (which are worth their weight in gold here for some reason), and the winners were given English dictionaries and books. I really wish I had thought of this project a year ago because it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve done here. My kids actually came to my English club to prepare months before and I must say they had a good showing :) Everyone is looking foward to doing it again next year. Here is one of our winners and our Georgian partner for the project, Madona.