We arrived back in Georgia the day before yesterday. Peace Corps picked us up at the airport and transported us back to our site. It is freezing – minus 20 degrees Celsius. We don’t think we have ever experienced this level of cold. Thank goodness for all those hot water bottles!

Firstly, our apologies to everyone for not sending out greetings cards this year. It is virtually impossible to do so from Georgia and on our travels we simply did not have time. We will be sending emails now that we are back and snowbound.

The hot water bottles, gloves, headlights, etc. were a great hit with our family here. Many, many thanks to Jeannie and Diana for shopping for us.

We start back at school next week and are wondering how that will be with all this snow – ten inches so far and still coming. It does look very beautiful, but we hear that Gill’s site does not have water (some pipes froze and burst), so maybe the school will not open. In the meantime we will have to work on our curriculum for the “English for Tourism” course we hope to give here in Borjomi. Given our level of proficiency in Georgian, it presents some challenges. Send us your ideas on what you want to find when you travel. We know that friendliness, English ability and plumbing are good. However, our assumption is that most people would prefer the country to remain “Georgian”, i.e. no hot dogs, burgers, etc.

It is amazing to us that our dog and cat are out all day in this weather, but they seem fine and make themselves comfortable when they come in. We, on the other hand, feel like hibernating. We expect to be more energized after a couple of days’ acclimatization.

More news soon.