the w()rd: UK break

I'm in the UK as of today, with a 6-hour stop in Vilnuis, Lithuania en route as that was the cheapest flight arrangement. Interesting fact: Lithuanian is regarded as the closest of the Indo-European languages to the original language from which they all grew. Vilnius has a beautiful medieval old city, but due to a cellphone accident a day before leaving Tbilisi I'm on this 2-month UK visit without a cellphone while it gets repaired. But I did take a large external hard drive with me, and intend to post some older scanned images from it to the blog. Meanwhile, Ushguli winter '07-08 themes are on hold. Stay tuned for more to follow.

Well, I found quite a few more cellphone images from my last weeks in Ushguli, so I'm not through with the village just yet. (Still scanning the 20 rolls of film from the winter - best work from them will come later. IF there's any space left on the blog...) Top to bottom:

- Some of my students outside the school, and the stone path which I helped build last October with my friends from Bulgaria. It's beaten up a bit from the ravages of winter, having nothing to stop the stones from moving around, but still there under the snow and ice.
- Melt in progress. This snow would all disappear a few weeks later.
- Our bebia (grandmother) attacking the veggie plot just outside my window; time to plant soon!
- Almost all of the school's 51 students and 10 or so staff in late April, closest thing to an official school photo for 2007-8. I'm on the extreme right; a few people left of me, in a purple winter coat and sunglasses, is the school's director and my boss, Nona.