5 Months in Mongolia

It's really strange to think I have been here for 5 months already. So far the time has gone by so fast that I can't believe that it has already been 5 months... then again, this is the longest I have ever been away from home I think, because even in college I would get home for all major holidays and everything. I am missing people back home, and some things (like my almost daily caribou coffee ~though thanks to my mom I do have caribou beans for my french press :) but I don't miss home to the point that it makes me sad or anything. My Mongolian counterparts will often ask me if I miss home... and I tell them exactly that, yes I miss people, but I am very happy here. Who knows, maybe the miserably missing home will hit in a month or two... will keep you posted!

So this past week was the third week of not having students at school, and next week school is again cancelled for students because of H1N1. Now I know what you are thinking, "Wow, you never work... I'm joining the Peace Corps and going to Mongolia." In truth though I have been working! This past week all teachers went into school. I did English lessons for the teachers, which was a lot of fun for me to teach people English that aren't like hitting each other as I'm talking, and they take notes so well, and repeat after me so well... it was strange! haha Though I am starting to miss my students I have to admit... The other really nice thing about this week was that I met with three new teachers to work on my Mongolian language. This is extremely helpful to me, just to be able to one on one get tutored, and it's also a nice way for me to meet more of my counterparts. So far I know my fellow English teachers pretty well, Tamir very well, but not many teachers beyond that. I mean all the teachers are very nice to me, I say hi to them and all that, but it's not like I can communicate too much with too many of them beyond that because they don't speak English, and my Mongolian... well let's just say it's not at their level yet! haha So anyway, this past week was really fun for me to just study Mongolian and get to know more people that I work with.

Where the real work comes in though is the ger maintainence! Let me tell you, it's a good thing we have not had students so I have not had to prep. any lessons for them because living in a ger is time consuming! haha It is typically like 10 degrees or so outside right now, and into the negatives at night, so keeping my ger warm is constant work. After a week or so of asking my director, my supervisor, my counterparts, etc. they finally did send school workers to my house to saw some wood for me so I can chop it. So I've been chopping wood like it's my job! I feel so good when I get my ambar (little doorway thing they built for the front of my ger) full of wood and coal, only to have the supply dwindled down to nothing in a few days! haha So the basic upkeep of my ger takes some time. At this point I still really like chopping wood and re-stocking everything, taking my dirty water, ashes, etc. out, getting new water and all that... though at some point I'm sure once school is back on and I just don't have time for everthing, I can see myself being like... hmmm an apartment in UB sounds pretty appealing right now! I was helping some guys try to apply for their green cards the other day, and they told me if I can make it through the winter living in a ger then I must be a descendent of Chingghis Khaan... that makes me a little nervous!

Other than that not too much is new... have just been catching up on my reading, studying, cooking a little bit, and cleaning my ger a lot.

No School This Week

Due to all of the swine flu students did not have any school this week. Teachers went in yesterday and Monday for a bit to work on their classrooms. We completely cleaned the foreign language room and re-painted the desks and the floor. In typical Mongolian style we did this a little differently than one would in the U.S. but in the end the room looked good, and it was actually a lot of fun to be at school doing a different kind of work. The rest of the week myself and the rest of the teachers get to "relax." It is going to be a wonderful break and a great chunk of time to catch up on things and hopefully even get ahead on my lesson plans. Though I put relax in quotes because not too much I (and everyone else for that matter) do here in Mongolia is very relaxing. Yesterday when I got home from the day of working at school I chopped a ton of wood, wood that will probably only last me a few days then I will be at it again. I like all the work I have to do here to live, it is fun, but it is work. There always seems to be a fire that needs to be started, but first take out the ashes from the previous fire, then re-stock my coal/wood supply. Everything here is just kind of like that, there is no turning on a switch for heat or water or anything; you physically have to go through the steps to get anything you want. It is interesting for me, and fun right now, but eventually it will pobably wear on me a bit. So my point is, things just take longer, and three typical school days to stay home and relax will end up being a lot of ger maintenance too. Just to clarify though there are parts of Mongolia that have running water and all these types of things we have in the U.S. The capital of UB is like a big U.S. city I think, and actually most of my friends in the Peace Corps are living in apartments. I feel really lucky about the family whose haasha my ger is in. I live in two of my counterparts (they are married, both teachers) yard. The woman, Tamir is probably my closest friend here, and she is wonderful. So it's nice living in here haasha just because we get along so well, but also because her family is so helpful to me. Tamir will help me cook traditional Mongolian foods, which when I try to repeat on my own somehow they never quite turn out.... haha. But she will bring me food that her family is cooking, and then I make cookies and other treats and give them to her family as well. It is just a really nice relationship (by the way, the Mongolians that I gave my chocolate chip cookies to had never had them and they loved them!) My haasha bro's say "goy" about the cookies, which means beautiful, or really good. And this is always better than them calling something of mine "mohigh" which is bad... and they have done this a few times too! Also when I'm chopping wood it seems like I never get much time to do it by myself before Tamir's younger brother, who I believe is 23 also, comes out and helps me with it. Or rather, he says he will do it and takes the ax and does, which let's face it, he chops about 100 times faster than I do. I asked him if he has ever cut his fingers when he holds the piece of wood with one hand as he chops with the other (I don't do it this way, as I am positive I would cut my whole hand off). To that question he showed me his hand with it's array of gashed scars from the ax... he said he's just cut a "little" of his fingers.

Other news, I kind of have a puppy... I say kind of because I'm trying to not get too attached to the thing! Hence why she does not have a name, and I don't think ever will. Well actually I just call her gulug, which is the Mongolian word for puppy. I like this word, and she answers to it, so I think it will stick. She is Tamir's dog's baby so technically she is not mine, she is the families, she just likes me a lot and hangs out in my ger all the time. When her mom comes crying at my ger door I open up and let the gulug out, then when the gulug comes back crying I open my door and let her back in. It works out for everyone I think! I think they think I'm a little weird for liking this little dog so much because most Monolian people don't think of dogs as pets in the way we do. They are more animals that guard people's haashas, at night it is like this chorus of barking dogs. Many Mongolians I've met are afraid of dogs, some have told me how they have been bit when they were younger, so rightly so. Some dogs are really mean too, I remember being instructed during pre-service training to go down and grab for a rock if a dog is coming at you and usually this motion alone will scare them away because they think you are going to throw it at them. I have not yet had to throw any rocks at dogs. And in the meantime, I will continue being that crazy American teacher at school who is actually nice to puppies... weird.

I don't have too much else to report at the moment. Just loving life here really; I feel like I have several of those "aha" type moments everday here, which is wonderful. I will try to be better about posting more specific stories on here, as things all run together and I forget stories when I don't write them right away.

October 4

This past week of school was pretty good, busy but good, and overall less busy than the previous weeks so that was nice. I played soccer a bunch of the days after school because kids kept asking me during the day. Playing seems to give me some form of credibility amongst some of these boys... because let's face it, in the classroom I'm kind of at their mercy. Though it was funny, the other day in my one seventh grade class I just laughed so hard. So there is one student in particular who never takes notes or anything, like I go over to him, get his notebook out and stand there asking him to write and nothing... and I really like the kid, he just doesn't do any work during class time. Though he finds me earlier in the day to ask about English class, and has stopped by my ger a few times and just kinda hangs around for a bit, so deep down he must really like me. Anyways, so the other day I go to class and he is there, but then also his twin brother.... who knows where the twin was for the first 2-3 weeks of school... but I just started laughing so hard because of course that would be my luck that the kid I struggle with so much to get any work done would have a twin! The class thinks I'm crazy I think because I was so amused by this, and they were all like, yeah there are two of them... so what. Then on Friday of this past week, these same kids had me laughing so hard again during class. So I walk into class and I could just kind of tell it was a different day. I asked what the date was and the whole class responded, and started writing it without me even asking... it was weird. Then I look at the twins and they were writing the date. I just about lost it then, I was like, why are you writing? you never write! haha, and the whole class just laughed, but the twins waved me out of the way like, um teacher can you move, you are blocking the board and I'm trying to take notes here... I'm sure it was a one time deal, but it was certainly a great Friday! So the kids in my neighborhood have caught on to me going running and have joined in on this. I had eight little boys tag along on my run today, ages 6-13 just following right along with me. And two of them ran the whole time with me, at first I was just laughing as I was running because it was such a halarious sight to see. I mean in America you would laugh if you saw it, but here in Mongolia people don't exactly go running, so it was just that much more strange. But then I was just impressed that these little guys ran the whole time with me... It's kinda nice to have some running partners here though I have to admit.

Weekends go so fast

Sunday night of another weekend... the weekends so far have gone by so fast. I think it's because the weekends are when I do my laundry and actually cook, work out, bathe, you know, those types of things. And all of those things take A LOT longer here! Yesterday I was supposed to have my soccer club in the morning, but no kids were there at 9:30am... turns out there was a movie showing at the culture center, so that trumped soccer. Such is life. But no worries, the kids came and found me at my ger and we played in the afternoon. My nose hurts today, as one of the kids nailed me with the ball in the face and gave me a bloody nose... and while I was busy wiping away the blood they scored the winning goal... we will need to have a re-match! On Friday night my haasha brothers taught me how to chop wood. Everytime I would chop a piece they would scream and cheer for me; it was ridiculously halarious. I loved it. Some Peace Corps staff came and visited me on Friday; they do these site visits with all volunteers to check in and see how things are going. Which overall things are going great, and my site is wonderful. The thing that concerned them is just how packed my schedule is with so many different kinds of things so soon. My school has me teaching my five classes, and then team teaching a bunch more, then running all these other English clubs, plus doing language classes for primary teachers, secondary teachers, solo-English lessons, and these other seminars with primary teachers.... it's a bit much! Which was exactly what the people who came to visit me said (which was a relief for me that they understood my overwhelmed feeling). Typically they like TEFL volunteers like myself to teach 10-12 hours a week, then have other hours dedicated to things like resource development and staff development. Because really behind everything is the idea of capacity building and sustainable development, so really anything I do here, I should be doing with other Mongolian teachers. Anyways, they met with my school people and we all discussed everything. Tomorrow they are going to look at my schedule again, and I believe revise it, which will be really nice. The point is that I want to do all of these things, but I can't do everything right away. I need to be able to see how things are here, spend some more time on the language and just learn more about Mongolia. Which really they say the first year is kind of like that, just figuring things out, then the second year is when you really get a ton of things done... So we will see what happens with everything now. Hopefully it will work out to just put some of these trainings and clubs and what-not off for a little bit so I have time to prep. for my lessons and actually feel like I'm doing a good job. It was encouraging though that the lady from the Peace Corps was really impressed with my lessons. She was like, Allison what is your background? And I told her Elementary Ed. and she goes, "Oh yes, well that explains it." And she said that my classroom management was so good, which was nice to hear. Considering some days here I feel the complete opposite. I think I had six different kids crying in my one seventh grade class the other day. Kids just hitting each other and what-not. I couldn't turn around to write on the board without something happening, muchless get much "English teaching" accomplished. I'm getting better at not being bothered when some lessons don't go very well like that. And for now I'm still hopefully optimistic that if I plan interesting, fun lessons they will be more inclined to pay attention.

School

School has been going pretty good lately, though it's challenging. I think the most challenging thing is just not speaking enough of the language. It makes planning for lessons difficult. There are a lot of activities I would like to do, but either don't have the resources, or don't know how to communicate effectively enough with my students for the activity to be able to work. So I'm really still figuring out this whole teaching English as a foreign language thing... and it's not easy, but hopefully will start getting easier soon. Another challenging thing has just been my schedule. They basically doubled the amount of classes I'm teaching now, either new classes that I team teach with another English teacher, or English Clubs that I have on my own. Then I also teach the teachers English and work with primary teachers on developing materials. I really like all of these things, and I think once my schedule gets more set in stone and it's clear when I'm doing what I will feel confident in my abilities to be able to prepare for all these things, but last week when everything got added I did not feel that way! Actually cried at work... I couldn't help it, just had to do it. It was a combination of everything being added to my schedule and times conflicting, for example I was supposed to work with another teacher on her English and my Mongolian. But then at the time I had set up to work with her they added that I would work with primary teachers preparing materials. So I was frustrated because I really need to work on my Mongolian language... and I was supposed to lead a session on materials but had no idea what kind of materials or even a topic that they wanted me to prepare for them. Anyways, I think my counterparts think I'm a tad silly for crying over a scheduling conflict, but they don't know how addicted to having a plan I am! Mongolia is totally going to change my Type A personality I think.... Today I actually stayed home from work because I did not feel well at all, and I don't think me throwing up on anybody at school would be good thing! I'm feeling a bit better now, though have none of my lessons for tomorrow really planned... And tomorrow is my long day with a lot of classes, so we will see how that goes!

September 4

Today was my second day teaching lessons. I teach classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (you are jealous of my schedule I know!) On Tuesdays and Thursdays I still come to school, but I have those days to hold meetings with the English club and have different seminars for teachers. I also plan on those days, observe other teachers’ classes, and make different resources and materials. So as of right now it seems wonderful; I have that extra planning time built into my work week that every teacher dreams of! On my first day of teaching I taught four different classes, three of them were wonderful, the students were great, and I thoroughly enjoyed teaching them. But then my last class of the day was a completely different story… it was a big class, a little over 30 kids, which did not help. But the students behaved horribly; I left class feeling so helpless. There were so many behavior issues going on, that in the U.S. I could have sorted out, but here in Mongolia, my not speaking enough of the language was extremely problematic. I told some of the other teachers that I had a rough time with that class, and they must have talked to the class because today when I taught them they were angels! I went in all prepared to try to explain I would draw a smiley face on the board at the beginning of class, and each time someone’s behavior disrupts the class I would erase part of the face. How much of the face left at the end determines how much time we get to play a game (hangman, which is still educational –but what they don’t know won’t hurt them!) I ended up not even explaining about that though because they were so good there was no need. Hopefully they continue to be like they were today, because today’s class was so much fun to teach. I think they recognized that I’m a lot more fun, thus class will be a lot more fun, when I’m not super-duper frustrated with them!!! I’m happy that this first week of teaching is over though because it was nerve wracking! I was extremely nervous on both days to teach, mainly because I didn’t know what the students would know. Was I going to get blank stares for 40 minutes because the kids didn’t understand a word I said? Or would we blow through my whole lesson plan in ten minutes because it was way too easy…? Luckily, my plans fit in somewhere between there, and I think I will be less nervous to teach in the future. Other happenings… I bought a modem for my laptop so now have internet in my ger. It has been pretty rainy here, and I think it starting to get cold for good ~my fire making skills are soooo not ready for it to get cold yet! Oh and all of my counterparts say I look like Barbie because of my “yellow” hair (it’s light brown but whatever) and blue eyes… I’ve gotten quite good at making vegetable soup; I actually can’t believe I never made homemade soup in the states! It’s pretty easy, and so delicious ~we will see if I still feel this way after two years of soup! Otherwise things are just busy, busy, busy right now. Like the U.S. there’s never enough time in the day. I think once I get my school curriculum/lessons/clubs, etc. organized things will slow down. Email me if you have the urge to mail anything to Mongolia (you know, like teaching supplies, or treats hehe) I can definitely give you my address (get good at writing in Cyrillic!)

August 27

I have been in Batsumber Soum for one week now, and it has been a crazy busy past few weeks! Last week all 66 of us trainees were back in Zuunmod, where we had orientation at the beginning of the summer, for our final center days. That was kind of like a big college party I guess you could say, as we all hadn’t seen each other all summer. We had sessions on all kinds of Peace Corps info. during the day, then we would have the nights free to hang out and spend as we pleased :) On Wednesday, August 19 we officially swore in and became Peace Corps Volunteers!! It was a big event with lots of important people in attendance, and I wore my Mongolian dell that my host mom sewed for me. After swearing in we had a quick reception then headed straight to UB where most of us stayed an additional night. Thursday morning my supervisor picked me up and we headed to Batsumber! I will be living in Batsumber for the next two years. It is a Soum (small village) of about 7,000 people. It is in Tov Aimag (Tov would be like the state if we were talking about the U.S.) which is really nice because I am just two hours North of UB by train. This is incredibly close as far as traveling in Mongolia goes!! Some of my friends will travel for days to get back to UB… I on the other hand, can take a day trip to go stock up on fruits and veggies if I choose :) -and I’m going to need to do that soon I think, as the only fruit I’ve seen in Batsumber are apples, and vegetables are pretty much limited to their staples of potatoes, cabbage, and carrots. I will be getting very creative with my cooking soon! My new favorite thing to eat is bread with butter and sugar on it… so simple, but so good! Anyways, enough about food! My school is very nice, and the teachers have been incredibly nice! They have helped me with my ger, and walked with me around town so I could get acquainted with different people and places. They all really want to become better, or fluent in English, so they asked that I only talk to them in English; I said, “yeah that I actually know how to do!” The other night I played soccer with a bunch of these guys on the foot of a mountain, it was beautiful! And quite funny… some of the guys would be smoking a cigarette as they played, and then when they got tired they would just squat down and jump back up again later on. Soccer so far has really been a nice way to meet people, so I hope it continues to introduce me to new people. My one counterpart said, “I did not think girls played sports… I was wrong.” Man did I just rock his world huh?!? Only kidding, but I hope to start a soccer club or two for students once the school year gets going. Other things my school wants me to do are obviously teach, but then also develop curriculum, work with all teachers on their English, have English clubs for teachers and students, and observe teachers and work with them on methodology. So a lot of different things, and hopefully once the school year starts everything will kind of fall into place, because as of right now I’m still just trying to figure out how everything works around here. I hope I can do big things for this community and really make a difference because they are all so excited to have a native speaker here I am told. To be continued I guess….