All about IST

Yesterday I returned to Batsumber after being gone for about a week. Peace Corps brought all of us English Teachers into UB for a week of "In Service Training (IST)." Each of us brought along one of our Mongolian Counterparts. We stayed at a nice resort that is just outside of UB for the week, and it was wonderful to not have to make fires or cook for myself for the whole week! Coming back to my freezing cold ger yesterday was a little rough... IST was awesome though. We did so much during the week that I'm having a hard time even trying to remember everything. Everyday was packed with different sessions led by Peace Corps. Some of the time we were in sessions with our counterparts and some of the time it was only volunteers while our counterparts went to other sessions. We had Mongolian language class for an hour every morning, so I have plenty of hand-outs to be studying for awhile. I also re-took my language test (didn't pass when I took it at the end of the summer). I was happy this time though because I did well and actually scored a step higher than the level Peace Corps said I needed to get. Then we had sessions dedicated to Cross-Culture topics, Medical topics, and lots of Teaching English topics. During these there was plenty of time to discuss things that are happening at site and to share with the other PCV's, while also getting input from our Mongolian counterparts. It was great to have the Peace Corps staff there for translation too. So all sessions where we were with our counterparts Peace Corps would translate everything being said. It amazes me how the Mongolians that work for Peace Corps can translate everything from Enlish to Mongolian, and Mongolian to English. Maybe someday I will come close to being able to do that a little bit!! As of right now though I am far from it! Anyway, one of the main things we did at IST was learn how to, with our counterparts, write out a future project that we want to do at site. Tamir and I wrote out goals and a plan for how I will go about teaching English to our other English teachers. And also how together we will teach English to all of the teachers at our school. I hope we can stick to our plan at site. At IST we had time to write out what we want to do, and had each others un-divided attention. This is not usually the case when we are at school. There are always a million things going on, and things always seem to change and get interrupted. So I hope our plans do actually happen, and I'm going to try hard to make sure they do. IST was a very motivating week. There is nothing like a week away from school (and a week that is completely dedicated to learning about teaching and everything in Mongolia) to make you want to go back to site and really do good work. I met some amazing people this past week and had a blast hanging out with all my American friends. So it's a little strange to be back all alone here in Batsumber! This week is also Christmas, which is going to be a little strange to just go into school and teach on Christmas... I think I'm going to dedicate this entire week of teaching to Christmas songs! At least if I teach about Christmas it will feel more like Christmas is what I'm thinking.

Home Sweet Soum

Traveled to the big city this past weekend for Thanksgiving. A few facts about Ulaanbaatar the capital (and by facts I mean approximate facts based on what I've heard). We all call it UB, which is way quicker than saying Ulaabaatar everytime! Most Mongolians though just call it the city. It's kind of like New York City, New York I would say. Somewhere between 50-60% of Mongolia's population lives in UB. In UB you can find most any type of thing you would want. There are outdoor markets, a big mall called the State Department Store (though any clothes or shoes in there are wayyyyy too expensive for me and my Peace Corps issued salary!), tons of small shops that sell every type of thing just depending on the store. Then there is a wide variety of restaurants and cafes. The restaurants we went to look the same as any nice one in the US would. I ate pancakes, a wide array of veggies, pizza... I drank coffee and had real red wine (any of the wine that my school has had at events.... I'm not a fan! I would rather have the vodka! let's just leave it at that!) So UB has a lot of appeal, and I really like the city. Plus I stayed at my friend Cassandra's apartment (which I can't even talk about how nice it is or I will start crying in my ger!) with a bunch of other volunteers, and that was just so good to see all my friends again and catch up on things and swap stories. It's also so encouraging to see all these other people enthusiastic about what they are doing, but at the same time all having different very challenging stories. We just relate to each other on so many levels living here together. The downside of the whole trip though was that it was slightly overwhelming. I have been alone here in my Soum for awhile now and love being the only one amongst all Mongolians. So to have all these people I wanted to meet with and catch up was almost too much! It sounds weird... but that's how I felt. And I had this big list of things to buy, and I did buy a lot, but shopping here is different. It's true you can get most everything, but I'm still new, so knowing exactly where and how is still a little tricky for me. Maggie and I were shopping for clothes and we wanted to try on pants. Now I don't know how to describe where we were shopping. It was a big market (inside) so there are just rows and rows of little stands kind of, each one selling different things. So when we wanted to try on pants (yes I know how to ask to do that in Mongolian, pretty proud of myself) what they do is just hold up a little sheet around you and you just do it! So the lady held up the sheet then Maggie and I added a coat on the other side to help each other out. Trust me, you are still not totally covered! So trying on things could be a bit awkward with people all around.... I will get better as time goes on here I think! All in all UB was great, just a big overwhelming.

I was really happy to get back to my Soum, though I've spent quite a bit of time getting my ger to be back in the swing of things! Just getting water again and washing everthing and cleaning out my stove so I can get a fire going so things will thaw out.... it just is a lot to do when you just get back and honestly just want to lay down and sleep! Or eat something because your starving, but all the dishes are dirty so you need to wash them first, which requires water, which you don't have..... not that that happened to me or anything! I'm just saying... haha. School continues to be challenging. They are re-doing my schedule for the second quarter so things are kind of up in the air right now again with when exactly I'm teaching what. I still have my two seventh grades though and my eleventh grade elective. I love the eleventh graders; it is an elective so they are all really motivated to learn English and just really well behaved. Almost to the point where they are so quite and good during my class that I feel awkward with them all staring intently at me the whole time.... Then my seventh graders.... the one class has actually been exceptionally good lately. We play hangman at the end of almost every class because we get through all the material because they are so good. They like to go up and be the teacher and I sit and pretend I'm a student to get in on the guessing of letters. It's funny though because they like me and me only to guess, a kind of "try and stump the teacher" deal, and they have stumped me quite a few times! I gotta watch myself, can't have them thinking I don't know every single English word there ever was.... Then there is my other seventh grade class. Wow, they are like the ultimate test to a person's patience. It's like every class period there comes a time when I just give up, most all of them are not listening, half are not writing anything I'm teaching down, and a select few are so disruptive I'm pretty sure other teachers would hurt them for how they are behaving in my class..... So I am trying to think how I can do better for this class; there has got to be a way, I just haven't figured it out yet.

This class caused me to really think about the question, "What am I doing here?" and not in a way, like I don't like it and want to go home. But just in a way that I need to think about that question and really examine to myself why I am here, and how I can make a difference here. I feel so lucky to have been placed in Mongolia, and the country, culture, and people are beautiful. I really love Mongolia. So that is what makes me think, "How can I help Mongolia?" How can I help my students, thus help the country develop..... That is what I'm trying to figure out.

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….

August 9

PST is almost done… one week left with my host family. One week left of living in Erdene with 12 other Americans and teachers and a family that can help translate things for me, and be there to talk to when I need anything… it’s kind of a scary thought! I am excited to live on my own at this point though, and I’m excited to get back to Zuunmod with everyone and swear in and become an official PCV!!! We had our last day of school with our students this past Friday. To make it a fun last day Maggie and I just team taught review things, so we sang all of the songs we have taught them throughout the summer. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun with this. Then the Peace Corps gave us certificates to give them so we made a bit of a production about that, and it was very cool. Then the kids gave us these little pillows they had made us that were stuffed with flowers that they had picked. Then they wrote our name on the little tag and another word about us; mine said princess. Finally we finished with a huge photo shoot; all of the kids wanted pictures with us. The whole day just got me even more pumped up to get my site placement and be a real teacher at a school here. We had a site placement meeting with Peace Corps the other day where we got to talk discuss placement options. I basically said I’m open to going anywhere, as I don’t really know where I would even request. And realistically they place us based on our skills and after looking at those and what the school wants/needs, they might look at our personal requests, but probably not. So I will probably be placed all alone in the middle of the Gobi since I was not picky in these interviews!! In a week I will know! Yesterday we did a bit host family appreciation event. We (and by we I mean the Mongolian men who know what they are doing) cooked a few goats. They do this by putting hot stones inside the animals or something and they cook them in this box thing… I don’t exactly understand it so I apologize for this terrible description, but the point is it’s this funky, cool way to cook the meat that the Mongolian’s love. Then they put potatoes and carrots in there that steam as well, and it turns into a huge feast. I filled up on all the other fruit, veggies, and treats obviously… My host family has come to terms with the fact that I’m not into the meat at this point! Once I’m on my own though it will be nice to be able to just never cook with meat at all. This last week is going to be packed with trying to fit everything in, making time to spend with host family, friends, teachers, and study for the language test that we will have on Thursday! We need to meet the Novice high requirement for the language test, so I need to make sure to study a lot this week. I’ve accumulated quite a bit of a Mongolian vocabulary already, though speaking it and understanding what they questioner is asking is different than just saying any random word that I have memorized. At site I’m hoping to be forced to really continually just learn more and more of the language, because as of right now they have just tried to give us a bit of a base so we can go out and kind of survive…

Friday July 16

Well I have officially been in Mongolia for over a month! We are now about half way through PST, which I cannot believe because the time is really flying by! I am using more and more of the Mongolian language I am learning everyday (my host family gets soooo excited with each new word I use). Though it is slightly scary to think that in about a month I will be at site and on my own. This makes me very motivated to keep studying as hard as I can so I feel more competent with the language by that time. Our Micro-teaching sessions are over and now we are in the process of planning out our next set of teaching, which is called Practice Teaching. Practice Teaching will be much like our Micro-teaching was, now we will just teach for 40 minutes at a time to a larger class of Mongolian students. We will start off team teaching (so I will teach with a partner, my friend Maggie), and then move on to just teaching by ourselves. The organizing of this is basically up to the 12 of us trainees in Erdene. We had our language teacher translate the information for us so we could write out a bunch of signs to post around town (no copying machine obviously) advertising a sign up date for these language classes. The signs read: “Free English Language classes taught by native speakers!!” We are hoping to get a lot of people to come to our information session tomorrow. At this session we will ask each person a few questions in English to get a feel for what level they are at so we can divide everyone out into classes by level. Then Monday we start! Apparently it is kind of a chaotic deal… we are just trying our best to make sure it is organized chaos! Then much like Micro-teaching, we will be assessed by the TEFL trainers on our practice teaching. The point of that is mainly to give us constructive feedback and to just get practice, though another part of this is so they can see our skills, which will then have an impact on our site placements that we find out about on August 15 before swearing in. On July 9 the Peace Corps staff conducted their first of two TAP Interviews. With these they had us fill out a packet on where we think we are at with the different skills and areas we have been working on thus far. Then they filled out the same packet about us and we discussed. It was a good time, nice to touch base with the higher ups and discuss everything. The same day we had short interviews with our LCF’s this interview was just on language. This interview was to check up on where we are at, as they say they would like us to be at the level of Novice High by the end of PST. I believe everyone in Erdene is pretty much right on track, and we actually have a few trainees that are far beyond where we “should” be at this point. I think I am just about where we need to be at the half-way point; my teachers say they like how hard I work and try in class, so that counts for something!!

The other big event that happened was NAADAM!! Naadam is the second biggest holiday of the year in Mongolia. National Naadam is July 11-13, and then we had a local Naadam in Erdene the days before that as well. Naadam celebrates the 1921 independence of Mongolia from Chinese control. At Naadam there is horse racing, wrestling, archery, and tons of other activities going on. All of my host family’s relatives came over so the house was just busy as can be; it was wonderful. Always when relatives come they are so excited to see me and bring me treats, and then I of course can say about two Mongolian sentences to them so I feel a little silly! My little host sister rides horses, so I always love seeing her ride. Some of these kids that ride are teeny tiny, like smaller than some of the first graders I had this fall. Then the wrestling was very neat. These men that wrestle are ripped! A few of our American PCT’s wrestled… they did not win, but it was cool that they did it! Besides that I drank the fermented milk, which was surprisingly pretty good. I at a lot of hoshure, basically deep fried goodness, and of course had a little bit of vodka. I am looking forward to hopefully going to Naadam in UB next year.

PST

My apologies for these entries being few and far between lately, the issue is that the Soum I am in now, Erdene, is pretty small, so there is no internet café or anything like that. Our Mongolian language teacher though happens to be married to the school computer teacher so she works that angle for us to get some internet time in the school about once a week… J we love her. So things have been very busy, which I think will be the trend all through pre-service training (PST). I always have 4 hours of language class every weekday. My Mongolian language speaking capability is still pretty shaky, but I am seeing progress!!! A current peace corps volunteer (PCV) said Mongolian is like the 4th hardest language for English speakers to learn or something like that, so I’m being as patient as I can with it. Then with the rest of the day I either have Cross Culture class or Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) class. With both of these there are native Mongolian teachers paired with PCV Trainers. Cross Culture is very interesting and is teaching us all of the must-know type of information, as well as history, customs, community development, etc. TEFL sessions are also interesting and just very practical stuff for us to be learning. Part of our TEFL training is called Micro-teaching, where we are actually teaching Mongolian kids with another trainee. So far we have done 3 micro-teaching sessions. Our last session on grammar was by far our most successful lesson. We have had 6-8 Mongolian students at these, and we teach them a lesson for a half hour. It is an English lesson, so we speak English, but there is a great variety in the amount of English the students we are teaching speak. That is probably the biggest challenge with these sessions… what if what we plan is way too easy because it involves words/concepts they already all know. Or… what if we get blank stares the whole half hour because they can’t understand a word we are saying!? Luckily, we have had a nice balance between these two extremes thus far! Apparently though when we get to our sites for our real teaching this coming fall there tends to be this huge range of English speaking abilities within classes, not to mention class sizes are upwards of 40 students I guess. In my free time I hang out with my host family, who is wonderful and takes amazing care of me (not as good as my real mom back home, but they are up there!) The other day I got home and my host sisters were cutting into a sheep’s stomach… they laughed pretty hard at my face. I help out with the cooking/cleaning (that’s right real family, I help with these things) and my best friend Ann would laugh at how I slow the process down with my cutting of the vegetables, but hey if they want me to help that’s what they get! I and the other trainees also find time to play soccer (or bombok –rough translation from Cyrillic to English). Though the other day we started playing on a patch of “grass” that at least had some grass amidst the rocky, bumpy dirt, and the soccer ball popped within the fist five minutes of our game. The rest of the game was played with a flat old basketball a kid had. Oh and another trainee and myself were captains picking teams at the beginning, and none of these little Mongolian boys wanted to be on the girls team. As in they literally refused to come be on my team when I picked them (funny how that sexism in sports is pretty much across the board in the U.S. and abroad). Anyways, by the end of the game the boys that did agree to be on my team were happy they did J

July 29: Day in UB

Hi all!! So I have blog entries typed up and on my flash drive because we don't have internet in Erdene, where I'm place for PST. Unfortunately I can't get them to open up here right now.... so in a few weeks you will hear more about this past month of my life!!! haha, today we are in UB for a short orientation of things... something like 50% of Mongolia's population lives in UB, so it's a pretty happening place. I love Mongolia and have had some really cool experiences so far :) Sorry this is so short, but my time is up... in like a month I should have internet access and I will seriously update this blog I promise!!! hope all is well is the states!

Orientation and PST

Well officially in Mongolia and loving it! I am now in my host community of Erdene, living with my host family. So much has happened so sorry for being all over the place! The flight here was surprisingly very good, by the time we arrived in UB we had been up for like a day or something, but were greeted by the very pumped up M19's so it was impossible to be tired. We then stayed in Zuunmod for a week or so for orientation and I got to really get to know the other 68 volunteers that with me make up the M20 group -20th group that has come to Mongolia. The majority of us are going to be Teaching English as a Foreign Language -TEFL teachers. The days of orientation gave us a lot of information, and a lot of general overviews about things we will need to know. Now we are at our sites where we will be for the rest of the summer until we swear in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. I had language training this morning for four hours, which we generally have everyday, then usually we have some session in the afternoon, either on culture, or something specific to teaching. I feel like I have learned so much already about Mongolia since arriving like 11 days ago, but with that said I feel like such a baby here as well! It is difficult not being able to communicate with the majority of the people around you. My host family is wonderful and takes care of anything I could ever need, but it's like this giant game of charrades, how I try to communicate with them. My host sister is 22 and knows a bit of english, and she really helps me out with things. Yesterday she showed me how to wash my hair, body, and clothes in my washing basin. I will probably do that about once a week, or maybe twice a week, considering you have to walk a ways away to get water. I have really enjoyed the food, though it is very different from what I ate in the states. In the U.S. I did not eat any meat, and little dairy. Here I eat a little meat, and then eat dairy too. There is also a lot of bread, rice, noodles, things like that. I have helped out making meals, though compared to my host mom and sister I am a horrible cook! Basically I just slow the process down! Right now the most frustrating thing for me is the lanuage. I pretty much know the cyrillic alphabet now, but now it is time to start making sense of words, and just picking up as much as I can. I am hoping to continue to learn a few new words a day that I know how to use. My goal is to by the end of the summer feel competent in my Mongolian.... I have a lot of work to do!!!

Night Before...

So I fly out to L.A. tomorrow morning at 7am, which means we will leave Hudson at like 4:30.... We will have an orientation in L.A. all afternoon, then it's off to Seoul the next morning. From Seoul we will fly to Ulaanbaatar, so I will arrive in Mongolia on the 14th if I remember correctly. Should be interesting!!