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!)