Sunday, September 27, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

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!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

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….