Well it has been quite some time since I have written... my computer has been broken for a few months. I hope to get it fixed and install the best virus protection in the world and then bring the same lap top back here for my second year... that is the plan at least! Nothing too exciting happened during April and May though; I'm having a hard time even remember anything that I should re-cap on here. The end of the year was a little crazy with all the different tests students are given. School is actually still going on, but I am in UB. I came into UB about a week ago to start a seminar called TOT (Training of Trainers). So I am part of the 20th group of Peace Corps volunteers that has served in Mongolia. In country everyone just refers to us as the M20's. The next group of volunteers though, the M21's, will be arriving here on June 5. There will be 76 of them I believe, which is 7 more than we had coming in, and I guess then the next couple groups after them will be bigger and bigger... within a few years I believe they hope to have a group of 110 volunteers come in. Anyways, so us M20's and all the Peace Corps staff are very excited, and very busy! getting ready for the new group to come. The M21's will have a summer much like we did last summer. They will all have an orientation in Zuunmod for a few days, then go in groups to different small communities to live with a host family for the summer. Thoughout the summer they will be trained by myself and a bunch of other PCV's and Mongolian counterparts. Peace Corps breaks the summer in half, with different PCV trainers for the first and second halves of the summer. I will be training the M21's for the second half of the summer along with another PCV who is a friend of mine and two Mongolian counterparts. Our Mongolian counterparts are awesome; one is a middle age man who has a ton of experience in education and teaching in Mongolia. The other is a girl the same age as me; she studied at a Mongolain University to get her bachelors, then in England to get her masters, then after returning to Mongolia she worked in the President's office! This past week of working with them and the other PCV's has been awesome. I hope the summer goes really well and we can be helpful, effective trainers for the new group. I am training the sector of Cross Culture and Community Development. Every trainee will have sessions with us every week. Then they will have sessions for their specific sector and Mongolian language classes as well. Last summer I had Cross Culture, Mongolian language, then my sector was TEFL training. The other non TEFL sectors are Community Youth Development, Business, and Health. So right now the Peace Corps is crazy busy with all of us summer trainers trying to get everything for summer prepared before the new group comes in one week!!!! Needless to say we have been working pretty long days. Today is Saturday and we are heading out to meet with the host families, tomorrow we have a little retreat kind of day, Monday we do final checks at the host families homes, Tuesday is a national holiday: Women and Childrens Day!! so we have off and a big group of us PCV's are actually going to travel 45 minutes outside of UB to Zuunmod and have a barbeque. Then Wednesday through Friday will be crazy getting all lessons planned out because ideally we would like to have all lessons set for the summer so we are not rushing to plan them out the night before this summer.
My friends and I are going to run in a 5k in UB next Saturday, which should be a lot of fun. Then that night I think the plan is to head out to the airport and be there to greet the new group. They did this for us last year, and as exhausted and out of it from the flight we were, it was really cool to have the current volunteers there to support us coming into the country. Then I will actually leave for America on Monday! I am very excited to come home for a visit. Being in UB is a bit like America, with the variety of foods I can buy, real coffee at a select few places, running water and a shower in our apartment, foreign people kinda all over the place now as it is warmer.... buuuuut still not quite America haha, so I'm pretty excited to come back for a visit. It will just be nice to see my family and friends; that is definitely what I am most excited for. Other perks include being able to speak crazy fast English to everyone, walk anywhere and not be stared at or probably even noticed by anyone, and of course just eat and drink everything delicious that I have not had for the past year! Though one of my Mongolian counterparts at my school warned me he will be giving me a Mongolian language test when I get back because I can't forget my Mongolian!!!! So some people in America may get a little Mongolian language lesson from me so I make sure the language stays in my head for that month that I'm back!
