Wood Chopping Season!

Sorry these pictures are crazy all over the place... can't quite figure out how to put them where I want them on this blog thing! They are pretty easy to figure out though, soccer kids, an 11th grade class with me, then one of my fourth grades, then Batnym fixing the glass on the top of my ger... little scotch tape will fix anything!

It is starting to feel like winter for real around here... I don't know how Batnym has been running around without a hat on because when I do that my ears are in paaaaain! Snow is sticking around now and the water is freezing. So I am pumping myself up for the next 4 months of freezing cold! Good news though this means I get to again start my beloved hobby... chopping wood. The other day Batnym asked me if people in America need to chop wood? My response was, nope, we just press a button. He thought that was very interesting! Granted a lot of people in Mongolia live in apartments, especially in the capital, but he never has so this information was pretty mind blowing.

This school year is still going well. Things just seem to be easier this year, so that's really nice. And because I understand more about what's expected of me and how things work this year I have been able to try more in my classes. Things that I probably wouldn't have known how or wouldn't have thought were possible last year. I also think I am better at setting boundaries for myself and working with my counterparts on whatever they ask of me, but in a way that I am comfortable with too. Some students have mentioned next year and then they are always surprised when I tell them, "I won't be here next year, but you will probably get a new American English teacher." My little fourth grade girls are always cute about that, getting all mad, like, we don't need another English teacher, nope, I'm not learning English from them! The other day a group of them were walking home with me and decided to give me a Mongolian name... only they coundn't agree on a name, so it's still unkown, the possibilities are endless!

The other week some 10th grade boys asked me if we could have a soccer competition and it ended up being awesome. I was a little nervous because I didn't know if it would work with all the other scheduled things, and then how to even begin organizing everything... but it all worked out so well. They let me know how many teams wanted to play, ended up being 11 teams, and then I made a bracket and wrote out the rules. Then my counterparts helped me out a ton; anything I couldn't explain to the students they did. And my one counterpart came out for the whole competition to help if there was ever confusion with anything, and he acted kind of like my translator. He being one of about 4 people in my school that can do this, so I was really grateful that he was willing to help me out. Then different 10th grade boys reffed all the younger kids games for me as I just stepped in if we needed, but mainly stayed on the sidelines (sidelines is a bit of a stretch for what we play on but you get the idea!) This time it was just a boys competition, and more than 100 boys in grade 8-11 played. I hope we can do a girls' competition soon... feel like that would be a really good thing for me to do here. But it was just so cool for me to do this here because it's something I miss doing, being involved in soccer. And to see some of these boys who can really play, like really play, was awesome. Especially because those few boys that are really good at soccer aren't necessarily good at wrestling and things like that that are really valued here. It was just a really cool thing, and I'm happy it didn't end up being a disaster!

Not too much else new to report... It's Sunday night here now; I have planning for school to do still but the day of cleaning, washing clothes, running, bathing (and bathing here is a chore in and of itself!) etc. has left me pretty tired so I may just call it a day and finish up my lessons tomorrow... I look forward to the day when those things are not an all day task!!