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!