ShOeS!!! (AnD ClOthEs!)

When I left home, I left my shoes. You know the cute sparkly shoes with the peep toes that you wear for a night out on the town. The shoes that make you wish you didn't have feet by the end of the night! I also left behind my best clothes. The sparkly short skirt, super cute dress that you would only wear on a night out on the town. Had I known, I would have done things differently. Instead of my wardrobe consisting of "smart" professional clothing; like I would wear to work in the states, I would have instead brought that tight purple sparkly dress and those to die for stilettos. The fact was, I didn't know. Women in Mongolia dress to the nines. We're talking stilettos, short skirts, cute tops. The type of clothing we as American's wear to the club is completely appropriate for work. While some are a little more sophisticated with suits (it varies aimag to aimag) the consensus remains to same when it comes to shoes. Learning to walk on ice with stiletto boots is a necessity if not a requirement. If I had only known, those favorite Steve Maddens and Betsy Johnson shoes would have been packed and I wouldn't be pinning for them for the next two years!

HoPELess CoNFuSioN!

My dance class is up and running. As previously stated, I had two yesterday and one no show...today I had a no show as well. It was the same class that I told to show up yesterday while I was teaching another class. I also had another child come to me with her teacher and ask to have classes, and I am pretty sure I told them I could teach them when I am teaching others. It is all very confusing and sorting it out is even more difficult given that there are about 80 teachers and 1500 students here. When the sheer volume of students is added to the fact that half of the students come to school in the morning and half of them come in the afternoon, it only exacerbates my confusion. Try tracking down the teachers when you can't pronounce their names. However, that is the least of my problems. Even if I did know their names, half the time I don't know if they are coming or going to school or what room they are currently teaching in. As of now, I have two school classes (4 dance classes) figured out time-wise. I have two more teachers to track down while I attempt to also have an English teacher in tow. Surprisingly, I am not at all frustrating. I find it humorous and wonder if people view me as scatter-minded as I am currently feeling. For the first time in a long time, I am starting to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

ThE MaNy SpLintErS oF mE!

Splinters splinters in my Ger,

These splinters are just everywhere

In my hands, and in my feet

These splinters are so hard to beat!

I sweep my floors, 

dust my shelves,

take off my shoes,

should this not help?

Splinters please! Disappear!

Find a place not in my Ger.

You can burn,

in my stove,

or sneak away,

from my home!

SmaLL VicTorIes MaKe FoR GrEaT DAYS!

The start to my day was not the best and had me questioning if I should have even gotten out of bed; less than an hour into it. I woke up pretty cold (it was really only 60 in my Ger) but managed to drag myself out of bed and get ready for my day. The brisk morning left me wishing I was back in the warmth of Texas and the moon seemed to be taunting the sun as it had not yet set. It was 8:15, why was the moon still high in the sky? As I was navigating my route to work and contemplating my day, I decided to cross the mini stream to the other side of the road because eventually, I would need to cross it anyways. Three steps in and my left foot completely slid out from under me and I landed on my left side. It was the first time in my 28 years that I took a minute to determine if I had broken anything or if I was in fact just fine. I decided I was probably okay but would be left with a killer bruise on my knee. After slowly picking myself up off the ground, I managed to safely walk to rest of the way to school.

Despite having a difficult start to my day, I am proud to say that I had my first successful dance class! I had about 30 kids across two dance classes! I even had another full class of kids show up because I had accidentally scheduled them at the same time as the other class! I told them tomorrow I would hold a dance class for them. Interestingly, the older kids (9th graders) that were very gung ho about taking my class, did not show up at 11 for their dance class. I will need to remind them that they have class on Wednesday's the day before and inform them that if they do not show up (3rd week in a row), that their class would not have dance. There are more and more teachers that are asking me if their class can participate so that spot can easily be filled. I have also decided that once the four classes I have participate for a couple of months, I will rotate them out. There are about 1500 kids in my school, and it seems that the vast majority of them are interested in my dance club. It will be impossible to get them all in if I don't rotate! It was a great feeling dancing again, even greater was teaching. I never wanted to be a dance teacher but these kiddos are so enthusiastic it makes it hard not to enjoy it!

Togtohoo, my social working counterpart and I continue to get along swimmingly. While I still have very little Mongolian and he has very little English, we have started to make lists of Mongolian to English translations to hang up on the wall. If it is hanging on the wall, I have to say the word in Mongolian and he has to say the word in English. It seems to work and we have a good laugh when one of us says a word incorrectly.

Yesterday, I had to think on my feet when my room when my English club room was locked and the only one with the key was a math teacher who was not there. We ended up using my office and the kids stood the majority of the time because we had about four chairs, and culturally, women and girls do not sit on tables (apparently it means you will never be married). They finished up discussing the fashion designs they had made and then we played a couple of ABC games and worked on diction as P, Z, C, F and V can sometimes be difficult to say. My second class went the same way. At the end of the class one of my students wrote out that she loved her teacher and gave it to me. It is not in Cyrillic but, the national writing of Mongolia. It was a beautiful reminder of the impact we can make on our communities in such a short time. 

DorM LifE and a BuSy SChEdUlE!

 My school has the only dorm (except for the university), in my Aimag. I had made plans two weeks ago to go in on Wednesdays and do activities with the kiddos. From what I saw the kids ranged about 5th grade to 11th, but I can't be sure (some kids may have been sleeping). At 7, I showed up and after pantomiming and utilizing what little Mongolian language I have, I got my point across about what I wanted to do. In typical Mongolian fashion, my counterpart showed up about 15 minutes late, but I was just excited that he showed up at all! There were about 30 kids who participated in the activities and I stayed for a little over an hour and a half. We played a game that I made (there were two teams and they had to pick the corresponding picture for the English word I said, whoever picked the right card first kept the card and points were tallied at the end of the activity for each team). I also taught them "Go Fish" with two decks of cards so many children could play, and brought my chess boards for them to play with as well. It was a quick hour and a half but it was also a LOT of fun and I really liked it! It was great to get to know so many kids in their living environments and I cannot wait to go back next week! Things are really starting to chug along here as I have recently created weekly schedule and made my counterpart aware of what projects  I really want to get up and running in the time that I am here. I am able to run two life-skills classes per week, I have two English clubs, 2 dance clubs, I visit the dorms once a week and hopefully, I can spend about an hour a week teaching 6 and 7 year old's English songs! Beyond that I am getting an Anti-Bullying campaign together for next week and would LOVE to get a debate club up and running in the school.  I enjoy how busy I am these days and look forward to seeing how all of my activities will progress! 

Off topic. I finally got my winter stove, my Ger has been fully winterized (my door was fixed) AND I got a couch last night. It's the little things that really make your day! :-)

My WeEkEnd!

This weekend, was a lot of fun filled with a lot of visitors. Will's family was in town and so was Marc, a guy I am seeing who is originally from England. Surprise, the cat's out of the bag! It was fun showing the weekend visitors my Ger and acculturating Marc to REAL Mongolian life, versus the posh apartment life he lives in UB. For the first time since i have been here I went on an amazing hike up one of the mountains that are behind my school. It was an incredibly view of my aimag and not at all easy terrain. However, it was thoroughly enjoyable and I look forward to doing again as soon as some of the snow melts and it will be safe enough for me to climb up another mountain.  

 

My Hasha..I could zoom in and see it from the Mountains! My Hashaa is the one that has a truck in the yard, the house with the pink red roof and the Ger (my Ger). It is set in between the hashaa that has a white house and a Ger and the red roofed blue house with three Ger's.  The pink building in the picture below is the water well, where i fill my water bin.

                            
                                 This was a shrine we saw at the top of one of the Mountains! The rock that is below, was inside this tepee looking construction.

                                                       
                                                  This appears to be an old factory.

GeR LIfE iSn't EasY~

Ger life is very time consuming. Since last blogged about it, I got myself a ginormous water bin that I fill up once or twice a week at 100 tugrigs a pop (that's about 10 cents). While I really quite enjoy utilizing as much water as I want, the water well times are not super conducive to my schedule. It opens at 10:30, closes at some point and then opens back up at 4 and closes at 6:30. While it is customary for children to be budged by adults, I somehow cannot bring myself to do it. This means that I am waiting 30 to sometimes 45 minutes just to get my water bin filled up. This is not going to be very conducive to my new schedule, that has me going in at 9 in the mornings Tuesday thru Friday, and not leaving until 6:30 or later Tuesday thru Thursday. I clearly will need to be planning ahead if I want to keep enjoying an everlasting supply of water. Since I also manage to use an insane amount of water, this means at LEAST once a day I have to empty my dry sink bucket so it does not overfill and spill nasty dirty soapy water all over my carpet. The last thing I need is moldy dishwater stinking up my Ger. Beyond that, there is the everlasting supply of dirt that seems to be trekked in; every time a human steps in my home, or I bring in wood. I do not have a vacuum so this means depending on how much debris sneaks in, is directly correlated with how many hours of my life a day I spend sweeping up the dirt off my rug. If I become a hermit and miraculously don't ever have to leave my humble abode, the time I spend sweeping per week could be utilized to write my own book, paint my Ger, run a marathon...you get the picture. Cooking is a whole other issue. I tend to cook on my fire when it is going because if you remember, my oven tends to like to blow fuses. This means if I don't have a fire going, which is every time I get home form an outing or a day of work, I need to build one. There are in fact days that this happens rather quickly. However, since it has started to get colder (there's snow here people), my fire seems to be rebelling. Once I hear that snap crackle popping of the wood, it's like music to my ears and I know it won't freeze to death in my sleep. To get a good cooking fire going, it takes a little longer than just lighting a fire. If I am lazy and not starving, a little fire that gives off just another warmth will work to cook the food.  However, it may also take an hour to appropriately cook the food so I don't get salmonella. Make the stove hot enough to cook quickly on and sauna like temperatures will make you a participant in naked cooking my friend. It's an ongoing dilemma for me, although given the choice, I would much rather be too hot then too cold! My friend Will's mom and aunt came and brought a thermometer for all of us PCV's. When I got my stove really going the other day, it topped out at 105. If you come visit me, don't fret about being too chilly. Likewise, don't complain about the heat. I like it. Last but not least..cleaning. Picking up the odd's and ends, doing the dishes etc. I have never been a super neat person. I sometimes call my style organized chaos, but living in the small quarters of a Ger (think a small one bedroom) having a place for EVERYTHING is a necessity. I find myself making my bed almost every morning (you'd be proud mom) and putting everything back in it's place after I use it. If I don't do this right away, I will clean the moment I get back home from whatever it is I did that day. Ger life seems to be suiting my needs for now, and I am truly in love with my Ger and warm and friendly Hasha family. As for living this lifestyle for the remainder of my life I absolutely, positively, could NOT do it. Having lived like this for the last couple of months I have gained a lot of respect for Mongolian family's that live like this permanently.

EnGliSh CluB!???

On Tuesday, I had my first club. English Club! I feel like teaching English at all, is every CYDers WORST Nightmare. We would rather do ANYTHING other than that! For me agreeing to run this club seemed to appease my HCA so I decided to plaster on a smile and have at it! My English Club consists of 8th-9th graders and 10th-11th graders. Both classes lasted an hour and a half and both classes had approximately 18 kids who attended. We started with the general reminders. Since cell phones tend to be regularly utilized while classes are in session, I made sure to inform them that I would take cell phones away during the club if they were texting and playing on them. Surprisingly, only one of the students had to get their cell phone back at the end of the club. I also made sure to inform them that this is in fact an English club therefore it would be vital for their success to be involved in the conversations, and pen and paper would not be necessary. It was interesting to see the students critical thinking skills at work. We played a game where the students had to tell a story one by one, in the middle of a circle with gestures that the rest of the group could copy. It was interesting to see how little off the beaten path the children went with their stories. I started this activity, and pretty much everyone's story ended up back at the same Ger I had introduced to the storyline at the beginning of the activity! It will be very interesting to find out how the students progress in this activity. While I feared that my activities would not last long enough for the hour and a half club, it was perfect. At the end we wrapped up with a "how did you think this went" activity and everyone had pretty positive feedback. I quite enjoyed my time with this group of kiddos, and can't wait for the next English Club.