So glad this week is over.

January 26, 2009

My work day started out alright. I got to work and finished the surveys for my life-skills lessons. I had Moogie translate the questions this weekend, so it wasn’t a problem for Oko to type them up this morning. After we printed everything out that we’d need for our lesson, Oko and I went over everything to be sure that we were on the same page. The jijuurs (building workers) came to put together the white board that was bought specially cause I’m here. It’s a big, six foot by 3 ½ foot board. No instructions came with the frame, so it took the guys putting it together a few tries to get it right. When I went to lunch, I felt alright about everything.

The lesson, for students and social workers, was supposed to start at 2 o’ clock. This coincides with the same time that I’m to return from my lunch break, but I knew it wouldn’t be a problem if I got back to my office at the time things were to start. As I suspected, no one was there when I got back. Around 2:30, people were there and we got started. Shuree had translated everything for me, and I had an English and Mongolian version of everything. I had high hopes of what we were about to do.

Right off the bat, I was upset because the age range I’d asked for wasn’t there. I’d asked for only 10th and 11th grade students to be there, but there were several 8th and 9th grade students. This had me upset from the jump. Slowly, we got started, and I thought everything was going to be fine. Since I was the only person in the room that spoke English, I let Oko do all the speaking, and made sure that she followed my outline. It was fine for a while. And then she skipped a part. I asked her what she was doing and she said, “Oh, it’s okay. That’s not important.” Since I had no way to tell her otherwise, all I could do was think, ‘Yes, it is important; why the heck do you not think so?’ No matter what I said to her, she continued as she pleased. After that, there were several parts that she just completely skipped, thinking that they weren’t important. I can’t put into words how much this bothered me. The only thing I kept thinking was, “I have to learn Mongolian so I can do this on my own.”

Man, that put me in such a bad mood. I left work at 4:45, went to the bank, then did the grocery shopping that I’ve been needing to do. I’ve been going to a few new places lately, so that meant that I only had to go to three different stores for all the things that were on my list. That was kind of nice. Surprisingly, I even found some real tomatoes and bell peppers. They were in a freezer, frozen, but better than nothing. Beer was one of the things on my list, too. When I got home, I ate some kimchi and cooked a really nice meal involving beer in the recipe, and have done nothing but listen to music, watch TV, and try to relax, since. It’s been an alright plan to relieve some stress.

January 27, 2009

The first part of my day consisted of more editing. I thought that’s what I would do when I returned from lunch, but Densmaa called me after 30 minutes and asked me to meet her in her office. She wanted me to go to the kindergarten to do some kind of training. I thought she had set up some kind of English class for me and was dreading it, but when I got there, I found out that it was a session on how to be a good teacher. Um, okay, I know about that kind of stuff. I thought that I might give some actual input on the subject, but all I did was set up the projector and screen, tell her the first computer we had was bad, then sit and be bored as she gave a presentation. It wasn’t a very good one, either. If I were to have given a presentation like that in school, I had one instructor in particular who would’ve gone berserker. Densmaa had a PowerPoint prepared – either by herself or someone else, I don’t know. First, there were spelling and grammatical mistakes. It was in Mongolian, and I could even see that. Next, she had each slide just full of info; and she read every bit of it. To risk sounding like a snob, let me tell you: that’s not how you’re supposed to use PowerPoint. You’re supposed to put your key points up there, then talk about each of them. If all you’re going to do is read to people, you’d might as well just print it out and give it to them. Let them read it by their self, instead of wasting their and your time. Oh well. I’m a Youth Volunteer, not a Business Volunteer, and I don’t know how to explain all that to her anyway, without having a whole month long class about it. You know what; maybe I’ll do it anyway. Afterwards, some people from UB came to check on all the work that our district did last year. She wanted me to be there for that, too. After about 10 minutes, she told me to help Oko and Javkhaa do whatever it was that they were doing. I stood watching for a few minutes, and then they told me to go to my office and wait. Fine with me. Later, I went to a summary meeting. The coolest thing was a model of what they want our district to look like in however many years in the future. They have big dreams if they think it’s going to look like that. It would be really cool, though. We’ll see in a couple years how much they’ve progressed toward that vision.

Ambaa and Khishge came for tutoring and as soon as they left, I finished making the kidney beans I’d started earlier in the day. I added tomato and country ham, and all kinds of spices, as I’m wont to do. I made some good cornbread to go with it, too. While enjoying a bowl, there was a knock on my door. Of course. No matter where you go in the world, someone, somehow, is determined to disturb your evening meal. When I opened the door, I saw that it was one of the cops that has told me several times he wants to learn English. I thought he was there for me to teach him. I quickly saw that he was in his uniform and was on duty, so that couldn’t be the reason. When he came in, he started asking about drinking. After a minute, I realised that he was asking if I’d been drinking with kids. What! What!! What!!! I assured him I hadn’t, then went on to explain that there was an underage girl at my place, but she was there with someone else at the same time, we were only studying English, and the two of them left together. He had me nervous for a minute. I don’t know why he was asking about that, but he dropped it as soon as I told him all that. During most of this, I continued eating. He eventually asked me what I was eating, and when I told him it was American food, he asked if he could try some. He had a bite and liked them, so he asked for a small bowl with some cornbread. He said he liked them. After that, we exchanged phone numbers and he said he’d “protect” me, if I needed. That’s nice to know.

I finished all the editing marks in the language book this evening. Now I just have to make the changes on my computer. That shouldn’t take too much longer.

January 28, 2009

My work day consisted of working on the edits to the language book. I finished the last change right at 5:30 and emailed it to the PC Language Coordinator. I’m really proud to have done this. It was fun, and I feel like I’ve made a little bit of a contribution to the next group of PCVs. There were mistakes on almost every page. Sheesh! It definitely makes up for the crappy day I had on Monday. I really could have finished it sooner, but there were a few evenings at home that I didn’t feel like doing anything but zoning out. It took me another hour to actually get the file attached to an email and send it. It was about 15.7MB. Hm, now I’m going to have to find something else to occupy me. Good thing I have plenty of books to read.

This evening, I came home and there was some random guy outside my building. I said hi to him and kept walking. He started saying something to me and followed me up the steps. As usual when I don’t know what’s going on, I became suspicious of what he was doing. He asked me if I had power, so I stopped at the electrical box outside my door, hoping that would appease him. “No,” he said. “Inside.” I opened the door warily, keeping one eye on him, then reached in and turned on the light, showing him that I did have power. “No,” he said. “In the kitchen.” Dang it. I’d never seen this guy before, and I had no idea what he wanted. He followed me into the kitchen and started talking 160.9 km/h (100 m/h), and I finally figured out that my boss had sent him over. I told her a couple of weeks ago that the outlet was bad and sometimes it would go crazy. The last time I was in UB, it had gone off and my fridge thawed out, getting water all over my floor. He was here to check it. He grabbed his only tool – a screwdriver – unscrewed the cover, and started poking it into the holes. “Be careful!” I told him. He just looked at me. Ok, whatever. If you get the end of your fingers exploded from messing with 200V of electricity, don’t bleed on my floor. After a few minutes of fooling around, he came up with the same deduction that I didn’t have the language to tell him: the outlet is bad and needs to be replaced. He’ll be back tomorrow to do that. So he says.

When he left, I took the bell peppers and tomatoes and sliced them up. They had thoroughly thawed out and were leaking juice out of their bag and into my fridge. I mixed them with some meat and fajita seasoning, warmed up the can of black beans that Myra had sent, made some tortillas, and had some of the best fajitas that I’ve had so far. I just can’t get enough of those things. I love them. Maybe I should start up my own guanz (diner) and cater to the Mongolians on the weekends. Too bad I can’t make a profit. I’m quite sure that they would like them. I’ve had two different people so far tell me that they were really good. Well, they really didn’t have to tell me: I already knew.

January 30, 2009

After getting to work this morning, I went to my boss’s office. I don’t know what she and Oko were doing, but they seemed to be hard at it. I asked if there was anything that I could do to help and she said yes, giggled, and then just looked at me. Um, okay, anything in particular? After asking a few more times, just to make sure she understood what I was asking, she told me to go to the Culture Centre and make sure that everything was ready for this afternoon’s celebration. Today is Teachers’ Day and all across Mongolia, places are having celebrations for their teachers to tell them how much they are appreciated. When I got to the Culture Centre, it was teeming with kids getting ready to practice. Of course, as soon as they saw me, I was swarmed. They were cool kids. As always, they made a circle around me and asked me all kinds of questions. “Are you married?” “Do you have a girlfriend?” “Do you live by yourself?” “Do you know my sister?” “Do you know this person?” “Do you know this person?” “Do you know this person?” ad nauseam. A couple of the kids decided to practice their English with me. Basically, that consisted of them telling me their name and asking mine; telling me how old they are and asking me my age; and maybe one other obscure question. One of the guys had previously asked me if I knew any Russian. People always want to know if I know Russian. Most of the older people here know it and think that since I don’t know Mongolian that well, and I kind of look Russian, maybe they can communicate with me in Russian. There have been several times, after I’ve asserted that I do not know Russian, they’ll start talking to me in Russian anyway. It’s like they thought I was joking or something. Anyway, the one boy started saying something that I couldn’t understand at all. It was in a perfect Russian accent, so I asked him if he was speaking to me in Russian. He said, “No, English.” Huh?! After I got him to repeat it a few times, I was able to figure out what he was saying. He said some memorised phrase about how he is in the sixth grade and is learning English. I guess I can see how Mongolians don’t understand me when I try to talk to them sometimes.

I went to the thing for Teachers’ Day this afternoon. It was quite boring. At first, a bunch of different people got up and gave presentations similar to the one I wrote about earlier in the week. All but two literally stood at the podium with their head down and read everything, word for word. After every person was finished, the MC asked if anyone in the crowd had questions. Out of the all the presentations, only one person was brave enough to stand up and ask a question, one time. As shy as most Mongolians are, I was actually surprised that he asked a question at all. But he’s from a different part of Mongolia, where (they say) people are different. Maybe that’s what he had going for him.

It’s the end of another week for me. This one has seemed particularly long for me. I’m glad it’s over. I hope you have had a better week than me. Talk to you later. See ya.