Hey Friends and Family!
I finally have sometime to spare to write about my daily life in my town. Since things have become the norm for me here, I forget that people back home might not know what/how a Mongolian School is run. Also, people always want to know what is the food like and what am I eating. Then there is the question of what the heck are you doing in Mongolia aside from working?
Well lets start with the school! The students stay in their homeroom class while the subject teachers move from class to class. The students stand up when a teacher enters and greet the teacher ( military style) saying "Good Morning/Hello Teacher. How. Are. You?" It was quite strange for me at first and sometimes still is. After the teacher says they can sit down, the lesson starts. Another interesting thing I have noticed is that Mongolian students have a very intense relationship with their notebooks. Their notebooks reflect who they are as a person so if they have a messy notebook or bad marks, people/their teachers will think poorly of them. So when I ask the students to draw a picture or graph they pull out their rulers and make everything so precise! They also dislike ripping out pages from their notebooks as it makes their notebooks look ugly after. The students wear black and white uniforms and the girls wear the biggest bows in their hair! Its quite cute. My school is pretty well stocked and most of the students have books. However it is not uncommon for many students to forget their books thus having 3-4 students share one book.
The schedule: There are 12 periods in a day, the first 6 are the morning classes and the last 6 are the evening going from 8:00am-5:30pm. But students don't go to school for the entire day; they either have the 6 classes in the morning and have the afternoon free or visa versa. However this means my day might start at 9:00am and end at 5:30pm with random breaks in between. During my down time I write lesson plans with the Mongolian English teachers, make materials, teach extra classes like the English Club and I am also teaching English to bank workers and to the teachers at my school. Sometimes it feels as though English rules my life!!! I hope this will change once I find a secondary project.
What do I do when I am not working you ask? Well...not much. I usually do some type of house work, wash clothes, or walk around to all the dellgores. (dellgore=shops). Sometimes my site mate and I will cook dinner together and watch a movie or some TV series. My wonderful mother has sent me my knitting and that keeps me busy for sometime.
Cooking keeps me busy as well. Although I am not a bad cook, I am sadly not great. The foods available are ok, but I usually dont know what to do with them! For example, I saw eggplant in one of the dellgores, got really excited and then realized I had no idea what to do with it. I also dont have a fridge so that makes keeping certain foods a challenge. And I really miss having good cheese!
Usually I make spaghetti (Mongolians say spaghetti) , rice, and alot of meat/carrot gravy (its easy and filling!) I recently found tofu (yay), soy sauce and kimchi which have changed my eating world for the time being. Also my sitemate and I have perfected the art of making fettuccine :)
Well thats it for now!
Miss everyone so much!
Bayishta! (bye in Mongolian)
ellie
