In some sad news, I learned my friend Brad passed away. He was so much fun to be around, a genuinely great guy. You can read his obit here.
Last week my sitemate Sarah was at training in UB so I had Uneg at my place. The dogs LOVE each other, get along great, and bonus: tire each other out playing. Uneg is around 6 months old, so there were still lots of accidents on my floor and middle-of-the-night potty trips outside. It served as a good reminder of all the work involved with puppies when I think I should save another one!
More of the same really with work...but with LOTS of Christmas/New Year's prep. My CPs wanted to have a Christmas competition AND a (foreign language department) Secret Santa, so each day for the last week and continuing through this week, I've been leaving (and receiving!) a 500-1000 tug (~ $.50 - $1) gift in my person's desk. For the competition part, I've been teaching:
5th Grade: Holiday vocabulary for a listen-and-circle-the-picture competition
7th Grade: Jingle Bells for a singing competition
8th Grade: We Wish You A Merry Christmas for a singing competition and provided them a poem for a cursive writing competition
9th Grade: Holly Jolly Christmas for a singing competition and provided them a poem for a cursive writing competition
10th Grade: Poster contest
11th Grade: Poster contest
I'm actually really enjoying teaching the vocab and singing the songs, but I gotta admit, providing the poems killed me a little inside. Because my CPs wanted them to be ~100 words, I couldn't do any of the REAL Christmas poems (Night Before Christmas) or stories (Grinch, Frosty, etc) so I had to find forced, obvious vocab, and easily understandable poems online. So. Very. Bad. But it's okay, the kids are learning about (secular) Christmas and English at the same time, so win-win. I'll do the judging next Monday, the 24th. And I'll be sure to take some pictures.
We're also doing the expat holiday party on Dec 23. Everyone will come to my apartment with a dish to share and a Secret Santa gift. Since there wasn't a suckling pig at the supermarket this year, we decided to tag-team the meats and have a variety (that each meat-eater will then pitch in some tugs for a share of). I'm making baked fish (imported whitefish filets from New Zealand!), Koty is making a roast (horse or beef TBD), and Merrie is making baked chicken (perhaps bacon-wrapped, perhaps stuffed?). I'm also making wassail with brandy. There will probably be eggnog and mulled wine too. Love it! So very grateful to celebrate the holidays with my sitemates, my "PC family."
So, here's my "Happy Holidays!" wish to you and yours. If I've learned anything in the last week it's that we're never too busy to take the time to tell the ones we love just how much they mean to us.
With love from Mongolia, Krista & Bambuul
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