Tsagaan Sar 2013

Another Tsagaan Sar (Lunar New Year) has come and gone.  Over the three days, I made 86 veggie buuz, ate a combination of 40 veggie, horse and mutton buuz, took only 10 vodka shots and wore two deels.

 The traditional greeting is "Амар байна уу?" (pronounced "Amar bain uu?") which means "Are you rested?" and you greet the eldest person of the household first out of respect.

 My veggie buuz.

 

My deel vest (previously seen at Naadam).

 My super awesome ultra warm winter deel debuts!

 PCVs at my house.

 Blaze orange deel!

 Boy in a Buryad deel.

 Loved the color of her deel.  Too bad she turned away just as I snapped the pic.

 

 There's a baby in that red bundle.

 Deel family!

 I just love the deels.

 The awesome table Z put out for us.

 

PCVs at Zoloo's house.  Her parents had just gotten back from the hudoo where they got stuck due to all the recent snow.  Glad they were able to get back so we could greet Aav (father).

 The girls on the frozen fake lake.

A busy week!

Last week was a crazy whirlwind of volleyball and seminar planning & facilitating.

Monday afternoon, all day Tuesday AND Wednesday morning was the aimag-wide teachers' volleyball tourney.  I was able to play in 11 sets, of which we won 7.  The ShKh ladies played twice more on Wednesday without me and ended up finishing 6th while the ShKh men took 3rd.  Way to go guys! 

All day Wednesday and Thursday morning the PCVs hosted an Active Learning seminar for the aimag's teachers.  It was a lot of work, but I think they got a lot out of it.  We really emphasized going beyond the Ministry-mandated textbooks to incorporate communicative methods, various activities to support multiple learning styles, immersion language learning, critical thinking and making students responsible for their own learning.  We had hour-long large group sessions as well as 45-minute small group rotating sessions, which means the participants got tons of information in a very short amount of time.  The participants seemed really excited about it so hopefully they can take it back to their classrooms and make some positive changes, as well as educate their fellow teachers (only one teacher from each school was required to come, although many schools had 2 or 3 in attendance).

 

Introducing the practical application activity: taking all the skills & strategies participants learned the day before and using a lesson from the textbook, make an Active Learning lesson plan.

 

 Each PCV monitored a small group as they lesson planned.

 

Group shot at the end!

So now I am officially on school break, although I still have some side-project work to do.  I am looking forward to catching up on a whole lot of nothing the next few days before the buuz-fest known as Tsagaan Sar hits next week.  Mmmm, buuz.  Can't wait to eat buuz until I explode!  :)

Bummer of an update...

After two emails going unresponded (is that a word!?) to, I sent a facebook message to the former PCV who had been working with (but stopped back in December) the PUC-Mongolia program at Texas, the one who first got word out to current volunteers about this program.  She confirmed my suspicions: my shelter project will not be funded. I am pretty broken up about this, but not for me, for my community. I wish those advocating for this project and making the financial decisions could have seen the project through my eyes, seen the women and children it would have saved, and treated it with the respect it deserved. And that they would have had the professional courtesy to tell me the project was a no-go.  But I am NOT deterred; already this morning I am researching, contacting and sending off the proposal to try to find funding elsewhere. It may be a very, very long shot, but I have to do something. Wish this underdog some massive luck!