The Olympics

Since resuming classes after Tsagaan Sar, I have been engaged in a flurry of Olympics. You see, the Academic Olympics are a BIG deal here. Think the National Spelling Bee, only on steroids. The competition is fierce, the distrust is rampant, and the glory is sublime. The Olympics span all subjects, but obviously for me, it's all English. For weeks now I've been giving practice tests (mostly grammar and listening) and trying to teach test-taking strategies, even adding extra time to my school schedule to accommodate students wanting additional help. I've also been working with a handful of students who participated in the PC International Writing Competition, but more on that later.

So on March 1 each school held their Olympics; technically it's only for 9th & 11th grades and teachers, but 8th graders can take the 9th test and 10th graders can take the 11th test. Based on those results, students knew if they should (yes, should, not could) participate in the city-wide Olympics, held at Khan-Uul school this past Sunday. The overall winners and the winner from each school (regardless if they placed 1st or 60th, if you placed first among all participants from your school, you "won") will participate in the aimag-wide Olympics on March 29th. I've heard non-winning students can pay to participate.

Let me elaborate on the Khan-Uul Olympics process: Participants (and I as the Native English Speaker representative) show up at 8:30am. They figure out what room they're in, and by 9am are expected to be in it. Well, that doesn't happen 'til about 9:15. Next, the tests. The tests are not printed. Rather, one copy of each exam is in a sealed envelope that, at 9:30, a participant from each classroom witnesses being opened in the teachers' lounge. Now the copies are made on "official" paper (the paper had the ubiquitous red stamp on it) and taken back to the classrooms for participants to start. I am finally given the listening scripts to read about about 10am. I start making the rounds to 14 (yes, 14!) classrooms to read the listening scripts. Parched, I finish around 11:30. I then summon any and all available PCVs to come assist with the grading. Yep, all the grading is done by hand. No Scantrons here! Two other PCVs show up and we begin the grading at about 1pm. One teacher from each school is asked to help grade the 9th and 11th multiple choice. We, the native speaking PCVs, will score all the writing. And due to the aforementioned distrust, we, the PCVs, grade everything on the teachers' exams. 193 exams and 3 hours later, we're finished. It's a little after 4pm. I am exhausted. My head is throbbing from reading all the essays (each essay got read and scored twice in an attempt at objectivity). The overall winners got a medal and a cash prize, something that apparently became very messy and contentious when a pair of teachers tied for second and a pair of students tied for first on the 11th grade exam. Glad I wasn't part of sorting that out!

But the fun was only beginning...

For the second time, Mongolia participated in the PC "sponsored" International Creative Writing Competition (ICWC) . It takes place in about a dozen PC countries and aims to improve writing skills, the least-taught skill. So on Friday and Sunday, the official writing sessions for the competition were held. Why two sessions? Because the Khan-Uul Olympics date got changed on us and when we realized no secondary students would be able to come to the Sunday session, J&K added a session on Friday evening. The turnout was impressive really, given all that was going on over the weekend. 48 participants across grades 7-11 and university. The students were given a choice of two prompts and one hour to write a creative essay. 6 PCVs and 4 HCNs with high-level English got together on Monday over dinner to score the essays. Every person read every essay and assigned a score based on a rubric. That's 10 readers x 48 essays = 480 reads. It took just under 4 hours. Exhausted and again with a throbbing headache, I stumbled home.

All that said, I'm actually looking forward to the aimag-wide Olympics. One of my students has a great shot at winning the whole thing (she was one of the two that tied for first on the 11th exam) and going to UB to compete at the national level. I'm just not particularly looking forward to the marathon grading that will follow. And in the next day or two J&K should have averaged out the ICWC essay scores and will announce the winner of each grade level. Those winners' essays will go up against the winners in the other aimags, and perhaps eventually against the other participating countries' winners. And again, I have a student with a real shot at winning not only for Choibalsan, but for Mongolia.

ICWC UPDATE: My 10th grader WON her grade and my 7th grader took 2nd in hers! Woohoo!

I think Bambuul hates me though, having locked her in the living room (couldn't crate her for that long) and neglected her walks and play time in favor of bed time these last two days. Not to mention the extra time at school the last 3 weeks. I can't wait 'til school break starts next week so I can catch up on sleep and puppy lovin' (er, I mean, training, yes, puppy training). But for now, I pray to the coffee gods to spontaneously refill my travel mug. Please!?

Tsagaan Sar

Whew! That was a whirlwind of a holiday week! Although I didn't have school, classes or clubs, I certainly was not resting. Tsagaan Sar is all the food of Thanksgiving, the gifts of Christmas, and the drinking of New Years. At every home you visit. The main holiday lasts three days, with visiting family on the first day, friends the second and third. All this visiting can last for two weeks though, especially for people who live in the countryside and come into the city, or those with family in far away aimags. For weeks in advance, women will make hundreds (sometimes even a thousand plus) of mutton, beef or horse buuz, a filled dumpling. They freeze and store them, often outside, then steam cook them when visitors arrive. The platters of salad and salami-like meats never go empty. Your mug of suutei-tsai (milk tea) magically refills when half-empty. And in accordance with tradition, it's three shots of vodka at each house before leaving. It's also traditional to give a gift to visitors, the "worth" of the gift according to the host's income.

What every Tsagaan Sar table looks like. The cookie stack is called a kheviin boov and it's dotted with aaruul (dried curd). It MUST be stacked in an odd number as each level represents happiness or sadness, the first level being happiness. And yes, that IS the whole back of a goat. Little hunks are cut off and given to each visitor. I passed on the goat (and the maxtai [with meat] buuz) in favor of potato, pasta or veggie salad.

Bimba took me around to visit some of my APDC English Class participants' homes on the second day (Thursday).

Everyone wears deels. Lookin' good ladies!

Super cute little girl in her deel!

Munkhzul and her daughter.

The view of one of C-towns ger districts.

At Tsetsegdelger's home.

Two random boys that I thought were too adorable NOT to take a picture of!

Visiting Zoloo's house. Nearly all the foreign volunteers were there!

Visiting Badmagarav's home.

The awesome spread I put out on the third day (Friday). I made 90 veggie buuz, mustard potato salad and a raw veggie salad. To keep with tradition, the gift bags were for my CPs, although I substituted Chilean Merlot for vodka. Unfortunately, my CP dropped my camera and it broke so no pictures. :( After my CPs left, a bunch of my sitemates came over. Their gift? Leftovers!

Bituun

Today is Bituun, or Lunar New Year's Eve. Tomorrow starts Tsagaan Sar (White Moon), the three-day lunar new year celebration as marked on the Tibetan calendar, and the unofficial start of Spring. It's arguably the most important Mongolian holiday. The city is a ghost town as people finish preparing for all the visiting, buuz eating and vodka drinking that will occur in the next three days. The markets have been a zoo, sold out of nearly everything and what's left has doubled or tripled in price. People are taking out massive loans to comply with the food and gift traditions. And there are plenty of rituals that will happen tonight in Mongolian homes. Tomorrow, the first day of Tsagaan Sar, has it's own Christmas morning-like rituals, and is reserved for visiting family. Therefore, I won't be doing any visiting until days two and three.

As it's another "warm" day here in C-town, I decided to take full advantage of my time off and take Bambuul on a long (90 minute!) walk down to the river to run free. To get to the river, we walk about 200 yards south to one of the two main roads, cross it, dash behind the Mormon Church and we're in the openness. Another 300 yards or so and we're at the river. No people = off leash = happy puppy!

Fun times at the river!


The riverbank.

Bamers on the ice.

One of the deeper holes.

Hangin' out in a hole.

When we were done at the river, we walked a bit more east (although I live to the west) to check out the progress at the housing development.

They're building Western-style multi-family homes, complete with yellow siding over the brick!

The Mormon Church through the trees.

Walkin' the dog

Saturday is the only day I don't work (by that I mean I don't have to leave my apartment). I'm in all likelihood working on something, just doing it in my jammies. So now that the weather is getting warmer (and by that I mean a straight temp in the teens ABOVE zero, windchill in the single-digits below) I can take Bambuul for longer walks and burn off some of the puppy energy she still possesses. I decided to film a panoramic on our walk out toward the river today to show just how blue the sky is (hey, Mongolia isn't called the Land of Blue Sky for nothin'!), and just how Nebraskan, er, I mean, flat it is out here on the Eastern Steppe.

Gimmie all your money! What you don't see are the two layers of pants, fleece socks, boots and gloves. This is my standard "going out" look.

Thanks for reliable electricity!

We didn't go down to the river's edge; maybe next Saturday if it's warmer and we can be out longer I'll get some shots. And I'll definitely get some shots in the summer. The background music is traditional Mongolian throat singing and a morin khuur (horse fiddle). I've come to really love it.

Spelling Bee

Back around New Year's we held a Spelling Bee for the 5th graders. Here, finally, are the pictures!

Each student got three dots. Spell the word wrong, lose a dot. It was like I was collecting their souls, one misspelling at a time...

There was actually a lot of difficulty with my pronunciations. The students are so used to hearing their teachers speak English with a Mongolian accent (and their mispronunciations) that they had a hard time with my native-speaker pronunciations.

I included this picture for the sole purpose of illustrating the New Year's decorations. The dangling tinsel renders the gym useless for two weeks.

Down to the final two!

The two finalists.

The winner! She won a certificate (of course) and school supplies, just what every 10 year old wants.

When you send me things...

...I use them! This is my 5th grade English Club.

I love this class. So eager to learn. And learning is still "cool."

We started the lesson with a crossword review of clothing vocabulary.

I forgot 5th graders are short!

Then we worked on speaking, reading, grammar and vocabulary using Brain Quest.

I had them take turns reading the cards...

...correcting pronunciations as needed.

To work on listening, I always read them a story to end the lesson. This week: Peter Rabbit.

I do the voices and the actions to help them understand.

I know they enjoy it. How? Well, those smiles are one way. But last week I told them I needed to end the lesson early to make a meeting. They were so bummed I decided to be late to my meeting and read to them anyway. :)

So thanks for the colored dry erase markers, the Brain Quest and the story books. I always appreciate school materials in care packages. And so do the kids!

Conditionals

Look at me! I'm teaching the 11th Grade Extra Lesson about Conditionals:

It's seriously exciting stuff...

Did you know you can write conditional statements a bazillion ways?

Trying to make it funny/interesting. "If it rained zebras, then..."

I'm sure I was saying something important.