Apocalypse...

...What apocalypse!?  It's been 12.21.12 for about 11 hours now and so far we're all still alive and kicking.  Although with the time zones, the apocalypse is supposed to hit at 5:11pm Mongol time, so I guess we've still got about 6 hours.  If the apocalypse does hit, it won't be raining fire, we'll instead freeze to death:

 

This was at 8am.  It definitely felt like 39 below on my walk to school this morning...BRRRR!!  :(

 And because nothing says "Happy holidays!" like celebrating on the apocalypse, here's a photo from our Foreign Language Department's holiday lunch/Secret Santa gift exchange Friday afternoon. 

Holiday Party Numero Uno

Last night we celebrated the holidays with our Access students.  It was so much fun, but very bittersweet as well.  See, the Access program is only for two years and all these kids are finished at the end of next week.  I've been teaching them for the last year and a half and to say that I've grown very fond of them is an understatement.  Because they are the highest English-language level students in the city, we are often able to digress from the text and have real conversations about anything and everything.  They are a wonderful bunch of kids and I will miss them dearly. 

 Altanshand was the MC.

 Latin Ballroom performance by School 8 (with a few ringer boys as their partners).

 Goomaral playing One Republic's "Secrets."

 Shine Khogjil skit.

 Altanzaya singing a Mongolian song.

 B. Nomin-Erdene playing the piano.

 Girls from School 6 singing "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree."

 Battuul thanking the teachers.  I cried.

 Binderya introducing the first game.

 It's EXACTLY what it looks like.

 Game two: Teachers act out an animal, student partner draws it then writes a funny sentence.  I was an elephant.

 We didn't win, but I was still very proud of my Goomaral.

 The cake!

 Group shot, including library staff.

 The students presented each of us teachers with a small gift.

 Shine Khogjil REPRESENT!

 The teachers: Nemekhee, Koty, me, Zoloo, Sarah.

With Binderya, recreating our Halloween photo. :)

Three more parties to go: APDC on Saturday, expats on Sunday, and my school on the 30th.  Happy holidays!

Breaking Radio Silence...

Another two weeks have flown by!  Let's see, what's happened...?? 

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

Thanksgiving

A little late, but after a two-week school break (one week between quarters, and another due to the local elections) and my trip to UB for Thanksgiving, I was crazy busy last week.  Turns out, doing no work means when it's time to get back to work, there's more work!  How that happens, I'll never know.  ;)

Here are a couple photos from my Thanksgiving in UB.  I flew in Thursday (Thanksgiving) evening just in time for dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant.  Friday I spent the morning shopping (all for the dog, none for me), then got my flu shot (the reason I got to fly; thanks PC!), then had dinner with M2 RPCV Joe.  The M1s (the very first PCVs in Mongolia) were all in UB; the M2s were the first to go to the hudoo and Joe was the very first to go to Choibalsan.  It was really cool to see his pictures and hear his stories.  Joe now works for the US Embassy, just starting a two-year assignment in UB.  Saturday morning I played football (we lost again, wah wah), then went to the big potluck.  No turkey this year, but still lots of good food and great to see everyone.  I was so exhausted after three days of go-go-go and massive meals that Saturday night I stayed at the hostel, watched The Santa Clause with a few other PCVs then went to sleep at about 9 (everyone else went Salsa dancing).  My flight was Sunday morning, had to be at the airport at 10:30, so there wasn't time for anything else.  It was nice to get home Sunday afternoon though, get my house cleaned, laundry done and lessons planned.  My sitemate Andrea watched Bams.  She sent email updates saying they were getting along like gangbusters; so great to hear since anytime I have to leave my baby I'm always worried about her.

Football Saturday morning

Catching up with friends at our Thanksgiving feast Saturday afternoon.

So now I'm back to the usual grind of school and side projects.  Still waiting to hear on my shelter grant.  Started planning my school's English/Christmas competition.  Got a GROSS of condoms from the local hospital for my World AIDS Day lesson.  Laughed hysterically with my 5th graders as they tried to say "hippopotamus."  Started a new English class for business professionals in the community: Jaki teaches from the book two days per week, then on Fridays I teach speaking using the topics in the book, not necessarily the book itself.  They can all read and write, and have enough of a vocabulary & understanding of grammar that they can express "to be" & likes/dislikes, so we're not really starting from scratch which is nice.  They all happen to be women (at least, that's all that came to my class) and are super energetic. I had them sing a song which turned out to be too simple for them (what a problem to have!) so we added some dance moves and they were totally into it.  Having such fun students will keep my motivation up too!

Video Competition

In order to show off PC/M to the "higher ups," we're wrapping up a little friendly competition among PCVs.  What kind of competition you ask?  Create a video showcasing the serious side of our work or one showing our silly side.  Below find links to three videos I made; The first is the final, edited version submitted to the "serious" competition.  It was limited to three minutes and is focused specifically on one project, our Access class.  Below that is the link to the longer, "director's cut," aka the version I would have liked to have submitted if I was allowed more time.  Was really sad to have to cut the parts I did.  And below that is the "silly" video I did with Zoloo.  We crack ourselves up!

Competition Submission: Focused Projects

The "Director's Cut"

Too funny!

Competitions galore!

This past week, despite it being the week before break and exams being given, my school (and apparently many others) found time to have a number of competitions.  I wasn't able to get to them all, but here are some photos from the fashion show competition and the choral competition.  And just today my CP and I started brainstorming English activities for a Christmas competition (eg between the 5th grade classes, who can draw the best Christmas scene poster; between 7th grade classes, who can sing the best Christmas carol; etc). 

Girls from 10b class

Girls from 11v class

 Winners, the girls from 11g class

Winning choral performance, 11g class (gotta love the uniforms!)

Women's Shelter Update

So remember how I said UT was presenting the three Mongolia projects, mine and two in UB, to their board this last week?  Well, I finally heard back today: The board advised them to focus solely on our project as it was the most well developed...And they agreed!  YEAY!!  Now our project will be SOLELY presented to donors, funders and sponsors in the next month.  The team at UT expects to know whether or not we'll be funded around the first of December, so keep it all crossed just a bit longer!