4/16/2014
Yesterday
I was supposed to have taught my first English lesson at the Drug Research
Center, but it was canceled due to the fact that they were getting ready for
another celebration “Nurses’ Day”. I feel like they have a day for every
profession and each one of them is a two day long celebration that takes about
a week of preparing. I don’t remember a week, where there hasn’t been some kind
of party. But honestly, I was relieved not to have had it yesterday. Tuesday’s
are my long days already. We have morning meetings at the HD on Tuesdays, so I
have to be at work from 8:30am- 530pm. Which I know is basically a normal day,
but when you have to be constantly on your game, thinking in another language,
trying to get your points across in another language, trying to plan projects,
that long is exhausting. I definitely prefer my rest of the week schedule of
930am-5pm. I get up every morning at 6am to go for a run and workout in the
park. The days are just going to get busier now that I am working on so many
projects at one. Tuesday and Thursdays will not be 830am-530pm, then home for
dinner quickly, then English lessons from 7-830pm for the community health
workers. Monday and Wednesdays will now be 930am-630pm (work then meetings with schools, world
vision and community members about the summer camp I will be helping put on)
then after that volleyball from 7-10pm. It seems as though Fridays will be the
only day with normal hours. I don’t mind though, I am much happier when I am
busy and the days fly by when I am doing so much. Once it’s July, work will
slow down dramatically, due to the fact that everyone takes their annual leave
then and goes to the countryside for most of the summer.
This
whole week they have been having dance exercise classes, like Zumba, at the
Health Department with doctors from soums. It has been Pitbull songs from
9am-5pm every day and them dancing, which is so fun to watch. They all look
like they are having a lot of fun and I am excited to start my own Zumba
classes next month with the HD , Hospital and School staff. They love to dance
here, so I thought it would be a fun way to exercise together, many of the
women had voiced that they want to lose weight, so I think this will be great
for them.
Today,
I had two meetings. The first was with the school teacher I work with
regularly. I am working with her and another teacher from another local school
on a summer camp that we want to do in August. So we met to come up with a
schedule of what we need to accomplish in order to make this happen. We don’t
have much time, so I am hoping we are able to get funding and put it on, I tried
working with her for the past couple months on it, but there has been so many
English Competitions in the schools, that she has had no time to meet. Some of
the staff at the HD wants to help to, so tomorrow evening after work we are going
to have a big meeting and hopefully get the proposal done and sent out to
different organizations to get grants to pay for materials, travel expenses,
food and salaries. Friday, we have a meeting with the governor to ask for
funding from him and then Monday we will meet with the education center to see
how they can help us. This year, since the budget was cut, Peace Corps is not
giving out any grants, which is how in the past volunteers have gotten funding
for their projects, which is disappointing that that is no longer an option. I
have found a couple of organizations that do International work, hopefully one
of them will fund our project. It is hard to find funding, most international
grants are just for clean water projects or countries in Africa. Also, many are
from religious organizations, which we are not allowed to work with. I have two
options, I really hope one pans out.
My
second meeting was with my friend Gerlee. We met up for coffee and she helped
me translate the answers to a questionnaire that I had handed out in the
community. She had never had a cappuccino before, so I bought her one from the
Australian bakery in town. As of today, I will be going to the countryside to
her family’s ger with her Friday afternoon! I hope we go!
Once
I was done with the meetings, I went back to work to work on my proposal for my
Oral Hygiene Project. The health department wants me to come up with a training
and curriculum materials that will be given out to all soum teachers in the
province. Which is a lot of teachers, so I have to right for funding for
pamphlets, books, trainer salaries, dentist salary, toothbrushes, etc. I hope
to have that done by mid next week. I just found some great research papers
that a dental group from Finland did a couple years ago about Mongolian Dental
Health. It has some great information that is still relevant today and is in
English. I also, got a report from an American Dental Hygienist that came to
Mongolia for research about dental hygiene. The interesting thing about dental
hygiene in Mongolia, is that it is a fairly recent idea. On January 1, 2000,
the first and only Dental School was opened in the country in UB. So far over
900 dentists have graduated, but 79% of them live and work in UB. This leaves a
very small amount of dentists in the other provinces. Here in Arkhangai, we
have one dentist for the 90,000 people in the province. This is not adequate
and the dentist does no community prevention work, only individual work once a
person has a dental problem. I am hoping by using the book “Where There is No
Dentist”, we can train some teachers/community members as pseudo-dental
hygienists who can teach the children oral hygiene and will be able to some
simple dental cleaning procedures.
I understand how it is impossible for the dentist to go around the province, so
that is why it is so important to train other individuals in each soum so that
they can reach their community.
4/21/14
I
hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! Saturday morning, Jen came over and we
watched movies and painted our nails. Will then came over and we went to the
Australian family’s house (missionaries who own Fairfield’s guesthouse) for
dessert and coffee. They had made hot cross buns and chocolate mousse. Also, we
had Lassies (Indian smoothie). It is always so nice going to their house and
hanging out with them. We chatted for hours and listened to music with them and
their kids. They always have the most interesting stories about Mongolia. They
have lived in Tsetserleg for years. Around 11pm they drove us home and Jen and
I decided to decorate Easter eggs. So we stayed up decorated eggs and then hid
them on each other and had our own mini Easter egg hunt in my apartment. Haha
On Sunday, I just relaxed and did some laundry. I was able to watch Pope
Francis’s mass on the internet, with English translations, which was great. His
homily was so simple but was such a great message.
Today,
I finished the proposal for the summer camp and I am just waiting now to visit
the government officials with the two teachers who are going to be running the
camp and waiting to hear back from my contacts at the US Embassy about the
grants they give out. Hopefully, we will have a meeting with the government
this week! We really need to get moving on this, especially since they want it
to be in July.
I was told today, that I will be
conducting an hour long health training with Ariuk for 4th and 6th
grade students on Thursday. I got to pick the topics, so I will be doing a 20
minute session on oral hygiene, 20 minutes of what I am calling exercise
training, but really I am just going to play musical chairs and a couple other
games with them and talk about the importance of exercise and then a 20 minute
session on hand washing. The students will be from all over Arkhangai Province.
They are all visiting for the Health Olympics, another competition the schools
put on that is a written test about Health subjects. It is a two hour test and
after that test they have to go to an hour of health training, hence why my 2nd
session is just going to be playing games. I know that they are not going to
want to sit for an hour and learn more after they just sat and took a test for
two hours. The trainings will be held at one of the local schools and they told
me to expect over 50 children in my sessions. It should be fun! So I will
finalize my power points and activities tomorrow.
I had a meeting with the Health
Department director this morning. She told me to start working with Ariuk to
come up with a schedule for next week to conduct my Stress Management and
Occupational Psychology seminar. She wants the doctors from the family clinics,
hospitals and Health Department to receive their own trainings. So we must call
the places and set up a schedule with each one of them tomorrow. She also said
to start working with the staff to come up with a training schedule and
materials for my week long oral hygiene training for teachers in the soums. I
need to make pamphlets and guides that they can bring back to their schools to
use and they must be trained on dental hygiene procedures, diseases and
prevention for a week and be able to prove that they are knowledgeable and
competition to teach it to the other teachers in the school who will have to
teach it to their students in the fall.
4/23/14
On
Tuesday morning, I had my English lessons with the Health Department doctors as
usual. This week I added onto the medical vocabulary I taught them last week.
So this week I taught symptoms and names of different types of injuries. Last
week, I had taught body parts, names of different types of doctors and how to
ask for help when sick/injured. First, I gave them envelopes full of review
words, pictures and statements that they have learned in the past, to make sure
they were retaining the vocab, which for the most part they have been! It is
very exciting to see! I then gave them pictures of people that I had cut out
from magazines (thanks to the Brackett House!) and had them label the body
parts we learned the previous week. We went over it as a group and then I began
to teach them symptoms, illnesses and injuries. Nasal Congestion and bleeding
heavily were the hardest for them to say and remember. After we had gone over
the pronunciation a number of times I then taught them how to report the
symptoms. So we practiced a dialogue between a patient and a doctor, where the
doctor asks what their complaints are and what happened. The doctor would then
report it to another doctor, practicing 2nd person conjugations for
the verbs. Once they had practiced it a few times. I showed pictures of
different symptoms and injuries and they had to report to the rest of the group
what was wrong with their patient. It was pretty hard for them to do, so we
will practice it again in the next lesson. At the end of the lesson, we played
medical word BINGO. They love BINGO. I always give out snickers bars to the
winners of each round. After lesson, I did some errands around town on my lunch
break and then worked on translating some medical reports. Towards the end of
the day, Ariuk and I went to the post office to use the phone. It is the only
phone in town that makes international calls, but of course it was not working
that day. We are still trying to contact distributors for the brain surgery
sealant. So after not being able to call, I messaged my parents and asked if
they could call the US distributor we are trying to buy from and because they
are just amazing, they did it as soon as they saw my message. Unfortunately,
the product cannot be shipped to Mongolia from the US because it is temperature
sensitive and the long shipping time would ruin it. But they did get me an
email to someone who may be able to help in Asia. I emailed the woman, but have
yet to hear back.
I then went to school #2 to chat
with the English teacher there to give her the proposal for the summer camp and
to talk about what our next steps need to be. 10 minutes after being there we
went to the Governor’s Office to set up a meeting with him for next week to ask
for funding and then we went to the Education Department to speak with the
Foreign Language/English Methodologist (FLM) about the camp and about the
National English Olympics Competition that the student, Batkhisig, I am tutoring will go to in two weeks. The FLM
said that she thinks the camp is a great idea and wants to help us get funding
and would like to go to the meeting with the governor. She then said that the
best way for me to help the girl I am tutoring is to hang out with her a lot
over the next week, so that she can practice her listening and speaking skills,
since those two weigh heavily on the national test. The province test she won,
was all grammar and reading competition, she only got one question wrong, so
obviously she is pretty strong with that, so what she needs to practice is her listening skills. So we decided that she
would follow me around for the next week, helping me at work and basically just
being my shadow/assistant. She is valvictorian of her class, so her school
director said it was fine if she spent her time with me instead of attending
her classes. They take this English Competition very seriously! So it should be
fun having someone to hang out with all day who can also help me translate.
Tuesday
night, I had dinner with my friend Gerlee. We went to one of the Mongolian restaurants.
I had a dish which was basically a stir fry with two fried eggs on top. We
talked about so many interesting topics, everything from American celebrities
to water pollution and shortages in Mongolia. I learned so much about the water
shortages and extreme pollution. I had a fantastic time with her and she ended
up paying for my meal even though I kept telling her it was not necessary. We
then went back to my apartment, where I gave her a ton of music. She likes to
practice English by singing along to songs. Luckily, we have the same taste in
music. She is also a huge fan of the Biebs, One Direction and Beyonce. Haha.
Her dream is to go to university in the US, so I told her I would start helping
her study for the TOFL exam. She will graduate from her university here next
year, so I told her we have plenty of time to study and work on finding ways
she can go to school in America.
Today,
the student I am tutoring met me at my work and stayed until 6pm. I helped her
with English Idioms and just talked with her all day. We went out for lunch and
then she helped me translate one of my presentations. We ended the day by
watching adorable youtube videos of proposals. It is so funny that these girls
Batkhishig and Gerlee both enjoy the same things that I do although they are in
a country that is on the opposite side of the world and so different from the
US. Batkhishig’s dad is the general surgeon in the hospital, so she is going to
introduce me to him and see how I can help and her mother is a Kindergarten
teacher, so I will also meet her and set up a time that I can volunteer there
as well.
I
find it slightly funny that my two closest friends and the two people I have
the most in common with, other than my counterpart, are 17 and 20 year old
girls. I am only 23 years old, but almost everyone my age here, are married
with children, so they have totally different interests and priorities than I
do now. So the people I am most similar to in Mongolia, are the girls/guys in
the age bracket of 17-21,after that they are parents. But I never feel as
though I am hanging out with girls that are years younger than me, young people
here are so much more mature than people of the same age in America. These two girls
are not running around, partying and getting in trouble, they are studying
every night and planning for their futures. In a lot of ways, I am in the same
place in life as they are. These two years are my years to really figure out
what I want my future to be like and plan for it, which is exactly what they are
doing too.
4/24/2014
Last
night, I did some online shopping at GAP and Urban, it felt so great! I cannot
wait to get my new dresses, bathing suit and pairs of shoes in the mail! In the
past year, I have only bought one dress and one pair of boots in Mongolia. Back
in America, I shopped constantly, and by constantly I mean I was buying new
outfits at least twice a week. I had so much clothes, shoes and accessories,
yet I never appreciated it. Being here and wearing the same clothes over and
over I realized, that I really do not need a new outfit to ear out every
weekend, granted I do not have anywhere to go out here, but still, I think that
when I go back to the States, I am going to shop a lot less once I get over my
initial shopping crazed first couple of months. I know the minute I get back
home, I will go on a shopping spree and since I gave away all of my clothes
before coming, I really do have to buy a new wardrobe, but after that I will
not be buying clothes just for the sake of buying clothes. I can’t tell you how
many times I would buy a new article of clothing, justifying it with statements
like “of course I need this silver shirt with octopuses and anchors on it, I
may be invited to a space-fish themed party in the near future” or in December
“yes, I need to buy these three swimsuits, I plan on visiting the beaches a lot
in 6 months”. Now I think I have a much better grasp on reality and look
forward to being able to more self-sufficient when I get back. I have started
using a budget and saving money each month, for the trips I want to take around
Mongolia this summer. I know my parents having been looking forward to that day
for years now. haha
Today
was the Health Olympics Competition. 4th, 6th, 8th,
and 10th grade students competed by taking an exam that asked
various questions about healthy foods, exercise, smoking and alcohol. The test
was 40 minutes long and then we did a short health lesson afterwards with them.
I could tell that they were drained after the test, and during the first health
lesson given by the HD dietician, I knew that it would be of no use to do
another lesson with them. They were tired and stressed, so my counterpart and I
nixed the two lessons we had and decided to just play a game with them. We
decided to play Taboo with them. They got into 5 teams of 15 children and we
gave them a list of Health/Medical Words, which the speaker had to describe
without using the word on the lists and get their teammates to guess the
correct word. They each had a list of 8 words and instead of giving them a time
limit, we just timed how long it took each team to complete the list of words.
They seemed to have a lot of fun and was great review for the different health
terms they had studied for the exam. You have to be able to tell whether or not
the kids are going to be perceptive to training or if it is going to just be a
waste of time and Ariuk has really learned that over the past year. He really
understands how ineffective it is to do a long training to children who are not
even 10 years old and he even interrupted and put an early stop to the other doctor’s
nutrition presentation because he could tell they were miserable. I told him
next year, we should do the lesson the day before the competition when the
children arrive from the soums, as a way to help them study for the exam,
instead of trying to teach them after they take the stressful standardized
test. He completely agreed and said he would suggest it to the HD director and
education department. I had brought toothbrushes, small boxes of soap and
bouncy balls to be used as prizes to give out during the hand washing and tooth
brushing lessons, but since we didn’t use them, I just let the winning team
members pick what item they wanted out of the bag. All the boys of course
picked the balls and the girls either picked the soap or toothbrush, not one
single girl picked a bouncy ball. Batkhsishig (the student I am tutoring) was
there helping us with Taboo. After the competition, I went back to work to find
out that I will be competing with other doctors (because I am a doctor) in an
“arts” competition. Each team competing has to perform a dance, song, musical
instrument performance, skit and something else that I didn’t understand, but
luckily don’t have to compete in because I can’t speak Mongolian well enough to
do it. I was assigned to sing a duet with Ariuk. He has a great voice and after
singing at the New Year Party, they think that I do to. Haha. So we need to
pick out a song to sing together, hopefully an English one, because Mongolian
songs are super hard to sing and the competition is next week, which does not
give me a lot of time to memorize and learn a Mongolian song. I will then be
playing a child in the skit, because that way I only have to memorize short
statements in Mongolian and I will be a part of the dance that they have hired
a dancer from UB to choreograph. The HD is determined to win. We start the
dance tomorrow.
Tomorrow,
I have a meeting with World Vision to set up a schedule for the English Lessons
they want their staff to be a part of and then I will go to School #2 to help
teach the Concourse Class (English class that 11th grade students
have to take to get into certain universities). 11th grade is the
last year of school here, there is no 12th grade. After the class,
the school social worker asked to meet me, she wants me to help her plan some
trainings for the teachers regarding mental health and how to make the school a
child friendly learning environment. The education department’s latest campaign
is “Creating A Child Friendly Environment in Schools” regarding the social
environment of schools. So she needs help coming up with trainings to teach the
teachers about self-esteem, promoting sense of achievement and self-worth,
getting rid of corporate punishment (teachers here smack students, as wells as
each other in classes in front of the other students), promoting active
participation in classes and addressing students with special needs. She had
seen the sign and pamphlets I had helped make with the health Department
regarding this subject and wants to work with me, so I am really looking forward to the meeting
and working with her. On Saturday, I will be hosting an Easter Party at School
#2 for the 7th grade students. We will dye eggs, have a spoon/egg
relay race and egg rolling race outside.
Next
Monday-Wednesday, dentist from Japan are coming to do dental trainings and
cleanings with the school children and I get to help them. My director spoke
with their organization, which is basically Dentists Without Borders and told
them how my main project for the coming year is oral hygiene in school children
and they said that they would love the extra help and to meet with me to
discuss my ideas and how they may be able to assist my project.
One
last thing, what happened to Spring? I woke up to 4 inches of the snow on the
ground and it has been snowing non-stop all day/all night. Come back sunshine
and 60 degree weather!
