9/15/13
This
morning, I hung out at Will's apartment, with him and Andrew (a PCV from a neighboring town). I
brought over Gigi, which I will never be doing again, because I will
have no skin left on my arms after walking the ten minute walk to his
place with her in my arms. I wrapped her in a blanket and she still
managed to claw my arms. But she enjoyed the change in scenery. Will
taught me how to make homemade tortillas, which are super easy to
make. Who knew. So far I have learned how to make french toast,
fried rice and tortillas. I hope to be a good cook by the time I get
out of the PC, so my future family doesn't have to live on omelets
and vegetable stir fry (currently the only things I can make
successfully). We then walked around town and went to the market,
where I found chocolate arraul. Arraul is dried yogurt curd, it is an
acquired taste, which I have to come to enjoy, and with cocoa added,
it is even better. I bought a big bag of it, since it really never
goes bad (it is already fermented and sour). It is a great snack. I
ran to the bank as soon as I saw it, so I could buy a big bag of it.
The market lady laughed when I asked her if it was really chocolate
arraul and that I would be right back to buy some.
9/16/13
Sunday
evening, we went to the Australian families house for dinner and
dessert. The family runs a guesthouse and cafe in town. They have
been in Tsetserleg for a little over three years as Christian
missionaries. They are wonderful people! They have 4 children, who
are hysterical and so interesting to talk to! They go to school at
Mongolian Schools for half the day and then the second half, their
mom home schools them, to make sure they are keeping up with
Australian standards. The eldest boy is planning on going to
university in Australia next year, so he has been only home schooled
for the past year to make sure he meets the requirements of the
colleges he is applying to. We had homemade pizza for dinner and
apple crisp and custard for dessert! So delicious. We then talked
about skiing and sledding, both of which are possible here! I can not
wait for the snow! I absolutely love the family and can not wait to
get to know them better over these next two years. They plan on
living here for another 5 years I think. Every 9 months they go back
to Australia for three months so see family and friends. Their
restaurant and guesthouse is a favorite of tourists, it is always
full and they employ local Mongolians to run them, which is great.
They also rent out mountain bikes and camping gear, which we are
renting this weekend! There are great mountain bike trails and a
plethora of places to camp. I can not wait.
9/17/13
The past couple
days have been so busy! This past weekend, Andrew, a PCV who lives a
couple hours away from Tsetserleg came to visit. We went out to the
dance club on Saturday night. The Mongolians love when we go there.
Everyone wants to talk to us and dance. We met some pretty good
English speakers who work as computer engineers in town and the
club's manager who speaks awesome English. Jen and I have to set up a
meeting with him to see if we can rent out the club for our Halloween
Party we are planning for the high school students of the town. He
owns a hotel here too and worked with one of the previous volunteers
here on planning events for the town at his nightclub. Right now Jen
and I are on the Halloween Party committee for the Special Olympics. We had to come up with
the theme and decoration ideas. We came up with two great ideas and
the rest of the committee is going to vote on which one they want on
Friday.
Our
two themes are, Hallowscream Masquerade Ball or Zombie Apocalypse.
These were our ideas for the two themes:
1)
THE
HALLOWSCREAM MASQUERADE BALL
BROOM
PARKING: Which could be a coat check that we could potentially charge
money for.
CUTE
LITTLE SPOOKS: We could have pictures of the Down SYndrome of
Mongolia events and perhaps pictures of the children if that is
allowed. This could be their promotion area within the party.
CAUGHT
IN A WEB OF FRIENDS: This would be the backdrop for pictures. We
could use toilet paper as a spiders web. Cut outs of the moon, glow
in the dark starts (Brittany has) and we could do cutouts of black
cats, and spiders. We could also utilize a prop table where we could
have broomsticks, hats, masks, another other tidbits that people may
have lying around. We could also potentially charge for printouts of
pictures.
MONSTER
MASKS: We could have a table where people could create their own
masks out of paper plates and string. Markers, scraps of paper,
shiny paper...glue...Pretty much anything we have or can find CHEAP
which is the name of the game.
We
were also thinking that if there was a way to get sponsorship from
companies around the area...even having them invest 5000 or 10000 t,
We would be able to easily get the materials we need and we could
make signs with their names to promote their company around the
room...
We
can also decorate with recycled jars and cans. We can place candles
in them...do halloween cutouts with the cans that go over the jars
for decorations. We can hand black and orange balloons, and decorate
doors with cutouts of monsters like frankenstein witches, mummies.
2)
Name: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
ARM
CHECK: Coat Check, same idea
WALKING
DEAD: We could make a section with this heading for pictures. The
backdrop could be fake trees, the prop table, chains, torn clothing
with "blood" stains, if allowed, hammers, shovels, things
zombies would carry. Gravestones. Also, we could have paper machee
heads.
DEAD
YOURSELF: We could have a ZOMBIE face-painting and hair-styling area.
CUTE
LITTLE SPOOKS: Same idea as we described in the other email we wrote!
DECORATIONS:
I have wood that we could make gravestones with. We could hang pants
upside down stuffed with newspapers. We could also hang gloves.
Pretty much any article of clothing that looks like it's been cut off
from the body. We can also ask some kiddos here to show us how to
make paper machee heads:-)
On
Friday they will vote between the two. Not only are we planning this
party, we are also planning parties for K-4 grades. 5-8 grades and
high school students. For these parties, the two younger groups will
have parties at the school, where we will have games, music and a
costume parade, the high school students will have a Halloween Dance
at the Nightclub. Jen and I have been meeting with teachers and
community members to plan the parties. We have so many ideas and
everyone seems very enthusiastic about the parties!
Another
project we have been working on, is starting up an English Club in
School 1, where we would teach English, help with homework and watch
American movies. One of the English teacher's at the school expressed
the need for beginner English books and to start an English library
at the school. So we are going to look for companies and grants to
get books sent to the school for the students to use. Currently, the
only books they have in the school, are the books teachers buy with
their own money and lend out to the students to practice with. I also
set up a pen pal program with a teacher in Philadelphia at the
Science Leadership Academy through the Coverdall World Wise School
Correspondence program, so we are going to incorporate this into on
English Club. Also, I plan on doing a similar program with Corinth
Elementary School. The Mongolian students and teachers are really
excited to speak with American students! We are going to start our
English Club in October.
After
meeting with the school doctor, social worker and Dorm teacher at a
local school, I have seen the need for Health Classes in schools and
in the dorms. So I am going to come up with a health curriculum for
the schools. Currently, there are no health classes going on in
school and with all the young teenage pregnancies in Mongolia, I
think that it is very important to have Sex Education in the schools,
as well as nutrition, body image, fitness ad hygiene classes. Today,
I went to the World Visions Headquarters in Tsetserleg and spoke with
the Health Education Training Manager and she said that she would
love to work with me. She wants to come up with ideas and trainings
for the schools and community, so she will be a great help when I
start planning my trainings for the schools! I also me with the
Director of their Child Sponsorship Program. She asked if I would
help her translate the letters from the Mongolian children to their
sponsor families. I ended up helping her with four of them today. The
sponsorship program is where orphaned and poor children are matched
up with Korean families, who send the children money and gifts. Every
month the child and Korean family send letters to each other, so her
job is to translate the letters from the families into Mongolian, so
the child can read them and then translate the child's letter from
Mongolian into English, so they can be sent to the Korean families.
It's a wonderful program and I am so excited to be helping out with
it.
Starting
next week, I will be tutoring a local business man in English. He
speaks well, but wants someone to practice conversations with, so I
told him I could help him, if he helps me with my Mongolian. We are
going to start meeting at my work on Tuesdays and Thursdays to
practice. I am also tutoring an 11th grader, who came up
to me while I was touring one of the school and asked if I could help
her with her English speaking skill. Her mom works as a statistician
for the Health Department. I'm looking forward to helping them and
really looking forward to improving my own Mongolian skills.
Tomorrow,
Jen and I plan on visiting the remaining three schools on our list
and the local University, to talk about our Halloween party and
starting to teach health and life skills courses at the schools. Jen
is my site mate, who is a social worker and works with one of the
school social workers in town, so a lot of our projects are going to
be done together, which is awesome. We both have the same ideas as to
what we want to do in the community and work well together. Thursday,
we are visiting the Education Center, the Governor's office and
revisiting FLOM. Finally making moves!
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