9/27/13
Currently, I am
sitting at work, happily singing along to the Justin Bieber Christmas
Album that my coworker is playing. I'm almost positive they have no
idea that the songs are Christmas songs, but I am really enjoying
singing along to them. His renditions (which I kept spelling as
ramditions, and getting mad that spell check didn't understand what
word I wanted, good thing I'm not an English Teacher here) of popular
Christmas songs and original songs are actually pretty great. My
absolute favorite though, is when I walk into the Health Department
and highly explicit rap songs are playing. That really makes my day.
I keep going back and forth between telling them that the songs are
sexually explicit and they may not want to blare them through out the
HD, but then on the other hand, I really enjoy the songs and it gives
me something to sing along to with them, even though they don't
understand what they are singing along to. So I will probably just
say nothing and enjoy some English music being played during the day.
They are also huge fans of Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull. So it's even
more hilarious when we all try to sing along in Spanish to their
songs. One day I hope to video record the singing madness that
happens in my office.
Yesterday, my
counterpart approached me and asked if I would help him to come up
with brochures about dental hygiene that will be passed out to
teachers and parents of children in the community. At first he told
me posters, so I got straight to work designing posters and looking
up ideas on Pinterest. But then about a half hour later he came down
and said that he didn't mean posters, he had a little paragraph he
wrote out in English describing what we were supposed to do. We
needed to make brochures/pamphlets not posters. We had to look up
facts and advice to put in the pamphlets and design them. What we
decided to do was to have a cover with a catchy photo and slogan and
then the pages following would be: 1) What is a cavity? 2) How can
you keep your teeth healthy? 3) Advice for Teachers 4) Advice for
Parents 5) Diagram showing how to properly brush teeth. We decided
that I would make a brochure and he would make one. We are then going
to combine our ideas and make one final brochure. So that is what I
am currently working on. I gave him a rough draft of mine last night
to see if I was on the same page as him and doing what he had
envisioned. He said it was great and that when he is done with his he
will show me. One thing about Mongolians in the medical field is that
they love love love statistics, facts and dry information. He told me
that since the brochure is for adults that we do not need any
pictures. So I then explained to him that no one will read our
pamphlets if its just paragraphs of stats and facts about dental
hygiene. People are more likely to read things if they are
aesthetically pleasing and interesting looking. So I am interested to
see what his looks like. They do the same thing with power point
presentations. The slides are just full of lines and lines of
sentences that the presenter reads word for word. No interesting
graphs or pictures, just straight words. Hence why everyone is having
side conversations and talking on their phones during them. Once I
establish myself more in the Health Department, I would like to do
some kind of training on this and show them how to make their
presentations more interesting an interactive. I would also love to
do some trainings on practices of facilitation, using surveys to
receive feedback after trainings, Behavior Change Communication and
Edgar Dale's Cone of Learning. I think that these would increase
their effectiveness tremendously. But those will have to wait until
I have gained their respect and proven myself to be successful with
these techniques in my own trainings with the community. For now I am
enjoying conducting surveys around the community myself and helping
out in little ways around the Health Department. Currently all the
Halloween party planning is taking up a lot of my time.
The beginning of the
week consisted of me spilling hot water all over my laptop and
sending me into an instant terrible mood and pity party. The minute I
did it, my world fell apart and I left work to see if I could salvage
the computer. All I wanted to do was call my parents, but it would
have been their 3am. It did cross my mind to just call anyways but
after thinking about it, that was not necessary, I am an adult and
need to start handling things myself (although I did call the next
morning to talk about it). A great revelation, right? Haha.
Thankfully I was able to, but that was after having a mini hissy fit
on top of a mountain I hiked/ran up in a fit of anger. I ended up
twisting my ankle half way up it, but continued to run until I
reached the top, where I got out all my anger and prayed. It actually
turned out to be very therapeutic and by the time I came down the
mountain, my head was clearer and I decided to make progressive steps
and begin to ask around about the best way of buying a new laptop.
Do I take the 8-12 hour bus ride to the capital to see if there are
any good ones there? Do I order from China, pay the enormous tariff
on it? Or Do I buy from America and hope it gets here in one piece
and makes it through customs? I got a lot of advice and decided the
best option was to go to UB and my counterpart said he would drive me
and help if I needed to go. He is so great! Hahaha, I am such a mess
in situations like these. I do not like when things happen that I
have not planned for. I like to have control and structured
environment. My sister always told me that I was too uptight, and I
never fully recognized it until this situation. I can only hope that
my up tightness will be non existent or at least drastically reduced
at the end of these two years. Because really having to buy a lap top
is not the end of the world (even if I did just buy a new one 4
months ago), there are much worst things that could have happened.
Luckily, none of that was needed and my computer survived and is
running like normal. I will never have a liquid near it again. Lesson
learned.
This weekend we are
planning on visiting the hot springs (so excited to just relax in
them), going camping and hiking. I am really looking forward to it!
This will be my first time really camping out in the wilderness in a
tent, unless you consider sleeping in tents in Emily P's yard as
camping =). I always did. Haha.
No comments:
Post a Comment