New Projects

3/16/2015

Every other day, I have been going to one of the local schools to help the students prepare for two English competitions. First, the English Pyramid, which is a competition Peace Corps volunteers hold in Arkhangai Province for students in grades 9-12. Each school has one team that competes. We volunteers, write three essays, one for 9-10^th grade, one for 11-12^th grade and another for all grades. The two students from each grade must read over/memorize the essays for the competition. The competition has three parts. The first, a question and answer part where we volunteers ask the students questions about the essays they were given, the second is Taboo with vocabulary from the essays and the third is a Jeopardy game based off of the third essay. I wrote the essay for the 11-12^th grade students. Each essay is supposed to be about American culture, celebrities or history. I chose to write my essay on one of the women I look up to, Hillary Clinton, of course. The other two essays are on Sharks and Native Americans.

The other competition I am preparing students for is English Olympics, which is a country wide competition in Mongolia. Every subject has an Olympics competition. One student from each grade 9-12 competes from each school. It is a written test, so I basically just go over grammar rules and work on their reading comprehension. Sometimes there is an essay portion and speaking portion. It depends on the year and what the education ministry decides. The day of Olympics, the test comes in a sealed envelope, which is then opened and the students and teachers find out what portions are on the test. So for now they prepare for all portions. I really enjoy prepping the students for these two competitions. Since I am not an English teacher/ TEFL volunteer, it is fun every now and then to work with students. Although, I can say that I am very happy I am a health volunteer, who works with adults all day and gets to decide when I want to work with children.

Last week in Health Club, I taught the students about oral hygiene (and did Zumba of course). We practiced brushing our teeth the proper way and did an activity where they had to sort good and bad food for our teeth. Each lesson, I pick two students who have to teach the mini lesson to the others. It is so adorable watching them read the posters and teach each other. We then made funny mouth masks, which they loved and took a billion pictures. This week my Health Department got two Social Work Interns, who will be interning at the HD for two months, so I am hoping to get them involved with my Health Club. Meet with them each week and then have the help me teach the lessons and work with the children. I think it will be great for them to practice working with children in schools, since that is where the social workers are and to see how a club is properly run. Social workers in Mongolia are in charge of setting up clubs in schools and planning extracurricular activities for the students. I will talk to my director about this sometime this week.

Last week, I also started tutoring this doctor from the Emergency Aid Department. She is in charge of making sure the Millennium Development Goal initiatives are being run in the province and the goals are being met. Her English is pretty good and she is a lot of fun to chat with. She comes in every Mon, Wed, and Fri to practice her English speaking. She has traveled to many countries and is hoping to move to Australia next year for a new job, so she wants to improve her English. She told me all about her trip to India, a place I am dying to visit! And somehow our conversation led to 50 Shades of Grey and how she is reading the first book now (although I think it is the Chinese edition, which is heavily censored). The censored version played in movie theaters here. She also wants to learn how to make cake, so I told her next month we can have a girls’ night at my apartment; we will watch the movie and make a cake. Who would have thought I would be talking about 50 Shades of Grey in Mongolia!?!?

Right now a few friends and I are planning a week long trip to the Gobi Desert at the end of April before our COS (close of service) conference. We recently received an email saying that our COS conference will be the last week of April. At the conference, we talk about our experiences, get debriefed about moving back and living in the US, have physical exams and dental exams, US government paper work/stuff and pick out COS date. There are three dates we can leave, I am hoping for the first one. We all have to talk and decided who gets to leave when, but since I have grad school to get back to, I am pretty sure I will be leaving on the first date, which is July 23. So it seems like I will be landing back on US soil July 24, 2015!!!! Fingers crossed, I get the first date.