22 December 2011
Last week I was brought back to the city of horrors for our one-week IST (in-service training) with the rest of my M22 TEFLers. Luckily, my time in UB was limited to the weekends before and after training and the actual event itself took place at a hotel about 2 hours outside of the city. Each of us brought along one of our CPs (counterparts/co-workers) who attended sessions with us. We had some separate sessions where we did admin/health/safety things with just us and PC staff while our CPs had sessions about our safety/security, intro to Peace Corps, and some background about the American educational system (which probably included why we have some problems adjusting to the system out here). There was some learning and less napping during sessions than during PST (no offense PST trainers) as well as dancing, games, and general frivolity. I got to know some people who I had never really talked to before which was nice. I consider the week a success overall because after some of the sessions my CP would turn to me and tell me something we should work on which made me do little dances inside. Of course, when I asked her what she learned at the end of the week, she was proud that she had learned the words “boobs” and “wingman” as well as beer pong and flip cup. Third Goal, people, Third Goal. I’m still going to assume that she came out of it with more than those bits of American culture and that we can do good things / start to be more productive from now on. Unfortunately, we are now rapidly approaching the holiday season here in Mongolia so lesson planning meetings are set aside in favor of decorating the school with excessive amounts of tinsel. I’ve started to walk to school without my glasses because breathing into my scarf causes them to fog up then ice over and that’s really annoying. Unfortunately, no glasses means I can’t see anything. So when I walked into school on Monday afternoon after being gone for 11 days and was confronted with a solid wall of shimmering tinsel, I stopped short and just stared. It’s a little disconcerting to not be able to anything other than shiny silver.
In other
news, I woke up this morning (the first official day of winter, mind you) and
thought, “Oh wow, it feels a lot warmer this morning.” Lo and behold, it was
actually 22 degrees inside. I’ve been in the 9-15 degree range for the past
month, so 22 was really exciting. Then when I was out and about after school
hunting for food for my cat (the meat store is never open yet everyone always
has meat – there must be a secret I don’t know), I was again amazed by how warm
it was outside. I had to keep my hood up so my frostnipped ear wouldn’t
refreeze and suffer any real damage, but I couldn’t see my breath when I was
outside. To celebrate this minor respite of cold weather before the REAL cold
that will be January sets in, I broke out my camera and took some pictures from
around town so you all can be a little jealous that you don’t see this when you
look outside.
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| The view from my shower house; I think it’s my favorite view in town |
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| how I get to school every day |
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