Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills

The last post was supposed to go up last week, so you get TWO today. How exciting.

Let’s have a little chat about my life. I’ve hit a low lately and I hit it hard. It’s not quite as bad as that week during the first quarter when I went home from school in tears every day (did I not mention that before? whoops), but there’s a considerable amount of grump. You may have noticed a hint of this in my Christmas/New Year post, but now we’re going to actually talk about it.

I guess I should start this out by saying that I know I hold some responsibility for the way things are now. I’m not good at pursuing or maintaining relationships of any sort. I’ve always kind of accepted being by myself as how I live life. I have a problem inviting myself along places, I feel uncomfortable around people I don’t know, and I don’t really know how to invite people over to do things. I don’t push things. I generally refer to this as my social incompetency and it has definitely not gotten better or easier since I got here. So yeah, I don’t exactly have friends out here in my little soum, mainly because I have no idea how to make friends. College was four looong years. But this week I decided to start asking people to be my friend. I made an effort to the Russian teacher, but she didn’t really seem to know what to do about it. I’m pretty sure the key is to convince my fiancé-to-be that we should just be friends, then I can make other friends through him. We’ll see.

But that’s not really the point. I’ve been having a serious “Why am I here?” crisis for the past few weeks. I teach 6 hours a week – 3 with my 5^th graders, 2 with my 4^th graders, and 1 to the kindergarten. I really enjoy those classes. The kids and I have an understanding (slash someone helps me out with the kindergarten, thankfully) and we get things done. I’m scheduled to teach 6 more, but let’s be honest, I don’t teach those. I’m pretty sure everyone involved just considers me a helper to the real teacher. My job, however, is not a substitute teacher or even an aide. I am supposed to be actively teaching and engaging these students, but more often than not, I just sit in the back while my counterpart leads the lesson. I can’t even follow along because it’s all done in Mongolian, so when the kids ask me a question all I can do is shrug and say, “I have no idea.” Lately I’ve been muttering a bit more than that because my irritation level has been rising drastically, but the things I mutter aren’t really appropriate. I try saying, “Hey, let’s plan together!” and I usually get an enthusiastic, “yeah!” in response, but when it comes time to sit down and plan, I get an, “oh, I am busy now, sorry.” Then I start hitting my head against walls.

All of this assumes that both teachers are actually PRESENT in the classroom. There is an unfortunate phenomenon where my counterpart tells me as class is starting that she is busy or has to teach another class and therefore can’t make it to class. Since we don’t plan together, this leaves me standing in front of 15 rowdy children with no plan. These children don’t believe that I have any clout (which I don’t, really), so the moment we are left alone together, all hell breaks loose. Just in my 8^th grade, I’ve had things thrown at me, boys get into serious fights, children take off running down the hallway, refusing to sit, mocking the way I pronounce things, and taking baskets off the shelves and wearing them as hats. Most of that happened this week. I think the worst part is that the reasons I’m left alone with these children (book-less, plan-less) are completely ridiculous. Too busy teaching another class, too busy making food for their family (at 3pm on a Monday? come on now).

So really, what AM I doing here? Teaching kids English – sure. Helping the English teachers with their English skills – not so much. Helping the English teachers develop methodology skills – HA yeah right. Someone had to want me, there has to be a reason that they wanted me (or at least a PCV), but I have no idea what that is. I feel useless and unwanted and oh so alone.

Which brings me to today. After having another day where I didn’t make it off school grounds before the tears came Wednesday, I gave in and talked to my Regional Manager yesterday. I said, “These are my issues,” she said, “That’s not good, let’s fix them,” then BAM it got done. She called my Training Manager ostensibly to check in, told her about things that aren’t going well, and then called me back to say we’d made progress. Later that day, we four English teachers met with the Training Manager, talked about things, and made a schedule for lesson planning and English grammar/speaking/writing practicing. It helped that the three of them had just taken an English test and all got bad grades, so there was physical proof that we needed to fix some things. Unfortunately, our next break starts this weekend and the next quarter will probably have a different schedule so we’ll probably have to start all over in a couple weeks, but you know what – a schedule was made. Maybe we won’t completely recover from this recent bout of mutual hostility, but maybe we’ll at least accomplish a productive relationship. A girl can hope.

And to leave on a slightly more entertaining note, I was talking to one of the gym teachers about my feelings about the 8^th graders aka miming boxing and deep breathing exercises, and he laughed and agreed that they’re difficult. I then explained the concept of knocking heads and he got a big kick out of that. Lesson: even my anger and frustration can turn into a bonding moment.