let's play catch-up!

Hello friends! I realize I haven't posted since around Thanksgiving, but life has been rather hectic. From Thanksgiving to New Years, the PCMOs (doctors) in Mongolia and I kept in steady contact because my knee was in serious pain. On January 2, I went in to UB for an MRI and on the 12th, I was on my way to Bangkok, Thailand, for an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon and eventually knee surgery. I'm still in Bangkok awaiting release because I'm fine now, really, I just need the Peace Corps people in Thailand, Mongolia, and Washington to agree with me. Later I'll post stories and pictures from this adventure because currently all of my pictures are stuck on my memory card and I have no way to get them off. Alas. In other news, I've received my first two grad school acceptances - American University and the George Washington University - to study International Education. I'm still waiting to hear from their financial aid departments and from two more schools before I finally decide.

Whew. That was long. And a lot of information. Sorry. Moving on!

Waaay back in December, the foreign language department put on a little event called Foreign Language Week. It was nicely situated right before Christmas, so we got to do a lot of Christmas themed activities and have some fun with the students. All of the classes from 5th grade to 11th grade learned holiday songs in English and Russian with the favorite being We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The original plan was to have a competition, but that turned out to be logistically impossible, so we just had fun with it instead.

The two 5th grade clases made decorations to put on a Christmas tree on the wall. There was a great debate between other non-English teachers and me when deciding how to draw the tree. The usual Mongolian way is with snow-covered curvy branches and I was all for the sharp angles. I prevailed but it turned out to not matter because the kids made ENORMOUS decorations that completely hid the tree.

The biggest event of the week was the Trivia competition for the 10th and 11th grade classes. The week before, I created information blurbs for five categories agreed upon by the English department and we posted them in the hallway so the students could study. We displayed the questions on a Powerpoint on the wall and had the teams check each others' work to discourage cheating. It turned out really well and the students probably learned more about American/English culture preparing for the competition than they do all year from the textbooks. Success!

supervising while the students work on their answers

one of the questions from the powerpoint - spelling doesn't count :)

me with the two winning teams - 10V and 10B

One of my favorite things to do is holiday crafts with my kindergarden class. Christmas did not disappoint as we made Christmas tree decorations and taped them on to a paper tree. These kids never disappoint.

Then to round off 2012, my first entire year not being in the US, we had a nice New Years party where I sadly couldn't dance because of knee pain but had a great time anyway because the teachers at my school are good fun. Since coming to Thailand, I have missed two more holidays (Teachers' Day and Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year) and I really don't want to miss any more.

Сайхан шинэлээрэй!