Minii surguill

Have I really not written for that long?  It's because I am busy having new adventures to write about.  But mainly school is keeping me busy.  Here are a few school tales:

The basics

My school is pretty great.  It is conveniently located about a two minute walk from my ger, and it is painted an overwhelming sea green color.  you can see it from almost anywhere in BX, so it's a great landmark.  School time is from 8am until 7pm, but different grades come at different times.  It is an eco-school, meaning that we have plants scattered about!  Also we have a fish tank.  On my first day of school we had about 5 fish, and then within about month we just had a very very dirty fish tank.  I have 8 fellow english teachers (counterparts) that I team teach with - 5th to 11th grades. Sometimes, there is no power at school, which phases no one, and select students get to walk around and ring an actual bell to let everyone know it is time to change class.

my school from atop the neighboring mountaintop

Team Teaching

Team teaching is where both I and a Mongolian English teacher teach a class together.  The goal is to not only help students learn english, but to build the capacity in my english teacher counterparts.  So in a perfect world, I am not supposed to ever be the only teacher in the classroom.  However, this doesnt always happen.  One day, my counterpart wanted to leave class when we were playing review games.  For one of the review games, the mongolian language was needed.  I expressed my concerns, and to combat this, my counterpart appointed an 11 year old to be my co teacher for the day.  Even though you cold tell the girl really wanted to play the review games, she stuck true to her role and helped me teach and corral the other students.

Cracking up

I know when I speak Mongolian, I say things incorrectly all the time. That is just a given fact.  Like the time I told my host mom, a cow (okir) was death (okil) and who really knows what other gems have come out of my mouth.  It is all part of learning a launguage.  Similarly English words get mispronounced by Mongolians all the time in class.  Most times, I can keep a serious face, but sometimes I lose it.  Here are just a few of my favorites:

Peace Corps: Peace Corps gets said constantly as Peace Corpse.  This reminds me of all the tales I heard about the former CMDD skater with the such a name. I can only hope in her country of service, that this was also a common mispronunciation.

Bear: We were reviewing animals one day in class, and the picture was a bear.  The student I called on however, just so politely said, ‘this is a beer!’  I couldn’t help but chuckle.

Sensible:  Probably my favorite so far.  While going through students one by one to check pronunciation for this word, one student so confidently blurted out ‘sexy-bull’.  The class started cracking up first, and unfortunately after that I lost it for a moment.

Names

Mongolian names are very long and just hard for me to say. When school first started I had the best intentions to learn all of the students name, but after about just a week, that quickly changed to me just trying to pronounce names correctly when told to me.  After the first entire quarter of school, I know 4 students names (one of which I am pretty sure I say quite incorrectly, but the student just entertains me).  Usually I just get by with pointing at students.  One day, however, in 5th grade, we circled up and played a name game where you introduce yourself, and then introduce all the people who have introduced themselves before you.  Naturally i went first, meaning I just had to introduce myself. When all the students finished, my counterpart teacher felt the need to embarrass me, and said, now April will introduce everyone!!!! Let's just say that took me about 10 long minutes and I completely ruined everyone's name.

Saying hello-

Some kids overwhelmingly like me, and other kids are very indifferent, nevertheless, everyone will say, shout and scream hello whenever they see me.  Not just one time, but 8 times until I start ignoring them. Back in Xorolloo soum, when there were only 20 kids total, it was endearing, and now it tests one's patience. Sometimes they just cycle through all the ways to say hello, good morning, good evening, hi, etc.  and then once I physically pass them, the goodbyes, bye byes, see yous begin.  Others will say hello, and when I answer, go the other direction giggling.   For the students who like me, there are additional steps to greeting me, which include running across fields to catch up with me just to say hello, walking me home, and the ones who when they see me, proceed to tell me every english word they know in no particular order. There is this one student, who whenever she see me runs up from behind me and grabs me to say hello.  I rarely see her, and so this is always a scary surprise hello...I am still getting used to it.

Apple for teacher

In the states, students might give teachers apples.  here in dino land, students sometimes give me delicious delicious dried cheese curd.

it's number twister!

Coming up next:
The Chicago Bulls come to my ger to make breakfast huushuur.

3 pales of water, 2 sheep, 1 knife and a Friday afternoon.

I came home from school one beautiful friday afternoon.  There was a new addition to our hasha yard...two sheep, that were tied to a fence eating a plastic bag that was also conveniently tied to the fence.  I paid no mind to their cuteness, because I knew they would be supper, and just went into my ger.  My hasha family had recently given me a big water pale, and when I got home, they came over and reclaimed one of the small ones that they had given me- leaving me with one small pale, and the big pale.  They day went on and after a little while, the girl that lives next door, came over and took the other small pale, and my pocket knife (aka my one and only knife).  After another 10ish minutes, she came back in my ger and told me to come outside for the main sheep event! 

Now, I always thought of the killing process in Mongolia to be sort of similar to the second Indiana Jones movie, where they just reach in and take out the heart, removing it still beating as the sheep would just slowly go to the big pasture in the sky, but, I guess I missed that part.  When I came outside, the sheep who were previously standing by the fence, were already being skinned...with my knife!

he was clearly upset

  My hasha neighbor guy complimented me on my knife as I approached to watch the skinning.  It was a family event - the daughter held the legs firmly as the father pushed the carcass around ridding it of its hide.  And the mother waited idlely by trying to keep the baby calm as it was getting upset at the activities.  Calming the baby involved taking his toy car, and running it over the sheep and into its lifeless head.

Soon once the first hide was shed, it was time to gut it.  The mom set the baby aside and once the stomach and intestines were removed, she started to clean them.  I eventually became the baby holder, because he was getting pretty upset, and I was just glad to be holding the baby instead of having to help with the sheep! 

During this whole process, I was expecting there to be a lot more...well...blood.  But it was a pretty bloodless event until the chest cavity was opened.  And it was opened with such precision as to not lose a drop of the blood.  Ladle by ladle my hasha neighbors put the blood into the small water container that they took from my ger. Once the heart was cut out, the teenager girl started cutting it up into little tiny pieces.  While she was doing this chopping, excess blood was just bleeding out onto the cutting board and ground.  During this whole gutting process, I started to make faces, at which my neighbors just laughed...but during the heart chopping blood ladling activity, I think they could really see my face in utter disgust.  I only think this because they all cracked up at my uncomfortableness, and then started to pick up different organs out of the bucket and pretended to eat them raw in front of me.  They told me how much they loved to eat the different parts, and I told them how much I disliked the different parts, to which, naturally, was unreasonable for them.  After the first sheep was done, they picked it up to hang it up, and drips of blood just fell upon this man's jeans.  I thought for a moment that maybe these pants were this man's animal killing pants...kind of like pants that you might get paint all over while painting, you know, your painting pants.  But somehow, I think this thought might also be unreasonable...they are probably his only pair of jeans.

The process was repeated for the second sheep, and during the ladeling of the blood the second time around, I thought I had seen enough, and retired to my ger and busied myself with a movie.  Not too long after the meat processing was finished, a truck pulled up right outside my ger to start loading some wood that was next to my ger.  About ten minutes later, this old lady came into my ger, and without even returning a pleasant, hi how are you, she grabbed my large water container, and started to carry it out of my ger!  I jumped up and asked her what she was doing.  From what I learned culturally so far, is that if you ask a Mongol a question, and they dont want to answer, they will either, depending on the situation at hand, either 1. ignore your question and keep staring at you awkwardly, or 2. ignore your question and keep struggling to carry your big water container until another Mongol comes over to also ignore your questions and help the old lady carry your water container away.  Because I am naive, I figured they would soon return in, so I just went back into my ger.  Come dinner time, I still did not have any water, since my water container had in fact not been returned.  So this left me with quite limited options to make for dinner.  I could not really make anything without water aside from that chunk of pig meat that my neighbors made me buy on my first food buying outing, so I got it out of my freezer, and I got out my frying pan...and then I remembered that my neighbors had my only knife.  So I put the meat back and had some really bad sugary korean peanut butter that I got in UB for dinner. 

it was a family affair

Later that evening, right before I went to bed, my teenager neighbor came and returned my knife, with dried butchered sheep still on it.  I just left it for the evening, because I, in fact, had no water to wash it.  The next day, I still had no water to cook, or knife wash, so I asked my neighbor about it.  Their response was to give me back the small water container they took the previous day, complete some water in it.  However,  it was the water container that previously held the sheep blood, and let's just say the container was not washed before they gave it back to me.  It's funny maybe? 

Cultural note:  When killing a sheep Mongolians really do cut open the chest of an animal, and stick their hand inside.  However, instead of removing the heart like an indiana jones movie, they just reach in, find the main artery, and cut it.