What is Work!! Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.

Many of you have probably been wondering what I do. The main reason I have not written anything on work until now, is because it has been slow to start.

I am a Community Youth Development (CYD) Volunteer. This mouthful means that rather than being focused entirely on English and Teaching English, my focus is more on developing projects that improve the community and youth. These projects include and are not limited to social clubs, life skills, summer camps, and training for teachers. My focus could be in anything. This is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I am free to design and incorporate projects that fit my skills, but on the other hand it is very difficult to accurately assess the needs of the community with limited language skills. Also, it can be hard to get projects going when dealing with Mongolian Standard Time (see Cultural Differences Part 2).

Photo from one Halloween Party--I'm the Ghost.

 When the Mongolians ask me what I do, I tell them I am a social worker (Нийгмийн Ажилтан) and PCV.  This has been very useful because social workers are a relatively new and prestigious position in Mongolia. Often when encountering groups of drunk men in Chinggis Town, I will explain my profession and where I work. It is has been a useful tool for deterring unwanted attention, because they seem to respect the role of social worker. I also drop the name of my coworker and that seems to generate even more respect.

So, what does a school social worker do in Mongolia? The short answer is everything. Social workers in schools are perhaps the busiest people, because they are often doing the jobs of 3 or 4 people. It is not uncommon for a social worker in Mongolia to be in charge of planning student events and parties, organizing extracurricular student organizations (Scouts, Student leadership,  Young Doctors, Young Policemen, etc.), organizing awareness and life skill activities, collaborating with local police departments on research, collaborating with the local government as a school representative, discipline of deviant students, programs for students with special needs, collecting information on students, working with families that need assistance, etc. There are probably some things that I have left out, but you get the gist. This naturally leads to hard working individuals who are overworked, very busy, and unable to complete tasks efficiently or accurately. Often tasks that seem less important are not completed or fall by the wayside (e.g. working with families and students in need).

Photo of second Halloween Party--Kids are watching a scary film.

So, where do I come in? My school has 1500 students and is arguably the largest in our aimag. We also have one social worker. PC has placed me in this school to work directly with him as my primary counterpart (CP). He is a very capable individual who has mastered the knack of being in multiple places at once. Some of my coworkers nicknamed him “The Wind.” This seems to be a suiting description. Sometimes I will be walking behind him in the school and will stop for a second to say “Hi” to a teacher I know. When I look up, he will have vanished. I seem to run into him all over town, but when I need to find him it is almost impossible. The best solution for locating him is to wait in the office that we share, but that can sometimes take hours. He also speaks very little English, so we are often communicating in Monglish (broken English and broken Mongolian). This can be difficult for projects and collaboration, but I am studying my Mongolian all the time.   

I also have 5 English teachers who are my secondary counterparts. Their English is pretty good, and they have had two previous TEFL volunteers, so they are pretty competent teachers too. In the future, I may also collaborate with the school doctor on health projects. With the exception of my Social Worker, CP’s are flexible positions. If I find a teacher that wants to collaborate on a project that person becomes a CP. If I have a current CP that is not willing to work with me, than I can stop doing so.

Second Halloween Party--I'm still the ghost

That’s all good Caleb, but we still have no idea what you are doing? The short answer is integrating and not much. I have been slow to push new projects, because I have treated that last few months as a time to observe and establish myself as a coworker. A lot of PCV’s come to site expecting to jump right into meaningful work, but the reality is that things do not move that fast here. So here is a summary of what I have done and what I would like to do by the end of the year.

September—spent observing counterpart and starting relationships with various CPs.

1                                                                                                                                                                       

S      1.   Started an English club for foreign language teachers, we have been meeting 3-4 times a week.     2.      Attended various athletic competitions both student and teacher based. 

        3.      Observed and assisted social worker in electronically entering student’s personal information to            database/ files.

October—

      1.      Organized an alcohol awareness meeting for students in the 10^th grade. Social worker presented         PowerPoint that I created.  Other speakers from health department also participated.

      2.      Started an English speaking club for students grade 10-12^th. This club meets twice a week for one       hour.

      3.      Helped plan and put on two Halloween parties for two different English speaking clubs.

      4.      Began planning possible beginners speaking club for teachers and a movie club.

      5.      Began talking about children participation organizations that social worker and I will be putting           on. (My social worker and I are to be in charge of 7 clubs, but with MST they have not started             yet.) 

Goals for next semester

     1.      Start English movie club that is in the works.

     2.      Start beginning English speaking club for teachers.

     3.      Begin various children clubs that are supposed to start with social worker.

     4.      Start pushing for possible life skills clubs that might be needed by the school.

     5.      Collaborate with school doctor and health PCV on possible health awareness.

     6.      Continue to better improve my Mongolian so as to make conversation more achievable.

     7.      Meet with Child and Family Development Center to collaborate on Summer camps for next                summer.

     8.      Continue current English clubs and work with English CPs

Posing with fellow teachers during Chinggis Khan's Birthday

   I hope this helps paint a picture of what I am doing. In addition to this, I spend a lot of time                  waiting for the ball to roll on various activities and have been reading a lot.

~Caleb 

A Trip to UB

Last week, Sally’s and my schools were off for fall break. I went to work a couple of days to see what was happening, but it turned out to be mostly a holiday for teachers as well. The only result of me going to work was a conversation with a slightly inebriated teacher in which I may have agreed to coach a hockey team. After some demonstrations of what I would look like on ice, we agreed that I had two years to get better at hockey. Is there even a hockey team in Alabama?

Sally and I enjoyed the much needed R & R after our busy Halloween schedule and spent the week reading, lounging about, exercising, and finishing Parks and Recreation (a rather hilarious show staring Amy Poehler). Toward the end of the week we prepared for a much anticipated trip to Ulaanbaatar (UB for short), the capital city of Mongolia located about 330 km west of us.

Friday morning found us boarding the bus in Chinggis Town for the 6 hour journey. Travel outside of our Aimag is prohibited in the first three months of service. However, we received permission to travel for the purpose of buying winter clothing which is not as easy to find in our small city. The bus ride was uneventful and freezing. It seems the bus we were on did not have heat, so the inside air was not much warmer than the outside zero degrees.

Upon arriving at UB, we headed directly to Narantuul which is the Capital city’s black market. (While it is a little shady and you can find everything, it is in no way illegal.) Narantuul is a Asian style market; a literal maze of venders and shop stands. Aisles are created through shipping containers full of goods. People are everywhere. Cars are parked so close you can barely walk between them. The air is full of smells: carnival like fried food, rotten vegetables, coal smoke.

Deep in the clothing section of the market, Sally and I found some nice winter coats. Haggling the price was insanely easy. For my coat the man started at 80 thousand and then said that because we were friends he would give it to me for 60 thousand. How could I argue a price like that for a winter parka with a fur lined hood? It seemed like roughly 30 dollars was a steal. Sally also found a coat that was more fashionable with that started at 120 thousand. We explained that we only had a 100, and that became the price of the coat. In another stand we found some nice gloves.

After an hour of searching for the exit from Narantuul, we walked to the downtown region of the city where we had booked a room at a Peace Corps friendly hostel. With most of our winter shopping completed, we could look forward to a day of sight-seeing and good food.  

First Mongolian Geocache!!!

The next morning, Sally and I went to the Monastery. It was there that we found our first geocache in Mongolia. The rest of the day, we spent walking all over the city and shopping in some popular markets. We were able to find a bag of Doritos, a large jar of crunchy peanut butter, and a large container of Hidden Valley ranch seasoning.  We also were hugely successful in finding casserole dishes that fit our small oven. I cannot convey to you how much this will change our way of life.  

UB has many amazing places to eat. On one main street is a German Doener place that is incredible. Dinner found us at an Indian restaurant that PCV speak of in reverence. It was the best meal I have had in Mongolia. The spiciness and flavor of the food is making my stomach rumble as I write this.

This is what the inside of this amazing monastery looks like. It does not feel reverent to take pictures, so this is a picture from the internet. 

After a successful weekend of shopping and good food, we returned to our small city in the middle of the steppe. Disembarking from the bus, we relished the quiet sounds of our city where only a few cars go down the roads. While it was nice to visit the teeming metropolis of 1.5 million people, it was better to return home.

~Caleb 

Halloween

Last week was a very busy week for Caleb and me. We both got involved in our schools’ Halloween parties. The week before on Friday, one of my CPs said “Let’s have a Halloween party!!!” Unfortunately, she was the most excited about it and she was sick all last week. She couldn’t help plan it or do anything at all.

Me as a ghost and some of the decorations

So my other CPs did a lot to throw this party together. It took place on Thursday evening. The students helped decorate. We had minimal decorations due to lack of funds and availability of Halloweeny stuff. White toilet paper can go a long way though. We used it to turn the gym door into a mummy and some of the teachers wrapped up a volleyball and hung it from one of the basketball hoops as a scary ghost head thing. It was creative. We drew Halloween pictures on cups and dispersed them through the gym. We also had some things that Caleb brought from his school, like little paper ghosts and a skeleton he drew and named Gentleman Bones. Gentleman Bones is now hanging in our apartment.

Gentleman Bones

Throughout the week, students were told to prepare a Halloween poster, a pumpkin, and costumes. There would be competitions among each class for the first two and an individual costume contest.

2nd place poster winner

The party was scheduled to begin at 7. The students didn’t make their entrance until about 8:30. I was slightly annoyed by this, but I spent this extra time wisely, haunting the school’s hallways making eerie ghost sounds in my costume. I scared some kids. It was great.

We started the party with some music and dancing, and then we watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. After that, I taught a dance to those who were interested based off of Thriller. I think they enjoyed it. Then more dancing. And a tongue twister competition. “Creepy crawler critters crawl through creepy crawly craters.” Two students from each class participated. Some of them were really good at it.

Students in their costumes

After that, we did a relay race between classes. There were 5 students from each class. The first did a sack race from one point to another. The second student had to run circles around a basketball – 15 times. This wasn’t my idea. The students said 15. After they did their circles, they had to shoot the basketball. This took a long time, but it was hilarious. Some kids just fell over. Some kids hurled the ball in the complete opposite direction as it should have gone. Once they finally made the basket, the next student had to blow up a balloon. Then the last two students had to run from one end of the gym to the other with the balloon in between them, without touching it with their hands. Then they had to pop it between them once they crossed the finish line. This was quite entertaining to watch, especially since I wasn’t involved at all. Up ‘til this point, I had taught a dance and conducted and judged a tongue twister competition. It was nice to just watch.

Watermelon Jack-o-Lantern

After this there was more dancing, and my CPs and I decided how to judge the costume, pumpkin, and poster contest. We worked it out and presented the awards. I didn’t judge the pumpkin contest, so I don’t know who won, but there were only two entries. One was a pumpkin, but the other was a carved watermelon. I hope that one won. Like Gentleman Bones, those two items stayed in our apartment until after Halloween.

The costume contest winners

After a bit more dancing, the kids all departed. It didn’t take long to clean up, and we were walking out at around 10. It was a long day. That was Thursday the 29^th.

Students dancing

Saturday on Halloween, Caleb, Kyra (another PCV in our city), and I decided to go for a hike across the steppe to a nearby mountain. The majority of our walk was across flat land. We were very chirpy on the way to the mountain. We left around 9:30 and got to the mountain around 12:30. It didn’t take long at all to get to the top. It wasn’t that big. We ate lunch and hung out at the top taking pictures for about an hour and then started heading back home. Walking back was okay at first, but then we started to feel it. The last hour or two was pretty torturous. Caleb estimates we walked about 12 miles total. We got back home at 5ish, and we were so happy to sit down.

Thriller pose on top of the mountain

That evening we, along with Ian (another PCV in Khentii) went out to eat and came back home to watch some scary short films and a thriller movie.

And that was pretty much our Halloween. I decorated our apartment a little bit, turning our mosquito net into a giant spider web in the living room, and we put up trash bag spider webs on the walls, toilet paper streamers in the entryway and into the kitchen, and of course our carved pumpkin, watermelon, and Gentleman Bones.

It was a pretty good holiday altogether. We have now been in Mongolian for a full 5 months. It’s hard to believe. Happy November everyone!

~Sally

It’s Cold Outside (Part 1) 10/26/15

Today, October 26, the wind has been blowing down from Siberia bringing some of the lowest temperatures we have seen in Mongolia yet. The high for today is 37 degrees. When I walked to school, the weather channel website said it was 25 degrees with 18 mile per hour northern winds that brought the temperature to about 11 degrees. The wind seems to be a determining factor for the temperature. Wind chills make a pleasantly chilly day, bitterly cold.

As the weather gets colder, I have been adding more clothing to cut back the chill on my walk to school. Today I wore low grade long underwear leggings for the first time. I also wore corduroy pants, wool socks, hiking boots, an undershirt, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, a long sleeve dress shirt, a tie, a scarf around my face (thank you Miss Kim), a sock hat, and my Duluth trading company fleece jacket. The jacket and corduroy/long underwear combo was vital for cutting out the wind chill.

Yet, in the grand scheme of things, it is not yet that cold in Mongolia. The season is young and just cooling down. However, today is unique because I can safely say that the wind chill is colder than some of the colder days of a normal year in Birmingham. About once a winter, Birmingham will see temperatures at or around zero degrees Fahrenheit, but it is rare and even rarer for such a severe wind chill to affect our southern climate. In the last four years, I have often gone hiking throughout the year with my good friend Tyler. In January on Vulcan Trail overlooking the city with the wind sweeping over the curve of Red Mountain, Tyler and I would occasionally experience weather as cold as I have just experienced today at the end of October.

~Caleb