Berkh English Camp and a Birthday/Farewell

After we returned from the Kherlen River Camp, Caleb and I had one day at home before we left again to travel north. Another PCV, Stephen, was hosting an English camp and asked for assistance, so we answered the call.

Berkh school's soccer field and the view behind the school

 We arrived on a Sunday in mid-July. It was 1.5 hours in an off-road mekr ride to the old mining soum, Berkh. Berkh is a very pretty soum in Khentii. It was really green when we were there, and there are trees everywhere. There are some good hills and elevation changes, which is something we don’t get to experience in Chinggis Hot.

Stephen and one of the English camp students

The next four days, we taught English classes for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon to 5^th-9^th grades. The class sizes were really small. The largest class we had was on the first day with maybe 20 kids. Two classes had only 3 or 4 students consistently, and after the first day, there were 8-15 in the other classes. This was great! Caleb and I mostly co-taught, which we had never done before with kids. It was interesting.

Me playing Frisbee with one of the students - Look at those TREES!

In between morning and afternoon classes, we would go home for lunch and then return to the school an hour before classes were to start. During this hour, we played soccer or threw the Frisbee with the kids. Most days, organized sports were not interesting enough, so we would play on the jungle gym, play Chinese jump rope, or whatever the kids wanted us to do.

Caleb is a monkey.

In the evenings, we hung out at Stephen’s apartment, cooked, talked, played cards, watched movies, and traded music and other digital media.

We traveled back to Chinggis Hot on Friday. For the next week, we were home. On the 17^th, we had a gathering of most of the Khentii volunteers at our KOICA friend’s apartment. She cooked us a fabulous Korean meal, and we played various card games including a Korean card game that was kind of confusing but pretty fun. We celebrated Kyra’s birthday, and unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to YeoWon, because her KOICA director is moving her to another site. We are hopeful to meet up with her sometimes in UB over the next year.

Caleb, me, Ashley, Kyra, YeoWon, Dylan, and Rishii (a guy from India who was in Khentii for a while)

The last camp we participated in this summer was the National Scouting Jamboree, which Caleb will write about in a post later this week. We hope to catch up on some other posts too, including the Q&As everyone submitted. It’s been a busy summer!

~Sally