Well today we had the first (hopefully annual) 'Olgii English usage and General Knowledge Olympiad' and I have to say, things went very well. I woke up at 8:00 today and went to the hosting school, met with Agii and we spent the the whole day up until 2:00 preparing everything and getting ready. All of the schools participated and sent a team of four students. The setup was really great and even though we started about a half hour late(pretty good for Mongolia actually) and the first couple events proved to be a bit more challenging than we expected, overall it was a success. The students had a hard time with the general knowledge questions but a few outstanding students did very well. In the students' defense, they didn't have much time to prepare and we probably didn't provide them with good enough preparation or study materials. Next time I think it would be very beneficial to provide the students with a quality study guide. The vocabulary section was also a little confusing and difficult for many of the students but they still seemed to learn from it and enjoy the challenge. The grammar section, the singing presentations, and the 'words of wisdom'(proverbs) sections went very well and the judges, students, and participants definitely enjoyed them.
I was a judge and also the host or presenter for the whole thing and I really had a blast. Two of the local private schools secured 1st and 2nd place as expected but a public school fought their way into third place and came very close to winning. The winning students received framed certificates, cash prizes, and some really nice English books we ordered from Ulaanbaatar. I was able to speak to some of my students after the competition ended and they seemed very happy to have participated. I was very proud of my students and all the students that competed and I hope that we can improve on any of the issues and make next year's competition even better. I'd like to leave next year knowing that the students and teachers will continue to organize this competition each year without the assistance of a PCV.
In other good news, I spoke to the director of School 4 (public school that hosted the comp) and they are very interested in having me help out next school year. They have some hours available for senior students and we talked about the possibility of doing some more practical English classes or clubs. I'm also interested in doing some career planning, study abroad learning sessions, and TOEFL test prep classes. Many of the students here are very interested in studying abroad but have very little idea of where or how to go about pursuing these goals. This summer I will be meeting with the director and Agii to discuss how I can help the school starting in September. If I can spend my second year teaching and helping out a local school in addition to my work at the children's center I think I can get a lot of good things done and have a positive influence on a larger number of students.
Anyways, I took many more pictures today and I hope to get them up asap. I am going to a shop tomorrow in hopes of using their card reader to put my pics on my flash drive. If I can do that I will post the pics up before the end of the weekend. Hope all is well back home, pics coming soon!
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