The past week has been interesting...I've spent a couple nights at my friend Bek's house and we've been discussing some ideas for when I come back from Thailand. Bek is an NGO worker and summer tour guide who I've known since August of last year. He's a really smart, motivated and hard working guy who's done a lot of good things for the community, especially the smaller towns outside of Olgii. He's worked with his organization to build three kindergartens, he's helped provide supplies for schools in the smaller soums(towns) and he recently opened up his own tourist ger camp in Olgii. He works with tourists in the summer and sometimes in the other seasons, taking them to Saxsai and other soums to show them eagle hunting, local Kazakh traditions, etc. and he's also starting to be involved in bringing ecotourism to Bayan Olgii. I've been to his home a few times and I've met his family, they are very nice and always happy to see me. His two daughters are so sweet and cute. This week I went to his house twice to have dinner, discuss project ideas, show him a little info on getting his company's website started, and help with his laptop a bit, getting him better antivirus software and hooking him up with some movies and tv shows. :)
Info on ecotourism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotourism (just in case you don't feel like typing in 'ecotourism' on Google.) ;)
We're talking about doing some health and English teaching training sessions and seminars in the smaller soums, helping provide some nomadic families with easier access to water in the areas where they spend the summer, and a few other ideas. I'm excited about what we'll be able to work on when I get back in January. It's looking like between teaching, my work at the children's center, helping with Laura's library, and these other potential projects, I'll be able to keep busy, be productive and get some good work done from January until I leave the country in July.
Also, I met with my friend Agii this past week, the English teacher who I worked with in February on the English olympiad. We're looking to do that again in February or March but this time we're going to expand it to include different subjects and different age groups, so more students will be able to participate. This weekend I'm going to be helping him with speaking portions on his private English lessons with intermediate and advanced students and I'll be helping out a couple days next week before I head to Ulaanbaatar. I'm really excited to go to UB and then to Thailand with Hanna but I'm a little sad, as I always am when I leave Olgii, to leave my students for so long. When I get back from vacation I want to make the most of my time and put as much as possible into the lessons and time I have with my students.
This past week I did lessons on Christmas with my seventh grade English clubs and we all made Christmas and holiday cards. The students seemed to really enjoy that and they do love singing traditional Christmas songs, which are really popular in Mongolia.
In other news, today Laura put on an English teaching seminar for Olgii's English teachers. It lasted all day and we had about nineteen teachers attend. I helped out, providing comic relief, candy, and even taught an hour on pronunciation. :) It was pretty fun and it seemed like the teachers enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. I'll put some pics of that up in my next post.
That's all for now, I'm sure I left something out but I'll update it when I think of it or before I head to Thailand. If you haven't checked out my 'snort monsters' videos yet, take a look, they are hilarious. Hope all is well!
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