More Progress, More Pictures

Yesterday and today were both productive, continuing with the construction of the room. We got the glass cut and put the windows in, finished up securing the rest of the wall, strengthened the supports in some areas, etc. We still have to finish the siding around the windows to keep the glass secure, make sure everything is strong and fits well, clean up and then start painting. I'm meeting my coworker Altinbek on Sunday and we're going to try and get some more done before the week starts.

Here's a link to my Facebook album that has all the pictures of the progress so far:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075189&id=72206395&l=9b738f88ad

If you have any trouble viewing the pics in this link, send me an email or leave a comment and I'll see about uploading the pictures to Photobucket or Flickr. More pics to come soon. :)

Supplies, Construction, Progress, Exhaustion

I'm completely exhausted, barely able to keep my eyes open as I write this blog post, but I am happy. The last two days have been fantastic, much better than I expected. Yesterday, Nurbol, Altinbek and I, went to the market and bought almost all of the construction materials for the project. We were there for over two hours and I could barely feel my hands but we got most of what we needed. That was satisfiying enough in itself. Today, I went into work at 9:00 AM and Altinbek and I started building the new wall that basically creates the new room. At 12:00 we had about a quarter of the wall up and the layout for the rest of it sort of figured out. I was impressed and suprised. For lunch I walked the mile or so to the other side of town where Nurbol lives. After surviving a near attack by his shaggy (all bark, not much bite), I had lunch with him and his sister, prepared by his mother, who is very sweet and kind. I transferred about 35 of my movies onto his computer and then we headed back out into the cold to walk to the children's center. We got there, met briefly with Altinbek and headed to the market again, this time to pick up the door and door frame and some new screws. From about 3:00 until 9:00, we worked hard, getting almost the entire wall up. We still have to put the glass in for the windows, secure a few areas, cover one more small area above the door, and then it's on with the paint.

We've discusses a few options and Nurbol suggested asking a local art teacher (who is known to be an excellent painter) to help paint some sort of mural or design on the outside wall of the new room. We're going to talk to the children's center workers and the student council and see what they think and figure things out from there. Once the construction and paint are done, we need to clean up and make sure the electricty is as problem free as possible. After that, we'll be buying furniture, decorations, flooring/carpeting, computers, and a printer/scanner.

I'm very happy with how fast and smooth the process has been so far(since we got the grant money) but we still have a lot of work to do and lots of training sessions, classes, and meetings even after that. I feel a fire and energy in me that I haven't felt in a while. It's been frusrating waiting impatiently for this project to come together but now I'm finally seeing things moving and it feels really good. I know that this is going to be an amazing resource for Olgii's children and I am going to work as hard as I can over the next few months to make sure it's completed perfectly. I'm exhausted after a long day but I know that I will fall asleep with a smile on my face and wake up motivated and ready to go tomorrow.

I'll try to write a better blog post tomorrow or this weekend when I'm a bit more rested. More details and pictures to come. :)

Rants and Ramblings from.....Kenya and Cambodia?

My friend Chris, from Fort Collins, Colorado, is a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, working as a math teacher and working on water projects. I've been reading his blog, getting caught up, and really enjoying it. Doing work in the future in Africa is towards the top of my list of things to do and reading his blog is making me want to really go to Kenya more and more. Check it out.

http://ctgrants.wordpress.com/

Also, I posted this under my friends' blogs list but again, here's the link to Hanna's blog. She's working hard in Cambodia, teaching and working as a leadership resident for a women's dormitory (Harpswell Foundation). I'm looking forward to joining her there as soon as I finish up here. :)

http://hannathink.blogspot.com/

Not much new to report right now. I was able to withdraw the money for supplies and materials with no problems on Saturday. My coworker Altinbek, who I'm supposed to go with to buy the supplies at the market, was nowhere to be found. I'm hoping he magically reappears tomorrow so we can get things moving.

Laura is back after a week from Hovd and it's nice to have her back. I spent some time in her library today, chatting with her and the other teachers, preventing the computer from being destroyed by a Mongolian flash drive that had 190 viruses O_O 190! , and catching up. I also met with my friend Bek today. We are trying to get the ball rolling on a couple of clean water projects for some small countryside soums (towns) and he's my main man. March will be a busy month, getting back to teaching, getting things ready for Laura's aimag (province) wide English teachers' seminar, getting the details finished for the English olympiad, and of course, working on my grant project.

I received two packages today from my good friend Andy and I now have enough Girl Scout cookies to last me the rest of my time in Peace Corps Mongolia. I'm reading a couple books right now and I've been spending some of my free time playing Diablo 2, a computer game my dad sent me last week. It's been addictive and fun playing a computer game for the first time in almost two years. I just gotta try not to spend too much time playing. :)

Pics and updates to come!

Finally

Well I have good news. The grant money was finally deposited into our account, two days ago. :)

I had a meeting with my boss, a couple of my coworkers, Nurbol and another friend of mine, Kulshat, who used to be an English teacher. The meeting went well for the most part, with some confusion and disagreement about some details on the project, but after an hour or so we got everything hashed out and it seems as though everyone involved is pretty much on the same page. My boss is going to UB this week so today I need to go and withdraw some of the money for construction materials. One of my coworkers, Altinbek, and I need to go on Monday or Tuesday to purchase the materials so the labor can begin as soon as possible.

I will be taking pictures as things progress. I'm excited to finally have this money available, after months of waiting. I'm excited to finally be able to get this project rolling. If this works out as planned, it will provide students with a safe, comfortable area to hang out, study, work on homework, and have access to computers with internet and learning programs. There's a lot of work to do in a short period of time so I should be a lot busier in the next few weeks, plus I'll be starting teaching again Monday after the week long break. I'll keep the blog updated with pics and posts about how things progress. Hope everyone is doing well back home.

"Tsaagan Sar" = Slow Week

So today (yesterday and tomorrow too I think) is the Mongolian holiday celebrating the lunar/Mongolian new year. Because it's a Mongolian holiday, there's no work for a few days and it also fell right on the week long school break. I have been recovering from some sort of cold that I caught last week, almost back to 100 percent now. I started working out again yesterday and I'm trying to get caught up on emails, catch up on some reading, get my planning for the olympiad done, and enjoy the time off a little bit. Laura is going to to Hovd for the week to visit the PCV's there and have some r&r. I am sticking around Olgii to try and be somewhat productive. I'll be going to World Vision to work on some of the details of them helping out with our project, helping my friend Agii with some of his private English lessons, and taking advantage of some free time to work out more and read.

I also took the opportunity to clean up my apartment a bit, sort through some things, etc. I'm going to be donating a lot of my winter clothes to some local families that aren't so well off. I recently realized that I have too much stuff in my apartment that I don't even wear or use and it would certainly be much better given to someone who needs it and will actually use it. I am also giving some more resources to Laura's library, stuff that I haven't found a way to really use in the classroom and will be better off in the library where students can use it.

Nothing much else going on at the moment. I'll update with more pictures and posts when something new or exciting happens. :)

Laura's Project: English Library and Resource Room

I finally got a chance to take some pictures of the results of Laura's hard work. Opened in December, Laura's project, the first English library and resource room in Olgii, has been very successful and popular so far.

In other news, Laura and I met two days ago and wrote our project proposal to World Vision asking for funding for this year's 'English and General Knowledge Olympiad'. We got positive feedback and it seems like they will back this project. We are expanding the olympiad to include almost 200 students this year, who will be competing in English usage, general knowledge, mathematics and computer skills. We have the support of M20 Peace Corps volunteers and three more teachers from Agii and Scott's school, along with Laura taking a more active role in the planning of this year's competition. This competition should be even bigger and more fun than last year. We're all excited about it and working hard to get everything planned and set up.

I am still waiting to find out what's going on with my grant. I went into my work today to ask if we had received the funds yet. My boss was nowhere to be found and none of my coworkers knew what was going on. We'll see what happens tomorrow or next week.

New Students, Patiently Waiting for Money, and PIZZA!

Last week was another week of ups and downs, typical of Peace Corps Mongolia. I found out that my work had set up the wrong type of bank account in order for us to receive the grant funds, despite me telling them numerous times the type of bank account we needed. Apparently Peace Corps tried to deposit the money seven times and each time it was rejected. Finally, Peace Corps called me and explained to me what was wrong, I met with my work again, and we got it fixed(hopefully for the last time). I haven't heard anything back so I'm hoping that there are no more issues and we will be receiving the money this week. As soon as we have the money, my coworkers and I can start purchasing the materials we need and start construction. It's getting down to the wire here, as I only have five and a half months left.

As I had posted earlier, I met with Erkegul the week before last, the English teacher at another school in Olgii, a private school called Darin, about starting some English speaking clubs. She met with her students, worked out days and times that worked best for them, ran it by me, and I started teaching three new classes at Darin last week. All three of the classes are English clubs, with an emphasis on speaking and listening. I have one class that is 8th and 9th grade combined, one 10th grade class, and one 11th grade class. All of the classes went very well, the students are very well behaved, focused and excited to improve their speaking. A few of the students were in my classes at the children's center last year but most of them are new, students I've never met or taught before. Anyways, the first week of classes at Darin went very well and I am looking forward to teaching them the rest of the time I'm in Olgii. I also picked up a couple more classes at Bastama, the school where I teach seventh graders. I am teaching two short speaking sessions to ninth graders. They aren't as well behaved as the Darin kids and the classes are a lot bigger, so it didn't go as well. We still had fun though and I think they will be fine.

At first I felt a little uneasy about helping out so much at the private schools, because obviously the kids who go to these schools are a little bit better off than most of the kids who attend public school. I don't worry about it now because I have put myself out there to all of the public schools numerous times, receiving very little enthusiasm. I have found that the teachers at both these private schools have been much more enthusiastic and proactive about having me come to help their students. I can only put myself out there and respond to those who show a real interest in receiving my help.

Today I met with Scott, Ashlee, Laura, Agii, and a couple of teachers from Scott's school. We met to discuss this year's English and general knowledge olympiad, which we will hopefully be expanding greatly. Laura, Agii and I are meeting with World Vision on Wednesday morning to give them our plan and proposal, hoping they can help us with most of the funding. We're planning on having around 180 students participating, competing in English, general knowledge(kinda like trivia), computers, and mathematics. We're getting the details worked out this week and will hopefully be meeting again before the weekend to put together flyers and study guides for the participating students. I'll keep the blog updated on how this all goes.

Anyways, not much else going on. I've been trying to eat healthier, working out daily with my dumbbells and trying out different exercises, walking and running around town when I have time. One of my personal goals is to get into top shape over the next five months, before I head to Cambodia. :) I'm doing well so far, just gotta stay focused and consistent. Laura made pizza and mac and cheese on Saturday night. It was delicious. Cheers.