An example of Kazakh music

This is a pretty popular Kazakh song, found the video on youtube a while back. This is something you can hear at any big celebration or party or even playing in a car/taxi driving down the road. I really enjoy this song and I love the dancing. Most of the people in Olgii can do this type of dancing.
Enjoy :)

Trying a new layout...experimenting a little

Hey so I as you can probably tell my page changed a little bit. I am trying something a little different, seeing what kinds of templates are available on blogger.

Anyways, not much new to report right now. I had a couple meetings last week. I met with a guy named Nurbol who is 23, a college graduate, and interested in practicing his English speaking in prep for the TOEFL exam. He has plans to go to college in Europe so I am going to be helping him work on his conversational English. Also, he's a pretty motivated young man and when my friend Linda told him that I needed some help with some translating, he expressed interest. While my Kazakh language skills are improving, I am far from fluent, so he is going to help me talk to some more locals about working on some of my projects. It should be very helpful so we'll see how it goes.

Also I met with another local English teacher who just started teaching late last year. I helped out with one of her 6th grade classes last week, it was a lot of fun. I am hoping to talk to her, another teacher at her school who I met, and a teacher from Laura's(my sitemate) school about starting life skills clubs and classes in their schools. If I can gather enough support for this project hopefully I will be doing the grant request paperwork started and get the ball rolling before the summer. Another meeting was with a local private English teacher named Agii, he's a really great guy, very nice and very motivated. He teaches English during the school year to students who are interested in lessons outside of what they normally get in school and he also works with travelers and tourists in the summers. Him and I are going to be meeting with the department of education this week to try and organize an English language competition/conference. I will find out the details of this project soon and post them up when I know more.

I am still working out a small problem with my laptop so I haven't been able to upload any new pictures lately. As soon as I get that bug worked out I will upload the pictures I have on my camera and also take some new ones. That's all for now!

Basketball Tournament / Latest News / Back ONLINE!

Hey everyone, sorry it took so long for my latest update. I was out of Olgii for almost three weeks but now I am back home, my computer is fixed(thanks once again to the awesomeness, patience and help of my computer genius mother), and I am back online.

In late January I took a van across the country to Ulaanbaatar. The trip was an interesting one. The van had five flat tires, we stopped what seemed like a hundred times to drink tea and it took a grand total of 61 hours. I made it in one piece though and met up with Jacob and the other guys from the basketball team at one of the guesthouses Peace Corps volunteers frequent. I was lucky enough to attend the first ever 'Super Bowl party' at a bar in UB and I ended up being on CNN for a little quick interview. The link for that is in my last post. After a couple days of hanging out in UB we took a train down to the city of Sainshand, in the Gobi desert southeast of the capital. The train ride was slow but not too bad of a ride overall. It takes about 10 hours and makes multiple stops.

We arrived in Sainshand pretty late but Jacob had hooked us up pretty nicely, we had a big hotel room in a pretty solid hotel and we were greeted by his coworkers with plenty of food and beverages. Jake also came through big time on the meal hookup. We had a local restaurant give us three meals a day for the whole week we were in Sainshand. The first couple days consisted of us practicing at the gym twice a day and eating meals, relaxing, and just chillin' like guys chill. From Thursday until Sunday we played six basketball games for the tournament. Being that we are all Peace Corps volunteers, haven't played much serious basketball over the past year, and that we hadn't played together as a team we did pretty well. We won our first five games pretty easily but the teams were competitive. They had some athletes and some good shooters but we managed to survive a few runs and win each game leading up to the gold medal game.

Before I talk about the last game I gotta say, the vibe and the scene at the tournament was awesome. There were tons of people there to watch the games, something like 15 or 16 men's teams and maybe 7 or 8 women's teams participating, and the town seemed pretty overwhelmed having eight pretty good sized American basketball players walking around plus a few other American PCV's hanging around to watch and cheer us on. During all of our games the gym was packed, a few hundred people crowding the bleachers and the balcony, tons of people standing, there were literally toes on the baseline the whole game. It was hard to even take the ball out on dead balls because of the crowding.

The gold medal game we actually played against a team of professional basketball players from UB. These guys basically play basketball for a living and get paid to do it. That being said, basketball isn't as competitive in Mongolia as it is back in the U.S. From a young age basketball players in the States have the fundamentals of the game and teamwork pounded into their heads. It's relatively new to Mongolia and outside of UB, basketball has different 'rules' and in some cases, no rules at all. There are many talented athletes in Mongolia and I think with better coaching and a more fundamentals approach to the game they could have some great basketball players. Now THAT being said, we lost the gold medal game to this team unfortunately. They came out gunning for us and gained a considerable lead pretty early in the game. I normally wouldn't complain about something like this or make excuses but the officiating was probably the worst I've ever seen in my life. We got called for multiple fouls and the other team would smack and hack us down low when we had the ball and we'd get no calls. In the 3rd we were down by as much as 17 points but we had a few good defensive stops, got a good offensive run going and cut the lead to 2.

After a couple more questionable calls I fouled out early in the fourth and we weren't able to pull ahead. We ended up losing by two points and earned the silver medal for the tournament. We were definitely disappointed that we didn't win the gold but it was still a fun tournament. The opening and medal ceremonies were really great, the environment was great and it was a great event to be a part of. After the final game we went to the restaurant for a quick dinner banquet, a little partying and celebrating and then we had to hop on the 9:00 train back to UB for an exhibition game. The train ride back wasn't quite as pleasant as the train ride there, since some of the PCV's had consumed a bit of alcohol and were slightly inebriated and it was an overnight train. We arrived back in UB at about 7 AM tired and a bit cranky but thrilled to be alive nonetheless. Two of our players, Peter and Kevin, had to catch rides back to their sites so we ended up having to play our exhibition game with only six players, six exhausted players.

It's amazing what six straight days of basketball will do to you when you haven't played seriously in a while. We went to the big gym where the Mongolian leagues play for our exhibition game around noon. We had six players to their fourteen. The team we played this time was actually a team of all stars from the professional league so we figured we weren't going to do too well, especially given our lack of players. The game started off well and we played pretty decent. We came out strong for the first three quarters and were up by as much as eight points towards the end of the third. In the fourth our fatigue took over and we just couldn't keep our momentum. They hit a few three pointers, we missed a couple shots and had some really bad turnovers, and the Mongolian all star team ended up beating us by seven points. From what we heard the game was televised on Mongolian national TV but we didn't get a chance to see any of it.

So that was the end of our basketball glory days. I spent a few days in UB before getting a bus back home to Olgii. The ride back to Olgii was about 45 hours, pretty cold and tiring but it wasn't as bad as the trip out to UB, thanks to no flat tires and not as many stops for tea. I'm glad to be back in Olgii. I have gotten back into my teaching routine and I picked up a few new students. In the next week I am going to be meeting with a teacher at Laura's school to discuss getting a life skills course started and I will also be meeting with a private English teacher to discuss working on some conferences and competitions for students throughout Olgii. I am also trying to get a geography class started and another English club going so things are looking good. Progress on projects is slow here but any progress is good news. More info to come. Hope everyone is doing well. Take care.

Super Bowl Party Mongolia/ Matt on CNN

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-207219

I was lucky enough to enjoy the Super Bowl at a bar in Ulaanbaatar and a news crew interviewed me and one of my buddies Kevin, we made it on CNN in the U.S. Haha, check it out!

Good start slowed down by computer failure and the plague

Well I finally got taken down a notch by some sort of Mongolian plague disease virus instrument of death thing.....
After 2009 got off to a great start, my positive attitude and outlook got shut down hard times two. First of all, my laptop got murdered by some spyware and is now down and out until I get some software and my computer genius of a mother can save the day via telephone once again. Secondly, I got really sick and was in bed for about four days. I had a fever, a sore throat, was coughing and my body was really sore. It was an unpleasant experience to say the least. Today my throat isn't feeling so good, I am coughing, and I am still in recovery mode but I feel better and I was able to go teach this afternoon. It was nice to see my students again and I let them try peanut butter for the first time. It was pretty funny because I didn't bring anything to drink and they ate just bread with peanut butter and even though they enjoyed it, they made it known that I should have brought milk or water. After we talked a bit about 'American' food, I promised them sometime this summer we'd make cheeseburgers so they could try them. They seemed pretty excited about that.

Anyways, because of my computer fiasco I am not able to get online as often. This was just a quick update to let people know what's going on. Hope everyone is doing well back home!

2009..off to a good start

So 2009 is off to a good start. To celebrate this, here is a picture of a cow outside of my apartment building. Yesterday I attended a basketball practice for one of the local schools and the coach asked me to come help out every week. I will be assistant coaching at least one day a week and I might see about adding another night to the practice schedule. One of the kids who plays on the team lives next door to Laura and is really close to her host family so he always comes over and hangs out at Laura's. He is obsessed with basketball and the NBA so he's always excited to play ball or even just to watch basketball videos on youtube.

The first day of 'practice' was fun and it was nice to mix it up on the court with the kids and the coach but as someone who played basketball most of my life, I can say that high school basketball in Mongolia is a lot different than in the U.S. The kids definitely need some good coaching and a bit of schooling in the sport of basketball. Many of the kids are athletic and they have a lot of enthusiasm when playing but they definitely need to work on the fundamentals, particularly the concept of teamwork. They watch a bit too much NBA but that's ok. I'm not planning on turning the kids into an all star team or anything crazy like that but I definitely want to work on some drills with them to help them improve their dribbling and ball handling, shooting, passing, defense, and the other basics of the great game of basketball. I am not sure what the schedule is like as far as playing games against other schools but when I find out more I will post it.

Speaking of basketball, at the end of the month I am actually going to be making my way back across Mongolia to participate in a basketball tournament in a town called Sainshand in the Gobi desert. The tournament is supposed to be a pretty big deal and there's a lot of teams from around Mongolia participating. Jacob, another Peace Corps volunteer from last year's group(M18) has organized most of it from what I understand and he's assembled a team of Americans consisting of myself, a few other M19's, a couple M18's, and a couple of Jacob's friends. The tournament is the first weekend of February and I get the pleasure of taking a two day bus ride across Mongolia in the coldest month of the year. :) I'm looking forward to that glorious experience.

In other non basketball related news, my sitemate Laura and I are supposed to be starting my physical education/sports class project next week. This week I organized the time with my work to use the facility and we are going to make signs and post them around town. With how enthusiastic some of my students have been about playing football and ultimate frisbee after English class I am hoping we can get a lot of students to come to this class on a regular basis. This week I got back to teaching my English students again and I am looking forward to working on some more interactive lesson plans and trying out some new games and activities. Today I started with a new Kazakh language tutor. One of my English club students knew that I needed a Kazakh tutor who speaks English to explain the grammar and other intricacies I am having a hard time with so she put me in contact with a lady she knows. My new tutor's name is Amaka and she is studying at the teacher's college in Olgii and also teaches Kazakh. She is very nice and our first lesson went well so I am hoping that in the next few months I can improve my Kazakh skills quite a bit. Not having an English speaking counterpart or coworker at the children's center makes things a bit difficult but luckily a few of my students have a good enough grasp on English to translate for me at times.

Other things I am hoping to get started in the next couple months are an English geography club, an arts and crafts class, life skills courses, and I'd like to get the ball rolling on funding and plans for a new children's center in Olgii. This is a pretty lofty goal but I believe that if I can generate some enthusiasm in the idea and start the planning, it could become a reality. The current children's center is a small area of the soum(town) government's building consisting of four offices. We also have access to a large room/hall next to the building that has chairs, a few desks, and a stage. It's a great room for events, meetings, classes, and some indoor games but it's not available all the time. I'd like to work towards building a real children's center similar to the Boys and Girls Club's we have back in the U.S., a place where kids can come to play, learn, have access to computers, books and other resources, form clubs and organizations, and be around positive adult role models.

Anyways, that's all for today...I had some more things I wanted to write about but I lost track of my thoughts. Keep the people of Gaza in your thoughts and prayers.

I love Russian music

Russian house/techno is officially my new favorite music. They play stuff like this all the time in the clubs or 'discos' in Mongolia. I'm really diggin DJ Smash/Fast Food. It's fantastic!