Sept 21, 2007 - 16th Street, Teaching English

Greetings from the field which is all white ‘n ready to harvest!

We were searching for an address to check a referral the other day: Bayankhoshuu, Baruun Bayanuul, 16th street, #103. We were on the 16th street here and asked this chick standing outside her ger just inside the fence you see on the right side of the picture. Her fence was #34, and when we asked her where #103 would be she pointed somewhere off towards those big fluffy clouds. Needless to say, we had another teaching appointment and didn’t have time to go gallivanting off in the direction of a whole lotta nothing so we had to turn back. Anyways, cool picture. The sky really is this blue all the time, and sometimes bluer, kinda like Sister Hunt’s eyes. I made a reference to Sister Hunt’s eyes in last week’s email, but it was in Mongolian. I think I’m going to try to get a reference in every week from now on.

I got two of my teaching [English] merit badges this week: Confiscating an Electronic Device and Dealing with a Big Jock Who Doesn’t Want to Learn, both of which occurred in my 10th grade class. I had to switch to Mongolian for disciplining purposes in my 9th grade class when they wouldn’t stop talking. It was so loud and the only people paying attention or even sitting in their seats were the weird smart girls up front who have been studying English since they were two and say stuff like, “I thoroughly enjoy classic movies and reading books about remarkable people” when I ask “What is your hobby?” The other students usually say “My hobby is play billiard” or something like that. Anyway, my patience and my vocal chords were running out, and I finally just cried out “Ta nar yamar AIMAR yum be!” (“You guys are freakin’ SCARY!”) The combination of yelling and switching to Mongolian startled them all and they hurriedly sat down and looked at me with a glint of fear in their eyes (the “g” on this keyboard doesn’t work very well and as I checked that last sentence it read “with a lint of fear in their eyes.” Ha! The Lint of Fear! I feel an animated short coming on…).

After calming myself a bit I told them we were going to play the Quiet Game for the last 3 minutes of class, and that if they could go three minutes without making a noise I would bring candy next time. We made it about 45 seconds before someone started beat-boxing. P.S. I really like teaching English. Dang it! I think that comes off as sarcastic again! I’m sincere! Sincere!!! It’s true, the trouble kids are also the most endearing ones. Also, the more I teach English the more I empathize with the kids (sympathize yum uu? Buu med!). English is way hard! This other guy that I teach asked what the English equivalent of “yabakh uu?” would be, and the best I could come up with was “Would you like a ride?” Mongolian is so straightforward, and English is complicated up the wazoo.

Yooooi, time’s up. Well, stuff besides English happened this week. Fun things. Not fun things. Spiritual things. COLD things! It almost snowed the other day! But today it’s warm again. Needless to say, today we’re making a trip (a ten minute taxi ride) to the mission office to get my winter stuff out of storage. I will not be caught unawares! I’m really excited for winter actually. When it got cold, I caught a whiff of the almost-forgotten and yet still familiar scent of burning coal, and I was flooded with winter memories.

Hope everyone is keeping warm where you are! Happy Birthdays to Sister Stitt, Lindsey O, and the Shore! Wish I could have been there, or that you all were here.
Bayartai!

Some cool pictures:














People at the well. This is a sight just as common as Starbucks in the U.S. People who live in ger districts get all their water from the wells and then carry or cart it back to their homes.

Here is another cool picture taken from the window of a speeding taxi. This guy’s head is totally exploding with light like Hobbes’ head did that one time.






Here’s a picture of some Mongolian AWESOME that I took this past week. Hey, a crappy Chinese camera is still a camera…