11/28/08 Happy Thanksgiving

So far, I've only missed one family Thanksgiving in my whole life. Well, due to the wonderful world of technology, I didn't really miss Thanksgiving this year. Bright and early on Friday morning (Mongolia is 14 hours ahead of Kansas City) I turned on the computer and low and behold I was sitting at my brother Mike's table having Thanksgiving dinner with the whole clan.

It was so great to see everyone, especially all the family who came from out of town to be there. Definitely missed being there this year.

The rest of the week has been good. The semester is winding down and I think everyone is anxious to finish. And I'm already looking forward to next term. I've put together a proposal of things the English department can add and/or change. I hope it enhances what we're trying to do here. We'll see how much is approved. For example, because the Intermediate-2 class is officially graduated, I'm holding informal discussion sessions next week in order to test my new class called "16 Guidelines for a Happy Life" which is an ethics class used for English practice.

And finished the week off with another successful Movie Night at the Stupa Cafe. It was a 'chick flic' so the audience was mostly women. But our technical setup was infinitely better than the first showing two weeks ago and I'm sure we'll begin to get a good following for our English language films.

11/22/08 A Typical Day

Well, didn't really have anything 'exciting' to write this week so I thought I'd show you what my typical day looks like. (I know, real exciting stuff!) [laugh]

Because I've probably stayed up way too late the night before, I usually don't roll out of bed until 7:30. Which isn't really that bad when you consider that the sun is late coming up and it is so cold outside. After getting dressed, I wander down to the kitchen for a simple breakfast. One weekends I might have a full breakfast but during the week, it's usually just some toast and a hot cup of tea. While I'm sitting at the dinning room table, I can usually hear the women chanting downstairs in the water bowl offering room. They come every morning to fill the water bowls and then come back in the evening to empty them. To me, the chanting is a wonderful sound in which to start the day.

Then I put on a heavy coat and gloves and head outside to clean the stupa in front of the center. Because almost everyone uses coal to heat their homes, the air quality of Ulaanbaatar is considered one of the most polluted in the world during the winter months. Every morning there is a fine layer of soot on the white stupa. I have a broom that we only use for the stupa to clean it all off. If I miss a day, you can actually see your hand-prints the soot is that much. But I like the feeling I get making it clean for everyone who stops by.

After that, I head to my desk which is now in the Translation department which I share with Khulan and Daria. Tsetsgee prefers to use here classroom as her office but I'm glad to finally be out of my bedroom office. From 9 to 4 I work on creating my lesson plans. Thank goodness for the internet as I use it a lot to search for explanations and exercises for the grammar I'm teaching that day. I can honestly say I've learned more about English grammar in the last two and half months than I learned in my many years of school in my younger days.

About noon, I have Mongolian class with Tsetsgee for about an hour. This week I'm working my way through numbers from 0 to 9999. Still, it's the strange sound combinations that still makes it so difficult for me to learn Mongolian. Then I have English class for Tsetsgee. She is reading an English translation of the Dhammapada which I thought is very difficult because of it's almost poetic verse but that's what she wanted. She has a Mongolian translation of the Dhammapada so she can check her translation just in case.

Usually after the language classes, I stop by the Stupa Cafe for lunch. Naraa finally came back from vacation, only to change jobs. Instead of cooking for the staff, she now works full-time in the Cafe kitchen. I think I'll start taking pictures of my meals just to show you what I eat here.

At 4 I get dressed for class. Even though I would love to dress casual, most Mongolians dress nice, much like Europeans, so I try too also. I have two classes that run 90 minutes each. After those, I also have a thirty minute tutor session where I help the students by going over the lesson again or helping them with their homework. Sometimes they bring work from their regular school, and on occasion one young monk comes by for reading practice (he's reading a mystery novel).

So, by 8 or 8:30 I'm done and can relax a bit. If Naraa isn't still cooking in the kitchen I try to make something easy for dinner. I might try and read afterward but usually I'm back on the computer. I'm either working on more lessons, catching up on my emails, updating my both this website and my Facebook page, or reading a few of the other blogs I follow. Besides all that I have been working on a new class for next term plus quite a few other proposals for the English department.

Which takes me to late into the evening, usually close to or past midnight.

Weekends don't differ much. I'm still working most of the time. On Sunday I also teach Geshe-la Tenzin who is a Tibetan monk living here to teach Buddhism to Mongolians (He lives at Gandan Monastery). So, before he gives a teaching, we usually work together for an hour. I told him that maybe some day he can teach me Tibetan.

But the highlight of my weekend usually is when Ani Deki and Ani Tenzin come to the Center for the weekend (from the nunnery) because they usually cook wonderful Indian and Nepali food. They might be returning home soon so they took time this weekend to teach me some of their recipes. On Saturday it was tupa, a soup with home-made noodles. Sunday they took me out to show me where to shop for the ingredients and then cooked dal for lunch. I will definitely miss their cooking.

Ani Deki cuts while Ani Tenzin washes


Ani Tenzin makes what I call 'pinch-off' noodles


The finished tupa (in which I ate three bowls full)

11/14/08 Change is Difficult

With the help of modern technology and my good friend Jesse, I was able to 'attend' a gathering of old friends (from grade school and high school) in Kansas City via Skype video on Saturday night even though it was Sunday morning here in UB. I was able to listen to the band and see everyone there. Many stopped by the computer to use texting in order to communicate as the band was a bit loud. [smile] It was great to connect again with Jesse, Joanne, Connie, Jimmy, Chris and my new friend Katie, Chris's 10-year-old daughter. Even Ani Diki came by and said hello to Katie. And later I took the webcam down to the Stupa Cafe where Lidia and Hanna, Esther's two little girls who are frequent visitors to the Stupa Cafe when they are in UB, were able to see others in America. I think we were online for almost 3 hours, all with the help of free Skype-to-Skype video. Many thanks go out to Jesse.

Had a rough week but it wasn't with my classes. Being the new guy from a different culture in such a small group of people, it is sometimes difficult to know how to suggest changes. After two months, I thought I had a good idea about the inner workings of the department but maybe I was a little weak on knowing the people themselves. It just goes to show that even in a Buddhist center there can be conflicts by the simple fact that everyone is human, even Buddhists. On the upside I think there are better channels of communication open that we didn't realize were closed and I'll be working more closely with Tsetsgee. We'll spend more time working together as a department, but we will also do a language exchange where she teaches me Mongolian and I will help her improve her English fluency. The downside is that I just won't have time to teach at Dolma Ling. Of everything I've been doing, teaching the kids and staff at Community Center was the hightlight of my week. I told the staff but couldn't let the kids down so I didn't tell them I wouldn't be back. I am hoping I can officially schedule time out there again starting next term in January. The video below is just another example of why I love the kids so much.

Just a little Mongolian Rap

One of the new things we started last night at Buddhist Center is a twice-a-month English Movie Night at the Stupa Cafe. The idea is to give anyone the chance to improve their English by offering activities such as showing movies that are in English. The movie we chose was called "The Cup". Only it was in Tibetan but it had English subtitles. About 25 people came which was a surprise because we didn't get much chance to advertise and the fact that it started pretty late (the local buses stop running after 8pm). As with all new ventures we had a few technical difficulties but it all worked out and I know our next showing in two weeks will be much improved.

Even thought this blog is published on Friday nights, it's actually Saturday morning here in UB when I finish writing it. Even though it was a chilly -7 degrees Fahrenheit, the city was rewarded with clear skies and a dusting of snow. Very easy to enjoy in my warm room but I will have to bundle up pretty well if I go out for lunch. Spending most of the weekend moving my 'office' out of my bedroom and into the translation department and then grading exams. Yippie!!!

11/7/09 Two Month Anniversary

Can you believe I've already been here two months. Time flies. Sometimes I worry that the year will fly by and I won't be any closer to learning the language or getting to know the people and the culture. Just have to find that balance between work and non-work.

Well, I've gotten on the FaceBook bandwagon. I'm not sure why exactly, but thought I'd give it a try. Maybe I will find other readers interested in my travels, specifically my volunteer work in Mongolia. It was a bit of work to set it up, but now it should run automatically, so you can view my post there if you're on FaceBook. My public site is WanderingTheWorld.com or you can ask me for an invite for my private profile page. Kind of surprised me all the people I found out I know on Facebook. Wow.

One of my favorite cousins, Cynthia, and her cool husband, Jean-Yves, are getting ready to embark on a huge tour of Asia. They leave next week and expect to keep traveling until February through Nepal, India, and Thailand. Yippie! You can follow all their adventures on their blog Voyage en Orient.

Tsetsgee and I seem to go out to lunch about once a week. One day she surprised me by taking me to a vegetarian restaurant. With us was one of our students who knew how to find this elussive restaurant which we were told was 'the best.' I think I can find it again but getting there was a bit difficult. First you go behind the MobiCom (one of the big cell phone companies in UB), walk through the gate and up some stairs. Inside you climb to the third floor and go into the clothing market (probably 20 vendor stalls selling all sorts of clothes), wind your way through to the back and there is a very small doorway with a cardboard sign overhead, you're there. Inside were a few tables, but the food was very good and very cheap - mine cost about $1.30 for a full lunch. Not sure I could go there by myself as no one spoke English and the menu was in Mongolian. But you never know, it was good enough, I might chance it again.

Khulan, the head of the translation department, took me out for dinner because I helped her with some tricky translation work. We did the work for free but the grateful person whom we translated for still insisted we accept a small gift (of cash). So we went to a nice restaurant (means the entrees were almost $10). I had a good time and the food was excellent too. Unfortunately I can't remember the name or even how to find it again since we walked there in the dark.

Speaking of translation, another translator who worked here at the center a few years ago came buy asking for help translating a construction project document. Even with Tsetsgee, Oogii and a few other Mongolians who spoke English, I still had a terrible time translating it. And that was with the advantage of me having been an engineer. Finally we decided the original Mongolian was the worst writing which doesn't surprise me when you remember that an engineer wrote it in the first place. The translator who needed it done finally came by and between the two of us, we had it done in an hour, and that was only for one page. One of my biggest difficulties was that I was not only trying to translate the text, but I was also trying to improve the writing. The translator kept telling me 'Too much."

I know I should have known it was going to happen, but every time I get a great class going, the power goes out. On Thursday the lights went out about 15 minutes into my first class. My classroom is in the basement so no light from outside. The small emergency light only worked for a bit but kept fading almost immediately. But everyone was having so much fun, we kept on going. We were practicing the 'voiced' and 'voiceless' TH sounds. I know, I didn't know they existed before I started to teach them. And Mongolians have a terrible time with any sound where the tongue comes out of the mouth. By the time the second class started, my students were using their cell phones to light their papers and my whiteboard was illuminated by candle light. Everybody, including me, seemed to have a lot of fun despite the circumstances.

And just to prove it wasn't a fluke, my Intermediate-2 the next day (where we had power and lights) also had fun with my pronunciation class. Feels great to finish the week on a high note.

And I still have a lot to do this weekend, most for work. Next week we start a Friday English Movie Night that will run every two weeks. We will show a movie that is in English and/or has English subtitles, and I'm in kind of in charge of putting this together. And to also ease some of the crowding in the Stupa Cafe by students, I'm opening up my classroom during the day as someplace anyone can study. I need to get the room ready so who ever uses it can be there unsupervised. And there's always more lesson plans and next week the Pre-Intermediates have a test. Guess it's good to be busy.

But there is one event happening just for fun. Saturday night (Sunday morning for me) a bunch of guys I went to grade school with oh so many years ago are going to have a reunion concert back home in Kansas City Missouri in the ol'US of A. Yes, concert. It's turning out to be an un-official grade school high school reunion of sorts. Jesse (whom readers might know from my AT thruhike journals) is setting it up so I can view the concert via Skype while also allowing folks to text me while the music is playing. How cool is that!