First Days of School

This blog has sort of turned into my journal while I’m here, so I have no idea if what I talk about is of any interest to anyone reading this. So if you’re reading and you want to know about something in particular, comment and let me know! Oh, and ignore the title of the last post, because it looks like I’m just verbose in general.

September 1st was the first day of school, which means that I’m finally starting work…or so I thought. Up to that point, I’d been attending meetings, lesson planning with my counterpart, and getting to know my coworkers, but I hadn’t actually taught a class. First, one of my counterparts asked me to come introduce myself to her 10th and 11th-grade classes. Both times, I said a few sentences about who I am and why I’m here, which were met with uncontrollable giggling. I’m not sure if it’s how I look, how I dress, how I talk, or some combination of those, but damn if Mongolian teenagers don’t find me hilarious. In fact, I hate going outside of my apartment in general because, at best, I get stared at, and at worst people (usually groups of 3 or more people under the age of 25) point and laugh. I feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame—I generally try to stay alone in my 4th-story apartment and only venture out with great trepidation, because I anticipate the mocking I’ll be subjected to. I try to look on the bright side though: think of how much entertainment I’m providing for this town! It’s not like teenagers have much to do here.

Anyway, after those classes, there was a ceremony, which was pretty confusing to me, because no one has the patience to explain to me in simple Mongolian what’s going on. So they just take me by the arm and drag me to wherever I’m supposed to be. When I arrived, I tried to be invisible in the crowd of students (playing with my cell phone and pretending I didn’t hear the group of boys saying my name and sniggering 3 feet away from me). The crowd, standing, formed a U outside of the school and there was a row of about 7 chairs in the middle of it. When my counterpart arrived, I asked her, “Who sits there?” She didn’t know, but I found out soon enough: the school’s director, the head of the educational center, the head of Xas Bank, some other important people, and me. It was a pretty typical ceremony: speeches were made, songs and dances were performed (including one “rap dance” set to DMX’s “Up in Here”). I was sandwiched between the lady from Xas Bank and the man from the Educational Center, both of whom knew a little English and took it upon themselves to explain what was happening (which I greatly appreciated). They also asked if I had free time to help them out. I don’t, since my school has set up a ridiculously full schedule for me, but I gave them my number anyway. The whole time there were cameras on us and I thought, “Really? Why would they film this? Is someone at a party someday going to say ‘Hey, let’s watch the footage from the first day of school in 2010!’?” But the next day my sitemates mentioned that some of the schools’ opening ceremonies appear on the news. Which is bad because I can’t sit like an adult for more than 3 minutes and the ceremony was about 2 hours long.

Speaking of looking like a professional adult, I wore a skirt that ends right above my knee to the first day of school, and I was little worried that it would be considered inappropriate. As soon as I arrived at school, I realized that it was silly to be concerned about that. All of the teachers, most of whom are in their 20s and very good-looking, looked like they were going to a cocktail party. I’m almost positive that there are rules against showing that much cleavage at high schools in the US. I was talking to my sitemate Caitlin, who has been here for a year, about this, and I mentioned that they must be taking advantage of the warm weather, because surely no one looks cute in the winter. She explained that actually they make flesh-colored long underwear so that you can still look sexy in a miniskirt in -30-degree weather. The students wear uniforms, which seem to vary according to grade level. My favorites were the 11th-grade boys, who wear blazers made out of some extremely shiny black material with red trim. (So they were probably laughing at how ridiculous I looked in my non-shiny outfit).

As a side-note, I also wanted to mention that there are some cultural customs I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of. As I was sitting in the middle of the U-crowd, I put my purse underneath my chair. I know that Mongolians consider it very dirty to put your bag (or anything, really) on the floor, but sometimes I do it anyway if there are no other options. About an hour into the ceremony, a little girl ran up to grab it from under my chair and hand it to me. It always seems to be the little kids who call me out on my gauche behavior.

Finally, the ceremony was over, and the Special People in the chairs were invited inside to have a meeting. I would tell you what the meeting was about, but it was all in Mongolian, so your guess is as good as mine. They gave me a heaping mug of airag, which I politely held in both hands and avoided drinking while furrowing my brow nodding with interest at whoever was speaking so it would look like I knew what was happening. Again, I know I should be respectful of certain customs, but if you can find anything that tastes worse than fermented mare’s milk, I will eat my winter boots. And even if I managed to drink any significant quantity of it, it would give me immediate and violent diarrhea, so I can’t really see any benefit to be had from this stuff. (Of course, my school’s last volunteer, who spoke Mongolian fluently, also really liked airag, a fact that I’m informed of whenever I turn it down. He probably wasn’t the Hunchback of this community.) Anyway, 2 Japanese volunteers, who are teaching Japanese at the school for 3 months, were also at the meeting, so it’s nice that I’m not the only weirdo in town right now. They get a translator who follows them around, though, which is so unfair.

Finally, people started leaving the room we were having the meeting in. (Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the guys at the meeting was filming it with his camcorder. I find it even less likely that he’s ever going to pull that footage out at a party—and I feel deeply sorry for his guests if he does—so once again I couldn’t figure out the point. He turned around and zoomed in on my face for a while, so there’s someone out there with about a 10 to 15-second close-up of my nodding and brow-furrowing.) As people filed out, I found a coworker (the CP I rely on for help and translation wasn’t there) who speaks some English to ask what was happening. She said, “You can go,” so I bolted home. A few minutes later, I walked out on my balcony to get my laundry and saw everyone who had been at the meeting walking somewhere in a group. So I probably wasn’t actually supposed to leave. Oh well. Caitlin asked me to meet her for lunch at the restaurant across the street from my school, and when I arrived I noticed a few tables pushed together and set up as if for an event. I told Caitlin, “Uh oh, I bet that’s for our meeting,” and sure enough, about 10 minutes later, everyone from the meeting filed in, and I got about 15 confused looks that said, “Why is that weird-looking white girl in different clothes and sitting with a bald girl instead of us?” I played it cool, but I know it only furthered my reputation for inexplicable behavior.

After lunch, Caitlin took me to the BookBridge Library, a community center and English resource library run by a lady named Uuganaa. Uuganaa is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met (I know I’ve said that about a few people here, but it’s true), and, having worked with PCVs for almost 10 years, speaks really good English. I became the first library member of the year (my library card number is 001!) (I took out The Lord of the Rings, because I thought, “Hey! I never did get around to reading that when it was assigned in middle school. I really should.” Now I remember why I never read it, which is that I didn’t like it at all.) While we were there, we met her class of deaf children, whom she’s teaching English sign language (“Why shouldn’t disabled students also learn English?”). She had us over for dinner the next night and served horse meat, but made fried tofu for me, which was really nice. She even drove me home because it was cold outside. Her kids, a 12-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, are adorable and speak great English- they each have a handful of English Olympics medals. So hopefully I’ll be working a few hours a week with her, too.*

So far work has been really frustrating, because I don’t have a schedule, and it’s very difficult to get plans out of my coworkers. For example, on my second day of work, I was woken up by a text at 8:53 that said, “You will teach a class at 9:20.” I bolted to the school, calling my CP on the way to ask what classroom I should go to. (Her response: “Uh huh. Yes. Goodbye.”) It turned out to be my CP’s class, and she couldn’t teach the lesson she had planned because the kids didn’t have their textbooks yet (so she figured she’d get the American to come talk in English for 40 minutes). We walked into a classroom full of 30 students together, and she sat down at the desk and asked me, “What will we teach?” I suggested that they could talk about their summer vacations in English. She said that was a good idea, so, after introducing myself (to a sea of giggles again), I wrote, “How was your summer?” on the board. That was met with blank stares, and my CP pulled me aside to say, “I just remembered, they talked about this in the last class [i.e. the class that ended 5 minutes before]. We cannot teach this.” I don’t know if you’ve ever had 30 16-year-olds in shiny suits stare expectantly at you while you try to figure out a way to entertain them, but I can tell you that it’s not a good feeling. So I suggested teaching the lesson we had planned and just adapting it so we didn’t need textbooks. She agreed and we taught them words like fashionable, trendy, silly, cool, awful, and some other words I assume British people say. She had brought some pictures she cut out from a magazine, and I held them up, asking the class, “What does he/she look like?” and they would answer, “He looks fashionable/awful/etc.!” The first one was a professionally-shot picture of Shia LeBeouf. I held it up for the class and was surprised by their reaction, which was to burst into laughter and yell in unison, “He looks SILLY!!” I’m glad Shia LeBeouf wasn’t there, because I’m pretty sure he and the photographer thought he looked very cool in that shot. The only other one that surprised me was the picture of some Japanese people wearing traditional Japanese kimonos. My students thought they looked “AWFUL!” The Mongolians in dels, of course, looked “nice.”

Then the students paired off to write dialogues, imagining that they were going to a party and consulting their friend about what to wear. When each group finished, they would walk up to the desk and perform their dialogue for me. I was actually really impressed by most of them. I hate to say it, but the girls are much, much better at English than the boys (maybe it was just the fashion theme?) My girl students generally don’t laugh at me when they see me on the street, but rather run up to me with a “Hello, how are you?” and walk and practice their English with me. The boys elbow each other and point at me when I walk by, then laugh uproariously once I’m 5 feet away (I think they think that distance is out of earshot). Actually, when I walked around the class asking people if they were finished, some of the boys simply stared and their notebooks and refused to respond to me. Do they think if they sit perfectly still I can’t see them? I can’t criticize their technique, though, because after asking 2 or 3 times, I would just shrug and walk away. In one class, my CP asked a boy to stand up and say his name. He just stared at his desk and wouldn’t say anything, even when she asked him, “Do you know English?” I felt really bad that she embarrassed him like that until 30 seconds later, when he put his headphones back in. Also, in case you couldn’t tell from that last paragraph, the “class at 9:20” I was called in to teach turned out to be 3 classes. So, all in all, my first day of teaching couldn’t have been much worse. Again, I’ll look on the bright side and tell myself that at least things pretty much have to get better from here.

At least I have a really nice CP, even if she is unreliable. She’s only unreliable because she has a 5-month-old baby, and, since they don’t use formula here, she has to run home whenever she gets a text from her mother-in-law saying he’s crying because he’s hungry (which is all the time—he is an extremely obese baby. And he has a pretty severe case of baby cellulite. Luckily for him, those are both adorable qualities in babies.) So between her 2-year-old and her 5-month-old, she’s pretty busy. She did make time to have me over for lunch, though. Her house is beautifully furnished with all kinds of expensive things, but has no running water or toilet. Those would be way above a decorative horse fiddle on my list, but different cultures have different priorities. While I was there, her daughter asked her, “Why does this woman not eat meat? Does she not have any goats or sheep?” And Oyukha is really funny herself. As she was cooking, I walked over to peek at what she was doing. I asked, “What are you making?” and she answered, “Food.” So I sat back down and read an English European history textbook she had on her shelf for some reason. It was probably for the best, because I’m not much help in a kitchen, and I hadn’t thought about the Enclosure Act in years. Also, when we were waiting for her husband at the bank, I was looking at a toddler and wondering if it was a girl or a boy (since they have hair-cutting ceremonies at around age 3, it’s sometimes really hard to tell). Just as I was thinking it (but obviously not saying it), Oyukha tilted her head towards the kid and asked, “What do you think? Man or woman?” It’s actually kind of fun being able to speak a secret language with someone. As we were walking home, a man in a car leaned his head out the window and yelled, “Hi!” She asked me who it was, and I said, “I don’t know! I thought you knew.” She said, “I don’t know,” then shrugged and added, “Maybe stupid.”

This post is getting long, but I guess I should add that I have a cat now. A guy who lives in a soum in my province has a cat who just had kittens, and he threatened to leave them out on the streets of UB if people didn’t take them. So of course I fell for it. And now I have a black, female (?), 5-week-old kitten whose hobbies include shrill meowing, eating my hands, and climbing up my bare legs with her razor-claws. I don’t know if you can tell, but I am not a cat person. I named her Circe because she is clearly evil (she’s actually eating the screen of my laptop as I type this), and I’m afraid she’ll kill me in my sleep, but we’re going to have to cohabitate for a few years regardless. We are growing fond of each other, though…I think. The only problem is that they don’t sell cat food here (Mongolians hate cats and wouldn’t feed an animal special food anyway), and I must have the only cat that won’t eat fish. Even though I am repulsed by all seafood, I bought some canned fish and, holding my breath and turning my head away, hacked into it with my dull knife. I heated it up on my stove and put it in a bowl (my only bowl, by the way) for her. Here’s the unspoken conversation my cat and I had with our eyes:
Me: Oh man, this smells disgusting. Anyway, here you go, Cat.
Cat: What the hell is this?
Me: It’s fish.
Cat: It smells disgusting.
Me: I know, but I thought cats were into that kind of thing.
Cat: No.
So now what do I do? By the way, my sitemates, both of whom have cats, told me that one of the reasons Mongolians hate cats is that they think that if you look a cat in the eyes, it can see how you die. (I mean, it’s not like the cat is killing you, but I’ll admit that’s still pretty creepy). Caitlin said that she used to sit bundled up in her ger in the winter and talk to her cat: “How does it happen, Bill? How do I go? If it’s freezing to death in this tent, just tell me. Because I’ll Early Terminate.” Anyway, I am at least glad that a tungpun full of dirt works as a litterbox. On the dark side, though, I am 3 steps closer to being a crazy cat lady: I now live alone, avoid social interaction, and talk to a cat. Blogging probably doesn’t help my case, either.

My sitemate Babila told me that our counterparts, the ones who showed up to UB and saw the entire M21 group, call the 3 of us who were sent to Arvaikheer the “Khamgiin Group.” “Khamgiin” basically means “most,” so they mean that each of the 3 of us is the most something of the 73 M21s. Joanne has the most experience (she’s middle-aged and has done social work for years), Babila has the best language (he’s the only one of us to get an Intermediate Medium on the test), and I am the most beautiful. That’s nice and all, but I would rather know what I’m doing or speak really good Mongolian at this point. That’s one good thing that I get a lot from people when we’re introduced, though: “Oh, you’re so pretty!” But I suspect they’re really thinking, “You’re a &*%$ing giant!” But I very much appreciate dishonesty when it comes to certain subjects. Babs also told me that Uuganaa’s son told him that there was a PCV at his school. Babila asked who it was and he said, “The pretty girl—Joyce. She looks maybe Russian or Spanish.” He said, “Hmmm, sorry, I don’t know any pretty girls named Joyce.” Peace Corps service can be tough, but at least I have these kind, supportive sitemates to get me through it.

*I didn’t want to put this on my blog, because it’s really sad, but I wanted to get the word out. Uuganaa lost her husband in a car accident last year. He and her daughter were in a crash; a car came to take them to the hospital (there are no emergency services here), but it only had room for one person, so he asked the driver to take his daughter, who was injured. He started walking to the hospital, but he died on the way. Anyway, Uuganaa’s daughter messed up her shoulder pretty badly, and Mongolian doctors have done all they can for her, but Uuganaa wants to send her to the US to get medical care there. Of course, there’s no way she could afford that (especially now that there is only one income for her family), so if anyone knows a group of people who want to donate to that cause, let me know (we’re trying to figure out the specifics of how much it would cost).