June 16, 2010

A great end to a productive day!

I finally learned how to say goodnight in Mongolian!!!! It is so easy. Basically it is Sayhan Nursery!!! For me the best way to learn and remember this language is to associate the words with English words, especially because a lot of the words sound familiar. I feel like today was a very productive day for me, aside from my waking up late issues. (Which I hope to resolve by tomorrow!)
To begin, this morning I believe there was some miscommunication between my host mom and I. Yesterday I told her that I was going on a trip on Wednesday. In addition, I told her that I need a packed lunch and that I was leaving at 11. Well I think that she thought that I wasn’t leaving the house till 11 because when I went to the house this morning for breakfast she didn’t make me anything. Which was fine because there was some bread on the table, which sufficed. (Plus she was busy bathing my brother in the kitchen) Anywho, I quickly ran to my school…which I was a few minutes late. .I am going to try to work on getting there 5 minutes early from now on. However, in Mongolia I find that time is not an issue like in America. People are in no hurry, which is nice but when it comes to class I need to be more mindful of my classmates.
Class this morning was short. We had about 2 hours of Mongolian Language where we worked on our greetings and possessive pronouns. Then we piled into cars for our trip. When I say piled I mean PILED!! LOL. To begin the trip my friend Shar was basically laying on top of the three of us in the back seat. About half way through the trip our driver (who is Shar’s host dad) stopped the car so we could rearrange. Then I got to sit on top of Mama Jo (Joanne’s) lap. (which for me was nothing for in my younger days I was used to always being the one to sit on someone’s lap….siblings you know what I am talking about!!!) Anywho that was comical for all the people in the car, 7 people in a 5 person car.
The reason for our trip was to go to a nearby town to received…..MORE SHOTS!!!! Fun Fun!!! My total for shots in Mongolia is up to 8!!! Hopefully I won’t be getting sick anytime soon!! Oh and silly me pulled away during receiving one of the shots so I was scrapped a bit by the needle which was no fun!!! Lets just say my arms hurt a bit tonight. It was a great trip because we were able to see other trainees who are staying in that town whom we haven’t seen in a week. Plus I got to mail out my 11 letters!!! (Which was expensive!!) Oh and I got to get online..to those of you reading my nonsense go to my facebook to view pictures. It is a lot easier to post pictures on Facebook then to post them on my blog.
Then we ventured back to our home sweet home. Upon returning we had another CYD session. That session was helpful because we were informed a little bit more on how to be successful in our final sites come August. Let’s see what else…oh we are planning a community meeting for Friday so that we can have a ‘needs assessment’ which members of the community to see what we can do through out the summer in our town. I am really excited to see who turns out for the meeting!
When I got home I ‘mongolian chatted’ with my fam a bit. Then my friend Shar came over and we decided to go check on another site mate who was sick that day. Her name is Brittany as well. Thank goodness we went to see about her because she was not feeling well at all. I took her temp and called the doctor to see what em (meds) to give her. I think that she got sick because of what she had for bfast, which was rice milk tea. Ironically my mom tried to give me that for dinner but I politely refused. ( I was worried I’d be sick too!!!)
So one of the reasons I am really excited about my day is because I feel like my family is really starting to understand me and why I am here. One of the Peace Corp goals is to teach other cultures about the American culture. SO…I asked my mom if she likes to exercise. She said yes. So I told her that I like to do yoga and asked her if she wanted to try it. SHE AGREED!!! We decided to try it out in the morning! So I am really looking forward to that. THEN another Peace Corp goal is to learn the Mongolian culture. SO…I asked my little brother to teach me a Mongolian song. He understood me but ran away laughing. Lol. Then my mom told me that she would teach me because my little brother prolly wouldn’t do a good job. Still I am so excited to learn!!! Finally the last of the three main Peace Corp goals is to create world peace through friendship and I feel like I have made a great friend in my neighbor..(her name sounds like Delgima) I asked her if she wanted to learn English and she does. So when I teach my English class to adults I am going to make sure she is apart of that! Oh and my little sister (who is 2ish) is letting me hold her!!! That just makes me smile! 
Anyways if you have made it this far into this blog thank you for reading my rambling!!!

Love,
B