America Night Week 3

Hey Ya'll!!

Reason for the title?  Our small group decided that we will celebrate each Wednesday (our first day of staging was Wednesday the 29th) and call it America night.  We all go out and use internet and eat together.  It's quite nice actually.  So I'm sitting here in a Mongolian restaurant casually eating fries and blogging (because I love you guys).

This week has been quite interesting.  I got pretty frustrated with my progress this week.   I think a lot of it was not being able to understand/communicate properly with my family.  But I think now I'm getting past that hump and it's much better.

Fun events in this past week?  So I decided to wash Zelda (my hair) last Thursday.  I had to wash it in a  tumpun (which is like a plastic wash basin)...which was close to impossible.   My hair was just not having any of my foolishness.  Between my twists falling out and not being able to reach certain parts with the water in the tumpun...it was just a struggle!   To add to that, I had to do it in the kitchen.  Water got everywhere, my family had to sit and watch, detangling was INSANELY hard, AND my family invited the family of another PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) over to watch the process.  It's one thing I wish I didn't have to do again (and yet this week is here...time for take 2?).  This is definitely something that will take some getting used to.

In more school-related news, we had our first micro-teaching session today.  My co-teacher (another person in my group) and I had a group of 6th(?) graders who we taught how to say various aches.  It went pretty well (my partner did a great job, I could've done better) and the students learned how to say "What's the matter?" and "I've got a _____ ache."  I was proud that we were able to teach them that.  It definitely had it's challenges though.  I thought it would be a lot easier to give instructions, but it turned out that the language barrier was a lot stronger than I thought it would be.  But as they say "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again."  So I'm hoping that I will do much better in communication and speaking next time (*crosses fingers*).

Those are the highlights of my week.  Language is definitely taking some time, but I love my group and I love Mongolia, so I'm motivated to push forward.  Who knows?  I may be mostly fluent by the time I leave here (in 2 years)!

Баяртай til next week!!!