Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Day 13 - The Thawing

This morning started out briskly cold as usually, but without the face-numbing wind.

Our second year English class was today and it was trying. We teach seperate classes but faced the same problem: trying to get our students using weren't/didn't/wasn't correctly. It turns out Mongolian has no equivalent of 'to be' (words like am/are/was etc) so how do you explain them? Understandably they wanted to know why "Paul wasn't like the party" is not correct. Gah! The class taught by the 'real' teacher is ready to do the exam this Thursday. Seumas will do review this Thursday and run the exam next Tuesday. Rachel's students are even further behind and she doesn't know whether to just go ahead with the exam or let them fall further behind.

Afterwards... to the cafeteria! It was packed today because lunch was free as a celebration for International Women's Day yesterday. The plates of mince and rice looked huge so we tried to share one but as soon as the students spotted us they brought a second plate over. Oh well. We ate it all (feels very ungrateful to waste food when everyone is so desperate to eat all they can) and it was very tasty but oh! such a mound of mince!

After some lesson planning and a quick grocery stop we walked home. It was a beautiful -6C! It really felt lovely a fresh and it would have been nice to stay out in it for awhile... but all the snow that has lain around for months is finally melting and turning the world into a giant mudpie.

Rachel has a cold and is starting to feel achy as the piles of tissues mound up. It has been dragging around for a few days so hopefully she will begin to get better for good soon!

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