It's easy to say, of course, that one will stay in touch. It's much harder to do.
On our end, the motivation is clear and relatively strong - having left a host of friendships and relationships behind, we are the far-flung ones, and in the relative absence of strong social networks and engagements in the here, our strong desire is both to communicate to people 'back home' (even though 'home' is kind of here), and to hear from home.
But on the other side, for those 'back home', that desire is not strong, nor is it in the front of the mind. For those we have left, life continues, and the everyday happenstances are shared and communicated with others, and our absence gets closed over, little by little, but very quickly. Perhaps only when a distinctive moment reminds you of the absence, "oh Seumas would have liked this", "oh Rachel would have said this", will the prompt come.
I want to disown the idea that I write this to guilt anybody, or in response to anything in particular. I'm just taking note of the phenomenon, and perhaps trying to raise your awareness. The internet is a tool that creates certain forms of communication, it bridges distance, and creates immediacy, but it also creates illusions of closeness and engagement. Particularly, the ability to 'post' can create the illusion of sufficiency. I have written, therefore I assume you have read. But that is not true, broadcasting is not conversation.
In our age, it's the intentionality of communication that is under a certain kind of threat. That one might communicate in order to communicate, rather than broadcast in order to share. That conversation might actually be for the other rather than for myself.
Of course, this whole post is ironically a form of broadcast, not conversation. But that is exactly why it is what it is, I want to broadcast this, because it's not for anything or anyone in particular. For that, you'll hear from me.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
English Teaching with Koreans
It's well summer here, and most things are on holidays, except us!
Last week was Naadam, a three day festival in which the three manly games of Mongolia are celebrated and contested. Those are archery, horse-racing, and wrestling. We didn't get along to see anything, partly because we don't like crowds, but mostly because we (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to teach English over this period. We did, perchance, watch the wrestling final on tv in a local Mongolian diner, wherein a new national champion emerged.
22 Korean students, mostly 17-18 year olds, came to Mongolia for a 10 day summer English-language camp. They arrived sometime around midnight on a Tuesday night, and had to front up for classes with us the next day at 9am. Poor things! It didn't particularly help that we're not trained English teachers, and the help we received in the lead up was not overwhelming.
But God is good, and takes care of all such things in his own good way, and things went much better than they might otherwise have. We had 4 days teaching 2 hours a day, trying to encourage these students to speak English. From the start it was hard to gauge exactly how much English they knew, and our instructions were to focus on speaking practice.
Seumas' class ended up doing a lot of work with sign language, thanks to a wonderful technique called Where are you keys? which he will happily teach you anytime. There's a short video below of what it looks like in action.
Rachel took the class of slightly more advanced (or maybe just more confident and outspoken?) students, which worked out well for everybody. They learnt idioms, played games, and even had some phonetics (thanks to Rachel's ongoing Master of Applied Linguistics).
Even with our rough pastiche of teaching techniques, the students seemed to have a good time, and they also got to see all sorts of Mongolian things in their non-class times. We turned up on their last day again for a certificate ceremony, a curious mix of Korean formalism and disorganisation, and enjoyed watching a slideshow of all their fun.
We're not crying out to be English language teachers, but it was nice to help out and we're glad for the ride.
2 more weeks of Mongolian class for us and then holidays in August...
Last week was Naadam, a three day festival in which the three manly games of Mongolia are celebrated and contested. Those are archery, horse-racing, and wrestling. We didn't get along to see anything, partly because we don't like crowds, but mostly because we (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to teach English over this period. We did, perchance, watch the wrestling final on tv in a local Mongolian diner, wherein a new national champion emerged.
22 Korean students, mostly 17-18 year olds, came to Mongolia for a 10 day summer English-language camp. They arrived sometime around midnight on a Tuesday night, and had to front up for classes with us the next day at 9am. Poor things! It didn't particularly help that we're not trained English teachers, and the help we received in the lead up was not overwhelming.
But God is good, and takes care of all such things in his own good way, and things went much better than they might otherwise have. We had 4 days teaching 2 hours a day, trying to encourage these students to speak English. From the start it was hard to gauge exactly how much English they knew, and our instructions were to focus on speaking practice.
Seumas' class ended up doing a lot of work with sign language, thanks to a wonderful technique called Where are you keys? which he will happily teach you anytime. There's a short video below of what it looks like in action.
Rachel took the class of slightly more advanced (or maybe just more confident and outspoken?) students, which worked out well for everybody. They learnt idioms, played games, and even had some phonetics (thanks to Rachel's ongoing Master of Applied Linguistics).
Even with our rough pastiche of teaching techniques, the students seemed to have a good time, and they also got to see all sorts of Mongolian things in their non-class times. We turned up on their last day again for a certificate ceremony, a curious mix of Korean formalism and disorganisation, and enjoyed watching a slideshow of all their fun.
We're not crying out to be English language teachers, but it was nice to help out and we're glad for the ride.
2 more weeks of Mongolian class for us and then holidays in August...
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Oh, Mongolia!
Today I will teach you my two most useful phrases in Mongolian:
Khaamaagui, and zugeer zugeer. (Apologies for transliteration, Mongolian doesn't transliterate well).
khaamaagui means something like "It doesn't matter", while zugeer zugeer means something like "it's okay, no worries". These are two most useful phrases because things here just happen differently, slowly, inexplicably, and a good dose of ambiguity tolerance goes a long way.
I know some people think that because we haven't put up a blog post we must be dead, or busy, or something, but really we are just a little boring. A high percentage of our time is spent first in going to language classes (which are going well), and then in day to day activities. Neither of which makes for particularly fascinating reading.
Our month of no hot water should soon be over. We are still trying to organise to get a hot water system into our apartment though, because the fact of having hot water in the building is no guarantee of actually having hot water at any particular time.
Today is Election day in Mongolia. Hopefully it will all go smoothly. There was a bit of trouble after the last election, so we are praying for calm and peace this time around. It has been interesting to observe Mongolian electioneering. They even send us text messages with political slogans.
Technically it's summer, but there was some very unseasonal snow in another part of the country the other day. We have had a bit of rain, which can make getting around difficult - there isn't really a drainage system in this city.
We are hoping to have a small english-language bible group meet in our home on Friday evenings for a while. Nobody came last week, but this week we should have some takers; this is a group that Rachel was going along to, run by someone else, but they are away for summer. Actually, a lot of Mongolians go away for summer, so one never really knows who is around.
That's us, getting on well enough.
Khaamaagui, and zugeer zugeer. (Apologies for transliteration, Mongolian doesn't transliterate well).
khaamaagui means something like "It doesn't matter", while zugeer zugeer means something like "it's okay, no worries". These are two most useful phrases because things here just happen differently, slowly, inexplicably, and a good dose of ambiguity tolerance goes a long way.
I know some people think that because we haven't put up a blog post we must be dead, or busy, or something, but really we are just a little boring. A high percentage of our time is spent first in going to language classes (which are going well), and then in day to day activities. Neither of which makes for particularly fascinating reading.
Our month of no hot water should soon be over. We are still trying to organise to get a hot water system into our apartment though, because the fact of having hot water in the building is no guarantee of actually having hot water at any particular time.
Today is Election day in Mongolia. Hopefully it will all go smoothly. There was a bit of trouble after the last election, so we are praying for calm and peace this time around. It has been interesting to observe Mongolian electioneering. They even send us text messages with political slogans.
Technically it's summer, but there was some very unseasonal snow in another part of the country the other day. We have had a bit of rain, which can make getting around difficult - there isn't really a drainage system in this city.
We are hoping to have a small english-language bible group meet in our home on Friday evenings for a while. Nobody came last week, but this week we should have some takers; this is a group that Rachel was going along to, run by someone else, but they are away for summer. Actually, a lot of Mongolians go away for summer, so one never really knows who is around.
That's us, getting on well enough.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Rainy Days and horse-riding adventure.
There's a newsletter that will be out in a day or two, with some nice pics. It's been raining for a couple of days, quite a bit today, on and off yesterday. This isn't that typical so the locals are happy. Being children of the sunkissed land, not so fun for us.
Last Sunday we went along to some Mongolian ballet. It was a performance of Swan Lake. Very impressive. They had an alternate happy ending, which apparently is more common in Russia/China/Mongolia? That particular day I was quite sick, which is a shame because I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't. Anyway, that Sunday was the worst of it, but I have had a long tail of a cold all week, which means I have not been doing a great deal of study. I did read three novels, and that was greatly enjoyable.
Yesterday was Children's Day, a public holiday here in Mongolia. We went outside the city with some friends, both from our team, and from some church friends of our team friends. We went to this holiday spot east of the city, along a river, and half of our group were going to stay the night in some gers there. We headed out about 10am, and it took a good two hours to get there. Quite a bit of traffic getting out of the city.
Gers can be pretty warm when you have a stove going on inside of them. Part of the day's plan involved horse-riding. So after lunch (I'm pretty sure I don't like Korean food much more than Mongolian. I don't know why anybody eats meat except out of necessity), most of us went up to this place to get some horses. When we got there the horses were not there, and so it was going to be a 30min wait while they went off and rounded up some horses for us. This is just how things are. So there were a few horses there and they gave the kids some rides while we waited. Then they brought a troupe of horses over the hill and we all mounted up and rode off.
Things about Mongolian horses: much smaller than 'western' horses; you hold the reins in one hand, not two; the ones they give to tourists tend not to listen to you, only to the Mongolian guides; saddles are also not western - ours were padded, but traditional Mongolian saddles are just wooden; nobody has heard of helmets.
So my horse was pretty obedient in terms of which way to go, not so obedient to me in terms of speed. That's okay, having not ridden except for maybe once in childhood, I was pretty content to take it easy. It would get up to a trot, and I was comfortable with that. For a brief spurt it galloped, and that was something I wasn't yet comfortable with, but I could learn to cope with more horse-riding in my life.
It was pretty nice to be out of the city, we crossed a river and rode through some light woods and across some fields, in the shadow of some mountains, and that was a lovely taste of real Mongolian countryside. After about an hour or hour and half we turned back a bit and stopped at one of the guides' gers. We enjoyed some milk-tea and snacks, and then rode back. They offered me a faster horse but I think for a first time out I was content with the one I had; it also had a mane to match my hair.
The afternoon saw some napping and some dinner and singing and praying, and an operatic performance (one of the Korean ladies is an Italian trained opera singer), and then we were back in a minibus heading back to UB; we got home around 10:30, 11pm. pretty tired, and of course our hot water is off for the next month.
Today has been a rainy day too. We had plans to go out and buy a couple of things, but the rain just damped our mood. Our Area Leader is in town though and we went out and had a tasty lunch with him, and that made a cheery diversion for the day.
Okay, I will add a few horse-riding pictures in a day or two when I get hold of them.
Last Sunday we went along to some Mongolian ballet. It was a performance of Swan Lake. Very impressive. They had an alternate happy ending, which apparently is more common in Russia/China/Mongolia? That particular day I was quite sick, which is a shame because I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't. Anyway, that Sunday was the worst of it, but I have had a long tail of a cold all week, which means I have not been doing a great deal of study. I did read three novels, and that was greatly enjoyable.
Yesterday was Children's Day, a public holiday here in Mongolia. We went outside the city with some friends, both from our team, and from some church friends of our team friends. We went to this holiday spot east of the city, along a river, and half of our group were going to stay the night in some gers there. We headed out about 10am, and it took a good two hours to get there. Quite a bit of traffic getting out of the city.
Gers can be pretty warm when you have a stove going on inside of them. Part of the day's plan involved horse-riding. So after lunch (I'm pretty sure I don't like Korean food much more than Mongolian. I don't know why anybody eats meat except out of necessity), most of us went up to this place to get some horses. When we got there the horses were not there, and so it was going to be a 30min wait while they went off and rounded up some horses for us. This is just how things are. So there were a few horses there and they gave the kids some rides while we waited. Then they brought a troupe of horses over the hill and we all mounted up and rode off.
Things about Mongolian horses: much smaller than 'western' horses; you hold the reins in one hand, not two; the ones they give to tourists tend not to listen to you, only to the Mongolian guides; saddles are also not western - ours were padded, but traditional Mongolian saddles are just wooden; nobody has heard of helmets.
So my horse was pretty obedient in terms of which way to go, not so obedient to me in terms of speed. That's okay, having not ridden except for maybe once in childhood, I was pretty content to take it easy. It would get up to a trot, and I was comfortable with that. For a brief spurt it galloped, and that was something I wasn't yet comfortable with, but I could learn to cope with more horse-riding in my life.
It was pretty nice to be out of the city, we crossed a river and rode through some light woods and across some fields, in the shadow of some mountains, and that was a lovely taste of real Mongolian countryside. After about an hour or hour and half we turned back a bit and stopped at one of the guides' gers. We enjoyed some milk-tea and snacks, and then rode back. They offered me a faster horse but I think for a first time out I was content with the one I had; it also had a mane to match my hair.
The afternoon saw some napping and some dinner and singing and praying, and an operatic performance (one of the Korean ladies is an Italian trained opera singer), and then we were back in a minibus heading back to UB; we got home around 10:30, 11pm. pretty tired, and of course our hot water is off for the next month.
Today has been a rainy day too. We had plans to go out and buy a couple of things, but the rain just damped our mood. Our Area Leader is in town though and we went out and had a tasty lunch with him, and that made a cheery diversion for the day.
Okay, I will add a few horse-riding pictures in a day or two when I get hold of them.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Rachel gets her ger on
Despite being very dedicated to not going camping in Australia, I decided to take up an invitation to join a bunch of women from the international church on a countryside weekend break.
Here we are, setting out in the van. Note the pile of luggage squished in (we had to bring our own food and cooking utensils and gas stoves and water and and and...).
It took about 90 minutes in the van to get to a ger camp by the river. The family have a ger that they live in, plus a few for guests. Each ger sleeps five, so we had two. Here's one of them!
They let a lot of wind and dirt in around the bottom since they had set up summer gers for us, despite it getting down to freezing point the first night. Turns out that you can either get up every hour to put wood on the stove and be super hot all night, or you can let the fire go out and freeze. Actually it was mostly just me freezing the first night; turns out that a sleeping bag for the Australian summer is not recommended for Mongolia in the spring, even with a blanket on top. The second night I was lent a Canadian sleeping bag and that was so much warmer. Also we burnt dried dung that night, which lasts a lot longer than wood. Easy to collect when there are horses and cows meandering around leaving their flammable gifts behind!
There was a hill behind the camp that we climbed a few times to enjoy the view, plus a river around 200 metres away. On the Saturday we also went horse riding. Mostly my horse was led along by other riders, but I did do a little riding unsupervised, go me! Other activities included cooing over a litter of seven six-week-old puppies, playing with the cute granddaughter of the owners, card games, long walks, song-singing... and eating a huge amount of delicious food. Including the fluffiest pancakes of my life, accompanied by homemade apricot sauce.
There was also a massive silver statue of Chinggis Khaan near where we stayed. Just chilling on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere. It was only erected fairly recently, but it's become a bit of a pilgrimage spot. One of the women said people bring offerings and such on special occasions. Definitely counts as another Genghis sighting!
I was surprised that being dirty for 48 hours didn't cause me more stress, as that's one of my least favourite things in general. I suppose when everything is covered in dust it feels natural. Still, it was quite hot on Sunday (yes, from freezing to hot, that's how it goes here) so I was most pleased that God responded in the positive to my prayer-pleas for the hot water to be running when we got home!
Have a few more photos.
Here we are, setting out in the van. Note the pile of luggage squished in (we had to bring our own food and cooking utensils and gas stoves and water and and and...).
There was a hill behind the camp that we climbed a few times to enjoy the view, plus a river around 200 metres away. On the Saturday we also went horse riding. Mostly my horse was led along by other riders, but I did do a little riding unsupervised, go me! Other activities included cooing over a litter of seven six-week-old puppies, playing with the cute granddaughter of the owners, card games, long walks, song-singing... and eating a huge amount of delicious food. Including the fluffiest pancakes of my life, accompanied by homemade apricot sauce.
There was also a massive silver statue of Chinggis Khaan near where we stayed. Just chilling on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere. It was only erected fairly recently, but it's become a bit of a pilgrimage spot. One of the women said people bring offerings and such on special occasions. Definitely counts as another Genghis sighting!
I was surprised that being dirty for 48 hours didn't cause me more stress, as that's one of my least favourite things in general. I suppose when everything is covered in dust it feels natural. Still, it was quite hot on Sunday (yes, from freezing to hot, that's how it goes here) so I was most pleased that God responded in the positive to my prayer-pleas for the hot water to be running when we got home!
Have a few more photos.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Summer to Winter to Summer to Winter
That is a fair description of Mongolian spring. Case in point, yesterday it topped out at 28 or 29 degrees. I would generally call that hot. Today it has hovered around zero, and we had rain and now snow. Such variation is rapidly becoming unsurprising.
On Friday I went to the AGM of the Bible College. It was conducted 99% in Mongolian, so that was mostly over my head, but it was a good chance to just touch base briefly with the Principal, and also run into a student to whom I taught English two years ago. Most of such students are just about to graduate.
On Sunday at church we heard about many mission trips planned from our local church, both to other parts of the country over summer, and into nearby countries as well. The sense of gospel necessity and passion is strong here, in part because the gospel has so recently returned to this nation, and if people had not come and preached, there would be no church here at all.
Language continues to go relatively well. I tried to explain cricket to one of my teachers today. My Mongolian was not really up to that challenge, but I did help clarify some of the basic concepts of the game!
On Friday I went to the AGM of the Bible College. It was conducted 99% in Mongolian, so that was mostly over my head, but it was a good chance to just touch base briefly with the Principal, and also run into a student to whom I taught English two years ago. Most of such students are just about to graduate.
On Sunday at church we heard about many mission trips planned from our local church, both to other parts of the country over summer, and into nearby countries as well. The sense of gospel necessity and passion is strong here, in part because the gospel has so recently returned to this nation, and if people had not come and preached, there would be no church here at all.
Language continues to go relatively well. I tried to explain cricket to one of my teachers today. My Mongolian was not really up to that challenge, but I did help clarify some of the basic concepts of the game!
Monday, May 14, 2012
State of the Blog, 14th May 2012
Sorry for the decline in photos, we have just been taking less.
The weather turned cold again, down below zero and snow over the weekend. This is the Mongolian Spring, up and down and windy.
On Saturday we went out with some Koreans for Korean lunch. I've never eaten Korean before. Most of the conversation was in Korean as well, but since we were discussing a ministry project, one of our friends translated for us. It was a good lunch, and Rachel enjoys going out and eating new foods.
Rachel has to fly-out, fly-in to change visas, and so is off to get another visa this morning to leave the country. Hopefully it all runs smoothly.
Not too much else to report. I'm over-tired because of the early-waking and late nights. Language classes continue to go well. Things seem to be moving forward.
The weather turned cold again, down below zero and snow over the weekend. This is the Mongolian Spring, up and down and windy.
On Saturday we went out with some Koreans for Korean lunch. I've never eaten Korean before. Most of the conversation was in Korean as well, but since we were discussing a ministry project, one of our friends translated for us. It was a good lunch, and Rachel enjoys going out and eating new foods.
Rachel has to fly-out, fly-in to change visas, and so is off to get another visa this morning to leave the country. Hopefully it all runs smoothly.
Not too much else to report. I'm over-tired because of the early-waking and late nights. Language classes continue to go well. Things seem to be moving forward.
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