I've shared with you all breifly about my team.  But, I realized that I haven't shared about the whole team Mongolia.

There are a total of 3 teams here in the city; 2 teaching teams and 1 leadership team which also includes the new people. 

This picture is from our training back in early September.

There are about 28 students in our EXCEL teaching program this year.  The three of us team teach the workshops from week to week.  I am personally responsible for 10 of the students (homework, grades, observations, etc.). Below is a picture of 9 out of the 10 woman that I work directly with.

  This year I am team teaching with two other women.  We are working with Mongolian High school English teachers.  We all meet one time a week for a workshop.  The rest of the week I visit my students in their classrooms and grade their homework.  Our workshops vary between oral, listening, and methodology.  We are working to help them improve in their own language ability as well as their teaching abilities. 

  Here are some pictures from one of our recent workshops.

                                We just make our students teach for us.  It's much easier .

  This last weekend some of us English teachers were 'received' by the senior class.  Basically that means that they took us on a nice picnic, by the river, and thanked us for the year.  It was fun!

   Join me as I take you  on a picture walk through the day of typical Mongolian picnic. 

                9 a.m. -Kill the sheep and sort him out for lunch and dinner.

                      Carefully removing the insides so that nothing is wasted.

                 The intestines are filled with blood and rice.  The stomach is filled with blood. 

                               The insides are all ready to cook now.

                   While we wait for our food we enjoyed going on walks and relaxing.

                                       Brunch is ready!

         Now we start cooking the meat.  It's put into a large, metal (milk jar) pressure cooker with some potatoes, carrots, water and salt.  It then cooks over the fire for a couple of hours.  Then we eat it for lunch.

           Again we wait.  We played in the river and chased little goats.

                                            ...and yaks

                                  The dung for the fires

              For dinner (7 p.m.) we take the left over meat and vegies and make soup.

                                                      The End!!

  This entry is going to mostly be a picture entry.  I want to share some pictures with you from our trip this last week. 

These pictures are taken on the ride to and in Ullangom, Uvs.  Ullangom is north of Khovd about 7/8 hours and is about 2/3 hours south of Siberia.

                                               Our ride and driver.

                                       The midway stretch break.

                                          The seminar

                                Around Ullangom

                                 Relaxing and reading by the river.

                                         Some smart kids getting their bikes stuck in the ice