Yesterday morning Nate left Mongolia for good. Living two hours away from me in Khanbogd, he was the closest thing I had to a site mate even though I never once managed to find a ride to visit him. Our next closest neighbors are in the aimag centers to our west and north, over 260 [...]

I have been told that my amount of blogging since my last visit to the capital was subpar, so I am attempting to make up for that with the second post this week. In the process, I can also catch up on the two last months of  teaching this year. April passed by uneventfully, but [...]

Summer vacation has started in Mongolia, and that means I am in Ulaanbaatar again relaxing. I had intended to be out west with Cara this week working in an English summer camp as a secondary project but my schedule ended up getting twisted before I left Manlai which kept me from having the time to [...]

It’s May, and summer is still approaching. I mean that in every sense of the phrase. At most, schools have another two and a half weeks till summer break. I am excited for some time in Ulaanbaatar and then I have an exciting month planned in Southeast Asia with my two travel buddies, Ryan and [...]

So, now that I’ve been living as part of a Mongolian community, and even occasionally working in it, for more than half a year, and the end of my first year of service is a mere two months away, what routines have I settled into? I’ve gotten to experience Mongolia at its hottest and coldest, [...]

Spring Break across Mongolia is approaching in little over a week. With it comes one of the two biggest events for TEFL: the English Olympics. The other big TEFL event is the Concourse Exam, given to graduating high schoolers.  Since my school only goes to the 9th grade, I’m looking forward to the English Olympics [...]

First off, I apologize for taking so long to write again. I am back in Ulaanbaatar and finally have a chance to post. I was in the capital city last month for In-Service Training during the week before Christmas, but most of the seminar took place in a resort barely outside of the city so [...]

It’s not Turkey Day yet, but I wanted to take the chance to wish all my family and friends back home a wonderful Thanksgiving. I will be spending the holiday in Ulaanbaatar, where PCVs will be staving off Swine Flu infection in order to properly celebrate. I’m excited to have a little time in a [...]

Hey everyone, sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted, but I’ll try to get everyone up to speed. I’m living in the Gobi, in Manlai. It’s a very small soum with some of the nicest people in all of Mongolia. Communication outside of the soum is limited though for multiple reasons. For a week [...]

The 66 trainees (including me) are wrapping up PST at the moment, concluding tomorrow with our Swearing-In Ceremony. I wish I had the time or ability to adequately express the insanity that is occurring in Zuunmod. Since I don’t, I will summarize the latest events and big news instead. I had my TAP (an assessment meeting [...]

With the end of PST looming (tomorrow) I have two big things on my mind. First, is a thank you to my family and aunts for the amazing care package. I got it safely and I can’t wait to read the books (I’m starting with the Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty”!).  That is officially my first [...]

In just under two weeks, us trainees will finish up in our current sites and congregate for site-placements and swearing in (sorry, for safety reasons I’ll be more specific down the road). I think all of us are ready for the change, and to get down to our “real work.” “Real work” in quotes because right [...]

As promised, I finally have some pictures that I can post. I will try to give them all captions, we’ll see what happens. Click on the thumbnails to see bigger pictures. The last two are actually the earliest, from Zuunmod. The rest are from Bagakhangai and Naadam. - John

Two days ago I was walking to my wonderfully windy wooden house after my first solo forty minute practice teaching class. I had spent five hours the night before working on the lesson plan, as well as another hour that same day between language lessons. Six hours of stress for a forty minute performance. I [...]

I wanted to also say happy birthday to my great-aunt, Sis. She absolutely lives up to the title. I hate that I have to be this brief, but I love you and hope you had a great day with lots of family. Please, someone make sure she hears about this because I can’t call yet. [...]

Because it has been a little bit since my last post, I’ll start with a brief recap of what’s happened. Last weekend we celebrated the Mongolian national holiday of Nadaam. Between the festivities and business closings I didn’t have a chance to get on the internet. Then during this week I have helped set up [...]

Before talking about the week, I wanted to mention an issue some of the multi-lingual Trainees are encountering here. While trying to use my limited Mongolian, I stumble across a word – usually a very basic one, or simple phrase – and insert French instead of English. One of the supervisors dropped the phrase Monglish [...]