Almost Finished with Training!

Learning and Teaching New Things

In the past few weeks I have learned so much. Our training has consisted of a portion called “Practice Teaching”. This segment included me and my fellow trainees being put into teaching groups of four. In these teaching groups we came up with a three week unit and lessons for everyday that we would teach. We did what they call team-teaching, for example me and a counterpart. My group of four included Cameron, Ellie, Nadra and myself. We taught the level 1 students. The level 1 students are the children who have no former english training. However, our class was awesome and the students loved us all. The students really liked our songs and our energy. For the first two weeks of practice teaching I would come to my cabin and nap everyday. Teaching/counterparts took so much from me... This was overall a good experience and I feel prepared for my job for the next two years.

…So I decided to do something different this blog... I'm including two of my journal entries “word for word”!

Journal Entry 8-1-2010

Today was a delightful day. The day started with me waking up and having buckwheat for breakfast. Buckwheat has become one of my favorite morning meals along with oatmeal, Kosh(cream of wheat). The buckwheat had raisins in it (mongolian mom) and I added cinnamon to it.
Yesterday I told the Korean minister at the local church that I would come to service today. Thus after breakfast I got ready by brushing my teeth and putting on my clothes. I planned to meet a fellow trainee Ashlie at the store so we could walk together to the church. However, In mongolia there is always spontaneity. As I was walking from my house Ashlie and another trainee Ben were right outside of my gate. Ben joined us as we went to the Mongolian worship service.
We arrived at the church at 11pm and worship had already began. The worship leader had her guitar and hands were raised. I was amazed! Because I am learning mongolian I recognized many words and phrases like “Jesus is my brother” and “I love Jesus”. I took me no time to jump right into the flow. The prayer time was also an awesome experience . The people would just go forth in prayer for 5min ad than finish the chorus of the song that they would be singing. The korean pastor whom preached did a good job. (How do I know I don't speak korean....LOL)Although, I could not Identify many of the words he spoke I knew the name “Jesus” and I heard that name a lot. There was another minister whom I met yesterday also, and he proceeded to translate the sermon for me and my fellow trainees. However, this meant that there were three languages going on at once and it confused the pastor. (Korean>Mongolian >English) The pastor was speaking Korean the translator next to him mongolian and the guy by us english. Honestly, IT was POWERFUL!
After service there was food and fellowship and they asked me to pray and bless the food. I prayed and gave Jesus his glory and there was a loud chorus of AMEN when I was finished. I felt like I was at Chayil. ( Peace and Blessings to my father and pastor Clifton N. Hurt)The rest of the day included mongolian dance practice, a meeting with a cool young mongolian banker guy and a peaceful 4hr hike with a fellow trainee Ben. Ben does not say much but every-time I go on a hike with him he makes sure Im OK. Ben is 23 year old scoutmaster standing at about 6ft 5inches, meaning I'm nearly running up the mountains to keep up with him.
… I just finished dinner which was a cabbage, onion, carrot and vegan meat soup along with a slice of bread. I added cinnamon to my bread. The bread my mongolian mom makes from scratch is so delightful. I now turn from my journaling to working on things for the week ahead. I will be solo teaching and doing a seminar with counterparts this friday in a different town. These have been good days!
Clifton A. Hurt (Happy B-Day DAD!)

Journal Entry 8-7-2010

The last few days have been very eventful and I know that the days ahead will hold so much more. I spent the first few days of the week planning for a seminar that I would be giving. The seminar was for Mongolian teachers. For the seminar I worked with a mongolian counterpart named Oyunga and my american counterpart and fellow trainee katie. Our seminar topic was “How to Motivate Students to Speak English”. The idea is that most mongolian students are not motivated to speak english in the english classroom... Our sub-focus topics were “Games” and “Music &Media”. The Music and Media portion was my baby. I believe our presentation went over well.
Yesterday when I arrived back from Nalik, I was very tired and irritated...(people can really say some dumb things) I was mainly tired so I got to my cabin and slept from 9pm to 9am. It was some of the best sleep I have had yet. My mongolian had breakfast prepared the next morning. It was more like brunch... I had a carrot, onion and cabbage salad sandwich. It was a delightful sandwich.
After to talking to my mongolian mom and older brother. I decided to get dressed and find out what my fellow trainees were doing. I heard that we were suppose to meet at 11am to talk about out projects. As I was walking from the school back to my cabin I ran into Ben. He told me that the meeting was at our language coordinators house. So we went to Bagies house and instead of doing any of the work I was suppose to do, I ended up making brownies with Erin and Nadra. We made six pans for or host family appreciation.
At 4pm Erin and I walked to the school for dance practice...I'm kinda upset that we are not dancing... (we did not find the music or so they say ;{ ) I think some of our crew were nervous and it was a easy way out!LOL It was looking really good too! *Tomorrow the guys from or group are going to lay concrete on the basketball court. We pre-gamed by pulling up weeds that were coming out of the cracked ground.
Honestly, I am so done with training. I loved it and the time was well spent. Now I am ready to get to site and get to work. The/ My fellow trainees are awesome people. My language trainers and host family are “amazing”. However, I am now one week away form finding out where I will be serving for the next 24months. I am so excited! I want to start building the relationships with my real students, counterparts and site-mates, man, I am so adrenalized!

Clifton A. Hurt
August 2010
Peace Corps Mongolia

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One Month Into It!

4th Blog Entry 7-03-2010

My first month of Piece Corps Reflection!

Today marks 1 month since I started my Peace Corps Training experience. I have started the day by going for a walk with a fellow trainee. The rest of the day I have been home doing my sunday chores on saturday. Tomorrow the trainees and our mongolia families will travel to a river nearby for a B-B-Q. Everyone is making a dish. I decided that I wanted to explore making the home made bread the my Mongolian makes without an oven...(straight old school) I had to mix and the loaf rise next to heat and once it got to a certain point I put it on a covered fire. I made a whole grain loaf, a bit different from my mongolian moms normal loaf. However, everyone in town including my fellow trainees agree she has (my mom) has the best bread. I got a some washing done today also. My method is to use the cycle on a machine to turn the hell(dirt) out of my clothes and then I rinse them in my tumpbin which is followed by hanging them in the sun. I often have to scare the baby cafes away because the dirt pile they play in is right in front of my cabin very close to the clothes line. (LOL)They usually behave well though. Ok so this morning my friend Angie had a cow run into her kitchen and I dragged out by it horns...(These kinds of things are pretty normal now)
I have been doing a lot of reading here in Mongolia. I read the “The shack” by paul young in like 5 days on top of training . Books are like my television. Mongolians watch television, but I, at this point understand three to four words here and there. I started reading “Roots” by Alex Haley. I am on page 300 in sum-thin...LOL... This book is deep. I started watching the series with my friend Krystal but I realized the book was better so I did not finish watching it with. She kind of put my on. I had the book for a while, it was giving to me by an amazing person named Dr. Krystal Moore while on the Alex Haley Farm. The days of “FREEDOM SCHOOL”... Anyway, the book is serious and really dramatic! I also started book that will help my english teaching here in Mongolia. They give all trainees this book in preparation for Practice Teaching, which is the next phase on training and learning. I will give more details on Practice teaching later.
Next wednesday our group will travel to Zummond for mid-summer days. There we will receive our last series of shots and take care of some business. Also all 75 of us will be back together so the trainers have planned some summer fun.(always welcomed in my book)I so excited about hearing about other trainees experiences thus far. I am currently trying to learn a mongolian song Hopefully I can focus on that during the next few nights also. This last month has been a great learning experience that I know will help a lot in the future. Did I mention... Mongolia is beautiful, minus the random dust storms in the summer time.

This is a Double** 7-10-2010

Our 4th of July celebration was amazing. The day started with getting up eating breakfast, and meeting at the school with my friends and our mongolian families. We were suppose to leave at 10am but we ended up leaving closer to 12 noon...LOL(CP time ain't go nothing on this!) My bread was a failure but my fellow americans had more success at their 4th food dishes. Some of them made apple hosher, monto, carrot salad, fruit salad and even onion rings and french fries! Our families had us put in 5,000 tugs, which is probably the equivalent to $3.00 to $4.00's. They bought to goats and all kinds of other Mongolian foods and snacks that we ate. The goats were slaughtered, skinned and hot-rocked (cooked) right in front of us. This was awesome! Although I do not eat meat this was awesome to see.
First they took the goats off of the truck. (*My apologies to the animal lover!) They simply held it and clocked it in the middle of the head and knocked it out with one pop of a hammer. Then they split its belly and reached in barehanded and stopped the heart. After stopping the heart, they started skinning the animal with a knife. They slit at certain points and held skin while pressed with their fist. After the animal was fully skinned they cut it into pieces and cooked it with hot rocks. It was like a pressure cooker kind of machine. Carrots and potatoes were included which were very flavorful in the end. ( I have Pictures)
The celebration was at the river. This scene was awesome...(the work of the creators hands). All of the volunteers along with our families played Frisbee, volleyball, baseball and soccer. However, soccer took place toward the end and I did not play. I found a spot in one of the vans and got some sleep just before leaving. The day was beautiful... Oh I almost forgot! So once the meat was almost ready the families and PCV's all gathered. Our Language Training Coordinators told us that our families wanted to tell us “Happy 4th of July” and how glad they were to host us. WE ALL SAID THANKS and shared/sang the American National Anthem. Its was really the first time I got all emotional sining this song...(LOL) I felt proud to be American! We had a good day!
Yesterday I returned from mid-summer days in Zummond. They were great. I got to see all 75 of my fellow volunteers. We started with 76...(Its a part of PC life) Anyway, It was a great time. We got the last of our shots from medical and had some sessions. On thursday the trainers gave a B-B-Q. We had a huge salad with lettuce.(This was a first for me in mongolia) We had cabobs veggie and regular! There was cool-aid and watermelon. The trainers did there thang! This was followed by a dodge-ball tournament. It was fun. The trainers and trainees divided up by training sites and played against one another. We did not when, but it is sicking how close our group had become. (That fish bowl helped @ 4th of July B-B-Q) Friday we left mid-summer days and headed home. It is so good to be back with my host family. There is no place like home...(LOL) (Shout to my CHI_TOWN FOLK)
Peac3 and Love
CLIFTON A. HURT

MIcro Teaching WEEK!

Micro Teaching

This week was an eventful week with new new surprises. One of the highlights was micro teaching. Micro Teaching is basically when our Language teachers gather students in the community and in groups of three we prepare and teaching lessons. In these lessons each person as twenty minutes to do their thing... My group consist of Ben, Erin and myself. I had the most experience in the group, but my fellow group-mates were naturals. Mondays lesson was a basic dialogue,
Hello
My name is ____
Nice to meet you
Im feeling_____
and the students really enjoyed our lesson. We had eight students the first day which was monday and nine students on thursday. Thursdays lesson was a review from mondays material in trio with body parts which Ben covered and numbers which I taught. Our observers said we did well both times and that we were ready for practice teaching which is a great a compliment considering we have a few more micro teaching weeks yet.
On wednesday me and one of my fellow trainees went on a five hour hike. This was an interesting journey... We traveled for two hours +1/2 around two big mountains and then cut through going over two other big hills to come to the place of my pictures..... Its amazing how there are forest like places on these hills and than on the backside of the same hill its as bare as babes bottom. On the way home Cameron and I were in conversation when he started humming a familiar tune... Check out the video ….It was a fun and eventful hike...I must say !
The weekend started with me finding the perfect Mongolian song to sing at the graduation in August. My Language teachers nephew helped me find it.(Thanks!) It a simple guitar driven song. I hope I can get the language, which is the biggest part. I learned to the tune and chorus yesterday! I am excited! I also was able to start a worship song in Gband. While I am limited because I do not have a keyboard here the track sounds ok... My Mongolian mom feeds me well! I am constipated as I type... Digestive system do not fail me now...LOL!
Peace and Love
Clifton A. Hurt

Video coming soon...

Getting to know my town.

This last week has been a blast. It started with me getting some weekend rest and washing my clothes with my Mongolian mother on Sunday in preparation for the week. I had a really cool experience on Sunday. I went up the hill in the back of my house and looked down over the town. This is where I had my devotional time. I played the guitar, read scripture and prayed giving God my best praise. Each night this week held something different, something good. Actually, I found out that my host mom would like me to be in the house by 9P.M. At least that’s what I thought I heard....there is still a big language barrier but I'm starting to understand. I have a curfew.... (Humbling aye)
Learning how to start a fire thing has been an experience fun and awkward at times. The other night I got one started but it was not blazing until I fell asleep. It was the wind blowing through the exhaust hole that probably caused it to burn so big. In my Mongolian mom's cabin she can keep a fire burning for hours smokeless and warm. I have been spending a lot of time with my host family, I think its most appropriate and helps for learning the Mongolian language met my Host mom's daughter in-law who quickly told me that she was a Christian and that there was a small church ran by Koreans in the town saw the lil cross on the building and thought nothing of it. How awesome is that? She also told me that her English teachers was a missionary who started that church and live in Mongolia for 12 years and 9years somewhere else and is now serving in the Philippines. I thought to myself this and man and his wife are awesome examples and missionaries...
Mongolian language classes are fun. We spend 4 hours each day in class. However, it is not as brutal as it may sound. We do many different activities and games. Although, the youngest person in the training group is 22 we all act like 12 years in most cases when it comes to the fun learning activities. Our Mongolian Teachers Adiya and Baggii are great and simply good teachers. They rarely use English in the class... Well.... really.... they don't know much English. However, they do well with use 12 American students. Yesterday (6-17-2010) I was feeling so sick from the second round of vaccinations. Today I feel better and plan to hike with some of my fellow trainees.
Random …. Last night I was out past curfew, which did not seem to matter. I arrived home at about 10pm. I initially was going to cut my oldest nephews' hair. But the American clippers were going crazy being hooked into the Mongolian power, even with the converter plug thingy, it did not work! After trying different methods I gave up and was sucked right into a late night home improvement project in my mother cabin. I and my oldest nephew and a younger nephew put a wall paper (or something like it). This project took us 1 hour in a half. I was so exhausted by the time we were finished, it had been such a long day. I went to my cabin and realized I had to use the outhouse (LOL) and quickly ran back out only to stand in awe of what I had not notice a few minutes earlier. I marveled! It was like I was able to see every single star in the sky... I never say anything like it … I cannot wait until the day me and some of my fellow trainees go camping. I will be able to sleep under this awesomeness.... Until Next time Peace AND LOVE

Clifton A. Hurt

The first few days in Mongolia have been awesome. I have seen so many things and met so many people. There have not been any major challenges. The Mongolian people have been very receptive to the Peace Corps Volunteers here in Zuunmod. They seem to think that we are funny... There are 76 plus volunteers here and we have all been attempting to learn one of the hardest languages in the world. With some success at “hello” and “thank you” we have seemed to manage well.(LOL) Today two little girls from the Zuunmod hung out with us. They were awesome! The currency exchange rate here is MNT 1,375= $1.00, which is generally ok for what Peace Corps supplies us with in money. You have to be smart with your money and budget correctly.

For now I'm rooming with three guys Glen, Ben, and Cameron. These guys are all different but cool for the most part. My vegetarian diet has not been challenged yet. However, I will not really know until I move with my host family for training. I have been reassured by one of the volunteers that I would be able to continue the diet I will continue to try... I really like it here. I think with some more language training(which is coming soon!), and living with the host family I will be able to serve well. There is much for me to learn and I am really excited about it. Oh, the school dorms that we are staying in have hill like mountains on the side of the building that set the most beautiful scenery for when the sun is shining. (Actually got a lil ultimate Frisbee in earlier today...)

( Its currently 8:50pm in Zuunmod which means its 7:50 back home in chicago) Im getting a bit tired!

Peace and Love Friends & Family!