Bayankhongor American Culture Center Opens!

Excerpts from the grant we helped Tysen and Oyuntugs write:

"The Bayankhongor American Culture Center (BACC) is the brainchild of Oyuntugs, PCV Tysen Dauer’s counterpart. She noticed that Bayankhongor Aimag [Province] lacks a public English education center and adequate English resources. Community members have requested several English based classes. Over twenty five Bayankhongor residents requested a TOEFL preparation class. There have been over two hundred fifty requests for English courses ranging from elementary to advanced conversation classes... There have been numerous requests for English literature, TOEFL resources, computer classes, English language films, American popular culture magazines, and above all a safe and engaging space for Bayankhongor youth.

"To address these needs, Oyuntugs approached the aimag government in January 2009 about acquiring a space for the BACC. The local government has given the BACC two rooms in the aimag government center and has promised to provide rooms in the future Children’s Palace, which is currently being built in the aimag center. [At the time of the grant], the BACC [had] limited resources: four sets of benches, five tables with broken legs, a small desk, and a blackboard. Resources are being accumulated through additional grants. These resources include books, DVDs, CDs, music scores, computers, internet access, and electronic English language learning programs."

From the grants, we were able to get all of these items, paint the room, install electricity, and have desks, chairs and shelves made. And this made for a great atmosphere for the sample classes we taught during Saturday's open house.

PCV Peder and his counterpart teach a lesson together during the open house.

(Left) New PCV Wally teaches with his counterpart, Boldmaa, the head methodologist for the aimag. (Right) Students actively participate during a class.

The open classes were well attended, but the opening ceremony was the highlight of Saturday's events. Our Peace Corps Country Director Jim Carl flew in special to offer his remarks. He was set to come to Bayankhongor for a routine, periodic site visit and was able to arrange his schedule to accommodate our needs. He and one of the medical officers, Amy, stayed in a hotel in Bayankhongor for 5 days.

(Left) Peace Corps Country Director Jim Carl makes his opening remarks praising the work of the community and emphasizing that this is just the beginning of a new step toward bringing the USA, which is often referred to as Mongolia's third neighbor, closer to Bayankhongor. His counterpart representing the provincial government reinforced the same.


Nathan's counterpart Undrah, who has a commanding voice and personality, was the master of ceremonies. Here, he is making notes.


Leslie accompanies a group of students on "This Land is Your Land."



(Top left) A performer from the 4-member group, Baby Girls, from new volunteer Anna's school, stands in her school uniform anxiously awaiting a resolution to technical difficulties for her song and dance to "Eternal Flame". (Top right) Dancers from Tysen's business school danced to an upbeat number you might hear behind cheerleaders at an American sporting event. (Bottom left) A Mongolian dancer from Leslie's theater cuts an impressive rug. (Bottom right) Undrah holds the microphone for a student from Leslie's theater who is playing the horsehead fiddle or "morin huur".


Jim Carl and a Mongolian girl cut the ribbon to open the Bayankhongor American Culture Center on September 19, 2009.

A Special Thanks
We called out to our friends and families to show us Americana. With their help, we were able to print and display over 260 photos on the wall of our culture center. Here are some of the highlights:

Please check out all the photos here and here.

Thanks to our professionals:
Eric George
Piper Robbins
Rob Shore
Ashlee Christian

Thanks also to our keen-eyed amateurs:
Melody McFarland
Lydia Godfrey Donovan
Melissa Munoz
David and Melissa Reeder
Paige Robbins Elwafi
Cat Kruszka
Kristen Chamberlain
Mary Lou Chamberlain
Kendall Glouner
Cipperly Good
Jen Sokira
Nancy Nally
Bonnie Gruttadauria
Cynthia Rack

(Top, bottom left) Attendees gawk at the photo wall courtesy of our friends and family. (Bottom right) Students, teachers and Peace Corps volunteers and Peace Corps Country Director Jim Carl pose to commemorate the opening of the culture center.

Classes began this week, and the third consecutive week of American Movie Night hosted by Leslie, is set for this Friday! You can come, but just a warning, it will be packed like last week.

Summer Camp at Uvgun Jargalant: WE CAN DO IT!

After some administrative problems including being told we would have three quarters as many, then twice as many students as we'd planned, we had a good 5 days in the countryside at Uvgun Jargalant, "Ol' Blissful," a summer camp for children nearly 70 kilometers from Bayankhongor.

(Thanks to Peder for this photo). For more photos from the camp week, click here.

Our particular camp focused on English and life skills, and there was some physics rolled up in there too. As you might imagine, the planning and compromises that went into making the camp were many, including a surprise early morning flight back from UB for Leslie because two of the English teachers and the life skills teacher dropped out two days before we were supposed to leave. We nearly canceled the thing altogether because of the many frustrations and misleading, fanciful assertions made by some of the Mongolian staff, but like many kids who are forced to go to camp and then end up loving it, we found ourselves sorry to see the camp end.

The first two days were treacherously cold and it snowed on and off, sometimes for over an hour. We were advised to bring clothes as if it were winter, and we did a pretty good job layering. Unfortunately, we didn't quite take them as seriously as we should have because as it was snowing through the broken window of our room and we were hunkered down in our sleeping bags, our faces were ice, ice cold. We never thought it would snow in June, and in fact, the other two Peace Corps volunteers who went with us (Peder and Fahd) were so convinced it wouldn't be that cold that they didn't even bring sleeping bags. Brrrr.















Peder & Fahd took some of the kids on a day hike up a smaller peak on one of the surrounding mountains. Notice the storm clouds with snow rolling in.

Nathan, clad in every piece of clothing he brought to camp, waits to receive a pass from a student showing off his best Boomer Esiason.

Despite the cold, we and the 27 campers were outside much of the time. And much of the time was flexibly structured so we knew about what things should happen around what time. Thanks to some last-minute but pretty comprehensive planning, we came up with a schedule for the week and a theme for each day.

Our Daily Schedule at Uvgun Jargalant Camp

9-10	Breakfast
10-11	English lessons in 3 groups by level
11-11:30	Tea, butter crackers
11:30-12:30	Life Skills (1/2 hr), Physics (1/2 hr)
1-2	Lunch
2-3	Free time
3-4	English (language games)
4-4:15	Tea or yogurt
4:15-7	Structured play time (hiking, football, sports tournament, scavenger hunt)
7-8	Dinner
8-11	Event (drag show, dancing, plays, poetry-off)

Themes included family, sports, nature, weather, and incorporated several grammar points based on class level. Each American was partnered with a Mongolian English teacher so the teacher could learn from the lessons as well. With some mixed results among us, the system seemed to work OK, though if we had had more time to plan, the Mongolian teachers could have been more involved.

The first day we arrived at camp in the afternoon, so after a quick break for some soup and the first of many yak milk teas (not even as good as you might think), we interviewed each of the 10-17 year olds and grouped them according skill level resulting in some of the older kids winding up with the youngest kids. No matter, though. All the students were motivated and energized for each lesson, and we didn't have a single discipline or attention span problem.

Students used their bunks as desks and chairs. Much of the teaching was active and involved speaking or drawing, so they got along just fine.

The classroom was useful, but we were outside a lot. In fact, many of the highlights of the week for us included:

1. Nathan's hike up a steep mountain with 4 kids.

The five hiking guys stop for a quick photo.

[Left] The grounds of the camp. [Right] The kids found wild onions and a kind of sour wild leaf vegetable they called red cabbage. It was like grocery shopping on the mountain.

2. Football, including an 11 on 11 game.

Teaching and playing football was a big part of our camp. It started with just throwing the ball and ended in an 11 on 11 game, culminating in a well defended long bomb that hit its receiver on the run for a touchdown!

Early on we taught the campers some sports words and phrases.
Here you can hear them shouting, "Pass it to me!" and, "Throw it to me!"
They had the throwing part down, but receiving never did catch on.

3. And teaching music outdoors.

The kids do their best James Taylor on this Carole King favorite of ours, "You've Got a Friend."

One evening, Leslie and I turned in early while Peder and Fahd attended the camp drag show. We heard they were going to have a "Miss" competition, but didn't know it would be the boys dressing up as girls. Some of them really committed and pulled it off. The one older student dressed his version of Middle Eastern garb won the competition. Maybe less IS more.
















Another day was filled with a Mongolian sports tournament that pitted us against each other in a tug of war. We broke the rope with our awesomeness leaving the competition in a draw.






And at the end of the evening, Leslie put on her dancing shoes to teach the Cha Cha Slide. Think of it as a kind of hip-hop line dance, where the recorded announcer instructs dancers when and what to do, like a solo square dance. It was a big hit.

"Clap your hands. Now hop. Slide to the right. Slide to the left. Cha-cha-cha," and so on.

On the final evening they put on English language skits of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears (which they knew through Russian influence), and The Boy Who Cried Wolf was new, but a big hit. In the two latter skits, they came up with original dialogue and memorized it in between readings from the narrator. We were impressed.

What Nathan thought was most stunning from the week was how well Leslie was able to really instill some positive qualities through life skills training. Most notably, she taught them about sportsmanship, being a role model, and positive language. After the second day, the motto of the camp was "We Can Do It!" in English. This flavored everything we did from then on as kids happily shouted the moniker to their friends while hiking, working in class, and competing on the field of play.

It was a good week filled with more than we can put on one blog, so check out more of the action here. We look forward to doing the camp again next year working from the strengths and weakness of this year.