Chess

The title of this post says that it is about chess, and the picture is, indeed, about chess, but o.my.god. I am not going to write about chess.  Just yesterday, I wrote about how my students make me happy.  Then, today, I come to my part-time job, and two classes in a row, my students manage to prove that wrong.  In the first class, I'm trying to explain something, and my students are sitting there talking to each other, joking around, and not listening whatsoever.  I told them that this behaviour was unacceptable, but they continued to do it.  I warned them that I can be either an extremely fun teacher (like what they have seen up until now), but if they disrespect me (and I feel incredibly disrespected when it's obvious that nobody is listening to me), then I can also be an absolute bitch.  Then, I go to my second class.  I start every class by reviewing the homework which I assigned in the previous lesson.  That way, we can be sure that everyone arrived at the correct answer and that they understand what we are learning.  It should take a maximum of twenty minutes.  Maximum.  This fucking class didn't do the homework.  I don't mean that a couple people didn't do the homework.  I mean that absolutely nobody did the homework.  Making them answer a question was like pulling teeth, and it took the entire fifty fucking minutes of class to review their homework.  I ended up slamming my whiteboard marker down four minutes early and walking out of class because 46 minutes of trying to be patient when I'm actually incredibly pissed off that no one did my homework is apparently all I can manage.  Thank you for listening to this rant.

Feeling Bleh!

I got very sick yesterday.  Well, it was the sickest I've been in close to a year, anyway.  I'm not sure if it was a very mild flu or if it was food poisoning, but I just felt sucky.  Since I've decided to not get a phone here in UB, I couldn't call into work, so I had to go to my part-time job, hoping they would send me home.  I couldn't have called in to work anyway because people tend to not believe me when I say that I am sick (I was actually misdiagnosed as a hypochondriac once when in fact I have a degenerative autoimmune disease).  So, I went to work, felt sucky, went to the bathroom and threw up, and yep, I did get sent home.  My boss forced me to drink some Theraflu and then she drove me home (that was nice, or else I would have been stuck on public transportation in that state), and I went straight back to bed.  I've slept for close to two days straight now and I feel close to 90% of normal!  Huzzah!  I will go in to work tonight, even if I'm not 100% my normal, bouncy teacher self.

Incidentally, speaking of being sick, my first thought when I saw this bus was that the Easter Bunny must have thrown up all over it.

ARGH!

Dels are really cool.  What's so cool about them is that you see people wearing them everywhere.   It's traditional clothing that people (albeit, mostly old-timers) actually still wear around town.

I wish I could be all happy and cheery in this post, because the man's outfit in this picture is totally awesome and because it's Halloween, , and just, in general, I wish I were happy and cheery, but I'm not.  You see, there was an incident yesterday at work.  You see, my camera went missing.  I started searching for it.  I knew exactly when the last time I had it was, but nonetheless, I looked everywhere.  I searched the area around my desk.  I searched that area five times.  The more I looked, the more frantic I got.  A few of my coworkers started to help me search.  I told my boss my camera was missing.  She made everyone join the search.  Suddenly, my camera was "found" by my desk, under my chair.  My camera was NOT there when I searched my desk area the five other times.  I know, because I had moved everything (including the chair) in that area searching for my camera and it definitely wasn't there.  So, my camera magically reappears, and then my boss lays in to me (in front of all my coworkers) about accusing my coworkers of stealing from me.  I try telling her that my camera had definitely not been under my chair, and she says that I just missed seeing it.  No fuckin way (I didn't actually say that, though).  I tell her that it's possible, just possible that someone put it back there when they realised that the entire school was now searching for my camera.  She says no, she SAW three people all find my camera at the same time, and I feel like a retard.  I don't understand how that is possible, because I definitely looked under my chair, and it definitely wasn't there, but if three (essentially four) people all found my camera at the same time, it must be true.  Then, she continues to demean and demoralise me (in a very condescending, nasty way), and a few minutes later, she lets slip that three people TOLD her that they found the camera under the chair together.  I ask her, which is it? did you SEE three people find the camera or did three people TELL you they found the camera.  She says there is no difference.  I say there's a huge difference.  Then she says, it's okay, no one will steal your camera again.  I retort sarcastically, yeah, they won't steal it again.  She lays into me for "making fun" of her English.  I wasn't making fun of her English.  Her English is pretty marvelous.  If she let slip the word "again", deep down, I think she knows what really happened.  In the end, I guess it's okay because at least I got my camera back and I know what really happened, and I guess that's all that matters.  But I'm upset because I was the victim there, but in the end, I was made to look and feel like a giant foolish shithead.  I have to go into work now, and I don't want to go.  I may be a whitey, but I'm not Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, or any other fictional character with a bag full of endless goodies.  The expression "what's mine is yours" is only an expression.  Don't take it too literally.  It does not mean you can help yourself to my camera.  And besides, I never once said to you "what's mine is yours", so just fuck off my stuff, okay?

Korean in Cyrillic

When I was teaching business students in Korea, I found from listening to them that Koreans really like Mongolia.  This was confirmed when I decided to move to Mongolia and told a few of my Korean friends about my plans.  When I arrived in Mongolia, I found that Mongolians seem to love Korea as much as Koreans love Mongolia.  This was confirmed to me when my high school students spent twenty minutes listing all the K-pop they love and when I noticed the superabundance of Korean restaurants in downtown Ulaanbaatar.

I hope this bad week turns around real soon

Yesterday was a bad day.  My school was three days late paying me my salary this month.  And I really needed it!  And it was my first salary that I received from them, so they even had me worried about whether they were the type of place that regularly pays their employees or not.  And they have my passport because they were going to "help" me register with the government, but that was three weeks ago, and I still don't have my passport back, and when I ask about it, they get angry at me.  Well, at least now they've paid me part of my salary (but not all that I was expecting) and they've offered to put a computer in my apartment, which will be great because then I can blog at home instead of at work (oh yeah, and I can do some work from home, too, like preparing for lessons and I also keep a different blog for my students).  So, things are shaping up today, I guess.  I hope.  If I also get my passport back this week, things are definitely shaping up a lot.  Here's to hoping!

The Story

A lot of people, upon hearing that I moved to Mongolia, responded with "Mongolia!?  Wow!  Why Mongolia?"  Well, basically, it was a lottery.  I was very sick and tired of all the bullshit in Korea, and I desperately wanted out of there.  So, I went to the nearest PC Bang (internet cafe/world of warcraft den), looked through Dave's ESL Cafe and eslteachersboard.com and a few others, blanketed the ESL industry with my resume (as long as the school wasn't in Korea), and I sat back and waited.  I had decided that the first place that offered me a job would be the place where I would move.  So, a few days later, I got an email from a school in Mongolia that said simply, "Okay, we like your resume.  We'd like to hire you."  So I started preparing my visa for Mongolia and I started packing, and that was that.

Was this a poor decision?  In some ways, yes, in other ways, no.  Mongolia, itself is really nice.  I actually really like Ulaanbaatar, and all of the people here.  It's pretty cheap to live here (well, as long as you're not too free and easy with your lifestyle).  I think it's going to be really fun to live here (even if the winter is going to be fucking cold).  That's the good.  The bad: it's only October, and it's already pretty chilly.  That, in and of itself, is not that bad (I'm Canadian, after all-- I'm used to chilly weather).  What's bad is that I'm lucky if I have hot water once every three days.  In the past week, I've taken exactly two showers, and both of them were cold.  I'm usually a showers-every-day type of person.  The reason why I've only had two showers in the past week is because every time I turn on the water in my bathroom, hoping to take a shower, the only thing that comes out is cold water.  Since it's chilly outside, and since my place is not heated, I just can't bring myself to step into a freezing fucking shower (when I was backpacking in SouthEastAsia, I took cold showers almost every day, but that's because the guesthouses that only had cold showers were cheaper and it's a WARM climate-- even if the water is cold, at least all the air around you is warm).  So, in the past week, I've stood shivering in my very cold bathroom almost every day, holding my hand under a stream of cold water, trying to decide if the freezing cold water on a freezing cold air backdrop was worth it, and the only two times I came to the conclusion that it was worth it was when I was so filthy I could actually smell myself.

But that's not the worst of it.  The worst is actually a situation at work.  I should preface this with the following: in general, I like my students.  I also think that my coworkers are pretty nice.  But, when I was hired, I asked if there would be books and resources for me to use at school once I arrived in Mongolia.  The answer was a resounding YES!  So, imagine my surprise when, on my first day here, I sat down with my principal and my co-teacher and they explained to me that my co-teacher and I would share the book that we would use to teach the students.  I thought that was fine.  That's generally how it's done in Korea, as well.  Then, they explained to me that actually, just my co-teacher would use the book to teach the students; I could LOOK at the book to see what topic she was currently teaching and prepare my lessons totally from scratch based on a stupid, measly topic.  I just started laughing at them.  I said, "No, it's not going to work that way.  I teach 30 classes a week, my co-teacher teaches half that amount, so if anyone should have to create their own lessons for every single lesson, it should be the teacher who has fewer classes."  They said, "Fine, we'll find a different book for your co-teacher to use, and you can use this one for the older classes."  Wha??  You can find a different book for my co-teacher to use, but you couldn't have found a book for me to use?  Something smells funny.  Then, they tell me, "But for the younger classes, you really do need to make up your own lessons each time."  I say, "That's fine, just as long as I'm able to print off worksheets for the kids, I can handle making up my own lessons for very young children."  SO... today, I finally get all my shit together to print off a bunch of stuff for my classes, and they lead me to a room with a printer connected to a computer that DOESN'T WORK!!!  I say, this isn't working.  At first, they treat me like I'm a computer illiterate retard, until they realise they can't get the fuckin' thing to work, either.  Then they lead me to a different room with a different computer, and they won't even let me use that one because, according to their demented perceptions of the situation, I just don't know how to use a computer.  But, as it turns out, even on this computer, it will only print the first page of each document.  Ummm, I need all my work, thanks, not just a fifth of it.  So now, I'm hyperventilating and considering refusing to go in to teach the younger classes since the school gave me no resources and no access to print or make my own resources.   Yeah, I'm kind of livid right now.

Anyway, here's a picture of a newspaper stand I saw on Peace Ave the other week.  I might walk down there as soon as I log off.  I need a long walk to clear my mind and calm myself down.  Arrrrgh!

Newspaper Stand on Peace Avenue in Ulaanbaatar