I haven’t had Internet access for about the past week, so this announcement is slightly late in coming. I’ve left Shaamar suom, Selenge aimag for good, and I’m now engaged in “final center days” in Darkhan, Mongolia. I’ve received my more permanent site assignment, and I’ll be spending the next two years in the aimag center of Khovsgal (Also “Hovsgal.” In Mongolian, the word starts with an X, so there are a couple transliterations of it.) It’s the northernmost aimag/province in Mongolia, famous for its scenery and the native reindeer herders. It is, perhaps, the country’s most popular tourism destination, and it’s a “fly site,” so Peace Corps will be sending me in and out by plane. I’ll be teaching at a complex school with around 1,300 students and 70 teachers, of whom eight English teachers will be my counterparts, whom I will advise, assist, assess and instruct. My home will be a traditional Mongolian ger, a felt tent, and I’ll be burning wood for heat, come the wintertime, which will feature temperatures dropping into the -30s Fahrenheit. Tomorrow I’m supposed to meet either my boss or a counterpart, depending on which one the school sent to receive me, for the first time. That’s pretty exciting. I was named a Peace Corps “subwarden” for my aimag, so I guess they must trust me, and today I gave a speech as a candidate for VAC, which, I think, is the Volunteer Advisory Council, or something along those lines -- a group that meets with administrators to discuss policy on behalf of the volunteers as a group. We voted today. Wish me luck.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 15:10:18 +0000
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