Idle hands

I thought I'd take the opportunity this week to tell you all a bit about the regular things I get up to outside of work. Not one for just lazing around at home (at this point members of my family will snigger!), I spend some of my free time learning Mongolian and running English language sessions for Mongolians.

The Mongolian Language Challenge - I'm quite conscious of the fact that getting a firmer grasp of the local language will give me a greater chance to explore Mongolian culture. It'll also allow me to interact more with the lovely Mongolian people! As a result, I'm trying to improve my Mongolian and have a one-to-one language lesson once a week. Whilst progress is slow I'm getting somewhere. It's not as daunting as when I first arrived. At the very least I'm now able to read Cyrillic. Also, my knowledge of food vocabulary is pretty good - I've got my priorities right!

English language sessions - Perhaps the most useful skill I have to offer to Mongolians is my language. Young people here are very keen to practice their English with a native speaker, so I've had requests from three groups to run English language sessions with them. The result is that I now run language club sessions three times a week. These sessions are great fun, as I get to chat about all sorts of topics with Mongolians. Last week I managed to find a video about the previous foot and mouth outbreak in the UK, which I showed to one of my groups. The participants found it quite interesting - many Mongolians are from farming backgrounds, so they could relate to what the British farmers were saying. On a side point, I had a chat with a group about religion, and it turned out that one of the participants was a shamanist. This person then told me about the shaman they regularly visit, and proceeded to show me their shaman's business card. Even shamans have embraced modernisation!

N.B. I should point out that I do a fair amount of meeting up with friends and watching films too! "Lazy Rob" surfaces from time-to-time. On that note, it's time for me to go home and get some sleep! Lots of love to you all,

Robert