Thursday, 15 May 2008

Birthday in Mongolia!

Yes, on Wednesday the 14th of May it was my birthday! I’ve got to say that it was a bit sad to be away from all my friends and family, but the volunteer community still gave me a good time. We met up at Ulaanbaatar’s one-and-only Kyrgyzstan restaurant (I’ve been wanting to go there for some time – when else will I have the chance to eat food from Kyrgyzstan?!), and had lots of nice food and beer. It was great to have lots of the volunteers around, everyone was in good spirits. Perhaps the highlight of the evening was the waiter at our table, he was such a friendly guy. After serving us food he turned to DJing, playing a variety of tunes at our request! We stayed in the restaurant for 3 hours, just sitting and chatting – a mark of a good evening.

Working at the Mongolian Blood Donors Association – My three weeks at Tolgoit NGO have passed, so I’m now working at the Blood Donors Association. It’s a different experience as the Association is staffed by two elderly volunteers. They are a real inspiration – people using a large amount of their free time for the good of society, expecting no financial reward in return. The two people are very nice, but it is a challenge to communicate with them – one of them speaks incredibly fast, whilst the other is partially deaf. My Mongolian’s ok, but this is a real test! One of my tasks is to teach them a little bit of English, but I have had to start from scratch, starting with the Latin alphabet. Most young people can use the Latin alphabet already (it’s the way they communicate by email and SMS), but the older population is not so familiar with it. I’ve got another week and a half with this organization, wish me luck!

English language lessons for volunteers/parishioners – last Saturday I started giving English language lessons out at my local parish (the Sain Honichin / Good Shepard Parish). Participants include members of the parish and volunteers from the organisations I work with. Turnout for the first set of lessons was good – over 30 people turned up. I’m enjoying my foray into the world of English language teaching, although I’m not sure I’d want to do it as my main job. Anyway, it’s good fun, and a really easy way for me to “give something back” to the local people.

Three months to go and I come back home. I had better start planning what to do with my remaining 10 days of holiday. I hope you are all well, lots of love to you all,

Robert

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