Dittos, Broken Locks, Cleaners and Contradictions

We laughed at the trouble you got yourself in the time you ran short of “ dittos.”

This past week I was late for my class because I did not get to the Cannon shop in time. When I got there I realized that I didn’t have enough tugricks ($) to make the number of copies that I wanted. So I was late and short on dittos for my students. I was pretty mad at myself for not preparing better because my lesson was really exciting.

So I stormed into class and said, “Let’s get started. Open your notebooks.” I was so mad I could have spit nails. My counterpart looked at me and smiled. She would never say anything to me during the crisis, (very quiet sort of gal) but later she mentioned that she was worried about me. (I laughed and said that if you see steam coming out of my ears that just means that my engines are running on full speed.) I knew my first class was the smartest and fastest, so, I thought, “I will have them skip the dittos and copy every sentence from the board and they will do okay.”

Just as I was starting somebody poked their head in the door and said that all my students are needed at the clinic for checkups. So everything worked out all right. I had forty minutes to prepare for my next class and since I did not use the dittos for my first class I was set. What a day! I taught two of my best lessons to my next two classes. That’s a day in the life of a PC teacher.

Your mother and I howled with laughter at this.

Other news: Enkhtuya broke the lock on our training center door by jamming the key in the wrong way. It is easy for me to get flustered when work piles up and you are working toward different objectives all at once. Then this happens and we can’t enter our center because the door is locked and broken. Then someone said to me that some of the Russian teachers were coming by—any minute now—to see our center.

Well, dig me a hole and throw dirt over me! Right about now I started up a good conversation with the wall in front of me and then I ran to find some pliers, but the Russian teachers didn’t come. They have threatened to come twice before and, truthfully, God only knows why they did not come. Our door is open now, but we can’t lock the center. Fortunately, our center is inside our English classroom, the door of which we can lock. Isn’t it funny how live fits together in the oddest way.

You may remember a prior journal entry a few weeks ago about and ambitious student who broke our classroom door lock while trying to break in so he could clean. Hey look—nobody is perfect and I am counting my blessings. At least they had the grace to not break both locks at the same time. If they had done that I would have checked for my suitcase.

I laughed out loud at your moving experience. Then I had to marvel at your colorful description of life in Mongolia.

I now have a new place to rest my head. Yes, I have moved across town. My school finally sold my big old apartment to a family who can really use the extra rooms. I am now in a two-room apartment and getting along just fine. It has taken about three weeks to get everything set up. Moving is always tough no matter where you live, but moving in Mongolia is somewhere between the blind leading the blind and a traveling dog circus.

After teaching all day the movers and I loaded all my worldly goods on a pickup truck and drove across town to the new apartment. When we started to move my stuff inside the apartment I discovered that the place had not been swept or the carpet cleaned. It was too late now to say, “No, take all my stuff back. The apartment is not clean.” So they moved all my stuff in and assured me that the cleaning ladies would come “tomorrow” and help me clean. “Tomorrow” never came so I went to the school and found the intrepid leader of the cleaning ladies who happens to be the school accountant. I basically called them all liars and said that I did not have time to waste and that they were responsible for taking me away from my teaching. Within thirty minutes four cleaning ladies trooped over to my apartment and cleaned the carpets. We had a blast talking and laughing.

Such is the contradiction and sometimes the frustration of life in Mongolia. The people are lively and warm if not the most organized. I have to remind myself that Mongolia is still a “third world” country, a very ancient country whose views on life and thinking are very different from our own. This is still a place where people still take off their gloves to shake hands no matter how cold it is. Mothers still wrap their babies in swaddling clothes and the people sing. They sing at parties, in homes, on horseback, etc. Mongolian women are known for their ability to carry a tune and their ability to harmonize with one another easily. It is a most beautiful part of their culture.