It's been a LOOOONNNNGGG ten days!

I and the other newbies here have just finished our first teaching opportunity here in UB, a ten day teaching practicum. We had about 40 Mongolian English Teachers (all women) come from all over the country on their Spring Break type of vacation (some traveled over 20 hours by bus - which means they were cramped in like sardines the entire time) to study English from actual native English speakers.

Along with tons of new vocabulary (including fun words like "bummer" and "gold digger"), we taught them new teaching structures designed to make learning English more fun and to give them (and their students back home) more opportunities to practice speaking.

So for the past ten days (March 23-April 2 with one Sunday off), my days looked like this:

• Wake up about 6-6:30am and finish getting ready for the days activities. 
• Leave for the office with my teammates about 8:30am, print off vocab words/pictures, stories, cut/tape/glue questions, take a deep breath, drink my energy drink and head to the school around 9:30am. 
• Teach from 10am-1:15pm with Barb.
•  1:15-2pm have a conference with our main teacher about things we need to improve on, things we did well and questions we may have. 
• 2pm-3pm have lunch with my team and not talk about teaching at all. 
• 3pm - 4pm-ish,walk home, try to catch up on dirty dishes, laundry, stare off into nowhere for a few minutes, return a few emails and then back to working. 
• 4pm-ish until about 8pm work on the next days activities with Barb, Duke and John and grade homework.
• 8pm - 8:30pm, have a snack and Skype. 
• 8:30pm - 11pm, continue working on homework and practicum activities. 
• Then try to sleep.

Two out of four us got sick by the end of this schedule - I think I caught the flu and maybe an upper respiratory infection. I'll have a picture in my newsletter coming out soon (if you're not on my newsletter list, email me your physical address).

It was a great experience despite the busy schedule and illness - I learned a TON about teaching, got to meet some great Mongolian English teachers and was taken very good care of by my team members! After a few days off and some medication, I feel great and am ready to start back with my Mongolian language lessons!