Right before break, our school celebrated the end of a month long book contest with a book fair and prizes. Classes made big books and little books, wrote books and repaired books. While I was disappointed that most of the “books” created were just copies of published books, I did appreciate the effort to encourage reading and was impressed by the artwork.

A big book by the 8th grade

And little books by the 11th grade

Bolor-Erdene perusing a display.

A book "first aid" kit that included a stapler and a roll of tape.

The game de jour in my room these days is Life. While they can’t read what most of the squares say, and they always forget to buy a house, they have learned the important words “pay”, “collect”, and “lawsuit”. The kids just love “that game with the cars.”

Shrinky Dinks are one of those things that are pretty silly when you think about them but are super cool in real life. I recently got two Shrinky Dink kits in the mail, one with fairies and one with monsters, and before break, the 5th grade and I got to shrinking.

1. First we had to color:

I really like this kid's giant pencil "pencil holder"

2. Then, since at all times I must keep up the charade of being a teacher, I had them measure their “dinks” before and after baking.

Odmaa taking her measuring very seriously

3. Next it was time to bake. As I was working with a stove just one grade above a Easy Bake, I had the kids come up two at a time to watch the magic. I have to say even I was impressed.

4. Finally it was time to create our fairy tree. I have a feeling that it will be in a place of honor in that classroom for years to come…..

The bedazzled fairy tree.

Cutie Pies

Last week the students were off for vacation and the academic Olympics. While most of the teachers at my school participated in the Olympics, Brian and I took it as a chance to get away for a bit. Ulaanbaatar is a hard city to love with its horrible traffic, pollution, and overall ugly facade, but it has its bright spots with friends, restaurants, and super fast internet. We got to see several friends including our “little sisters” Zula and Tsendee

and former ACMS co-workers. We ate all sorts of glorious food including Indian, Hot Pot, pizza, Japanese and many cups of expensive but delicious coffee. We did a little bit of shopping (okay just me) and came home with 25 new books and 3 new games for school among other things. We also got much needed haircuts, visited the swanky new Peace Corps office, and visited the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum. They have a relatively new display of 1300 year old wooden people and animals discovered in 2009 in Tov aimag which was absolutely fascinating. For those who speak Mongolian your can read about the discovery here.

A lot of our time, though, was just spent walking around, oogling at all the changes. The barrier around the Chinggis Statue at the parliament building was down so Brian was able to get his picture taken with him.

New buildings are popping up left and right and pleasantly enough, so are small parks and rest areas. Ulaanbaatar still has a long way to go to be a livable city, but it always pleasantly surprises me.

An ever changing view

Pollution makes for beautiful sunsets