2023.01.31. - 02. 03. - First week back, so many projects

Beware: really long post about my first 4 days being properly back to uni and life in, well, my life in Ulaanbaatar.

2023.01.31.

Had my first class today, with ‘Group 2’, that is, also presidential scholarship holders, but complete beginners. These guys got the scholarship two years ago but haven’t learned any Hungarian yet. They are supposed to go to Hungary at the end of February, apparently, to study at BME and ELTE in some kind of Preliminary Program. They speak even less English than the students in my ‘old’ group (referred to as ‘Group 1’ this semester) and so I have no idea how they’re going to study anything at all in Hungary. Also, I have no idea why no one told me that they’ll leave in a few weeks – I wouldn’t have prepared a whole curriculum and syllabus for them for 16 weeks, had I known they’d be leaving in less than a month…

To be honest, I have no idea how much sense it makes to teach them Hungarian now – I am pretty sure they’ll need to take a beginners’ course in Hungary anyway, upon arrival (and if not, these few weeks won’t make a difference), so me teaching them the basics is only going to make them bored in their first few classes there. Well, I hope that at least I can give them an advantage and maybe a lust for learning more. Also, I am trying to tell them about what to expect – today, we mentioned taxi vs public transport in Budapest (very dissimilar to Ulaanbaatar), forint and food prices, basic politeness, and of course learned the material for the first lesson (how to introduce yourself to someone, greetings, the alphabet). By the way, there’s only 8 of them (12 signed up on Google Forms but only 8 turned up today), so it’s a nice small group, but I am unsure about the worth of this course – if it’s really only for a few weeks. (Not that they have flights booked to Hungary or anything yet.)

After my class, I spent another 90 mins or so in the office, organising my lesson plans/worksheets in the office (I have some leftover sheets from last semester that I can re-use now, so I need to print less), putting together everything for my next 2 lessons (now I just need to grab the pile and take it to class), and creating a new emailing list/Drive for the new group, and sending them their first homework. Also, I’ve spent some time watching YT videos, which is not something I’d usually do at work, but then I work so much from home (most of my work is done at home, actually, because I prefer lesson planning and making worksheets in the evening) that I felt like I needed to spend some time in the office, just in case anyone wanted to come talk to me about anything, just be there and be available. So now I’ll probably spend a few hours in the office here and there, so that I give students and other teachers the opportunity to find me (although I doubt anyone wants to, tbh).

In the afternoon, I went for a swim, and on my way home I saw a food delivery guy with a bike (so far, I’ve only seen them powerwalking through the city – even though in Hungary they are usually cycling or riding scooters). I swear this guy’s bike was in worse condition than mine at home is, which is saying a lot, and he didn’t even bother to lock it, he just propped it against the wall and walked inside to pick up the order.

In the evening, I was supposed to do some productive stuff like read a book or do some work, but instead, I’ve watched YT videos. Shame on me. But I’ve also taken out the trash.

The pool in Shangri-La is so bright and nice - too bad it's not a proper competition pool

2023.02.01.

I had a class with group 1 (my ‘old’ students), then spent some time in the office (organising stuff, administration). We had Agnista delivered for lunch, and had vegan egg for dinner. Ticked some things off my to-do list (like paying the entry fee for the competition). Made a vocab list for the competition (so that I’d know at least the words for the strokes). Learned a bit about plant-care in the evening and watched another ep of Sandman with my husband.

Look at these vegan eggs! They look AND taste almost like actual eggs. I am in Heaven.

Got a pack of avocado-shaped toothpaste-flavoured jellies -
Asia will sometimes throw weird stuff at you.

2023.02.02.

Taught two classes today in a row: first group 1 (the students from last semester), then group 2 (the new ones, who are supposedly leaving in a month or so). The first one was pretty fun, I think. We did revision and I could see how the students kept remembering more and more – and they do remember a lot, I wasn’t disappointed (in fact, I was pleasantly surprised by how much).

Between my classes, I decided to just stay in the room and quickly read through my lesson plan for the next class, instead of trying to get a toilet visit in – kinda impossible to make it in 10 minutes when all the students are also queueing there, since it’s their break too. It turned out not to have been the most stellar idea since about half an hour into my second class I realised I really needed to pee. Problem is, I don’t even know where the toilets are in the building; I know literally one toilet, on the ground floor. But my classroom for this semester is on the 2^nd floor, and in a different corridor. Since my students just started doing a quite long task (working in pairs), I decided to just run off for a few minutes. However, I didn’t want to go all the way to the one toilet I know, so I figured I’d find one on the corridor I was at. No such luck. The only one I found was a men’s restroom, so I went one floor down – no toilet, just a closed-off area. Okay, then tried one floor up, and it did have a toilet! However, it only had squat toilets. I was seriously contemplating my life choices as I pulled my pants down, braced myself on the walls of the cubicle – praying they won’t fall down –, and slowly squatted down with my (not-quite) 3-weeks-ago-operated-on knees. But I did manage to pee (my first time ever in a squat toilet) and get back to my class just before they actually finished working on the task.

During my second class, I had a missed call from Munkh, so I called him back after the class, and he told me the article I wrote for the university journal came back with a few editing suggestions and that he’d walk me through them (I guess they are in Mongolian, and he needs to translate for me). So we scheduled a meeting for tomorrow, after my class.

Then I hurried home, and we had lunch with my husband. After lunch, I folded the laundry while he was shaving, then we went to the Embassy to have a meeting with the guys there about all the events we’d like to do this year, celebrating Hungarian culture. We had a few ideas, they had even better ones, and we made a list of things we could possibly pull off. I’ll try to get a grant (as a visiting lecturer) that could fund one or maybe two really cool cultural events here in Mongolia. I know some of these things probably won’t work out (mostly bc of money) but it still all sounds really exciting.

The meeting lasted about one and a half hours (we also talked about my students and scholarships and such), after which my hubby came back home to chill and I went to the swimming pool. Had a nice short swim, in preparation for the competition this weekend.

Spent most of the evening scrolling YT (something I’m trying not to do as much this year, but my brain was just tired and unable to focus on anything useful) while we were waiting for dinner. Hubby ordered a burger from Burger King for himself, and fries for both of us. He also deep-fried the 3 remaining frozen khuushuurs for me so that I had something more substantial than fries for dinner.

2023.02.03.

After my class in the morning, I had a quick meeting with Otgontuya. She said she’d move 2 or 3 of my (altogether 6) classes to another room and that would also mean moving them to afternoon timeslots. I told her it was fine by me, but we would need to ask the students too – she said she’d ask them and let me know. I am not happy about the ever-changing timetable (and the prospect of having to do both mornings and afternoons) but it’s not like I am here for anything else, technically. I am paid to teach, and nobody said my schedule would be made by me; so I will not complain, just accept the cards I am dealt (unless they are unfair, but so far, they are just frustrating, not unfair at all).

She also took me to this new classroom she wants to move those classes to, it’s supposed to be very modern, a hybrid-classroom (not that I would ever need it to be hybrid, I am always teaching in person while here); we couldn’t go in though, because she couldn’t get a key, so she literally just showed me the door and the water dispenser on the corridor right by the door. Water dispensers are pretty common here, since tap water is not safe to drink, but they are usually those gallons that you need to insert to the top of the plastic stand. This special water dispenser by the fancy classroom door is huge, black (very sleek), had no visible gallons, and has 4 holes for filling your bottle (instead of 1), which means up to 4 students can fill their bottles at the same time. 2 of those slits are for ‘warm’ water and 2 for ‘boiling’, and Otgontuya proudly explained to me how this new machine can actually provide lots of hot water – which is, apparently, a very desirable feat. Once she was done showing me the water dispenser, she also pointed to the door on the other side of the machine, which was a toilet, and told me this is the cleanest women’s toilet in the whole building. Then she went on to tell me I should try it – immediately. Since I’d been actually really wanting to pee for about half an hour at that point, I gladly took her up on her offer, but I still found it very strange. (Also, it didn’t really seem super clean compared to the other toilets or anything, but at least I know the whereabouts of another toilet now.)

Once I bid goodbye to Otgontuya, I went to Munkh’s classroom, and he left his class there (for a solid 20 minutes) to have a meeting with me in his office. He told me all the things I should change or correct in my article (literally one thing I am actually capable of doing on my own, I need to register to some website and add my ID number to the article – everything else is just translate this to Mongolian and translate that to Mongolian, which they’ll have to do for me). Then we also talked about why my Hungarian language course didn’t pass the committee and was declined as an elective class for students – basically, the other departments don’t want another elective course competing with their elective courses because their teachers need to have a certain amount of credit hours each semester, and if students don’t take their classes, they won’t get the credits, and so competition is bad for them; but if students can’t pick Hungarian, they are more likely to pick some other class that they offer. Munkh also told me about a conference (in April) where they want me to give a presentation because if I do, it will be considered an international conference (they already have a French, a German, and a Russian speaker, and lots of Mongolians of course, and a fifth nationality participating would make it international). Finally, we discussed a few approaches we could try to get that friggin’ elective course accepted into the curriculum.

In the afternoon, we went to Emart for a grocery haul and to get a few things we needed for the apartment (now that we’ll be staying here a few months at least) like extension cables and a digital scale and a new towel for my hubby (bc he doesn’t like the one that came with the flat nor the one I’d brought from home). It all added up pretty quickly so we paid a lot and also had to take home so much stuff (so we got in a taxi), but it makes sense, really, as we only just came back, and every time you need to start over somewhere (or even at home, tbh, after having been away for a few months) you just need some stuff – mostly food, but also some convenience items, if the place is not fully stocked.

Look at the Mongolian patterns on these blocks of tofu!

Sometimes I see English (international) words written in Cyrillic letters and I just lose it.

I spent the evening cooking and packing my bag for the competition tomorrow. I am not nervous about it at all, seeing as I am pretty far from being ‘in shape’ for it – my knees had surgery 3 weeks ago today and are still very much healing, I am still slightly jet lagged from having travelled across 7 time zones just a week ago, I’ve only been to the pool a few times this past week (and couldn’t even get into water for 2 weeks before that bc of the surgery), and we are 1300 meters above sea level, so my lungs are having a hard time with strenuous activities, not having accustomed to the height difference yet. Also, I haven’t trained for this competition at all. So I am just here, giving it my best shot, but not worrying about it.

Made a golden glow soup and a green goddess salad
(I am proud of both as it's so hard to make stuff with lots of veggies here)