The snow is melting, sun is shining, SPRING is here, in Mongolia!!!

Hey everyone.... sooo its been a long time, i apologies ive been very slacking with the blogging, but i have an excuse! Mongolia is too much fun.

So yes work! its going great, i spend my time in a couple of different classrooms now, working with some of the youngers kids as well (babies!!! super freaking adorable!!!). I do mostly arts and crafts, making playdough, paper mache, colouring, drawing dragon ball Z lol. Ive also begun running a cooking class every week, so the kids and I have fun baking cookies and cakes and yummy stuff like that, its pretty crazy actually but the school got funding to build a kitchen class room (its a very small and un-equiped kitchen, i have to buy cupcake trays!) but the government doesnt give them money to buy stuff for the kids to cook so its been unused! Untill now :) I've found allot of things are like that in mongolia (I hear you have to pay police to come to your house.... not sure if thats a bribe or just the cost of things eh? but anyway).

So mmm interesting things that have happend at school in the last month....

I've been pee'd on, slobered on, drooled on, spit up on.... so basically im prepared to have children lol. The kids have nap time in the middle of the day, this is my new favourite thing cause it means i have a nap time too, im going to try and get this instigated at work when i come back, definitely improves productivity!

Oh the tradition in mongolia is they dont cut a boys hair untill he is like 3 or something, and they will also shave a girls head when she's... 3 or 4 or something so at times it can be really hard to figure out whether a child is a boy or a girl. So yeah ill be playing around with a little 'boy' and then 'oh you need to go to the toilet' (you need to help the kids go.... bit icky at first but you get used to it)..... and then'oh your a little girl.... thats embarrassing'.

OK! so what have i been up to in mongolia?!? Its Spring so the weather is warming up, its positive degrees now (single digits) during the day so hanging around outsides a little bit more often. I've participated in the international dodgeball tournament of Ulan Bataar (just a dodgeball compition), i figured id dodged enough cars so i could dodge a ball, we did ok actually 4th... out of 6 teams :P

I've gone skiing!!! i was terrible and almost killed myself (took a wrong turn at the top of the mountain... twice and ended up on the black diamond run when it was my first time on skiis... ever, had to throw myself to the ground cause i didnt know how to stop when i saw the drop, stacked it hard, did some flips, lost my skis, walked down the mountain like a boss!!!). But skiiing is definitely fun, will have to go to NZ or Japan and do it again.

Went to the countryside, carried an eagle (super boss), rode mongolian horses (they're tiny, really grumpy and when they run fast they smash your man parts). The countryside is really beautiful though, definitely one of the reasons i wanted to come here, ive seen it snow covered, right now its red/yellow/brown cause the snows have melted, hopefully i get to see it green before i go, country side looks amazing.

Went on an outreach to a detention centre for homeless kids, its really heart wrenching stuff to see some of the younger kids there, there was a 2 yr old girl and apparently she was just living on the streets! Child protection isnt exactly great here. Played some games with them, had an improntue dance off (im the guy who dances apparently), played bball (haha my awfull ball skills came in handy).

Made a whole bunch of friends over here, people are just really friendly (drunk mongolian guys not so much.... they tend to want to punch you in the back of the head). Overall a very exciting and eventful month, cant beleive time has gone by so fast. 

If anyone wants to they can add me on facebook, actually starting to use it now that im over here. hope everyone back home is doing well, having fun, living life! Cause thats what its all about :D

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=764559745&ref=tn_tnmn