Learn to sew

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Friday, May 27, 2011

This week marked the end of this quarter's After School Activities. My activity was excitingly entitled "Learn to Sew," but nonetheless I had seven students sign up. Despite the challenging project I chose for them, my students did a great job learning to sew. It was great fun!

Spring flowers at last

North of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Sunday, May 22, 2011

Finally I saw my first spring flowers today on a drive we took north of Ulaanbaatar. Things are still barely green here but, at last, a flower!

Out to lunch, sort of

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Off on a crazy round of food shopping and found just enough time and energy to climb to the top of Nomin Department store for an early lunch in the employee's cafeteria. My favorite piroshki weren't on offer so I tried the fried egg sandwich (with coleslaw on raisin bread). With a glass of seabuckthorn juice. Sounds weird maybe, but actually it was incredibly tasty.

Still snowing

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Friday, May 6, 2011

Although this winter in Mongolia was NOTHING compared to last winter, we are still getting snow in Ulaanbaatar. It covers everything in a light layer and then melts in a few hours, but snow it is.

I long for green!

Chicken & ginseng

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Saturday, April 23, 2011

Spring is here, and this afternoon was our last cooking session for the season. We've cooked everything from Indian chappatis to Korean kimbap to Polish pierogi to today's final lesson: chicken and ginseng soup taught by a Chinese colleague. Thanks to my colleagues for all their recipes and company. We made it through another winter!

Pictured here: Some of the ingredients, including Chinese red dates, wolfberries, and five-star pepper.

Homeroom bread baking

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Friday, April 15, 2011

Got inspired EARLY this morning to bring a huge pot of bread dough into homeroom today and put the students to work on making some fun shapes. In the beginning they seemed pretty dubious about the whole idea, but in the end they all accepted a lump of bread dough from me and got to work.

By morning break, they were all wandering around school happily munching on their creations.

Great Works of Art

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Friday, April 1, 2011

We just finished a unit on coordinate geometry in Grade 9. Their final project was to select a "great work of art" and write the equations for the lines. Next, they had to use Excel to plot the lines (using Scatter Plots). This year's batch of artworks turned out really well!

Click on image to get a closer look...