Speech! Speech!

Just when you thought I was slacking on blog posts, here I go with two in a row.  Bam!

So nobody chanted for it to happen, but I did write and give a speech in Mongolian at our swearing-in ceremony last month (as did three of my fellow PCVs).  The beginning isn’t in the video, so read this first:

“Hi, my name is Ryan.  My wife and I will be volunteers in Erdenet.

In my opinion, it was hard to leave America.  I had to say goodbye to my friends and family.

Mongolia was a new country to me: new people, a new language, and new food.

Well, my Peace Corps group came to Mongolia.  First, we went to Ulaanbaatar by plane…”

And the rest:





There were dance and music performances, too.  One of the biggest crowd-pleasers was John and Andrew (with assistance from Sarah) playing a traditional Mongolian song with an American twist:

(This is Jason’s video.  I recorded it too but haven’t uploaded it.)





So even if I accomplish nothing else in my time here, I can at least say that I addressed a crowd of Mongolians and spoke intelligibly enough for them to understand me.  This is the hard part, though: continuing to learn the language now that I don’t have four hours in the classroom every day.  You might be thinking that living in Mongolia is like being in a big language classroom every day.  Well, you’re wrong!  It turns out that foreign language acquisition by osmosis is not an effective method, at least not as an adult.  I’ve been trying that strategy.  My arbitrary three-week coasting period is over, so now I’ve got to get cracking again.  Yesterday I met Erdenet’s mayor, a former wrestler, and promised him I’d speak decent Mongolian by 2012.  So there’s that motivating factor too.