Thanks, Thoreau!

This post is dedicated to the students of Mrs. Dressler's first grade class at Thoreau Elementary School in Thoreau, New Mexico, whom I have been corresponding with for the past several months thanks to the Peace Corps' Worldwise Schools correspondence match program. The idea is that the class can live vicariously through my experiences, learning about the people, geography, environment, and culture of Mongolia all from the safety of their own classroom. Who knows, maybe one of them will go on someday to join the Peace Corps themselves.

Anyways, over the holiday season I received a couple of packages from Thoreau. The first package was a big batch of letters for my 7th grade students. The second package had a few Christmas gifts for Ashlee and I, including a couple of hand-decorated place mats -- something that we were really touched by.

I took the letters into my class today and my students all loved them -- in fact, they wanted to express their thanks directly to the students in Thoreau. Unfortunately, due to the 14 hour time difference, our classes are never in session at the same time so skyping is not possible, but I settled for the next available option: making a video.

In this video, some of my students are speaking directly to the camera. My class fluctuates between 30 and 40 students, but because I only had 30 minutes to film, only some of them made it on. I asked them to introduce themselves first in Kazakh and then in English. I apologize in advance for the fact that my digital camera is not the best at taking video, so the audio is a bit quiet at the beginning of each segment.

I really love being able to make these little movies and I plan to make more. Just today I was speaking to my counterpart, Bahtgul, about putting together a film club where maybe every month we can produce a new movie about life in Olgii. I was thinking that each movie can have a different theme: food, culture, music, shopping, etc. I'll let you know as it develops!

For now, enjoy the video!