Apologies for the late review, I was in Darkhan for a month from the end of September to the beginning of October. When I arrived, Turkish airlines had left my luggage in Turkey so I ended up missing the train to Darkhan. Mogi helped me get a taxi there and helped me to get my luggage back, so this review is mostly to say thank you to my host.
… read more Also, this was my first time teaching and I would not have been able to do it without her help because she was there most of the time. She also helped sometimes when I needed something translated because I don't speak mongolian and showed me where to buy food and clothes.
The schedule for the teaching was 2 classes in the morning, then a lunch break which lasted a couple of hours, then 3 classes in the afternoon. Each class was an hour, 3 of them were for older kids and 2 of them were for younger ones.
In Mongolia getting a taxi is cheap and easy since anyone can be a taxi driver if they have a car. You can literally stand on the side of the road and someone will stop for you eventually. If I could give advice to anyone thinking about doing teaching for the first time or going to Mongolia, it would be to make sure you understand what you will be teaching and to have a plan for how to explain it. Basically be prepared. Also, get a sim card in mongolia so that you have data to be able to use google translate on your phone when you don't have wifi. Also, bear in mind that the language barrier between english and a latin language like french is different than the barrier between english and mongolian. For example, mongolian has a case system like turkish or russian which we don't have. Also, get Gboard on your phone so that you have the mongolian alphabet if you want. And work out how much it costs to get the taxi to and from the language centre so that you have enough cash. Work out how to pronounce the destination that you want to get to so that you can tell the taxi driver. For anyone interested in the language, "Colloquial Mongolian" and "Modern Mongolian a coursebook" are the ones I found that were most accessible to me. By the way, reading these two books once doesn't mean that you will be able to speak the language. If you are looking for english language teaching materials, islcollective has a lot of free stuff.
The place is pretty quiet and relaxed. It's at a high altitude and a pretty dry climate so drink a lot of water. There is a place right next to the language centre called apollo supermarket where you can get water,
The only things I found to watch out for are that Mongolia has strict drug laws, people drive aggressively (compared to London) and avoid tap water without boiling it or just stick to bottled water. This probably isn't out of the ordinary for anyone who travels a lot.
I am grateful for being given this opportunity to teach in Mongolia and for being treated so well by Mogi. I recommend this for anyone interested in teaching and visiting mongolia.
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