Dale City educator returns to Prince William

From a game played with sheep's ankle bones to CDs made by indigenous Maori children, Marla Kozlak returned home from her six-week Fulbright-Hays scholarship program last Friday with a treasure trove of trinkets and myriad educational tools.

During her trip to New Zealand and Mongolia, Kozlak experienced a breathtaking assortment of landscapes and was exposed to cultures and educational systems vastly different from the one she's familiar with as an English as Second Language teacher at Bel Air Elementary School in Dale City.

Kozlak said the two most surprising things about her trip were the Russian influence that still exists in Mongolia and the Polynesian influence in New Zealand.

The Russian Cyrillic alphabet is taught in Mongolia and traditional Russian costumes, like the ones seen in the famous Tchaikovsky ballet "The Nutcracker," can be seen in the western part of Mongolia near the border of Kazakhstan and Russia.

Kozlak also said purchasing an item from a department store in the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar was very similar to Hungary in the early 1990s, when the Eastern European nation had just cast off communism. Buyers have to go through several lines just to be able to walk out with an article of clothing.

In New Zealand, the ancestors of the indigenous Maori people, which Kozlak spent a lot of time with, are of Polyne-sian descent. That mishmash of cultures is kept alive with music, something she plans to share with her students this year.

In fact, the children at a Maori school made their own CD with traditional Maori songs, as well as music from Sa-moan and Cook Island cultures.

She was also surprised to learn how important the jade stone is in the Maori culture. The Maori have used it for both ornamental and practical reasons.

The experience overseas has left Kozlak wanting to do more and to encourage others to do the same. Several years ago, Kozlak participated in a Fulbright program in Japan.

However, scholarship rules prevent her from applying the next two years. She is also limited to a total of four in her lifetime.

Now that's she home, Kozlak has a long road ahead of her as she implements what she learned into her sylla-bus. There's a deadline requirement to meet in regard to developing the syllabus and another requirement in relation to the presentation of her trip to the faculty.

In the meantime, she's slowly jettisoning the jet lag from a 36-hour trip and relishing the creature comforts she's used to as an American. No longer will she have to wait five days for a shower or have to search high and low for an Internet connection.

"We had to walk down the hill from the hotel [in Ulaanbaatar] to an ice cream shop, which had a wireless connection," said Kozlak, who documented her trip in a blog entitled http://mkozlak.blog spot.com.

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-878-8062.