THIS MONGOLIAN LIFE

This past week in sum:

• SCHOOOOOL’S OUT FOR THE SUMMER!!!! (Last day was Weds… BOOM)
• Our good friend Ulzii got a great transfer to Ulaanbaatar this week. He will now be joining the UB police force! We threw him a little going away party in typical Mongol fashion (yes, Mongolian vodka was involved. yes, it was 3pm on a Tuesday). The man will be missed, of course, but we are so very happy for him! Also, doesn’t hurt to have an in with the UB police with all our hooliganism that comes out when we get ourselves to the big city.
• To fend off further desertification, many members of the community here planted trees. My 4th school teachers and I finally got our turn in, planting 5 trees a pop. I’ll sure be impressed with those little suckers if they make it through the 9 month winter! To them, I say if I can do it, I’m pretty sure any living thing can. 
• Due to some funding reallocation from USDA, the local branch of the NGO Mercy Corps (where my sitemate Corey works… well, worked) will be pulling out of Mandalgovi. To celebrate the great works done during their stint here, there was a lovely commemoration dinner with various members of the community. We were lucky to snag some invites. It’ll be hard seeing them go after all the wonderful work they’ve done with business development here. But hey not all bad…I got free dinner and a mug!
• The past few weeks, we made a friend in a German traveler, Hong Anh. This 20-year-old is rock star traveling around Asia for a year before starting university back home. Anyway, she somehow found her way down here to the Middle Gobi and has been teaching at one of the local schools while living with a Mongolian family. Champ. We’ve had a great time hanging out with her the past few weeks and had a little going away dinner at the local hot-spot Misheels. And what better way to go out than in Mongol fashion with some good beer, good friends, and the classic Mongol circle dance.
• FINALLY, I’ve been spending the week slowly preparing for my grand exodus from the desert! As much as I love this place, I’m excited to be spending the summer traveling around various aimags helping out various PCVs with various types of camps (sorry my brain is too tired to think of various synonyms). Anyway, tomorrow I will take off for the first leg of the trek: run a 5k in UB and greet the new PCVs (arriving Sunday!) at Chinggis Khaan airport!

another Peace Corps Volunteer Mongolia Production (or rather PCVMP… fun fact about Peace Corps: we love us some acronyms)

HYETYV! (Any takers on that one?)

just before graduation, my school’s graduating 11th grade class (the seniors) put on one last concert before heading off into the real world…well, university in Ulaanbaatar…

Here’s my haashaa sister, Haliuna, cranking out some Selena Gomez.

Last week, my school had their хонхны баяр (bell ceremony) also known as Graduation Day!

At the end of every year, the 5th, 9th, and 11th graders all graduate respectively from elementary, middle, and high school. Originally, I had planned to leave for the capital early that morning… GMAT weekend. FUN weekend ahead, I know.

But when I found out our graduation ceremony was that Friday, UB could wait! Not only was it my first Mongolian graduation ceremony, but it was my first graduation on the teacher end of things. Most importantly though was the fact that both my 5th grade haashaa brother and 11th grade haashaa sister were graduating!

It was a lovely ceremony with your classic Mongolian cultural performances, many awards presented, and diplomas given out. I even got all “deel-ed” up for the occasion. So just wanted to throw a little belated CONGRATULATIONS/Баярын мэнд хүргэе out to my haashaa siblings, Temujin and Haliuna! Proud of yall :)

(unfortunately didn’t get pics with them on my camera as my camera was hijacked for the day by the school’s technology teacher, but their professional photographer father did… will share if I can hopefully get my hands on those!)

and i love Chicago baseball

For the last English Club EVER of the year (ok there’s one next week but we’re playing pick up game of soccer… maybe I’ll teach them how to trash talk in English and count that?), I was trying to figure out a fun way to wrap things up…

My 7th grade English club has been fantastic this year. The kids are eager to learn, quick to learn, and humor me almost always (e.g. sporting mustaches for Movember, getting decked out for Halloween, making valentine’s day cards, grammar dodgeball, etc). Also, they’re still at the age where they think I’m cool. so young.. so naive…

So for this last one, other than inviting my new German friend (who’s hanging out/teaching English in Mandalgovi for 4 weeks) to come kick it with the cool kids, I wanted to see if I could sneak one more favorite childhood activity in there: the Time Capsule.

One of my favorite memories growing up was making time capsules with friends or in class. Then, a far more mature, evolved, and clearly superior Stephanie would open up aforementioned time capsules and scoff at just how silly and immature “year-ago” Stephanie was. and then I would create a new time capsule only to perpetuate the vicious cycle of adjudicating reminiscence. Precious memories.

So who am I to withhold such a classic American childhood activity from my little Mongols??

Using these fantastic posters Mama K sent in a care package, I tried my best to explain why decorating a poster about yourself, putting it in a box, burying it in the ground, then digging it up one year later was a fun fun activity and not what an insane person would do. May or not have had my work cut out for me a bit with that one…

But like the 7th grade rock stars they are, they humored me with making some great posters about their little 7th grade selves. Somehow I don’t think their 8th grade versions will be too critical. Too effin cute.

Now just have to decorate the box, seal the sucker up, ad find a nice little place to bury the thing for a year all while ignore the curious stares of Mongolian passersby who hopefully won’t misinterpret our box burial and alert the authorities…

SO just want to congratulate my English clubbers on a great year and finishing the 7th grade like champs! Here’s to hoping teenager aliens (aka hormones/puberty/juvenile dissent) don’t invade their brains over the summer..