THIS MONGOLIAN LIFE

wonder what the Mongolian version of Vitamin C’s “Graduation Song” or Green Day’s “Good Riddance ” would be..

Last Friday, my school held it’s “Bell Ceremony” graduation for the 5th, 9th, and 11th grade classes. Since I’m wrapping up my 2 year service working here at the 4th school, it was kind of like my graduation too (hence donning the French maid-esque Mongolian school uniform for the big event) Beautiful day to celebrate all the hard work these students have put in over the years… both so happy and lucky to have been a part of their last two years. Congratulations to all the 4th School 5th/9th/11th graders!

One of my favorite things to check out at the Peace Corps office in UB… good visual to see that you really can’t throw a rock too many places around Mongolia without hitting a PCV in the head.. check out those smiling Dundgovi faces!

Had to say one of my first goodbyes the other day to our school’s art teacher, Tsetseg, who got a great opportunity to spend the summer teaching and learning about the education system in Korea. Always fun to joke around with in the teachers’ room and hilarious to work out with at fitness club.. really going to miss her and wish her the best of luck with everything!

She gifted the picture (above) that she made for me before she left, the symbol being the “Soyombo”, the national symbol of Mongolia also pictured on the Mongolian flag.. for more on the symbol, check out the ever informative Wikipedia on it… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyombo_symbol

After our COS Seminar, we all had to stick around UB for our medical and dental check-ups. Great timing since we got to go to an amazing salsa night with Colombian performers, celebrate a few PCVs’ birthdays, go to a Mongolian rock concert (the Lemons.. one of my favorites!), have a few goodbye dinners, etc. Also, I got to see and work wtih my 11th grade student and counterpart who won the aimag-level English Olympics and were about to compete on the national level.

One of the days, my stiemate Anh, new Mongolian friend Sunny and I snuck in an afternoon trekking up Ulaanbaatar’s Soviet WWII memorial Zaisan Tolgoi for a great view of the city and some more eagle holding.

Then it was back to the Gobi again for my students’ graduation, our “Dundgovi Best Song” competition, and a day trip to Baga Gazariin Cholo.. To be continued…

So a little but much anticipated COS Conference tradition (along with slideshows and “Senior Best/Most Likely to” awards) is the COS Cook-Off…

This year, four teams participated with my amazing chef friend Jaclyn leading our team to winning “Best Dish” and taking second place overall with homemade lasagna, pulled pork sandwiches, chicken caeser salad, and bettter-than-sex cake (<—- which won best dish btw!)

The judges consisted of our fearless country director, one of amazing PC medical officers, and two fantastic Mongolian staff members. It was a tough call to judge as all the food was amazing (or maybe I’ve been here just a bit too long :) but the Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders (PCVLs), our fantastic four, took home the gold with their incredible enchiladas and Mexican-themed dishes.

In the end, everyone wins as the whole group gets an amazing spread for appetizer, entree and dessert this night!

Two weeks ago, the twenty-second group of Peace Corps Volunteers had its Closing-of-Service (COS) Conference, our last and final hurrah Peace Corps seminar together were we had time to reflect on these past two years and plan out our next big ventures as Returned Peace Corps Volunteers!

As seen above, we had ourselves a little photo shoot with one big group shot and pictures of each individual training site from our summer training in 2011. We made signs throwing shout-outs to those who weren’t able to make the conference for whatever reason. (also pictured, is one of the amazing PC Mongolia staffers, Muugi, who is becoming quite the yoga master after attending my school fitness club)

Blows my mind that we made it through, M22s! Proud of all y’all, going to miss you people and looking forward to seeing what crazy/awesome plans are next for everyone… 5 year reunion in 2018?? My vote is Fiji…

Just 23 days in this beautiful place.These past few weeks have left me little to no time for PCV senioritis to set in while I’ve been experiencing that crazy phenomenon of time both speeding up and slowing down. That being said, I need to catch up on all the good times that have been had this May.

At the beginning of May, I got to tag along as cheerleader with 15 of the best English students and teachers from the 4th and 1st schools here in Dundgovi as they made the 6 hour trek up to Govi Sumber aimag just north of here. (got to hang out with gracious Govi Sumber PCV hosts there too.. always a plus!)

My sitemate Anna and I had been working with the students for a while practicing speaking on such topics as “My Dream”, “Mongolian Air Pollution”, “Child Abuse”, “The Importance of Money”, “About World Vision Mongolia” <— who was putting on the whole event. Not the easiest prompts for 10th and 11th grade students to discuss especially in another language alone in front of an auditorium full of ESL learners and a few native speakers… but I was so proud of these kids for their hard work, perseverance, and bravery up there.. I kept putting 17 year old Stephanie up there talking about “Unemployment” in Spanish. Infinitely more impressed with my students then :)

So the competition consisted of 3 rounds, eliminating participants at each stage:

• round one: exam portion covering grammar and writing
• round two: the top 5 from each grade level moved on to the speaking portion where they drew a topic at random and talked about this topic for up to 5 minutes (of the 20 chosen for the 4 different levels, something like 10 of them were from Dundgovi!)
• round three: the top 3 from each grade level then participated in a debate against each other with topics mostly covering the importance of studying abroad… I was so pumped to see a debate here in Mongolia especially a heated one at that!

Oh there also was an English song competition thrown there before which I took notes on for our “Dundgovi Best Song” competition we actually just held this past Saturday (more on that later!)

After getting through all three rounds, the judges tallied up the scores and announced the winners and AMAZING PRIZES!

One of my teachers took 3rd place in the teacher’s category and another teacher took “Best English Teacher” of the tournament… both taking home certificates, medals, cash money, and a DVD player.

One of our 11th graders and one of our 10th graders got 2nd place, won “Best Pronunciation”, got 2 DVD players and a trip to the US!

One of my favorite students, a 10th grader at my school, took home the gold, a desktop computer… and a full ride scholarship to her choice of  150 universities in America!!!!! So incredibly excited for this student and to meet up with her sometime in 2014 :)

All the students and teachers did so well and I’m honored to have had the opportunity to work with these two years. They have some great potential and I look forward to seeing where life takes them

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30 days left of my Peace Corps service… way too many different kinds of emotions going on right now to process, So for now, I’m going to cherish every Mongol minute I have left here and get excited that I get to see all these faces and more in exactly one month!

Pizza Night at the Kovanda Ger with one of my English teachers, her son, one of my 11th grade students, my hashaa family, and the PCVs in town.

Went a bit off the beaten pizza path and cranked out some BBQ chicken pizza, Indian butter chicken pizza, and chicken alfredo pizza… dinner was a bit chicken-crazy but gotta cherish the brief respite from old angry sheep meat.

and as if this meal wasn’t deliciously unhealthy enough, we washed it all down with some coke and cupcakes for a little Gobi dessert.

We ended the night with some intense games of Bananagrams, and the smack talk coming from these ESL learners in English! Moments like these…. I feel like a proud mama:)