Modern Day Mongolian Celebrities

Today is Monday and we had quite the exciting day here in UB. The weather has turned out to be perfect, very similar to a ideal spring day in Northern California. Dennis and I have been exploring around the town and he is giving me a crash course in Cyrillic which is scary to look at but not too difficult to get the hang of. Still, understanding Mongolians is near impossible at this point. We met Nyamsuren (the school director and woman who has given us her apartment for the summer) outside the apartment and went to the immigration office to register ourselves. After that little extravaganza we visited "Success School" for the first time where we met her comrade and assistant director of the school André, a French man. It was fun to talk in French with André who is an animated, and classically funny Frenchman. The school is very nice, with two large classrooms, a huge computer lab, and an office for Nyamsuren, André, Leah (an American woman), Dennis, and I. Soon after that I got to meet my 30 students. They were very shy although thankfully just about the same age as me and look eager to be there. The deal with the school is that these students are offered free English education for the summer after going through an interview process. Many of them are from the country side without much money although very determined to learn English to improve their chances of getting international jobs after graduating college. While we spoke with them, a local TV station came and filmed the meeting. At this moment, I realized how important the implementation of English education is to the Mongolian people. After this meeting, the five of us, plus Leah's beautiful 11 month old baby girl Amélie, drove to national TV station in UB to be interviewed on live television! This was crazy. We were wired with headsets and brought onto a live set in which we sat in a cheesy pink and white decorated "living room" and spoke to a television personality about our intentions, experience, and reasons for visiting Mongolia. Nyamsuren translated for us and we sat there looking mostly confused by their chatter in Mongolian. 

Today was really exciting and I can't wait to actually start teaching on Wednesday. I feel really blessed to have students my age and I hope that I will form friendships with them, leading to an even more intense and personal discovery of this city. I am also eager to learn more about Buddhism and the history of the Mongolian people. I will write more soon.

xo, lucy