Half-Way Point

Well, while it may be a few weeks premature, we have officially survived our first year in Mongolia. Phew! I’m not going to lie: we faced our fair (and maybe not so fair) share of difficulties and there were a few moments of downright nastiness, but overall we are no worse for the wear.

On Tuesday (June 1st) we'll be flying into UB where we have some errands to run before traveling to America on June 7th. Among other things we have to do are our mid-service medical and dental check-ups, greeting the next batch of incoming PCVs at the airport on the 5th, and going to a free Ozomatli concert in Sukhbaatar Square. So yeah, our much-anticipated summer vacation officially starts next week -- which is none too soon because the weather is still driving us mad and we think that our apartment may be trying to hurt us.

Last week my school held its graduation ceremony for our 11th grade students. As custom dictates, the ceremony was held outside the school in the central courtyard. All week leading up to the big day the weather was pretty nice -- the morning of, however, a nice May snowstorm rolled through. The locals wouldn't be deterred. They were adamant that the ceremony take place outside and by golly nothing would stop them -- certainly not a little bit of snow! The jacketless and hatless crowd of students and family members assembled on the school steps and stood under the snowfall for almost an hour. I, on the other hand, watched from a second-story window. Here's a couple of shots:


This is Bahitgul's 11th grade class. She has been the homeroom teacher of this class for almost 6 years and she has grown really close to them. After the school ceremony she invited the students and their parents to her classroom for her own send-off. I helped her prepare and run a slideshow presentation. The presentation ran a little long and I tuned out near the end, but I was soon brought to attention by the quiet sobbing of pretty much everyone in the room. I guess the last slide was a heartfelt poem written by Bahitgul.



Back at home, after a bit of badgering we were finally able to get the electrical outlet in our bed/living room fixed. When my school's electricians first came over, they ripped the old burned-out outlet from the wall, took one look at the wiring behind it, and just shook their heads and said, "Bad." They then said they needed some more equipment and that they would return later in the day. We didn't see them for a week. In the meantime, here is what they left us with.



I guess they didn't have the necessary equipment at school, so I had to take a trip to the market on my own to buy a new outlet. I showed them my purchase and they said, "This will work." I brought them back to our apartment and they had everything working within 10 minutes and about 4 feet of duct tape -- they asked if I had electrical tape, which made me think, "YOU are the electricians, right?" Anways, it might not look pretty, but it seems to work.



In other news, a couple of days ago we were sitting down eating dinner when we heard a crash in the kitchen. We ran in there and discovered that a large patch of plaster from the ceiling had fallen onto the floor.




It turns out that this is pretty common in Mongolian apartments. A friend of ours told us that parts of her ceiling fall to the ground every day. Oh well, what are you going to do? We did scout out the rest of our apartment, and while we did find several other cracks, the ceiling above our couch, table, and bed seems to be clear...for the moment.