Things are pretty much the same since my last post. I'm still waiting on pins-and-needles to hear back from grad school, especially now that a few friends of mine who have applied to their own programs have gotten word on their applications. I check the status of my app every few days and it just says the same thing -- "No decision has been reached yet. Please check back during the months of March and April."
With all these things up in the air, Ashlee and I have been doing our best to keep busy. We're both studying for our respective grad school tests (Social Science CSET for me and GRE for Ashlee) and we are continuing with helping our two local friends (Aynabek and Agii) develop web sites for their nascent tour companies. I'm also happy to report that Agii passed the TOEFL this past week! This means that he can now officially apply for the Fulbright Student Fellowship for the 2012-2013 school year. Basically he just needs to write an essay, gather a few references, and send in his university transcript. If he makes it past the first round, he will need to return to UB in May for an interview at the embassy. After that the decision goes to Washington. I heard from the embassy that approximately 100 people apply for the scholarship every year and that they accept around 5. Keep your fingers crossed for him as well.
Earlier this week Ashlee and I also took a few baby steps in helping establish a Mongolian space agency. We finally got the chance to complete the model rocket that her dad sent us months ago (we have been waiting for the weather to get warm enough to the make an outdoor launch bearable). While things got pretty sticky (quite literally with our Mongolian superglue), we...er...Ashlee managed to assemble the little spaceship. Because of my large sweaty hands I'm not the best at such detailed work. Anyways, the rocket is ready. Now we just need to wait for a non-windy day for the launch -- something which we haven't had much luck with in the past few weeks. We're hoping for the first week of April when school goes back in session so we can have an audience.
In other news, this past Thursday we Olgii PCVs gathered for a little St. Patrick's Day celebration -- actually two celebrations. We started with brunch at Brian's with hollandaise sauce-covered omelettes and mimosas (although the Mongolian sparkling wine we got was flat). We continued the party with dinner at our place. Ashlee prepared an amazing soup (creamy, buttery, and baconey potato soup) along with sauteed cabbage, fresh soda bread, oatmeal cookies, and green cheesecake. There was also a considerable amount of beer. We love our holidays here.
Next week is Nauriz, the Kazakh holiday celebrating the first day of Spring. For us, it means three-ish days of visiting counterparts and being encouraged/forced to drink bowls of yogurt soup and eat chunks of meat (including choice cuts of sheep face and salty bits of horse sausage). Lord, give us the strength to pull through. Actually, it's sort of an awkward holiday, because in Kazakh culture you don't wait for an invitation to dine at a person's home, whereas for us the idea of showing up at someone's home uninvited is extremely rude -- and something we don't like when our counterparts do to us (like when a teacher at my school crashed our Christmas party). So basically I can see the situation playing out in which we sit at home waiting for text message invites to visit and our counterparts sit around their homes scratching their heads and wondering why we haven't dropped by yet. Ah, the perpetual battle of cultural integration versus retaining our American roots. Wish us luck!
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