Happy Nauriz, Indeed!

Yesterday was excellent for two reasons: (1) we celebrated a wonderful Nauriz with our closest friends in Olgii and (2) I got accepted into UCLA’s graduate-level Teacher Education Program! Man, if only everyday could be like yesterday.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to Nauriz this year. In fact, I woke up yesterday morning feeling a little squeamish over the idea of eating bowl after bowl of yogurt soup in between choice cuts of horse sausage and sheep face. Nonetheless I dragged myself out of bed and turned on my computer to check my email – my usual morning ritual, which has taken a more serious tone the past few weeks in anticipation of hearing back from grad school. My brain wasn’t working too well and I was confused to see a message from “Scott” to “me” titled UCLA and beginning with the word “CONGRATULATIONS!” I thought, “What was I doing sending such a mocking e-mail to myself?” After a few seconds I realized that the email was in fact from Ashlee’s dad, also named Scott, and attached to it was a letter he received from UCLA (his address is our official “home of record”). The letter was the admissions decision saying I have been accepted.

Needless to say, I was over the moon. Waves of relief, excitement, happiness, and a twinge of nervousness washed over me. I ran over to Ashlee to share the good news. I have never seen her wake up so fast. So yeah, it was a good morning – and it set the tone for the whole day.

We soon got a message from Brian saying that there would be a parade in the square around 10:30am. Our “downtown” apartment has a balcony that conveniently affords a view of the square, so we Olgii PCVs gathered for a celebratory toast at our place. The weather was awesome (in the 40s with blue skies and sunshine), the mood was elated, and Brian remarked that having drinks on our balcony made him feel like he was in New Orleans.

View from our balcony

After a bit we trotted over to the square to catch the parade. While it wasn’t an actual parade, there was lots of dancing, colorfully embroidered costumes, and loads of enthusiastic people. After a half hour or so we escaped back to our place for a Mexican lunch. We thought that if were going to spend the afternoon eating questionable Kazakh food, we might as well give our stomachs something nice to prep them. After we finished lunch, we got our first invite from our friend, Nurbol.

Nurbol is one of the nicest guys in the world. We used to see him a lot last year, but this year he finally secured a job at a local bank so he has been pretty busy -- in his words, "He's a banker now!" He still hopes to study abroad (he has something in the works that he should hear back from soon), but he says that his family is pressuring him to settle down and get married. He is 25 after all, which here in Olgii pretty much makes him middle-aged.

After Nurbol's, we made two more visits, one to our friend Khala's and another to see Ashlee's co-worker, Saule. According to Kazakh custom, a person should visit forty homes over three days to fully celebrate the holiday. What this means is that you spend roughly thirty minutes at each place slurping down soup, picking through the meat plate, and then cleansing your palate with cookies and candy before moving onto the next place.

We decided to end the night at Brian's "hashaa" (compound) visiting with our friend Sabit and his wife Nurgul. They are a wonderful young couple and we had a lot of fun playing "Sorry! Revenge" and sharing a taste of America with a bottle of Johnnie Walker in honor of my news from UCLA.

Around 8:30pm we found ourselves knackered and stuffed to the gills, so we decided to head home. We made a quick stop at a little store just around the corner from Brian's to buy some eggs. The store is owned and operated by a really sweet family who always light up when we visit. Ashlee and I both used our Kazakh to wish them a "Happy Nauriz" and they promptly invited us into their backroom for more soup and meat. Within 15 minutes our whole party (Ashlee, Justin, Brian, Sabit, and myself) were sitting on their couch enjoying their spread of food. It was really a delightful way to end the day -- and our last major holiday in Mongolia! It was one of those magical moments that makes our time with Peace Corps worth it, especially when our host pulled his dombra off the wall and serenaded us. Apparently he's a big deal in the dombra community.

So yeah, yesterday was awesome. As for the near future, we have to wait a few more weeks to hear back from school regarding our financial aid and housing options. We'll keep you posted!