The UB

I went into this experience thinking that Mongolia would be like China with just a few differences. But, to my surprise, Mongolia is WAY different than China.

Actually, I'll clarify. Being the capital city, Ulaanbaatar (The UB) is not just different from China, but also the rest of Mongolia which is more nomadic.

Though I haven't been here long enough to pretend I know much about this place, I'll list a few observations I've made in the last three days.

1. CHOCOLATE.

In China, chocolate was worth its weight in gold. Finding good chocolate was like finding Ryan Reynolds--but more exciting.

This afternoon I went to a grocery story that had three aisles of chocolate.

WHAT???!!??!

2. Other grocery store things. 

A lot of food is imported, including produce, which means that food here isn't as cheap as it was in China. Meat, however, does not have to be imported and you will find a lot of these in your local meat aisle:

Yep, sheep is popular.

3. Coffee shops. 

While there is not Starbucks in sight, there has been a real boom in coffee shops here over the last few years. Yesterday I went to THREE coffee shops.

4. Dairy products.

You want cheese, milk, or ice cream? You've got it. The national drink is fermented mare's milk. These people are all about dairy.

5. Russian influence. 

Mongolia has quite a bit of history with Russia, what with being located right next to it and all, and this influence shows up in a lot of ways--most apparently in writing and European-y architecture. The Mongolian language has its own script, but oftentimes they use cyrillic instead.

"Mini Market"

6. Temperature. 

Yes, outside it is really, REALLY cold. They tell me this has been a warm winter, but I'm still dressing up heavily enough to play in the snow just to walk outside for ten minutes.

But they are so good at keeping everything inside warm. 

I'm currently wearing shorts.

But not in this picture. 

When it was taken, I was wearing my new yak mittens, which are a furry miracle.

7. Pollution. 

It's not as bad as I was expecting for being rated the second most polluted city in the world. 

Apparently the air is worse at night when families in gers (also known as yurts) are burning wood and coal to stay warm. This week it's been exceptionally clear because it snowed (which is somewhat rare here because--DIDN'T KNOW THIS WAS POSSIBLE--it's usually too cold for snow) and we've had some stunning views of the mountains.

That's all my observations for now. 

The last three days have been full of training, walking around (yes, even in the cold), and meeting people. The team here in Mongolia is thriving, spirited, and welcoming. One of the greatest perks is having Bethany, one of my teammates from Taiyuan, here to hang out with. She's currently sleeping over for the SECOND time and has been helping me around...like a good babysitter. 

My teaching start date is scheduled for March 10th. In the meantime, they are trying to get two more teachers to come help out with the program I'll be doing--and once they figure that out, they will also figure out where my final residence is. 

Unpredictable? That's life here.

The Adventure of Flying Alone

It started all too early, as most international trips do.

Which is good, because I don’t feel like I’m actually going anywhere unless I’m sleep deprived, you know?

A small entourage was waiting at the Knoxville airport to see me off, which was wonderful and encouraging.

Molly, Jordan, Yours Truly, my Mimi, and mom behind the camera.

I got through security just in time to nab a last cinnamon dolce latte from Starbucks before heading from Knoxville to Chicago on a matchbox plane, accompanied by a book my friends promised would make me cry.

I’m over two-thirds of the way through and have yet to shed a tear. Oops.

(but that's because I made myself stop reading before I lost it in front of a bunch of strangers)

I had a minor freakout when I reached my gate at the Chicago airport.

Chinese people were everywhere (because the flight was to Beijing, duh) and I could understand bits and pieces of their conversations. I almost started bumping into people on purpose so that I could use my paltry Chinese skills to tell them I was sorry—and then remembered that Chinese people aren’t generally worried about people bumping into them.

The flight to Beijing, though…international flights alone are BORING. I am so very thankful to be in one piece and not to have had any problems, but hanging out in the dark with snoring Chinese people for 13 hours can get really long.

So I used that time to watch the One Direction movie without getting judged.

It might’ve made me giddy.

Or maybe that was the lack of sleep.

When I arrived in Beijing, I was incapable of producing emotion because I was so tired--but I kept thinking,

This is so WEIRD.

The last time I walked through the Beijing airport, only eight months ago, I was pretty certain it would be my last time, or at least that I wouldn’t see it again for a while.

HA HA HA.

I had to wait for my airline's booth to open up so I could get my boarding pass to Mongolia, and somehow managed to make friends with two middle-aged Mongolians who now live in America and had flown over in the same plane. This was our second conversation:

Mongolian dude: *points at my tennis shoes* “Not good.”

Me: “Yeah, I’ve got boots to change into…”

Mongolian lady: “Mongolia is very cold. Last July, American college student go up in the mountains and freeze to death.”

THANKS, I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER.

But then they stuck with me through security all the way to baggage claim at the end, which was a real answer to my prayers because, even after going through the Beijing airport FOUR times, I still think it can be a confusing mess. There also weren't many English speakers at the Mongolian airport and my new friends helped me not panic.

There were only three other foreigners on the plane to Ulaanbaatar and we were outnumbered by a herd of Mongolian middle schoolers who liked One Direction (if I'd been more coherent at the time, I may have tried to become friends). As we all stepped off the plane, THEY--those middle schoolers--were the ones moaning about how cold it was. 

WHAT? YOU LIVE HERE.

I'M IN TROUBLE.

But then I was met by some new teammates here, including my old teammate Bethany (who squealed and wouldn't let go of my hand) and Ann, who did the same program as I did a year ago, but in Ulaanbaatar. It was wonderful.

I stayed the night with another teammate here, Pam, who's been a great hostess. This won't be my final stop, but we're still not sure what my living situation will look like. My body woke up at 4 am screaming, "AWAAAAAKE!!!" 

It'll get the message soon enough. 

And this was the view this morning: 

MOUNTAINS. 

Today's goal: training and making myself eat at proper times.

Mongolia on Monday.

I'm leaving the country tomorrow morning.

I was hired two weeks ago and received my flight confirmation three days ago.

I still subbed and scanned charts at the office up until Friday, and at home we were having our carpets redone this week--so I couldn't start packing until yesterday.

I don't know why I'm not losing my mind right now.

I'm not entirely sure what's in my suitcase, but I know there are a lot of "warm" things in there. 

Their true warmth is about to be tested by temperatures I've never dreamed of experiencing.

I should be more freaked out right now. 

When I went to Uganda in 2010, I spent three months doing training and hyping up the fact that I was going out of the country for a whole ten weeks. I'd got to do some practice teaching and travel with other people from my college.

It was a big deal.

When I went to China in 2012, for a whole year, I faced a sequence of panic attacks for several weeks before I left. Once again, I did a lot of training and research and communicated with teammates beforehand.

It was a really big deal.

Now I'm going to Mongolia for two and a half months with less than a month's worth of notice. I'll be traveling alone and have very little idea what's going to happen.

And...it doesn't feel like a big deal.

I'm excited. I'm nervous about the unknown. The micromanager in my head is constantly buzzing about things I'm forgetting. But, overall, I feel like everything is going to be alright.

I can't lie, though. I have been a little anxious.

Over the last week a lot of details were up in the air and my flexibility and grace were stretched like a rubber band.

Here's how the week went.

Monday: The powers that be said I had a teammate. We would probably leave on Sunday (TODAY), but they weren't sure yet.

Tuesday: Still no flight information.

Wednesday: I didn't have a teammate anymore and my flight was scheduled for Monday (TOMORROW).

Thursday: I probably wasn't flying on Monday anymore because my teaching start date had been pushed back, but they didn't know when I would leave. 

Thursday night: JUST KIDDING I was flying on Monday again.

Friday-now: I've been moving my stuff back into my room (yay new carpets!), making calls, packing, and taking care of details.

To everyone who I haven't called or spent time with or said bye to...

I love you all, but I wanted to keep my mind intact.

I've hardly had any time to prepare.

And I'll be back in May. 

So it's no big deal, right?

RIGHT.

Tomorrow morning I'll fly out of Knoxville at 8:15, hit Chicago and Beijing, and land in Ulaanbaatar, Mogolia at 11-something on Tuesday night. 

Let's hope I make some good friends on the way over and that Frozen is a featured movie on the plane.

Miss Love: The Football Teacher

I sub at a K-8 school, and for most of the first semester I pretended that it was only K-5. 

Why?

Because the idea of ever being in charge of middle schoolers terrified me. 

I had ZERO experience working with them, hated middle school when I was in it, and was reminded several times by other elementary teachers at the school that  seventh grade was by far the worst grade to sub. 

I thought that was because middle schoolers were vicious, never listened to directions, didn't respect authority, and probably grew little horns filled with hormones under bushels of frizzy hair.

I'll go ahead and admit I was harsh and wrong.

Later in the Fall, I got adventurous and took a couple of sixth grade jobs that ended up being ok. But I put my foot down at any grade higher than that.

One day in January, though, I was getting desperate to sub again (thanks to Christmas break and FAR too many snow days) and in a moment of brash desperation, I took a job in seventh grade.

And I actually enjoyed it.

Since then I've taken a few more middle school jobs and learned that, while middle school isn't a walk in the park, it's really not terrible a lot of the time. You just have to know a few things. 

Things I learned about subbing middle schoolers

My mantra is be yourself, but don't be yourself. I have to be the confident version of myself with appropriate amounts of humor and sass. Kids listen if they think you can make them laugh.

Middle schoolers want to impress their friends, not the teacher and especially not the sub. You have to work your way up to getting hello's in the hallway. It's ok. It's not because you aren't pretty and awesome.

When you do get a hello in the hallway, treasure it.

It's very hard to keep middle schoolers quiet unless they have work to finish. When threatened with leftover work to take home, they will be quieter than any elementary class you've ever encountered. 

EVER.

Sixth graders are cute, seventh graders are funny, and eighth graders think they're at the top of the food chain.

The same jokes I used in middle school are still funny in middle school today and may continue to be funny for decades of middle schoolers to come. 

They still love Heads Up Seven Up.

On top of all that, my key to success is this chart: 

I took this photo on a day in fourth grade, but you get the idea.

I call it "The Football Chart".

The rules are simple.

If the students are quiet, get their work done, and don't bother each other, I will move the "football" toward their side every few minutes. After five downs, they will get a touchdown, and each touchdown for them results in five minutes of free time at the end of class. If they aren't behaving, the football will move towards my side, and each touchdown for me results in their pain and humiliation at being beaten by a sub.

I don't know why it works so well, but ever since I started using it in any classroom, it's made magic. 

"QUIET, guys! She's gonna get a touchdown!"

"Miss Love gave us another point! Shhh!"

I don't even have to yell.

Thanks to this chart, when kids don't remember my name, they don't just call me "China lady", they also call me "The Football Teacher".

The most important thing I've learned so far about working with middle schoolers--and any age--is not to take anything personally. 

For example:

Today I subbed for the music teacher, who goes from class to class. I rolled my music cart to a room of seventh graders I'd had before, feeling pretty smug and cool because a couple of kids said hi to me in the hallway. 

Then...the video I had to show them was poor quality and the sound didn't work right, so they spent the 45-minute class period ignoring me while I told them to be quiet. 

Some days you win, some days you lose. 

That's part of being a teacher in ANY grade. 

In approximately a week, I will be a short-term middle school teacher in another country.

Guess who never saw THAT coming?

(Ooo! Me! Me! Pick me!)

Thankfully I have a small reserve of knowledge to draw on now--though I may have to find something more culturally appropriate than my current chart to monitor classroom behavior. 

I don't want to know what "The Football Teacher" is in Mongolian.

For Morgan

Sometimes you have friends that last for a season. 

Sometimes you have friends that last a few years. 

Sometimes you even have friends that last many years. 

But sometimes you have friends you've known so long that you can't really think back to the days when you weren't friends.

You've been friends for such a long time, in fact, that you might as well have been born into the same family.

Maybe you met in second grade--an age when everybody was interested in the same stuff, like playing pretend and mastering "Double Double This This".

Maybe you listened to the forbidden Backstreet Boys in her attic bedroom and wished you had as many Beanie Babies in your collection as she did in hers. 

Maybe you even went on trips with her family because she was an only child and you were free entertainment.

The two of you might've grown apart during the awkward teenage years because she went to real school and seemed to have more friends than you did.

Which made you jealous. 

Then, strangely enough, your friendship could've been saved by dating a pair of brothers and going on double dates...then having your hearts broken and being able to commiserate over it.

The two of you might have even had professional photos done together because...why not?

In college, you both may have become very different people.

You may have had a hard time finding common ground.

She liked Dr. Who.

You liked One Direction.

That was that.

You may have even gotten into fights because you didn't understand each other. 

But, for some weird reason, that didn't stop you from trying. 

After college, the two of you might have started down different life paths--but that didn't keep you from supporting each other because you were family and that's what family does.

Then, one day, that family may have expanded.

You went from just sister to Aunty.

And you were happier, prouder, and more excited have that title than you could've imagined back when you were in second grade, playing out in the sprinkler with the adventurous girl you called your best friend.

Mongolia

Remember when I wrote about the nothingness of January a week and a half ago? 

Yes?

No?

The four of you who read that blog?

Well, it turned out to be a much more dangerous post than I thought it would be. Less than an hour after I published it, my candidate counselor from the organization that sent me to China shot me a facebook message. 

"Hey you! Any chance you'd want to go to Mongolia for 2 months?"

WHAT. EVEN.

My first response was to roll my eyes and giggle a little bit. 

Pfft. Mongolia. That place is cold. How do I say NO in a nice way?

I racked my brain for excuses not to say yes, but I couldn't find any.

Then I had a moment of panic as my thoughts changed to

Why wouldn't I want to go?

I went to sleep and woke up the next morning with a strange sense of readiness, even though I had no idea what I was being asked to do in Mongolia other than teach somebody English. 

I knew I was going to say yes.

This led to a couple of phone calls, an interview, a visa-required AIDS test, and a week and a half of waiting. During the entire process, they kept telling me to "consider" it---but I was already in.

THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE.

Yesterday, they said I was accepted into the program.

And here's the scoop: 

I'll be in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar ("Oo-lan-ba-tar").

The population of Ulaanbaatar is about 1.2 million.

The population of Mongolia is about 2.8 million.

The population of Taiyuan, my city in China, was about 3 million.

There aren't very many people in Mongolia.

Ulaanbaatar is also very polluted and nestled in mountains.

I'll be teaching a supplemental English course at New Era Bilingual School.

The course will be for Mongolian middle schoolers, to prepare them for rigorous English courses/tests in high school. 

I know, middle schoolers are weird. I'm ok with that.

My Taiyuan teammate Bethany has been in Ulaanbaatar since November, part of a whole team serving at different schools in the city. 

The program runs for two months through March and April, which means...

I'm supposed to be leaving in less than three weeks. 

And for some very strange reason, I'm not freaking out right now.

Apart from just being excited, I feel really calm about this.

It's very strange.

I need to finish my paperwork, raise $1300 in support, and get my hands on some good boots before I go, but I'm not worried right now.

The timing feels right.

I am so ready to be lesson planning and have my own students again, at least for a while. 

Part of me really hopes they call me Mees Love.

I've missed Asia (even though there's not a whole lot in common between Mongolia and China).

I can still get a job here in Sevier County next year, which I think is the direction I should be heading in.

It's not a problem for me to leave the two jobs I have right now and pick them up again in May.

I'll be closer to my Chinese babies (and I might even get to visit them, but I'm trying not to get too excited about it).

So why not?

And, if you think about it, you're welcome to lift up the smoothness of this process and praise the Father for bringing it all together at just the right time--which is right now.

These two pictures were taken the summer of 2010--right after I got back from Uganda--on a day when I took four international students up into the mountains. We hiked a waterfall and listened to Shania Twain in the car. 

Three of those girls were from Mongolia, and I remember listening to them chat in the back seat while thinking,

What a FASCINATING, weird language.

I've never even thought about Mongolia.

I wonder what it's like there.