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.