Sorry for two back-to-back blogs! Gotta get these out before we get to China to start month 10! 🙂
My team spent May in Mongolia. We flew into the capital of Ulaanbaatar and then took a sleeper train up north to a small town called Selenge. All month, we were only 20 km (like 12 MILES) from RUSSIA!! That’s how far north we were, especially compared to the capital. We worked with nomadic churches in several ministries. We taught English at night, organized a library at a community center during the day, visited church members on the weekends.
I am on a NEW TEAM starting this month! Last month in the Philippines, my then-team (Deeply Rooted) was combined with another team (Street Food). I really got close to Street Food, so much that AIM staff decided to switch me over! I was so excited!!! These 6 girls are the best on the squad and I am so excited to get to know them better!!!! Street Food team picture, seen below. 🙂
Here are bunches of pictures from Mongolia with stories for each! Enjoy!
^the view from our home. This little city called Sukhbaatar in Selenge province has a population of around 20,000 people. The streets aren’t paved. Most homes don’t have plumbing. Everyone potties in outhouses. Cows and pigs roam the streets. We bought our bread at a local bakery every day. Besides the bread, we bought all of our groceries from Russia. Our contact took two trips to Russia to get all of our food for the month. Supposedly it’s cheaper in Russia, so it’s worth the border hop! This picture is looking south, so Russia would be behind me! This village has a community shower house with indoor plumbing. People can pay 2,500 tugrik (approx $1.25usd) for one shower. It’s hot water and pretty good water pressure! We stayed in the basement of the shower house. I took exactly 8 showers all month hahaha. 🙂
^I love these women!! Left to right: the lady who rents the kitchen in the shower house to make dumplings, and her baby. The older lady is named Miga (I told her that Amiga in Spanish means friend and she loooooved it!). Then me. 🙂 Then Leeza who runs the shower house. Then Tegi who also makes the dumplings. This photo was taken seconds after I started crying when we were saying goodbye. I LOVE THEM!! Anytime I would be in the kitchen cooking while they were in there making dumplings, we would giggle so much. They would be trying to learn English, I was trying to learn how to cook certain things for the first time (like flipping fried eggs with a spoon!). Also all of these ladies went with us to the local night club (on an uneventful Thursday night… we were the only ones there…) to dance! “Disco!!!” It was so fun! Gosh, I’m going to miss these ladies. Tegi gave me jewelry as a parting gift. Literally a parting gift. I was already in my train car and I had to reach my hand out the window to grab her gift. She’s adorable! I MISS THEM!!!! 🙂
^two of the pastor’s kids from the church. On the Left is Amorah and the little girl with the glasses is Aruna, she was my favorite. 🙂 In this pic, we were playing with the goofy camera options on my computer. Silly silly!
^TEAM STREET FOOD! Front row: Anne-Michael (Kentucky), Edie (Colorado, also was on my team Jesus Jewels for the first 6 months, love her!), Kalie (from Allen, Texas!!). Back row: me :), Jenny (St. Louis), Grace (South Carolina), and Amy (Atlanta). LOVE THEM!
^the library at the community center. It was a complete mess! We took every book off the back wall, re-categorized (adult, teen, children, education, religious, etc), alphabetized, and re-shelved! It was SO FUN!!! This month I read 4 books from these very shelves: The Perfect Storm (remember the movie with George Clooney!!), The Hiding Place (Corrie Ten Boom), Visions of Sugar Plums (gotta love Janet Evanovich, right Hay and mom? :)), and The Miracle of Jimmy Carter (about how he publicly professed his Christianity during the presidential elections). That rounds my number to 35 books read on the Race so far! And counting!
^and this is how we mop in Mongolia. You get a wooden stick. And you attach it to another wooden stick. And then you wrap a towel around the bottom. And you mop. We spent time cleaning the community center where the library was and our English classes were.
^Aman, the son of the local community center. Goofing off! See the flannel I’m wearing? It has been a LIFE SAVER! I got it for 10 baht (about 33 cents usd) in Thailand at the consignment shop we were sleeping at. I didn’t really need a flannel then (it was HOT, tropical Thailand!), but glad I grabbed it so I could use it here in Mongolia!
^one of my English students. She placed second in an English spelling competition! Go girl!
^this is a ger, a traditional Mongolian home. Nomads set up and take down the ger every few months to move to another land. They do not have permanent homes. The church we were working with was able to build a ger for a homeless lady in the nearby village. We helped build it! How cool! We also got to sleep in one, to get the true Mongol experience! They are about 18 feet in diameter typically. See the bed, fire pit, and a small sink. Beautifully carved and painted wood!
^Mongolia is beautiful!!! Our English students took us up to this look-out place one night at sunset. Just over yonder is good ol’ Russia. Actually, we were so close to the border that there were guards demanding to see our passports. But we didn’t have them on us, since we weren’t actually crossing the border! After a bunch of Mongolian convo passed back and forth from the guards and our students, they finallllllly let us up the mountain to see this BEAUTIFUL view!
^speaking of Russia… we drove to the Border. A visa costs $150usd. So we didn’t buy it, too expensive! But we walked up to this sign. Just beyond the sign, there was a man at a guard tower. As soon as we got out of the car, he started watching us from his binoculars on his perch. He had his eyes on us the entire time!! This picture was taken hidden behind someone’s back. It has been known that if the guards see you take a picture, they will delete the pictures from your camera… and not just the picture you just took, but ALL OF YOUR PICTURES! AH, that would suck! Russians… they scare me! Gonna take over the world! :/ #WWIII
^Wild camels on the side of the road!
^this is my teammate Anne cooking. We volunteered to make fried eggs for the team but neither of us had ever made fried eggs before. So we just figured it out and had the most fun doing it! We cooked for ourselves all month: biscuits, garlic fried rice, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, all the things. Yum!
^I spotted another YELLOW BEAM! This is the second EY I have found on the Race. I’m sure they have an office in every country I’ve been to, but I haven’t gone looking for them. We just came across this one today and I had to snap a picture! Where’s my badge when I need it? 😉 Three more countries, if I see ONE more yellow beam, it must be a sign… 😉
^this was taken in the Philippines but I forgot to post it last time. One weekend, my team decided to have a little trip to the beach. We slept in our tents on a campground, spent 50 cents to visit a super sweet waterfall, and sat on the beach watching the sun rise every morning and fall every night. I’ve put my toes in the Pacific Ocean from Portland and Cali, and now from Thailand AND the Philippines!
Today is our last day in Mongolia. Tomorrow (Sunday May 31) we have a noon:50 flight to Beijing for month 10 for June. And then July will be spent in South Korea. A week in Japan for final debrief, and then HOME July 25!!!
I will turn 30 on July 1 in SOUTH KOREA! And Koreans celebrate your birthday from conception, not from birth, so technically in Korea, they will view this as my 31st birthday. 🙂 Getting older by the minute!!!
I am not sure what my internet access will be from China. Most likely we will have wifi, but the government of China has a lot of US sites blocked (gmail, google, facebook, instagram, yahoo, etc). We have downloaded some VPN blockers to try to change our proxy location. We’ll see if they work! If you don’t hear from me anywhere (blog, email, instagram), then it’s because I can’t access anything! We’ll see!
I LOVE all of y’all! Can’t wait to see y’all SOON!
PRAY FOR safe travels tomorrow. PRAY FOR open hearts in Beijing. PRAY FOR safety: ours and our contacts’, as China is very much closed towards the Gospel. PRAY FOR deeper friendships and unity in Team Street Food. PRAY FOR me as I start preparing for a return to America (stay in Dallas? look for a job? find an apartment?).
