Living and Learning in the Land of the Blue Sky
This is where we find ourselves these days–home and yet not home. Our hearts and feet in two different worlds. We have been back in the US since June 2018, and although our current situation is “home”, we yearn to be back in Mongolia. Because we are actively working towards returning to Mongolia, we feel […]
Read More Heart HomeCaleb is an English teacher who I know of from mutual friends in UB. Recently, he’s moved to a small town in Bayan Khongor to teach English in a more rural setting. If you’re curious what life outside of UB looks like, I recommend checking out his YouTube channel! He’s only just begun making videos, […]
Read More Small Town LifeIf you’re reading this post, I’m guessing you’re either interested in our lives or interested in visiting Ulaanbaatar or Mongolia at some point. We don’t spend all of our days either teaching or parenting, so we’ve had plenty of time to figure out what are some good items to keep on hand–or leave at home–whenever […]
Read More Day Bag Packing Suggestions – CityA couple of weekends ago, we headed west of UB with some colleagues from our school to spend the night in the countryside with a herding family. The connection to this family was that the patriarch was the brother of the husband of one of our school’s headmasters, which was great for a couple of […]
Read More Outhouse Wolves and Other StoriesTime for a possible paradigm shift! A few weekends ago, the 9th and 10th grade classes from our school went to the *takes a deep breath* National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Mongolia (Улсын дуурь бүжгийн эрдмийн театр) to see a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (Хунт нуур). Eric knew that I would be […]
Read More Odette and Odile Take UlaanbaatarI love finding these kinds of short videos online because I feel like they give our readers a better sense of Mongolia’s heritage. Yes, there are still traditional Mongolian nomads of different ethnic backgrounds (the family featured here is Kazakh from western Mongolia), although I would argue more of Mongolia’s population is urban than rural […]
Read More Inside the Rugged Lives of Mongolia’s NomadsIf you live in one of the ger districts or more on the outskirts of the city, you are more likely to live in an individual home, but by and large, housing in UB consists of apartments. New high rise apartment buildings go up all the time, to the extent that there are probably more […]
Read More Apartment Living in UBWhat is really essential in this process is that both the teacher and the students know that open, curious questioning, whether in speaking or listening, is what grounds them mutually—not a simple passive pretense at dialogue. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom Thoughts?
Read MoreFor readers of this blog who do not know us in person, this may come as a shock to many of you, but we recently welcomed our second baby into the world. I had every intention of posting a pregnancy announcement on here around the same time as we announced on FB and other social […]
Read More New year, new baby