A World to Admire

At last I have finished the world map. A project I expected would take 4 days when we started, took a little over 40 hours in 6 days to complete. Due to the scale of the map and my own perfectionism, I grew quite familiar with that wall, spending days of 9, and even 11, straight hours drawing, painting and fixing mistakes. I look at it now and think about all the time and effort we put into it.

It stands 6.43 feet in height and stretches 12.86 feet in length along a well-chosen hallway in my school. It is in a spot where students pass by each day.

As far as I know, 3 other PCVs have done a similar map project in their former schools. Some are bigger, some smaller. Some are more accurate, others not so much. On over all aesthetic appeal, ours is hard to beat.

I, and the student and faculty general population, owe a lot to those who helped me with this project. 19 people, in a variety of roles, worked to complete what is now a beautiful and well-used map of the world, a gift to our school for students to use for decades to come.

Each of the four corners gives a little something extra to the map. In the top left, the school’s logo, and in the top right, the Peace Corps logo. In the bottom left we put a compass and in the bottom right the signatures of those who participated in the creation.

When it was all finished, I had a small opening ceremony. I gave my thanks to those who worked on the project, talking about the many stages and the long hours. Next, each person who helped me (including the cleaning ladies who put the first coat of light blue down and the security guard who helped edge the perimeter in black) signed the map. Finally, I played a slide show on my computer of the 50 plus pictures taken over the last 6 days set to R. Kelly’s “The World’s Greatest.” Sure, it’s Kraft cheesy, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I often stand at a distance and watch students point to countries in all corners of the planet. Each time I stop by, it’s a different group of students whose faces read the gamete of expressions: excitement, confusion and pride. Its accessibility and easy-to-use nature makes the educational value more than apparent. Yeah, I’d say the 20 bucks and week’s work was well worth it.

A Countryside Wedding

As I walked home after work, I thought about what I might be getting myself into. Only weeks earlier had I told my counterparts that I really wanted to see a real Mongolian wedding, a countryside affair. Jokingly, I had told the only single female of the group, Uyangaa that she has only 10 months to wed before time was up, before I’d be on my way back to America. Now one of my students was getting married. What luck! And Khugjmaa, a sort of surrogate mother figure to me, made, on my behalf, unbeknownst to me, a request for invitation to the nuptials. How fortuitous! I could not help but wonder, though, what does a traditional countryside Mongolian wedding look like? What part would I take in it? I knew that many Mongolians were now getting married at wedding palaces, either in Darkhan, or, more likely, in Ulaanbaatar (UB). That, however, was an option generally reserved for those with money and an interest in celebrating in a more “western” style, an option I guessed Dulamsuren’s (Allie’s) family never once considered. The only thing that I was sure of was that the wedding I would be attending tomorrow morning would likely be nothing like my own and that my living in Mongolia only opened the limitlessness of possibilities. As for the rest, I’d just have to wait and see.

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Healthy and Happy!

Cady and Peter at Empire!

(This one's for the moms!)

Cady working at the 2008 Darkhan Harvest Trade Fair

Peter teaching General English students