Life In The City

Hello everyone!


This week, I wanted to take more charge in sharing spiritual decisions and lessons, so I taught a micro-lesson on Friday. I was teaching about the Liahona, the Broken Bow, and having faith. Our new member, the person I was teaching, started laughing hysterically when I was struggling with which case to put on a word. It was so funny. We laughed for 5 minutes straight. I was a little confused but joined in on the laughing because it was so funny. Anyways, my trainer, the new member, and I were all dying from laughter. Afterward, she told my trainer that when she heard me struggling in Mongolian, she was reminded of her English and how bad her English was. Apparently, she has been really nervous to work on her English speaking because she was feeling discouraged. I think it's cool that I could lighten the mood even if I was being laughed at.


Anyways, English teaching has been going great! Our teaching at the medical college has been a little rough with getting everyone to speak English, but the students do participate. Our ACE classes are always a blast; they talk about everything and anything in English.


Now for the weird part, almost all of the old men who are out past 9:00 at night are all drunk. And sometimes they see the American girls and try their English out. Or sometimes they start throwing gang signs at a trash can. They are all harmless, just a little tipsy. Here are some of my favorite drunk (or just crazy) interactions:


As we were walking home, a middle-aged man was wearing super baggy pants, a baseball cap, a wife beater, and his headphones. He was walking our way on the sidewalk when he stopped suddenly in front of a trash can, with one hand holding his pants and the other throwing some signs at the trash can. Real interesting, I guess.


A really dirty homeless man was walking by us and got really close to my face and said "hello" in the most gremlin/Lord of the Rings Gollum kind of voice.


A really drunk guy kept bowing to us as we walked by. Which I don't really understand; we're not Asian, we're Americans. Shoot off fireworks as we walk by, not bow. Just kidding, it was pretty funny.


Another funny thing that happened this week was seeing a kleptomaniac, a real one, find a used toothpick off the floor of the stake conference building, unzip her boot, put the toothpick in, and zip up her boot again. It was really gross. She also took a bite out of a piece of cake for an after-baptism snack and gave it to our elders.


Sorry for the long email; there is just so much happening these days. I will include my spiritual thought in another email to keep this shorter.


Thanks for joining in,
Sister Vestel


Pictures:





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Douglas The Cricket

Image
Hello All! I am happy to say that I am doing well at the MTC! I am starting to love the language and am trying to open up to my companion more. We had several interesting things happen this week so I'll try to keep the email short (no promises). For the past week, we have had an annoying cricket noise in our room. We checked the vents, we checked in the closets and under the bed. And then Sister Kayner checked her luggage in a last-ditch attempt to find the cricket, and voila, Douglas the cricket was found. It was a little prank toy that was set up by her family. They hid it in the lining of her suitcase, so we finally found Douglas. Last week we found out that we cannot share or post photos of us with missionary tags or refer to ourselves as missionaries to anyone in Mongolia. If we do, then we could get deported, and our district would get in trouble for going against Mongolian law. Yay. I also cannot wear my tag unless it is at home or during a zone conference. But it's okay...
Read more

Couch Surfing

Image
Hello Everyone, this week we had zone conference, so I thought the title was appropriate. We left for Darkhan on Sunday and had our interviews with our Mission president Sunday night! It was so awesome. Definitely my best president interview yet! We stayed over with our STLs and then had Zone conference the next day. This was my last zone conference, so I was able to bear my testimony in front of everyone in my zone. I wish I could have spoken more completely or more eloquently, but I think my message came through clear enough. I was also so lucky to hear from three of the other sisters who are leaving with me. After zone conference, we drove to Erdenet and crashed with the sisters there, and on Tuesday we finally made it home. Today is the start of the summer festival here in Murun and all over Mongolia! Everyone gets dressed up in their traditional clothes, goes to events such as horseracing and archery, and we are lucky enough to join the crowds. That's all for now, I love you a...
Read more