Yanna! I didn't post a thing in June!

"Yanna!"  It's an exclamation you'll hear from Kevin and me every so often.  It means, "Yikes" or "Oh, no!" in Mongolian language.  It has become a favorite expression. 

I can't believe I totally missed posting anything for one full month!  How did that happen?  I thought I'd post a few pics to show you what we did BEFORE leaving Mongolian, and a later post will show what we've been doing since being back in Rochester and Minneapolis, during our break from Mongolia:

May 6, we celebrated Enkhjin's birthday (far right).  He turned 16 and he brought these three friends.  Here, we're playing Sheggai (Sheep Ankle Bones) on the rug.



And, here's our candles and birthday brownies!  Enkhjin is filling up his mouth and lungs
with air to blow these babies out!




The next day, we had a graduation ceremony for our EXCEL students.  One of our American teammates made
this cake with a ger on top.  The Mongolian English teachers loved the cake!




Gillian, our teammate who teaches with Kevin and me.




Our only male Mongolian English teacher!  This was Graduation Day for him, so he won't be with
our program next year.  We'll miss him!



These two ladies demonstrated a traditional Mongolian dance.  I talked with them afterwards.
They will be two of our students next year, and I am hoping to take lessons from them to learn this
very active dance which I think would be excellent exercise as well as a fun presentation to our friends in America!

We are the Mongolian EXCEL teaching team for 2011/2012.  The rest of our team members will be branching out into new areas in Ulaanbaatar, which is really exciting!