Outer Mongolia

Yes! It’s the place I want to go.  Since childhood we’ve all heard of Outer Mongolia as a place so remote, so barren, so far away.  It is far away.  If you go any further than that place you are getting closer to your home.   Think about for a minute.  Ok.  Times up.

Why on earth do I want to go to Mongolia?  My daughter is the principal of the American International School there.  That’s why.  End of story.  Not quite.

Megan, my daughter, did not really like school while she was growing up.  Of our three children she needed more encouragement, more discipline, and more understanding than her two older siblings.  Her paternal grandmother, my mother, spotted her personality early on and caller her “contrary Megan”.

But Megan was not a Shrinking Violet.  She was taller tan almost all of her friends.  She was glib and could keep kids and adults somewhat spellbound with her stories and descriptions of people.  As a fifth grader she came home with the latest “dirty joke” when her older sister and brother never heard of them.

Megan played the cello, in the orchestra for a short time.  She played the sax in the band, for a short time.  She made the varsity softball team as a junior with an excellent fastball.

She did all this while being critical of her teachers and administrators.  Her sense of humor carried her through.

So when college came on the horizon what did Megan choose to become?  A teacher of course.  She spent the regular five years getting her degree.  Fun loving kids really do take five years.  The stodgy humorless students only take four years.  Megan was and is not one of them.  Actually, she added courses to be able to teach “gifted” kids at the elementary school level.

After graduation she attended a teacher job fair where representatives of  school systems from all over the country gathered to interview graduates for teaching jobs.  Almost all of the applicants presented their resumes.  Not Megan.  She brought a photo album of her times as a student teacher.  Sitting on the floor with kids from the inner city of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Posing with parents and kids in a learning environment.  Reading stories to kids that kept them spellbound.

She was recognized somewhat like a rock star as all the reps wanted to see the albums.  Before the end of the day she had been offered jobs in five schools right here in Lee county.

She taught here for 3 years at Bonita Springs Elementary.  She transferred to the Michigan Schools system and taught for three years there too.  She completed a Masters Degree while in Michigan.  But being a newer teacher and with cutbacks looming she decided to go for an international teaching experience.  At Cambridge in Massachusetts she applied and accepted a job in Cairo Egypt.  “Yikes”, we cried, that is Sue and I.  Oh my God!

We eventually visited her there and found a ten day in Egypt to be a most interesting and enduring time.  After 2 years she decided that Tokyo was the place to teach.  But, Egypt was in turmoil and she had to flee Cairo for several weeks.  She was in London accepting her Tokyo job but could not go back to Cairo as all flights into were cancelled until the “revolution” died down.

Just 4 days before she was to leave Cairo she was mugged by two young punks and dragged several hundred feet by their car.  Her treatment for serious injuries was a disaster because a male Muslim Doctor could not treat a woman.  But eventually she was treated at another hospital.  In deterred she took her 600 pounds of luggage to the airport the next day and demanded that she be put on the next flight to Detroit.  She arrived safely the next day and spent the Summer with in way up north.  The airline did not dare charge her for changing her flight plans.

Then off to Tokyo for two years teaching kids in English only American International School.    We visited her there too and saw the ancient, wartime, and current wonders of Japan.  From city to city on the Shinkanza, the 130 mile per hour bullet train, was a wonderful experience.  Sumo, sushi, and baseball, yes my favorite sport baseball, played Japanese style.  The fans are like college kids and the beer flows.

After two years, enough of Tokyo and its subway system so efficient, so crowded, so confining.  It’s off to Uulanbatar.  What? Where on earth is that?  Is that in the childhood place so far from everywhere?  Yes.  Outer Mongolia.  Last year we promised to visit her there.  But, health, world tensions, and 48 hours without a bed dissuaded us just then.  Megan’s disappointment was palpable, honest, and real,   But this years with a splurge of cash like no other time we will go “business class”, through Frankfurt, not Moscow, not Soule, not Hong Kong and visit Megan in her place. She is now the Principal of the school with her newly minted EdD, Doctor of Education degree.

She has accomplished so much, all on her own, with grit and determination.  We just have to see her in a setting oh so far away,  Outer Mongolia.