Since I came to Mongolia, I haven’t written about the subject I am working on: Mongolian education. The other day, I attended one event where I reflected the past, present and future of education in this country.
One of the unique things in Mongolia is the Steppe Marathon.
This month, I participated this marathons for the third time, and what makes it special are awards (horse and sheep), fresh air, eternal blue sky and green land.
Previously, I wrote about marathon several time since it teaches us various lessons.
One of the best human capacities is adaptability.
In the previous entry, I wrote about the extreme coldness of Mongolian winter (back then it hit minus 31 ℃).
But these days, I think I am getting used to the life of the coldest capital life in the world, since no matter how cold it is, we can buy and do essential things in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of the country.
But there are even some harder conditions, which I saw in my eyes when I went to the countryside of Mongolia in the last three days.
The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy. And happiness is born from gratitude. (Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar.)
I didn’t have anything special today, but it was just a grateful day thanks to the five things I would like to share.
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Life is full of Ups and Downs.
This is what I fully realized within a short time last night, through an incident of having my cellphone stolen in the movie theater of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. You can see a little bit of dram on it in this entry.
Recently, I had a great encounter. I didn’t expect to meet this person in Mongolia, the person who I would say is well-known to the majority of Japanese: Mr. Hirotada Ototake, the author of “No one’s perfect” (in Japanese, Gotai Humanzoku which literally means without limbs). He came to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to an event for opening new bookstore branch and introduce his book translated into Mongolian.
Furthermore, at this event, Mongolian national iconic person, Asa Shoryu (previous sumo wrestling Champion in Japan) was also present, so it was double unexpected encounter for me.
For the last 3 days, I had this feeling: Given that it happened at this time in Chile, where I used to live, I cannot help but write about the following two different earthquakes.
1. Chilean 8.3-magnitude earthquake (on Sep 17)
2. Chilean drink called “earthquake” (“Terremoto”) which people drink mostly in the national holidays (around Sep 18).
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