Tuul is from Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and now lives in Virginia with her husband and two kids and works at a dry cleaners.
"I studied University in Bulgaria, then worked for around six years in Mongolia and then in 2006 I moved to the United States to study a Master's degree. My husband is Mongolian too."
"I am very glad my parents named me something easy to pronounce here (in the United States). Most Mongolian names are between 10 to 15 letters long. Even the real pronunciation of mine is a very particular sound from our language -and she proceeds to show me-. My kids' first name is American and their middle name is Mongolian. Even our last name. We inherit our father's last name. So me and my husband had different last names. He had his father's last name. I had my father's last name. But with the school here everyone was confused, so I changed it so all our family has the same one."
"Mongolia was a socialist country up until 1990's, now we have democracy. In 1990's more American companies moved there. When I moved to the United States I did not know any English, this was the hardest part. But now there are a lot of English teachers."
"The food is ok here in the US. In Mongolia we eat mostly beef and lamb, rarely chicken. Very similar to other Asian cultures except the seafood."
"Mongolia has 3.3M people -she teases the 0.3 is important as to imply she knows it is a small population-. It is located between China and Russia. The south is very hot, mainly a desert and the rivers are salty. The north can get very cold, up to negative 60 degrees Celsius, only animals live there. In Ulaanbaatar, we had the four seasons in one day. Very similar to the weather in Seattle. But here in Virginia it is very humid and can get very hot during summer. I am used to it now, but it was hard at the beginning. Half of the population lives in Ulaanbaatar, the capital. The rest of the country is land and something similar to farms. People in the countryside are wild. You can find a house with a family of six and drive for many miles until you see another house. Tourism has increased a lot to the natural part of the country in the last years, it looks like National Geographic -she says teasing with wonder-."
"My parents and sisters are back in Mongolia. Six years after I moved to the United States, in 2012, I went to visit. And was impressed with how close we are to the sky. Ulaanbaatar has very high sea-level elevation. I could see all the stars in the sky this close -and places her palm in front of her face as to make a point for how close-. During another visit to Mongolia in 2021, we went to the country side. It was the first time I visited anything other than the capital. There was a clear lake to the West with dunes you could slide over. It was so much fun."
"I know about Venezuela because of a TV series. There was a popular soap opera in 1995. Some actors even came to visit Mongolia. Also, very beautiful women, I believe Venezuela has won Miss Universe three times. I believe there is oil in Venezuela but it is not extracted and sold properly. Same happens in Mongolia, there is a lot of gold and metals but no good system."
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