A student from Greyhills Academy in Tuba City on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Charise was traveling as part of the School Pairing Program, an ongoing cultural exchange administered by the Denver Sister Cities Committee and the Zorig Foundation. This year’s itinerary took Charise and five other Americans, along with six Mongolian counterparts, through Ulaanbaatar, Tuv, and Dundgovi Aimags.

The program, conceived during a trip by a delegation from Denver, Colorado in 2005, is an effort to connect rural and urban students from Mongolia and the Western United States through technology and yearly physical exchanges. This year’s exchanges took place in Mongolia from March 13-29 and from June 15-28 in the United States.