Mongolian Horses

Me on my pony ride and cows at the end of the rainbow

I finally got to ride a Mongolian horse last saturday! One of the trainees host family out in Bagh 5 has like 40 horses, so I went out there on Saturday (in Mongolia it is completely normal to just show up somewhere) and met Chris' family and showed them my pictures of me riding at home, and asked if I could ride one of their horses. At first the Dad said no, and I think he was trying to tell me that Mongolian horses are different, and he didn't want me to fall off (I think the PC may have talked to him about not letting us ride his horses), but he said if I got permission from my host mom then I could another time. I was sad, and Chris took us out to show us his room, and then when we came back outside his brother (who speaks a little English) said that I COULD ride a horse. I was really excited. So they tacked one up for me, and then the other brother rode another horse and he kept me on a lead line and took me for a little ride out in the field. I guess I passed the test though because they invited me to come back, so next Saturday I'm going to go back, and hopefully they will let me off the lead line. :) The horses are a bit different here, they are much smaller and sort of half broke. My horse was well behaved though. The saddles are much smaller, and they ride with their stirrups really short. The reins are just rope, which is a little scary to think of what would happen should the horse grab the bit and run... but I guess I'll just have to cross that bridge if and when I come to it. Chris' family has about 10 horses that are going to race in Nadaam, I'm really excited to watch Nadaam, it's in two weeks and we don't really have class for the whole week, we just have to do 10 hours of language class, but we get to decide as a class when we will have it.
Last week flew by so quickly, it was Monday and then all of a sudden it was Friday! I went out to a Mongolian bar with a few of the other trainees, it was called Chinggis Club, we went on a wednesday night, and we were pretty much the only people there. Which was probably a good thing, Mongolians love their vodka and they get completely wasted and then stumble around, and if you appear in their line of sight they will harass you. Such things happen at all hours of the day, it's not unusual to see someone stumbling down the street (or being picked up by the police and taken to the drunk tank) at 10 in the morning. Luckily you can see them coming, and as long as you don't let them grab your hand for the famous drunken handshake, you are fine. It can be a little scary though.
Going to the bar was OK, but it can get expensive. One beer is 2,000 tugriks, which is less than two dollars, but as we only get 30,000 tugriks every two weeks, 2,000 is a lot. And you can get a bottle of Mongolian wine for 2,300 tugriks. :)
Next week we get to go to Darkhan for Mid-Center Days. I'm not sure exactly what we do there, I do know that we get our last round of 4 shots (whoo hoo). I'm pretty excited to get to see everyone else, and I'm sure that we will go back to the dance club we went to the first time we were there, which should be a good time. We also take our first Language Proficiency Interview next Tuesday. I'm a little scared for that, but it will be nice to get a feel for what it's like, because when we take our real one at the beginning of August that is a big part of what determines if we are allowed to swear in or not. I'm not sure what happens to you if you don't get to swear in, maybe they keep you for more training, or maybe they send you home... But they have spent so much money on us so far that I'm pretty sure they will do everything they can to make sure we swear in. And there are sites that applied for PCV's which we are all here to fill. All the CEDs will be working with either CHF or Mercy Corps. We have started to find out a little more about what we will actually be doing here. We will actually be advising the business advisers at the NGO where we work, which is a little daunting. Most of what they need is very basic stuff though, things like time management and how to do an intverview or write a resume. We went to Darkhan last Wednesday afternoon to visit two of the CHF clients there. One was a small vegetable farmer and the other was a sewing factory (3 sewing machines) that makes gloves for one of the plants in Darkhan. Most of the small businesses here are very very small family-run operations. I'm glad that we are starting to get a better idea of what our jobs will be, it makes me feel like I can actually do this, which is a good thing.

Sukhbaatar

Well, I've been here a week and so far so good. It doesn't really feel like a week, it feels like forever but no time at all. My host family is OK. They watch a lot of TV, which is kind of boring for me, since I can't understand any of it. But when my Dad is home he quizzes me some on Mongolian, a lot of the time he speaks really quickly and I can't understand what he's saying. He is gone a lot, from what I've gathered my parents are alcohol distributers. The second or third day I was here I came home for dinner and right after dinner they had me help load up the truck with vodka, and then made me get in the truck with them and my dad was like "Ruski, Ruski" so I thought they were taking me to Russia (the border is only about 12 miles away). So I asked if I needed my passport, and he said no. I was a little worried at the prospect of going to Russia without a passport, but I just went with it. It turned out that we didn't actually go to Russia, just the border town. I saw Russia though. :) We went to this place where there was a room FULL of beer and vodka, and there were these women there doing some sort of accounting stuff and talking on their cell phones almost the whole time. So I just sat there and watched while they loaded up the rest of the truck with beer. Then we came home, and my dad left for a few days. I think he goes to UB to make deliveries or something, I'm really not sure what goes on. My mom left yesterday to go to Russia for three days, I have no idea what she is doing there, probably something to do with their business.
My little sister, Undarmaa is kind of my keeper, she is almost always the one who cooks for me, and she is the one who is always home. She is a good cook, so far the food has been good. We eat a lot of beef, potatoes and onions. Either in soup, with rice, or with homemade noodles (flour and water mixed together and rolled out and cut into little noodles). The food is very bland, but it's not too bad. We also have french toast for lunch a lot. We don't put anything on it though, we just eat it like toast. It's actually really delicious! Yesterday my dad did bring home some cheese from out in the country. It is not good. There's a version that is kind of soft and flavorless, and another version that is hard and really really sour. But other than that I have eaten everything they serve me. Luckily they haven't tried to give me any innards or anything scary like that. I am a little scared of the food preparation/storage methods though. They keep the meat in big hunks still attached to the bone in the freezer or fridge with no wrapping or anything. Not even a plate, just bloody meat directly on the shelf in the fridge. And they use the same cutting board for raw meat and then bread directly afterward. It's really scary. I have yet to see them wash the cutting board. Sometimes they wash the knife, but usually they just wipe it off with a dirty rag. So far I haven't gotten sick though, which is actually pretty amazing I think.
Today for lunch my sister made an omlet with sausage in it, which was really good, but she served my little brother in the same bowl she had been beating the raw eggs in. It amazes me that they don't get sick.
I did get to take my first hot shower yesterday, which was AMAZING!!! The third day I was here I kind of asked my mom if I could take a shower in the morning, but she said no, and got some hot water and poured it over my head so I could wash my hair. Then a few days later I washed my hair myself with the freezing cold glaciar water that comes out of the tap. The first shower I took was on Friday, and I was planning on trying to get Undarmaa to show me how to work the water heater thing, but she left right when I got home, and no one else was there, so I just broke down and took a glaciar water shower. It was pretty intense, my scalp was completely numb after I was done getting all the conditioner out of my hair, but I felt 100 times better after getting a shower, even though it was frigid. My hot shower yesterday was like heaven. It took like 15 minutes to fill up the water heater, and I had to stand there and hold the hose to the hose from the faucet, because it doesn't screw together or anything convinient like that. And then Undarmaa plugged it in, which was a little scary, there were some sparks. Wiring here is not exactly "up to code." But after an hour I had hot water! Yay! And it didn't stay plugged in while I was taking a shower, so I didn't get electrocuted.
Life here is pretty good. We stay really busy, we have language class from 9 until 1 (which is REALLY intense and exhausting) and then we get an hour and a half for lunch, and then back to school for either technical training or culture training. We usually get done by 5 or 6 and then we have to do our homework and memorize what we learned in language class that day. Last weekend was pretty awesome though. Friday night Cady (another CED trainee) and I bought a bottle of Mongolian wine and drank it while we studied. It was actually really good. It said it was a dessert wine, and I think it was fortified because it tasted a little like brandy. On saturday it was rainy and cold, I went over to Cady's again and we played Shaigai (a game they play with sheep ankle bones) with her little sister and Jim's little sister (Jim is another CED trainee who's family lives in the same Hashaa as Cady, I think their families are related) Shaigai was really fun, it took a minute to get over the fact that we were playing with bones that still had some blood and other stuff on them, but oh well. The rest of the afternoon/evening I just kind of laid around and read my book (I felt the need to indulge myself with some English reading). Yesterday a bunch of us walked out to Bagh 5 (there are PCV trainees in town in Sukhbaatar, and then there are some placed out in Bagh 5 which is part of Sukhbaatar, but it is kind of out in the country). It was about a 45 minute walk, and we thought that we were meeting up with some of the Bagh 5 people to play soccer. Segii was supposed to set that up, but it didn't quite get communicated. So once we found Segii's house we played in her yard for awhile. It was really fun, we kicked the soccer ball around, and played whiffle ball and played some volleyball (really just hitting the ball back and forth between a few people). After awhile a storm came in and the temp droppped like 30 degrees and it rained for awhile, so we went inside and played Uno with Segii's daughter. The storm was really amazing. The sky seems a lot closer here, you can see forever. We watched the storm come in and we could see the rain. It passed through in about 45 minutes though, and we walked home. We saw the most amazing rainbow on the walk back. It was the first full rainbow I've ever seen, we could see both ends of it touch down, and the colors were so vibrant! It stayed for our whole walk home.
Hopefully next weekend we are going to go on a hike and climb one of the mountains that are close to the town. I'm pretty excited about that, we will be able to see for miles and miles.

My New Family

Yesterday we arrived in Sukhbaatar to move in with our host families. They met us at a restaurant and we had lunch when we first got here, expect my family wasn't there, but communication is not always the greatest in the PC, so they probably just didn't get the memo... After lunch we all piled back into our respective Micers (micro busses) and they dropped us off one by one at our homes. I was the last one, and when I arrived my parents weren't home. Just my sister (Undarmaa who is 17) and my brother (Batkhulsen who is 13) who were both cleaning the floors. Segii, one of the language teachers who rode in the micer with us, stayed for a few minutes but then she took off. I took my stuff up to my room, which was an interesting shock. We are "required" to have a bed, table and chairs, bookshelf, electrical outlet and closet or somewhere to put our clothes and the host families all sign a contract saying they will provide such things. In my room I have a chaise, a counch, an easy chair and the family computer. No bed, no table, no bookshelf and nowhere to put my clothes. We are also required to have a door with a lock. I had a door, but it was sitting against the wall next to my room.... My family does have a toilet and a shower though, which is pretty sweet. Once my parents got home they fed me and then put me to bed for a nap. It was really intimidating and kind of scary, because they kept talking to me in Mongolian and i had no idea what they were saying. When I went upstairs to take a nap they came up and hastily put my door on it's hinges, but it doesn't exactly fit perfectly. It only sort of closes all the way, but it will lock. I asked my host mom for a blanket, and so then she got out a pillow and a little 1/2 inch thick pad and a blanket, and gave me the option of the floor or the chaise. I chose the chaise, but I think tonight I will try the couch... When I woke up from my nap I went downstairs and only my sister was home, and I got her to take me for a walk. We walked all around town for like 3 hours, which was really nice. I had my dictionary with me and she had a phrasebook from the PC, and she knows a little bit of English so we talked a little bit. When we got home we ate again. We had bread with a sort of creamy yogurt type stuff and sugar on it, which was pretty good, and then yogurt with sugar. The yogurt is not anything like yogurt in America, it is more watery and kind of chunky... and they don't refrigerate it. There is also no pasteurization here, but so far I haven't been sick... so here's hoping it stays that way. :)
This morning I had language class for 4 hours, we learned the cyrillic alphabet, which has a lot of letters that sound very similar. There are 4 different letters that are very slight variations of "ooo" But we went over it again and again and again, so it's starting to sink in. I didn't get breakfast this morning though, because my family didn't really know that I had to be at school at 9, so my dad didn't start making breakfast or heating up water for coffee until about 8:30, so I had to leave after only eating a small orange that I had brought with me from Darkhan. It made it a little difficult to concentrate in class... but oh well.
Lunch was really good, my sister made me an omlet with some sausage in it, and I had some coffee and some pickled vegetables (they love that stuff here).
I'm hoping that some more Mongolian will sink in soon and I will be able to talk to my family a little more. They said that we were going for a hike this evening, but I am too tired and all I want to do is take a shower and go to bed, after I do my homework and finish memorizing the alphabet....

Mongolia at Last!

So I have been in Mongolia for 5 days, all of which have been extremely busy and amazing! We actually only spent one night in the Ger camp in Ulaanbaatar (UB). We got there in the dark, so the next morning was like Christmas when we walked outside and saw the incredible scenery. We were surrounded by mountains, or I guess you would call them really big hills. The Ger camp had a herd of horses, which just kind of chilled wherever, they weren't exactly fenced in. They were semi-wild, and wouldn't let anyone near them, but apparently are ridable... We had lunch with the US Ambassador at the Ger camp, which was pretty awesome, and then we got on the bus for our trip to Darkhan, where we are having orientation. Darkhan is the second largest city, with a population of about 80,000. It was a four hour bus ride, and it was pretty miserable. No AC, but at least there were windows that opened. Still the sun was really hot, and the wind here is really dry. The scenery was worth it though, and I actually stayed awake the whole time because I was too hot to sleep, so I guess that was the silver lining. :) We drove through UB, which was an interesting experience. Mongolia really is a developing country, the infrastructure is very poor / almost nonexistent. We were on a paved road for the drive to Darkhan, but only the major highways are paved, and they are only marginally two-lane, no shoulder whatsoever. In UB we drove through the Ger district, which is on the outskirts, and is the very poor section. There is trash everywhere, partially because it is REALLY windy here, and partially because they don't really have any sort of public trash service or sanitation or anything like that. And the people here are traditionally nomadic, and many still are, so they just kind of leave things where they are, and until recently most things they had were biodegradable, so it wasn't a big deal. It was a 4 hour bus ride, straight north, and as we got further north we began to see more farms and wooden houses, a lot of the drive we saw a lot of open land and Ger compounds. We would drive for like 20 minutes and see nothing but wide open space, and then occasionally we would see 3-4 Gers with a big herd of sheep, goats, cows and horses. No fences anywhere. It is indescribable. About half way to Darkhan we stopped at a "restaurant" to take a potty break, my first experience with an outhouse. There was no toilet paper, but luckily one of the current volunteers who was with us brought some, thank god. It was kind of a scary experience, but by the end of all this I will be really good at squatting!
On Sunday we will leave for our host communities where we will spend the summer doing language and technical training. My HC is Sukbaatar. We will live with host families for the 11 1/2 weeks we are there. I am so excited to meet my host family and actually get settled. Right now we are staying in a hotel, that by the standards here is really nice, but it is not somewhere I would ever stay in the US. It's amazing what you get used to after a few days though. The first night I wouldn't go in the bathroom without shoes on, and I was kind of scared to take a shower, but I've adjusted.
The food here is a lot better than I was expecting. There are actually lots of fruits and vegetables, not quite the variety at home, but there is cabbage, carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes and bananas, apples, plums, pineapples (not fresh), and oranges. There is also a lot of meat, and it's actually pretty good. I'm pretty pleased all-in-all. I'm a little scared of my host family eating situation though, because whenever people slaughter a sheep the innards are considered the best part, so if my family slaughters a sheep they will be serving the intestines, stomach, lungs, brains and eyeballs... I'm pretty sure I will never get up the nerve to try the eyeballs, but I pretty much feel obligated to at least try everything else.
Orientation has been really fun too... We have meetings all day long, we've started our language training, which is done by teachers who don't speak any English to us, so it's interesting, but it really forces you to be engaged, and we learn an incredible amount. We also have culture training, safety and security training and some technical training for our programs (mine is Economic Development). We will have more of all during our summer Pre-Service Training in our host communities.
There are a lot of current PVC's in Darkhan right now to help us, and some of them are actually posted here, and a bunch of them took some of us out to a club a few nights ago. It was so much fun! They have a lot of current American music here, and we were dancing with the Mongolians. They do the circle dance, which is funny, but they were really friendly. Some of the girls would pull one of us into the circle and dance with us. It's not like dancing in the US, where there is always some guy trying to hump you, everyone just dances. Drinking is a big thing here. They drink A LOT of vodka, and they don't believe in mixed drinks, they shoot it. And it's not good vodka, pretty much equivalent to Popov or Aristocrat. But it actually isn't as bad as I was expecting, it's drinkable. But the problem is that you can't leave a bottle unfinished, and there is ALWAYS another bottle... so I'm sure you can see how that creates a problem. They have a whole ceremony for taking shots too, which is pretty cool.
All in all, I am amazed by Mongolia. It is such an incredible country, and I really can't wait to get to Sukbaatar and actually get started. I had hoped that my site for my service (we go to our sites August 19th) would be out in the country so I could live in a Ger, but I have learned that all business volunteers are in Aimeg (province) centers, so I will be in or near a city. There is still a chance that I will live in a Ger, but it won't be out in the country. The upside is that I will have internet the whole time I'm here, and I get to travel a lot as a CED. So I will get to go out to the country to work with herders and farmers, and I can always go and visit another PVC who is posted out in the middle of nowhere. :)

Korea

Today we are in Seoul, Korea. We got in last night around 5, and stayed in a hotel near the airport. We are actually in Incheon, not Seoul, but it is an hour bus ride into the city. Today I am going on a tour of Incheon that goes to the beach, the fish market and I think a temple. We flew in on Korean Air, an airline which I would recommend to anyone. The service was so much better than on any of the American airlines, and they even served us wine with our first dinner (we got two). Last night some people went in to Seoul, but a bunch of us stayed around the hotel for dinner. I went to a little place not far from here, and had a rice and vegetable dish. It was really good, and I'm thinking it will be the last wide variety of vegetables I will see for some time. Tonight we arrive in Ulaanbaatar at around 11pm and then we will stay in a Ger camp for a couple nights. I'm glad that we had this stopover in Korea, because it gave us a chance to adjust to the time change. It is 13 hours difference here, and 12 in Mongolia, so I am already adjusted, which is great! Going through customs here was kind of funny, we couldn't check our bags all the way through because of our long layover, so when the customs man saw that I had put down that I'm staying one night in Korea, and then he looked at my 100+ lbs of luggage, and looked back at me and asked quite skepticaly, "how long are you staying?"

Last Night in the States

So tonight is my last night in the United States for quite awhile. I just completed the staging event in Atlanta, a day and a half consisting of a WHOLE lot of information about the Peace Corps and what we are all about. It leaves me even more excited to get where I'm going and get started. :) Tomorrow morning we leave for Mongolia. We are flying through Korea, and have a 27 hour layover in Seoul. Much to my excitement, the Peace Corps will be providing us with a hotel room while we are there, so we don't have to sleep in the airport! And we have enough time to sleep AND do some sight seeing, a little bonus trip! We arrive in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia at around 11pm on June 4, and from there will be spending the first two nights in a Ger camp. Gers are the traditional housing in Mongolia, basically a big round felt tent. From what I hear we can request (and may be stationed there regardless of what we request) to live in a Ger for the duration of our 2 years of service. The advice of currently serving volunteers, however, is to get an apartment if at all possible, as the novelty of living in a tent wears off quickly.
The first 11 1/2 weeks we are in Mongolia we will be living with host families in Darkan, completing our extensive language and technical training. During this time we are expected to learn the language, as well as how to chop wood and other necessary survival stills for Mongolia. I am one of only about 5 Community Economic Development (CED) volunteers in my group of 48, the majority of us are English Teachers.
I am so excited to go to Mongolia. The past week or so has been full of ups and downs about how I feel about leaving my friends and my life behind for over two years, but all in all I wouldn't miss this for the world. Mongolia is one of the hardest posts in the Peace Corps, and from what I hear they are very selective about who they send there. Basically anyone they think is willing to go and do whatever and will stick it out are flagged to be sent to Mongolia, one of the most remote places in the world. I have to admit that I cried when I found out this is where I'm going, Thailand was what I was hoping for, but now that I have researched Mongolia and am at the brink of being there, there's nowhere else I would rather go!
My biggest worry at this point is hauling my significant luggage around until I arrive at my post after training. We are allowed 100 lbs of checked luggage plus a carry on and a "personal item". I have to admit my luggage comes in at around 105 lbs (hopefully they won't notice...) and my carry ons probably weigh another 50lbs between the two. Getting all of that from the baggage claim to the shuttle in the Atlanta airport about killed me... I am sort of regretting not being more discriminating in what I brought, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that I am not the only one with these problems.
I am hoping that I will end up in a post where I will have at least semi-regular internet access so as to continue this blog, and as an CED volunteer I think it is likely, so until next time, I miss everyone and hope life in the States is treating you well!