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.