Roughing it in Mongolia

Korea

2009-01-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I went to South Korea to take the GMAT. I am applying to business school for next year, so the past few months I have been doing little else beside study. Aside from my trip to Korea, I haven’t left Mongolia in the past 18 months. It was kind of strange to visit a developed country. The roads are actually paved. There ARE actually roads. Cars aren’t in a constant state of breaking down, and there are buildings taller than 16 stories. It was kind of intimidating.
Even just leaving Mongolia was a pretty funny experience. As I was standing in line at security a bunch of little kids who were probably going to study in Korea came, all carrying bottles of juice. Not only did they get to take their juice past security, they didn’t even go through security. They were just waved on through. And of course, there weren’t any of those “line control” things, so it was just a line of people standing waiting, which of course meant people were cutting to the front the whole time. Some people in Mongolia are just too important to stand in line. The woman at customs in the Ulaanbaatar airport took a very long time looking at my passport. She couldn’t understand the English on my Mongolian visa, and where it says “3 YRS,” she thought it meant 3 months. I explained that I live in Mongolia, that I’m a Peace Corps volunteer and I was just visiting Korea. She gave me a confused look and then let me pass. On the airplane as we approached Seoul, the flight attendant was passing out entry cards for Korea, and when she got to my row she gave them to the Mongolians sitting next to me but not to me. I asked her for one, and she said “no, you don’t need one. You are a transit passenger.” So I explained that actually, I live in Mongolia and was visiting Korea and then returning to Mongolia. We went round and round a couple times and she was clearly very confused, but eventually gave me the card.
Being in Seoul was fun, it was kind of frustrating at times because I didn’t understand anything that was being said around me. In Mongolia I’m used to being able to catch at least the gist of a conversation. Luckily, most people in Korea speak pretty good English so it wasn’t really a problem. I didn’t really do much because I was there to take the GMAT, but I did walk around Seoul a lot. I was kind of disappointed in the weather, it was cold and overcast the whole time I was there. Not nearly as cold as Mongolia, but I was really hoping that it would be warm enough that I wouldn’t need to wear gloves and a hat every time I went outside. I was really impressed with some of the differences I noticed in the few days I was there. Crossing streets, everyone waited for the light to turn before walking. Even if there were no cars coming. I was kind of shocked by that. In Mongolia that almost never happens. In Tsetserleg there are no street lights, but even in UB, people normally just walk right out in traffic. If you don’t, you probably won’t ever get to cross the street, and there is usually so much of a traffic jam that the cars aren’t really moving anyway.
As soon as I got to the check-in counter to my flight back to Mongolia I felt right at home. Everyone was speaking Mongolian and I could understand them, they were all trying to cut in line and an old woman in a fur coat even rammed me with her luggage cart because I wouldn’t let her cut in front of me. Everyone had luggage carts. Mongolians usually travel with little else besides their purse. I have seen women going on week-long trips without so much as a change of clothes, but coming back from Korea is an entirely different story. Nearly every person on the flight had a luggage cart full of boxes. Everything from Apple computers to blankets. The woman at the counter seemed surprised that I only had one duffle bag.
Even before I checked in, the flight had an hour wind delay. Flying into Mongolia in the winter is a tricky thing. I have heard rumors of at least two people who flew in from Beijing that got to Mongolia, and then had to go back to Beijing without landing because of either smog or wind. The weather in Mongolia is fickle. Luckily my flight didn’t fly all the way there before realizing there was a problem with the weather, so instead I just waited in the airport an extra hour. As soon as the airline staff showed up at our gate, there was a rush of people (there is no “group A” etc when flying to Mongolia, it’s just a free-for-all). The airline staff eventually came out from behind the desk and yelled at everyone to go sit down because they weren’t ready yet, but only about 5 people left the horde to sit back down. Once they did start letting people through, everyone started scrunching up to the front and two airline employees had to come and physically push people into some semblance of a line. That made me smile, and I was happy to be coming home. I didn’t even forget my line-standing defense mechanisms while I was in Korea. One man tried to casually cut in front of me and I gave him my best death stare, so he got behind me instead.

The ATM

2008-12-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I went to the ATM at the Khaan bank in Tsetserleg. The ATM is a new addition, it appeared last summer. No longer do I have to push grandmothers out of my way to get my pittance of a living allowance every month. But I do have to wait while a swarm of high school students tries to figure out how to work the ATM. I don’t know exactly when ATMs made it to Mongolia, but I am fairly certain it was only in the past couple years. In UB, most people have figured it out and are used to the process. In the countryside (as much as an Aimag center can be considered the ‘countryside,’ trust me there are several more levels…) people have not yet figured it out. Even young people, who are the most adaptable to technology, take several minutes to withdraw their 2,000 tugriks (less than $2) from the ATM. That’s another thing that seems odd to me, and makes me seem very strange to them. I wait in line behind 10 kids who each withdraw somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 tugriks, and then they all look over my shoulder while I take out 100,000. It probably just reinforces the perception that I am a rich American, but really I just don’t like to stand in that ridiculous line more than about once a month.
As I was walking to the bank, I saw a horde of high school or college age girls walking to the bank from the opposite direction, so I quickened my step in hopes of beating them to the ATM. I did, but there were already 6 or 7 people standing in line. So I stepped up (extremely close) to the last person, aware as I am to the Mongol line-standing requirements, and prepared to wait my turn. ATM etiquette has not reached this country yet, and everyone in front of me was looking over the shoulder of the person actually withdrawing money. Partially because most of them needed help from their friends to figure out how to do it. Also, PIN numbers in Mongolia are the last four digits of the ATM card, so it really doesn’t matter if anyone sees your PIN anyway, they could easily figure it out. Finally my turn arrived, and with three Mongolians looking intently over my shoulder, I withdrew the money I will need for UB as well as the money I want to exchange into Korean Won. This was a pretty significant amount (especially compared to the 2,000 or 3,000 MNT that most others were withdrawing), and I left the bank to a whispered chorus of “wow, that was a lot of money.”

Yammer Sonin Youm Be!

2008-10-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

This phrase has been the story of my life this past week. It means “how interesting!” or “how strange!” and it’s a phrase used in Mongolia for any number of things. It can have a positive connotation, like when you run into someone you know on the street that you weren’t expecting to see, or a negative connotation when you get hung up on by the fire department because it’s after 6pm and they would really prefer not to deal with your electrical fire after work hours.
Last weekend I went to UB to buy a plane ticket to Korea to take the GMAT and meet Cady. She came back out to Arkhangai to visit and do some seminars with me. While we were in UB we went to all the stores that sell “uncommon” vegetables and food, such as crackers, cheese, spices. On of my friends has told me about the American Store, which is owned by an American who has lived here a really long time and started importing many things from America that you can’t find here. The store is a little hole-in-the-wall place that is buried in a neighborhood in UB. My friend drew me a map, so Cady and I went in search of it. We eventually found it, and it’s literally in a shack in the middle of a bunch of apartment buildings. It was amazing. Tortilla chips, jars of salsa, marshmallows. Things I never imagined existed in this country. We spent about half an hour wandering around in awe.
We took the post bus back to Arkhangai, which is my usual mode of transport. It was especially miserable. We thought it was going to be the “big bus” because the woman who sold the tickets said so, but it didn’t turn out to be. The “big bus” is like a normal bus, the luggage goes on the bottom and the seats are normal bus seats that have backs and headrests. The addition of the “big bus” is a pretty new and welcome development. It turned out that we took the “little bus,” which is more standard in Mongolia. It is a bus about half the length of normal busses, with no room underneath for luggage. It should seat about 26, but usually there are about 40 people on the bus. And all the luggage is piled in the aisle, under seats, and crammed into the little shelf on the roof. On my way to UB it must have been “bring all your boxes on the bus” day, it seemed like everyone who got on the bus had about 4 boxes. So the luggage was piled about a foot over the level of peoples’ heads. I was in the very back seat and every time the bus stopped I had to crawl over the pile. On the way back to Arkhangai Cady and I were sitting near the front, so while we still had to climb over things, it wasn’t nearly as precarious. But we were seated right next to the heater, which is basically the breath of hell shooting hot air at you the entire 12 hour ride. So I opened the window. The bus ride is always a battle between the windows and roof vents being opened or closed. Usually someone will open them, and then 10 minutes later someone else will close it. Repeat, repeat, repeat. When the windows are open it is actually quite pleasant. It’s kind of annoying having air blowing in your face the whole time, but much better than being hot and miserable. Not usually according to Mongolians though. The woman sitting behind us was of the opinion that it’s better to swelter. So she tried to reach in front of me and close our window. I told her she couldn’t because I was hot, and she slapped me on the shoulder, pouted, and basically told me I was alone in being hot.
Everyone gets grumpy on the bus. It’s long and very uncomfortable. Sometimes that makes people act like jerks. While Cady and I were on the bus the Mongolians around us kept commenting to each other how difficult the foreigners were. I’m not sure why they thought we couldn’t understand them because we spoke to people in Mongolian several times. Our Mongolian is better than their English, so we made ourselves feel better by making sarcastic comments about them. After the lunch break a bunch of the men sitting in the front started drinking beer. So, of course, we had to stop at a place we don’t normally stop so they could get out and “look at the horses.” Cady and I got out and they yelled at us and said we weren’t allowed to and that we should drink less water. Later one of them tried to get me to throw his beer bottles caps out the window and I told him no I wouldn’t, what a bad thing. They all laughed, and it didn’t do much good because the next time we stopped for them to look at the horses he threw those and the bottles out the door.
We did eventually reach Tsetserleg, only slightly less the worse for the wear. A couple nights ago I had everyone over for dinner. We were all in my kitchen cooking, and all of a sudden we started smelling plastic burning. So we looked around to figure out what it was. Turned out to be my electrical outlet melting. So we unplugged everything, but Ochgo went out in the hall and saw a fire in the fuse box. That was a little scary. So I called my counterparts and they got a hold of my landlord. She came over and started calling the police and the fire department to get someone to come out and see what the problem was/try to keep my apartment from burning down. They hung up on her because it was after 6pm (not by much). Apparently in Mongolia the fire department only works during business hours. Yamer sonin youm be. Eventually they agreed to come out, and 45 minutes later two men showed up. I’m not sure what they did besides flip my fuses on and off a couple times and pull the outlet out and look inside the wall, but they said everything was fine but I couldn’t plug so many things in at once. Stupid foreigner. Aside from a half-melted outlet, it seems that everything is fine.
On Saturday we all went to Battsengal to go riding. It was Christi and Zaneta’s first trip to the hudoo, so we should have known… The driver we normally hire to take us to Battsengal couldn’t go because something is wrong with his car, so we had to take some other guy. About half way to Battsengal we were driving along and the tire fell off the axel. Not a flat tire, that’s normal. The entire tire, lug nuts and all, flew off the car and rolled about half a mile away down a hill. How interesting. The driver and Cady, who jumped out of the car and took off after the tire before we were even stopped, eventually got the tire back to the car and the driver began fixing it. He kept saying how interesting, we are so lucky, if we had been coming down a mountain we all probably would have died, we are the champions of luck. Interesting way to look at it I suppose. He discovered that the metal part that makes the tire turn was completely stripped, and a couple parts had fallen out. What brilliant car maintenance. Luckily Zaneta found the two little metal parts that were missing. He told us he didn’t need them so Tuul threw them in the grass, but it later turned out that his spare part was also missing pieces. So we picked through the grass and eventually found them. Two and a half hours, several games of 20 questions and charades later, and he had the tire pack on the axel and we were off.
On our way home, after our driver made us stop at some ger so he could buy aireg, the battery died. Luckily we just made it to Tsetserleg before the car completely died so we all just walked home. The driver still expected us to pay him full price. I refused, I have become so frustrated with some Mongolians and their ridiculous business practices. He takes horrible care of his car and it can’t even make it 120km without having several major problems, he stops at his friend’s place when we told him we didn’t want to stop and he still expects us to pay him what is equivalent to about a quarter of our monthly living allowance on top of all the gas? I don’t think so. We eventually came to an agreement on a 10,000 tugrik reduction in the price, and he was still mad and said we could never ride in his car again. How sad for us.
Luckily we made it out to Battsengal last weekend, because Winter has officially hit. It has snowed a few times this week and the biting, dust-filled winter wind has started.

The Second Year

2008-09-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

This is my second Fall in Mongolia, and it's amazing how many things are different this year. One of the most noticeable, and recently beneficial, has been the fact that I know more people. Other volunteers in my Aimag do too, and we have all benefited greatly in the form of leafy greens. Ik Tamir has one farmer who is growing spinach and lettuce this year. We bought out his whole crop of spinach and a lot of his lettuce and I have eaten salad at least once a day since Saturday. I also know the people at Fairfield well, and have been getting lettuce from their garden, as well as the hook up with vegetables from other missionaries in the Aimag. It has been awesome.
My language (though by no means great) is also significantly better than when I arrived at site last August. I can understand a lot more, and I can actually hold a somewhat meaningful conversation in Mongolian.
One of the things I am most excited about this year (aside from the exotic vegetables in my diet) is actually having stuff to do at work. I have almost 200 surveys that my office collected from tourists this summer to process, and I've started writing the value chain report. It's so nice to be busy.
I've also been spending a lot of time with my new site mates. It's strange not being the only PCV in Tsetserleg anymore. One of my site mates has the entire series of Sex and the City, which is awesome. We have been watching that and we will finish with the movie (which came out on DVD in UB about a month ago, which I am sure is perfectly legitimate. I would not steal a car, or a purse and buying a bootleg movie is definitely exactly the same...).
Though I am much more comfortable and used to a lot of the things that are Mongolia, there are still some that continue to frustrate and sometimes infuriate me. Some things about this country really are just inexcusably ridiculous. I've learned to embrace pushing people when trying to stand in line at the bank, or standing with my toes practically on the next persons heels while in line at a store. But sometimes the blatant inefficiency and acceptance of such inefficiency really gets to me. Walking into a delguur and seeing the shopkeeper talking on her phone doesn't really bother me any more. I usually just start talking to her and ask for what I want anyway, and they usually give me what I ask for and take my money without even pausing in their conversation. But the last time I ate in one of the cafes near my office with my site mates and Tuul, the waitress actually answered her cell phone and started having a conversation while we were in the middle of trying to pay. Not only was she having a conversation, but she completely ignored us until she was finished talking.
A few weekends ago I went to the supermarket that is open on Saturdays. It isn't the one I usually go to, but the other one is closed on Saturday. I was there with one of my site mates, and we both found a few things we wanted (although the dried tofu that was confirmed to have been there the day before was nowhere to be found). When we went to the checkout we were informed we were not allowed to buy any of those things because they didn't know the price. Things like honey, yogurt and plastic cheese. Things that are commonly found in the supermarkets in Tsetserleg and were ON THE SHELF. This is a fairly common occurrence, especially at that supermarket. I don't understand why anyone would think that is acceptable.
I love living in Mongolia, but sometimes it is impossible for me to understand why things are the way they are. I'm quite sure they will continue to be this way indefinitely though, because every time I get upset about it Mongolians look at me like I'm the crazy one.

A Lesson in Patience

2008-08-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

This summer has flown by. I'm finally back home in Arkhangai, and I don't plan to leave for awhile. It was really nice getting to travel so much the past couple months, I got to see Lake Hovsgul and the Gobi desert, but it was also pretty exhausting. My family was here at the beginning of August. It was really interesting to watch them come to appreciate what it's really like here. I thought I had described how bad the roads are, how things are never planned and how unbelievably long it takes to get places... but it would appear you have to experience it for yourself to really understand.
The trip I planned for my parents was pretty brutal, we only had 5 days to see the Gobi and Tsetserleg. Most volunteers who have people visit give them a day or two in UB to settle in, but we left for the Gobi the morning after they arrived. On the first day we drove all the way to Dalanzadgad, the aimag center of Omnogov (South Gobi). We were on paved road for about an hour, and then the rest of the 13 hour trip was dirt/rock/sand road. We arrived in Dalanzadgad at about midnight, but we could see the lights from the town for almost 2 hours before we actually got there. It was torture, we were all going a little crazy by that point. I didn't have a reservation anywhere, or really have any idea where we would stay that night. I just knew we would find a ger camp, there are several of them in the area. That's just the way things are done in Mongolia. My mom had a little freak out about that, understandably. But, after a ridiculous conversation with the receptionist at a hotel, we found a ger camp. The owner even made us some really delicious buuz, even though it was almost 1:00am.
The next morning we continued on to see the "glacier." The "glacier" is actually a small stream in a deep gorge that freezes so thick in the winter that it stays frozen all summer long. We rode camels part of the way into the gorge, and then walked the rest. It was a really beautiful place, the geology in the Gobi is incredible. The "glacier" was more of an ice cube by that time, it has been a very rainy summer, which washes away a lot of the ice. But it was still pretty incredible to see an ice cube in the Gobi desert in August. After the ice cube we drove to the Khonger Els, the giant sand dunes. We stayed at a really nice ger camp at the foot of the dunes. It was really incredibly hot. There was a constant wind that felt like it just sucked all the water right out of you. Even at 10 pm it was still unbelievably hot. My parents were hoping for air conditioning in the ger, which I said was impossible and they would never find that. Except, of course, the next night we stayed at a ger camp in Kharkhorin that actually did have air conditioning IN the gers. It was mind-blowing. Of course it was kind of cold that night, and we didn't need it. Too bad they didn't have that in the Gobi.
The last night my parents were here we stayed in Tsetserleg. My work had a horhog for us, which was really fun. My family also got to meet Sophie and see my apartment. Sophie was so excited that I was home, and I think she felt a bit betrayed when I left again the next day. It was interesting showing my parents my apartment, they were a little skeptical when we drove up to the building. It looks like a slum from the outside, but I think they felt a bit better when they saw my steel door and that the inside of my apartment isn't actually so bad.
I know that I have learned a lot of patience in the year that I have been here, but it really put it into perspective hearing my family asking "are we there yet?" and saying things like "it can not possibly take that long to go 200 km!" throughout our trip. And I guess I have forgotten how much I suffered the first few times I went on long trips in Mongolia.
My parents were also a little shocked by my newfound nonchalance about things like flies. One night we were eating dinner with our driver, and a fly landed on his hamburger (we were at the ger camp in Kharkhorin with AC in the gers, hamburgers are not normally found in the countryside). My sister scraped the fly off with a knife, because this was a very determined fly and would not be scared away by the wave of a hand. The driver then used the knife to cut his hamburger, and my Mom didn't think that was such a good idea. Such is life in Mongolia. Flies are everywhere, and you can almost guarantee they have touched your food at some point. And really, a fly never gave anyone giardia, so what's the big deal?
Seeing my Mom's surprise at my attitude about flies, I told the story of a volunteer who ate a piece of pizza off the ground this summer. When I was in Darkhan helping with the CED training, Cady hosted a dinner for the CED trainees at her apartment. We made them pizza, stromboli, fruit salad and all kinds of other delicious delicacies. Some people were standing out on the balcony at one point, and someone dropped a piece of pizza (Cady lives on the 4th floor). It just so happened that a volunteer was walking by at that exact moment in search of a delguur which would ignore prohibition for foreigners. He picked the pizza up and ate it. My family thought that was hilarious. But really, it landed crust-side down, and who wouldn't eat a piece of pizza that feel at your feet from the sky??
After my parents left my sister stayed four more days. We mostly stayed in UB and did some souvenir shopping and tried to avoid the creepy guy staying at the guesthouse. We did go out to Hustai National Park for one night. Hustai is about 2 hours west of UB, and it is where the 200 wild Takhis (Prezwalski's Horse) live. On our way out there the car got stuck in some sand, but after about an hour of digging and pushing we were on our way again. That evening we drove to the valley where the Takhis live, and as the sun set we watched several herds come down off the mountains to drink. It was really cool, they are the only undomesticated horses left, and Mongolia is the only place where they live in the wild.
The next morning we went riding. Our horses were unbelievably short, even by Mongolian standards. And the saddles, though the ger camp claimed they were Russian, were not much more than a thin layer of leather over some 2x4s. We both got a bit bruised.
After Tori left, I went back up to Darkhan to see the new volunteers swear in. We now have 59 new PCVs in Mongolia, three of which are in Arkhangai. I have two site mates in Tsetserleg, and there is a new TEFL in Battsengal (and she rides horses, which is good for everyone). The new volunteers have completely changed the demographics of Arkhangai, while I used to be the only girl in the Aimag, now there are four. It's a nice change, and they smell a whole lot better.
It has already started to feel like fall/winter. I forgot how quickly the weather changes. There has already been snow in several places of Mongolia, and I have already had to break out my long underwear (in August!!). I'm hoping that this winter will be a bit more mild than last, I lived through one record-breakingly cold winter and have no desire to do so again.

Summer Escapades

2008-07-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

The past month has been a full one, for me and for Mongolia. First we had a State of Emergency for flooding, several districts of UB had to be evacuated and many summer English camps were cancelled or evacuated due to the heavy rains. My apartment was without running water until the morning I left for Darkhan to help with PST (a total of 15 days!), though there was certainly no shortage of water outside. The whole country is beautiful lush green now because of all the rain, and all the animals are looking fat and happy.
I spent about a week in Darkhan helping with training for the new volunteers, and celebrating the 4th of July. On the 1st we had our second State of Emergency for the summer, declared to stop the rioting in UB. Mongolia had a parliamentary election and the preliminary results were announced on July 1st, with the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) winning 46 of 76 seats. The Democratic Party and some of the other smaller parties claimed that the elections had been unfair, or counted wrong and organized a protest in Sukhbaatar Square, which turned in to a drunken, violent riot with 5 people killed and a bunch more injured seriously. They also torched the MPRP headquarter building and, sadly, looted and burned the National Art Gallery next door. Many of the rioters were drunk, and they also broke in to the Duty Free store in the MPRP building. The police used rubber bullets, tear gas and a water cannon to try to dissuade the rioters, but none of those things worked. Apparently the police didn't have nearly enough rubber bullets or riot gear, and the rioting lasted pretty late into the night. All that is left of the building is a burned shell. President Enkhbayar declared a four day State of Emergency, which included a ban on alcohol sales, a 10pm-8am curfew, a ban on public gatherings and only the National TV channel was allowed to broadcast. This was the first time anything like this has happened in Mongolia, and many Mongolians are really sad and disappointed in their fellow countrymen. There were many international observers of the voting, and all declared that they were free and fair. The State of Emergency was only in UB, but Darkhan followed suit and also declared a four day State of Emergency, which happened to coincide with the 4th of July. That was a bit disappointing, but luckily PCVs are resourceful as well as persuasive and managed to explain to a few delguur owners that it was a really important American holiday, and that we certainly weren't going to do any rioting.
After the 4th I went to Sukhbaatar with Cady to visit her host family. We spent the night at their house, and Cady, Eej and I drank some vodka and wine and had a dance party in the living room. It was really fun to see the host family again, and they were really glad to see us. The next day Sukhbaatar Naadam started, so I spent the whole day at the Naadam stadium watching wresting and archery. Another PCV was doing archery, and one of the trainees wrestled. I stayed in Selenge until the 16th, visiting friends and celebrating Naadam. Naadam was even more fun this year, I am armed with a greater appreciation of Mongolian wrestling, a stomach that can handle Naadam hoshur with ease, and the great patience to be able to sit and watch archery for hours upon hours. I have also refined my ability to take shots of vodka, a talent that it seems I am frequently called upon to practice.
I needed a few days to rest and recover after the week of Naadam festivities, and then took the night train to UB, in search of a tour group going to Lake Hovsgul to join. After a day of frustrating waiting and brief talks with some guesthouses, it seemed like it wasn't going to work out and we were going to have to suck it up and take the bus. But then, at the last minute, Doug and I joined a group of 4 Polish and a French guy. We piled in the porgon and off we went. Three days later we arrived in Khatgal (the soum on the shore of Lake Hovsgul). That trip was my first experience with Mongolian tourism. I am a little amazed that people actually take trips in Mongolia. I think it might have to do with the fact that, until you experience travel here, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into (but for those who are not faint-of-heart, you should definitely come! It is a beautiful country and there is nowhere else like it in the world). Don't get me wrong, to me it felt like luxury. We had our own car, we could stop when we wanted, and no babies were throwing up on us. But three days of off-roading in a Russian vehicle tends to be a bit tough on one's bones and muscles. It was well worth it though, and we all became quick friends and spent a good portion of the time laughing.
Once we made it to Khatgal we celebrated in the only appropriate way. The next day we set off on a two-day, one-night horse trek along the lake. It was the first time I have camped since I came to Mongolia, and it was beautiful. Lake Hovsgul is crystal clear and surrounded by wooded mountains. We rode through the woods along the lake for about 5 hours, after which both the horses and we were exhausted. We stopped for the night in a beautiful meadow right beside the lake, and even though we could see storm clouds rolling in we all decided we had to "swim" in the lake.
Several Mongolians have told me that Lake Hovsgul stays so cold, even in the summer, that if you swim out into the middle you will probably drown. I never believed that, but after the 3.5 seconds I spent in the lake I am a believer. It was COLD. All I could manage was a quick dive under water and then a hasty retreat to the shore. We enjoyed the rest of the evening by a roaring fire, and rode back to Khatgal the next day.
We decided to stay one more day at the lake, and 5 of us went in search of some kayaks that were rumored to be around. We found the ger camp, and managed to talk them down from $20/hour to 20,000T for the day. They only had two kayaks, and we were five, but they threw in an inflatable dingy for free, because "they don't like it and never use it." We quickly figured out why they didn't like it, and ended up having to tie it to one of the kayaks and pull it with us. We rowed out into the lake for about two hours, against the wind the whole time but consoling ourselves with the thought that the way home would be super easy with the wind at our backs. We stopped on the shore for awhile, and the next thing we knew we were watching a huge rainstorm sweep down the mountains over Khatgal, coming right for us. We decided to make a run for it, and got back in our kayaks and started paddling like crazy. About 2 minutes in we started to feel the first drops, and then the sky opened up. It was raining so hard we could hardly see where we were going, and we were a little worried when we started to see some flashes of lighting off in the distance but it ended up being quite an adventure. We all returned to the ger camp soaking wet, looking like drowned rats. They kindly gave us some hot tea and then we went back to our ger camp and put on some dry clothes and started a fire in the ger.
Doug and I were really lucky, and managed to catch a ride back to UB with two other American girls in a Russian jeep. The driver had lost his tour group, they decided they wanted to stay in Hovsgul longer instead of doing the 10 day tour they had planned, so he was going straight back to UB. It only took us two days to get back to the city, but it was pretty rough. Russian jeeps really beat you up, and the road we took was a really hard one.
I have been in UB for the past week working at Mercy Corps. I've been interviewing tour companies for a project I'm working on. My parents and sister arrive on Saturday night, which I am really excited about. We will go to the Gobi for a few days, and then to Arkhangai for one night. It will be nice to be back in Tsetserleg, even if for a day. I have been away for a long time this summer. I am excited to see Sophie, I have been told that she isn't eating very well and searches the faces of all the foreigners looking for me. Poor Sophie.

The Hudoo Life

2008-06-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent several days at a ger camp, Beaten Paths, in Battsengal. It is set up on the family's land, a few hundred feet away from the well (there are no rivers or water sources close enough for the animals) and consists of two tourist gers and the family ger. Beaten Paths is a Mercy Corps client, so I went out to give advice on how to improve and a basic accounting/bookkeeping training. Also to hang out with some other PCVs who happened to be there. We were the season's first "tourists," so it was a good chance for the family to figure out what they still needed to do to set up for the "Jinkin" tourists who will come later.
Spending more than 1-2 nights in a ger camp is quite rare, most tourists spend an average of 1 night in any given ger camp and then move on. And with good reason, there isn't a whole lot to do. But sometimes it's nice just to sit under a dirty tarp awning and watch the sheep, goats, horses and cows go by. Our proximity to the well meant that close to 1,000 animals came and went several times a day. We fought the baby cows for the integrity of our ger and outhouse (they thought the dirt pile by the outhouse was AWESOME), stared down goats and pondered the worth of "sheep language," which it turns out is seriously annoying (and, as everyone knows, sheep are stupid so probably not very worthwhile either). One morning we were sitting outside reading and looked up to find about 50 goats ten feet away from us, just staring. I guess we are interesting too.
Watching the various herds of horses was really interesting for me. Horses in America don't generally live in proper herds, but in Mongolia they do. A stallion has 7-8 mares with their foals and "daags" (2-year old horses, who are actually only one by conventional count but Mongolians consider them 2) following them around. There was one herd who's stallion looked just like Spirit Stallion of the Cimeron, and whenever they drank at the well he would stand back and keep an eye on everything, occasionally chasing away a goat.
The last day we were all there we drove to the river and had a sheep horhog (after having the sheep's innards for breakfast...) Then we spent the night in Rob's ger in the soum center and Tuul and I came back to Tsetserleg yesterday. As seems to happen whenever I go to the countryside, we came back to find that there will be no running water in town until the 20th. So much for that shower we were both really looking forward to. Living in an apartment without water is awful. The faucets and shower just sit there mocking me, and I am currently having a debate with myself between paying Fairfield to do some much-needed laundry (they have their own water system), or just being smelly for a few weeks. We will see which wins out.

One Year!

2008-06-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

It's official, I have been here a whole year now. It's weird to think that last year at this time I was afraid to even take a shower in the Darkhan Hotel because I was still used to American standards... So much for that. I recently had to move to a different apartment, and my new bathroom makes Darkhan hotel look almost nice. It's weird to think that now I am one of the "experienced" PCVs. The M19s arrived in Mongolia a couple days ago, so I am officially an "old" volunteer.
The past few weeks have been the busiest I have had since training last year. Full of travel to the countryside doing research for a Tourism Value Chain analysis I'm working on, hosting SIT study abroad students and moving. Today I'm headed out to Battsengal to spend several days at the ger camp out there helping out and teaching some basic accounting to the owner. This ger camp is one of my favorites, it was started last year with the help of the PCV in Battsengal, it is a Mercy Corps client, and it also happens to be where I go riding when I go to Battsengal, so I'm excited to help them out and hopefully get a lot of riding in this week! Next week I head to Bulgan soum to visit another ger camp, and then shortly after that up to Darkhan to help with training. Where does the time go?

Normality

2008-05-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

In a few short weeks I will have lived in Mongolia for one year. That fact blows my mind in so many ways. I have never been away from my family, my country and all that I hold to be “normal” for so long. Yet I find myself at a loss of what to write about Mongolia, and my experience here. It has all come to seem so normal. Mongolia is like nothing I had ever imagined, or experienced, or even imagined I would experience. Yet now it is normal. It is Spring. Everyone says Spring in Mongolia is rough. All I know is Spring in Missouri. The red buds blossom, April showers bring May flowers. But Spring in Mongolia is filled with dust storms, white-out blizzards that melt in two hours and dead animals.
A few weeks ago I went to UB for my annual Peace Corps physical. The bus ride there was more frustrating than most of my previous trips to UB. They are working on the road again, which doesn’t mean progress at this point. It means driving aimlessly across fields because there are piles of dirt and rocks blocking the road. And it means animal carcasses. Animals die in the Spring. This past winter was harder and colder than it has been in 10 years according to most Mongolians. I believe them. Walking the 5 minutes to work my eyelashes froze, and even though my desk was mere feet away from the wall with a radiator, my hands were frozen most of the day. Long underwear, which I have never worn in my life, was a necessity from October until mid-March.
My trip home from UB was even more interesting. When we stopped for lunch it was like a scene out of a Disney movie. A storm was coming through. We sat in the ger , waiting for our lunch of tsoy vin to be served, and kept hearing what sounded like an airplane. It turned out to be a thunderstorm. When I went outside to look, I could see darkness sweeping over the land. It was like something bad was about to happen. I watched the dust storm coming from the West, and the thunderclouds coming from the North. But no lightening. In Mongolia the sky is nearly endless, you can watch the clouds cast shadow over the Steppe. I watched “dustadoes” rise into the air. There isn’t enough moisture in Mongolia to create tornadoes, but cyclones of dust frequently rise a hundred feet into the air.
Somehow, though I have never lived through a Mongolian Spring, it doesn’t really shock me. Last week I went to Battsengal to ride horses. While I was in UB I met some PCVs who had just ended their service in Ukraine and were taking the Trans-Siberian to Beijing. They ended up coming out to Arkhangai for a few days to experience the Mongolian countryside, and, of course, I took them to Battsengal. During the two-hour ride out there we saw innumerable carcasses on the side of the road. Spring means dead animals, but also clean-white baby sheep and adorable baby horses. Somehow, after living here almost a year the carcasses didn’t even phase me. Maybe it’s the normality of seeing animal bones littered across fields, and even in the dirt streets of Tstetserleg. The last time I went to Battsengal the baby sheep were just starting to be born, and when we came back from our ride the family told us that an eagle had eaten one. We saw one of the kids of the herder family tear across the Steppe on his ever-ready Mongol horse to the sheep herd because there was an eagle circling.
Everyone who has heard anything about the “Mongol Hordes” knows how hardy Mongolian horses are. During the time of Chinggis Khan, they carried the army all the way to Vienna. But you can’t even begin to imagine it until you see almost skeletal horses during the Spring giving birth and nursing their foals, and surviving that. Nearly every horse, yak or cow I see has severely protruding hip-bones, and is clearly seriously mal-nourished. Yet these animals, at least most of them, manage to survive this hardship and go on to thrive once the grass is fully grown and the Mongolian Summer fully arrives. Only to do it all again the next year.
It makes you think about the Mongolian people. Like their animals (which outnumber them almost 40 to 1), Mongolians, for centuries, have survived this harsh climate and at one point had the largest empire ever known. This country is full of hardy animals and the resilient people who care for them.
These resilient people are trying to fight through a post-Soviet, high-inflation and corrupt economy to develop. The contrast between their mostly small community knowledge and lifestyle and their desire to be a democracy seems an almost impossible struggle. The national elections are coming up this year. And with the national elections comes a possible shift in the controlling Party. In America we are used to essential continuity, regardless of which party is in power. Our basic civil servants are not politically appointed, they keep and do their jobs through major shifts in the political atmosphere. In Mongolia that is not the case. A change in the controlling party means every civil servant loses their job, and is replaced by someone with the same political affiliation of the controlling party. How is anything to be done under such a system? School directors, School system methodologists, Park administrators, all the way down to the drivers hired to transport these employees of the State have almost no job security. Why should they work hard? Why should the seek promotion?
Despite this strange governmental system, many Mongolians are working hard to develop their country and try to gain transparency in their government. Many of the younger generation, who haven't grown up under communism, realize there is a lot of work to be done and want to be the ones to do it. Mongolians love their country, and are proud of their unique traditions and way of life. Many of the small-business owners I meet and work with through Mercy Corps are eager to learn what it takes to compete and keep their business going.

Man's Best Friend

2008-04-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Today I watched two little boys kicking a puppy. That is not at all a strange occurrence. A few days ago I was playing with some stray puppies outside one of my friend's apartment building and a little boy, probably only 4 or 5 years old came out and started kicking them for no reason. Mongolians are strange about dogs. Mostly they are terrified of them. The same day I was playing with those puppies a group of little girls was giving me the "hello!" chorus, and started to come over to me. One of the puppies ran up to them wagging its tail and the little girls ran away screaming. There are lots of street dogs in Mongolia, (somehow the yearly mass-murder of the stray dogs doesn’t quite solve the problem) and if they go within 10 feet of someone the person will throw a rock or yell at them. Watching Sophie run around town is an interesting sight. She is one of the friendliest dogs I know, she is always wagging her tail and running up to people, whose response is inevitably to jump back with a terrified expression and yell. Or pick up a rock and throw it at her.
I admit that sometimes she can be a little startling, there have been a few times I’ve been walking back to my apartment when she is outside and she runs up behind me at top speed. But she really just wants to say “hi.” And she’s not enough of a Mongol dog to know that people are not her friends. It surprises me that Mongolians are so fearful and mean to dogs. Most people who live in hashaas have a dog, and their dog is a pretty important part of their home security. Hashaa dogs keep the drunk men away and won’t allow strangers to wander around your yard. And dogs are used to guard herds. But many Mongolians practically starve their hashaa dogs. I can’t count the times I have walked into a hashaa and seen a skeletal, mangy dog tied up to a short rope looking up at me with sad eyes. In my experience dogs are most loyal when you feed them and are nice to them. There are many Mongolians who understand that and care for their dogs. But there are many more that don’t. And it’s no wonder they are all scared of dogs. They throw rocks at them and kick them every chance they have. Even puppies that belong to someone generally wander around the streets to some degree, and they are at the mercy of every pack of little boys roaming around looking for something to pick on. Every time I see a herd of boys beating up a puppy I want to go and kick them. It seems that torturing small animals is not a sign of sociopathy in Mongolia.

Love Each Other While Living, People

2008-04-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

The following is a Mongolian poem written by O.Dashbalbar that my friend Tuul translated into English:

Love each other while living,
You need not be stingy with those things you hold dearest
Don’t hurt hearts with the spears of needless words
Don’t push one down into a dark hole.
Don’t laugh at the one who has fallen down sodden,
He might be your father, who knows!

If you’ve reached first the peak of fame
Open the gate of happiness for others
They should not forget your help!
Say the one nice word to the person
Who misses and needs it,
Days that are sunny outside and cold inside
Will be seen more than once on this earth.

The nice boy who fell in love with you,
Don’t hurt him with your hard words, girl!
Just love him back for loving you,
He might have loved another, prettier.

Our lives are the same
On our throats, words are knotted the same
On our cheeks, tears fall the same
On our ways, we cross the same paths

Without asking, wipe away a girl’s tear,
Raise up and calm a child stumbled,
Today you’re laughing and another is crying
But another day you’ll be sad and the other will be singing.

Because everybody passes through cradle and coffin
Just love each other, nothing else is needed!
In this wide world,
Humans need not be short on love.

Because I imagine happiness as a fire in the human soul
Because the golden sun bestows its rays upon us equally,
For me, being alive is to deliver my love to others
And I understand that happiness is to receive love from others.

Love each other while living, people!
Translated by S. Tuul

The Olympics

2008-03-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

Last week the annual Academic Olympics were held in Aimag centers across Mongolia. In Arkhangai we also have the Pyramid competition, a PCV creation. It's basically a game show testing English speaking and reading comprehension ability, and gives Mongolian students a chance to show their competitiveness. There were some tense moments when we judged answers to be wrong and they didn't agree. They also all thought that students who are taught by a PCV had an unfair advantage. But there was only one yelling match.
The day after the Pyramid competition was the English Olympics. Since I am a native speaker, I am qualified to be an Olympic judge. Also, as Rob pointed out, "Peace Corps Volunteer" roughly translates as "Slave Labor." What fun. Each school in the Aimag sends their best English speaker from 9th and 11th grades. The Olympics consist of written, listening comprehension and speaking tests. The day began with all four PCVs sitting in the teachers room reading The Economist for almost an hour, then we all paraded into the classroom where the test was to be given so the school director could show the students that no one had opened the envelope sent from UB containing the test, and THEN we made copies of the test.
The CD that was sent with the listening portion, of course, didn't work on the CD player. It worked on the computer, so we sat down to transcribe it. We planned to act it out for the students, which actually would have been much easier for them. The speakers on the CD had really heavy British accents and were almost unintelligible. But when we were about halfway through the first section, the director came in and said the students didn't want us to act it out, because it would give Rob, Jeff and Greg's students an unfair advantage. So instead we carried the computer from room to room (not a laptop). Only about one student from each grade actually understood any of the listening portion, so it probably would have helped them out if they had just let us do it...
The speaking test was painful to judge. Even though these are the very best English students in the Aimag, only about 2 of them can actually speak English. They have been studying the language since 4th grade. Each student had 5 minutes to talk about their prompt, after 5 minutes to think about it. Rob and I judged the 11th grade, and at least three of them sat there in silence for the full 5 minutes.
This can easily be explained by the English ability of the Aimag teachers. Each school also sends it's best English teacher, and they have their own Olympics. All four of us judged the teachers speaking ability. Though most of them could speak a little bit of seriously broken English, only two could be considered anywhere close to fluent.
The education system in Mongolia is tragic. No one fails, so students graduate from University with a degree in English teaching or translating unable to carry on even the simplest conversation in English. Many TEFL PCVs don't even give their students grades, because if they don't give them good grades the school Director changes them. There were some positive aspects of Communism in Mongolia. The education and healthcare systems were far superior to what they are now.
That being said, there are a lot of Mongolians who learn English despite their poor teachers. The influx of American culture on TV and in music has been good for Mongolians who really want to learn English and have the drive to do it on their own. It also allows Peace Corps volunteers to feel really good about ourselves. Many of the people I meet who speak English well are quick to say they had a PCV as a teacher.

Pictures

2008-03-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Spring at Last!

Vacation, sort of

2008-03-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

The past month has been full of travel (Mongol-style of course), Peace Corps training and enjoying above-freezing temperatures. I have finally been able to hang up my giant winter parka, and move back to my light jacket (a moment I celebrated fully). Some days I don't even have to wear a coat, so long as I layer properly.
In late February I went up to Selenge aimag with a friend to visit another PCV who lives there. We took the night train from UB to Sukhbaatar, which travels about as fast as a horse but is a bit more comfortable. While in Sukhbaatar, I visited Cady's host family from the Summer. They were really happy that I had come to visit, but I think I made Cady look like the "bad daughter" because she lives a lot closer but hadn't come up for Tsaagan Sar (never mind the fact that there was a snowstorm the day she had been planning to come, and the taxi drivers always seem to have a death wish anyway).
After three days of genuine hudoo life, I came to realize how happy I am to live in an apartment. I love my hot shower, the heat that is provided through no work of my own and my indoor toilet. The running water to wash dishes with is also a big plus.
I also got to experience the true "posh-corps" lifestyle in Darkhan for a few days after Sukhbaatar. Complete with CNN, National Geographic and Animal Planet, and a couch to lay on while watching. I went to Darkhan to give a training on sustainability with Cady at her CHF office, which went really well. We also had time to go shopping at an awesome thrift store, and I had a bit of a moment at Nomins. Nomins is a super-market chain that is in UB, Darkhan and Erdenet. I made Cady spend almost an hour just wandering up and down the aisles while I gasped at and drooled over the amazing things for sale there (sesame oil, broccoli, lettuce, meat other than hiam, brown sugar, cheese).
At the beginning of March we had a Peace Corps training on Project Design and Management (PDM). It was the last time all the M18s will be together in one place before our Close of Service conference next year. It was a really good training, and it was at a much better hotel than IST. The hotel is in the "Strictly Protected Area" outside of UB. I'm not sure exactly what is meant by "Strictly Protected," as there is still hunting, grazing, camping etc. allowed. But it was beautiful. We were busy with training sessions pretty much all day the whole time we were there though, so there wasn't much time to enjoy the newly-warm weather.
After PDM I spend a few more days in UB, going to some meetings and participating in the normal Peace Corps ridiculousness that ensues whenever a large group of us are in the city. Though it's always fun to be in UB, it gets expensive and exhausting really quickly, and I was glad to come back home. My friend came back to Tsetserleg with me to stay for a week and enjoy Arkhangai's awesomeness. The weather was beautiful. Arkhangai has been the warmest spot in Mongolia all winter, and it continues to be warmer than the rest of the country. All the snow had melted, and there are even some buds on trees now. Along with spring, though, comes the infamous Dust Storms. I experienced my first last Tuesday. Which, of course, was the day my office relocated.
Our office was moved in typical Mongolian fashion. I was sitting at my computer doing something when all of a sudden it turned off. That isn't such a strange occurrence, as the power goes out briefly quite frequently, and sometimes my computer turns off because someone looks at the extension cord wrong and it stops working for awhile. But I looked up to see people pulling computers off desks and stacking everything in the middle of the room. And so we moved. We threw everything in boxes and carried it to the truck downstairs. All during a dust storm. Probably not the best thing for the computers, but it really is amazing how durable things are when forced to be so. The office was moved because recently the cafe downstairs from our old office converted their pool/ ping-pong room into karaoke. You wouldn't think that would be such a problem, but in Mongolia karaoke starts up at about 11am. It's not so easy to focus on anything while listening to very loud, very bad karaoke being sung directly below you.
After the dust storm on Tuesday, the rest of last week was incredible. The sun was shining and it was warm enough to go on hikes without a coat. Doug and I went on a hike on Wednesday. We took Sophie with us, and as we passed by Andrea and Tuul's apartment buildings we were joined by two stray dogs that have befriended all foreigners. One is a true Mongolian dog, he is black with some white has the "four eyes" (light brown patches above his eyes). The other is some sort of mix between some fancy lap-dog and street dog. He is short and has curly hair (aka dred-locks). With our small herd of dogs we hiked up into the mountains around Tsetserleg. The little curly dog has some sort of inferiority complex, and can't get enough of chasing livestock. Sophie was good about not joining in at first, but as we went on she started to understand what was going on and decided she might like to play too. Near the end of our hike we heard thundering hooves coming up behind us, so we turned around to find an angry herder. He asked us why our dogs were chasing his animals. Doug told him that the yellow dog was ours, the other ones we didn't know anything about, they just followed us. He didn't seem to buy that completely, but eventually went away.
I also climbed Bulgan mountain for the second time last week. This time I climbed up and also back down the rock face. The first time Rob, Jeff and I came down on the other side of the mountain which is grass and trees. But this time Doug and I came across a couple of kids as we were climbing up, and they joined us. After we reached the top they decided they wanted to show us the "big hole." So we started climbing down the rock face, mostly scooting along in a sitting position. At first we thought it was just a little ways down, but as it turned out we climbed half-way down the mountain before we came to the "big hole." From a distance it looks like a yeti cave, but, in fact, it's just a deep hole in the rock.
We also went riding out in Battsengal again. There was again only one camel, and this time we discovered why. Apparently the other two camels the family owns had been bought recently, and they like to run away to their old home. I asked for a fast horse, and they gave me "Billy." He was dubbed Billy for the day because of his impressive mane, which is in the process of growing out and so stands straight up. Billy was indeed a fast horse, and just wanted to run. He has the habit of putting his head down while galloping, and that coupled with the fact that he has almost no discernible shoulder made it a little scary when trying to stop him. I always felt like I was moments away from falling off over his head. But we eventually came to an understanding, and spent most of the ride ahead of everyone else because Billy did not tolerate being behind anyone very well.
The camel was also a little sassy this time out. When Andrea and I were trading off, we tried to make him sit and instead of sitting he blew his slobber all over Andrea. For some reason he had collected an impressive amount of foam in his mouth, most of which ended up on Andrea's face.
Now I am back at work, in a new office with almost all new coworkers. I have a new counterpart, Azaa, a new translator, Jackie and our programming officer, Bayarhuu, is back from maternity leave.

Enough Buuz to Last a Lifetime

2008-02-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

It is officially the New Year according to the Lunar Calendar. In Mongolia, we rang in the new year in the traditional way of eating a lot of buuz, aaruul and various mayonnaise-coated salads and washing it all down with vodka. Tsaagan Sar is a very old, traditional Mongolian holiday that can be described as a mixture of Thanksgiving and Halloween for adults.
Preparations for Tsaagan Sar generally begin at least a week before hand. I was lucky enough to be able to help Uunee and her parents make their buuz. Many Mongolian women say they don't like Tsaagan Sar because they have to pinch a billion buuz, but for someone who hasn't done this every year my entire life, it was pretty exciting. It began with Uunee's mom elbow-deep in a giant bowl full of ground mutton, spices and salt. While she mixed the filling, Uunee and I began rolling out the 3-inch circles of dough. Making buuz assembly-line style for Tsaagan Sar was really fun, and after pinching about 5 buuz I had it down and even made some that could have been mistaken as Mongolian-made. I had planned to count how many buuz I pinched, but had to concentrate so hard on the first few I quickly gave that up. I'm sure it was a couple hundred though, I was at it for over two hours.
Tsaagan Sar eve was February 7th, a day spent cleaning house and spending time with immediate family, eating lots of food. This day is called "Bituun," which means to fill yourself up or become full. I spent the day cleaning my apartment and desperately trying to finish learning a Mongolian song (I have discovered that my problem is I absolutely cannot carry a tune). The first day of Tsaagan Sar I was invited to spend with Uunee's family. So about 10 am I put on my winter del and headed up the mountain to Uunee's house. We began the day in the grandparent's ger, which is inside Uunee's parents' hashaa. Upon entering a house for a Tsaagan Sar visit, you seek out the oldest man and greet him by putting your arms under his while he kisses or sniffs your cheeks. Usually you present him with a small gift or a small amount of money. Then you proceed to the oldest woman etc. People who are younger than you put their arms under yours and you sniff or kiss their cheeks. The Tsaagan Sar greeting immediately made me feel welcomed, people I had never met before sniffed or kissed my cheeks and asked "how are you, are you having a good new year?" Following this greeting the men and older women pull out their snuff bottles and offer them to everyone who has been greeted. After all these greetings and well-wishing the aaruul, milk vodka, aireg and vodka begin to be passed around, followed by buuz. As new people came into the ger everyone would shuffle around, and the new older people would greet Uunee's grandparents, and then sit down and everyone else would line up to greet them. I stayed with Uunee's family for about four hours, drinking, eating and looking at family pictures.
The second day of Tsaagan Sar I visited my friend Amu, who I met last September in the market. She goes to school in Erdenet, but was home visiting for Tsaagan Sar. While I was visiting her a couple of her friends came over, and then another of her friends came and picked us up and was going to take me home. We drove around for awhile picking up other people, and they were trying to decide what to do (everything was closed for Tsaagan Sar), so I invited them to come to my apartment. They all came over and bought a ridiculous amount of beer, vodka and food. We played Mongolian cards and hung out until eventually everyone fell asleep on my floor. The next morning I went to visit Dashka, my supervisor. Tsaagan Sar is like a drinking marathon, and I am continually amazed by the acceptableness of pressuring people into drinking in this country. Not to say I don't participate whole-heartedly in said pressuring.
After a final, relatively calm, day of Tsaagan Sar, my stomach finally gave out and I got violently ill for a day. But now I am recovered, and have survived my first bout of serious gastro-intestinal distress in Mongolia (I'm amazed I was able to put it off as long as I had). Though Tsaagan Sar is officially over, it is still common to see people giving each other the traditional greeting in the street, and people still come into our office to greet everyone they haven't seen yet in the new year.

Back at work after the holiday, there are some big changes. My counterpart, Uunee has been promoted to the UB Mercy Corps office. This is a great move for her, but sad for me. I am also getting a new translator, and will be interviewing people tomorrow. I have high hopes that after I get back from my upcoming trip to Selenge and the Peace Corps training I will be able to do more things and interact with clients.

The days are short, but the Winter is looong

2008-01-24T18:44:00.000-08:00

Lately my life has been a little boring... which is why I haven't written much. It's mostly too cold to go outside, so I spend a lot of time in my apartment. I have come up with various things with which to entertain myself. I've been spending a lot of time reading, and have gotten through the first 9 books of the Patrick O'Brian series in a little over a month. Sophie also helps a lot, and we've come up with all sorts of new games to play. One of her favorites began when I decided she really needed some civilized manners, and so tried to teach her not to chew on my feet all the time. My method for this was beating her with a rolled-up Newsweek whenever she started chewing on me. That quickly turned into a new game, and now whenever I pull out the rolled-up Newsweek she growls and barks and runs around in circles while I chase her. She's surprisingling agile, and generally wins the game. I'm finding that she is quite difficult to discipline. I have tried beating her with my felt slippers when she latches on and forces me to drag her around my apartment. She actually seems to like that, and it also became a game. She is a sassy little pup, and backtalks all the time. When I tell her "no," she growls.

Andrea, Tuul, Ochgo and I have also started a new tradition of going dancing every Friday night. We started it as a celebration of wine being back in stores, the second week we celebrated the fact that they started selling beer in Tsetserleg again. Our most recent dancing expedition brought back vodka. Since vodka, beer and wine are pretty much the only alcohol available in Mongolia outside of UB, we will have to think of something new to celebrate next Friday.
I have come to love dancing in Tsetserleg. They play bad music, and generally we hear the same song at least twice in the 2-3 hours we are there (some songs as many as 4 times). But there is always something interesting that happens. Two weeks ago there were some hudoo guys in for the weekend, and they came to the dance club in their winter dels and Mongol boots. One of them, who's name was "Soel" (Culture in Mongolian), bravely came up and started talking to us and even let us drag him out on the dance floor. He was so adorable, and it turns out that he owns horses and his summer camp is about 2km from the hot springs in Arkhangai. So we have plans to make a trip out there to go riding as soon as he moves back to his summer camp in May. Last friday I was asked to dance by a 16 year old, and he taught me the slow version of the Waltz. I wasn't very good at it, but he generously counted for me which helped a lot.

The Nine Nines

2008-01-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

The Mongolian winter lasts for 81 days. It is divided into nine periods of nine days, and each period has a meaning attached of the various things that will freeze during that period. Winter starts on the Winter Solstice, which was December 21st this year, and so it ends on March 10th (a day I am awaiting with great anticipation).

1st: Mongolian vodka made from mare's milk will freeze

2nd: A different type of Mongolian vodka made from mare's milk will freeze (or Russian vodka, depending on who you talk to)

3rd: The horns of 3 year old bulls will freeze

4th: The horns of 4 year old bulls will freeze

5th: Rice will not freeze

6th: Some snow will melt and you will be able to see the lines on the road (that is, if there is a road and it has lines....)

7th: The snow will melt from the top of little mountains

8th: The road will be slushy

9th: It will be warm (I'm assuming that's relative)

Today we started the 4th nine, which is supposed to be the coldest. I'm hoping that will not be the case this year, as the past week has been "colder than it's been in the past 6 years" according to my Mongolian friends and the Peace Corps. We even got a text message from the Peace Corps telling us it would be really cold, and basically "make sure you don't die." I knew before I came to Mongolia that it would be cold in the winter, but I have never experienced such extreme cold. And I live in one of the warmest places in the country. Everyone says that in Mongolia it's dry cold, so it's not that bad. I have to disagree, dry cold is worse. You can't breathe when you walk outside, and even the 6 minute walk to my office freezes my ears and nose unless I am completely encased in a scarf and hat with only my eyes showing. And even then, my eyes water and my eyelashes start to freeze together.

Nearly every morning my coworkers ask me if I'm cold, and if my apartment is warm or cold. Before this week the answer was always "maybe a little cold" or "my apartment is warm." But now my apartment gets really cold as soon as it is dark outside, and I am kicking myself for not taking the space heater that the Peace Corps provides us (I plan to rectify that when I go to UB in two weeks).
But at least we are now in the coldest part of winter, and it can only get better from here! I'm looking forward to the day I can go outside again.

A Very Dry Country

2008-01-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

Mongolia has been experiencing a period of prohibition for the past couple weeks. This was brought on when someone at the Asia Wolf vodka distillery in UB had the bright idea to add methanol to the vodka, killing 11 people over New Year's. Many other people were hospitalized, including the president of the company. As a reaction to this tragic event the government pulled all clear liquor off the shelves for an indefinite period of time. Somehow beer and wine were also included, but only in some areas of the country. In Tsetserleg wine was brought back last Friday, but beer and vodka are still off the shelves.
The really scary part of this whole debacle is that, rumor has it, the company was also filling old Haraa and Chinggis vodka bottles with their poison, and no one knows where these bottles ended up. Chinggis is one of the most expensive brands of vodka in Mongolia, so people would expect they are buying a safe product. Police are supposed to be confiscating and destroying all vodka throughout the country, but of course this isn't working out quite like it should. Instead, many police are giving or selling confiscated vodka to their friends.
It is nice not having ridiculously drunk men wandering the streets, but with Tsaagan Sar coming up it will be interesting to see if the government brings back vodka for the holiday. Tsaagan Sar is one of Mongolia's biggest holidays, and vodka is a vital part. This holiday officially lasts for three days, but in soums out in the countryside it can last up to a month. My fear is that if legitimate vodka isn't on the shelves, people will make their own, and that will be bad for everyone.

Some Random Pictures

Happy New Year

2008-01-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

The past three weeks have gone by in a bit of a blur. First we had a Peace Corps In Service Training (IST) in a ger camp outside of UB. All PCVs brought their counterpart with them, and it was a mixture of cross-culture, safety and security, technical and language training. Also a great excuse for the M18s to party together at night, as it was the first time we all saw each other since August.
The ger camp where IST was held was an interesting experience… It was really beautiful, in the middle of Terelj National Park. There were houses and gers, and those of us who live in cities or aimeg centers were all assigned to the gers except for a few. I was one of the lucky ones (so I though) who stayed in a house, with a toilet and a shower. Unfortunately the electrical capacity of the ger camp didn’t come close to being able to support all the electric heaters and lights, so the first couple days the power went out about every 20 minutes. Living in a ger does have its benefits, mainly in that you can build a fire. One night the electricity in our house went out in the middle of the night, and we all woke up freezing cold. Once it came back on my electric heater went a little crazy and started exploding and shooting blue sparks at me while I huddled in the corner of my bed and screamed like a little girl. Luckily Amber was there to unplug it. Later, when the Mongolians came to check it out I had an interesting time explaining to them that the heater had been shooting fire at me, while they looked at me like I was crazy. They took the wall socket out and did something to the wires, and seemed to think that it was fine, but I made them take it away. I’m pretty sure they “replaced” it with the same one, but no more blue sparks so oh well.
IST was full of interesting happenings. On the second day I and several others had partied just a bit too hard the night before and skipped a language training session to take a nap. We all got our names called out at lunch and had to have a talking-to during which we were told that had it only been one or two of us to skip, no big deal. But since 15 of us decided a nap was more important, we were going to be punished. Our “punishment” was that we had to serve dinner to everyone that night, which actually turned out to be kind of fun, and of course we served the Country Director and all the other important people last (they brought it upon themselves…. Giving the delinquents power over their food may not have been the wisest of choices).
The four Mercy Corps PCVs and our counterparts also had a very enjoyable “meeting” one evening. I invited Uunee to come over to my house and have a couple drinks, which turned into all the Mercy Corps counterparts, some of whom may have slightly deceived their PCVs into thinking it was an actual meeting… After we all had a good laugh about that we went down to the main building and bonded over a couple bottles of vodka and of course the mandatory Mongolian singing by those of us who know a song (I, to my great shame, do not yet know a Mongolian song… but am working on it).
We also had a bachelorette party for Kim, who is now at home in America getting married. She will be returning, and bringing her new husband along with her (brave soul that he is). I’m convinced that there never has been nor ever will be a bachelorette party quite like this one. Who else but Peace Corps volunteers can be convinced (and I don’t think it took a whole lot…) into stripping down to Victoria’s Secret panties and dancing around in front of about 20 women? For free?? And they let us take pictures… I’m told they even rehearsed their routine. In costume.

After IST we all returned to UB and had a couple days to relax (though there is never much relaxing that happens in UB) before our Christmas party on the 23rd. Brigette, a German expat who owns a bakery in UB generously gave us the use of her summer home outside of UB for the party. She and the Ambassador were both extremely generous in providing us all the food and beverages we could possibly want. A lot of us spent the night out there, and though it was really cold, we all had a great time. The next morning we spent several hours cleaning up the giant mess we had made (and I'm sure the local Mongolians thought we were all crazy drunks as they watched us haul billions of beer cans and wine bottles to the dump). As the morning wore on people started to head back to UB, those of us who were left made some hamburgers on the grill (a delightful experience) and drank some of the left-over beer after warming it over the fire. Probably the only time in any of our lives we will complain of beer being too cold, but frozen beer is really hard to drink.
A few of us ended up spending a second night out there, and had a quiet Christmas Eve which was nice after all the partying of the previous few days. Christmas was also pretty quiet for me, which was nice. I cooked dinner for a few friends. I made roast chicken and potatoes and broccoli. I was sooo excited to eat broccoli, it's one of the vegetables I miss the most.
The day after Christmas all four of the Arkhangai PCVs braved the bus ride home together, and after some more practice at climbing somewhat gracefully over piles of boxes and bags of frozen meat to get to our seats we arrived home safe and sound. The next day was the Mercy Corps New Year's party.
Mongolians celebrate New Year's any time between Christmas and the 31st, and somehow there has been some confusion between the two holidays. Santa generally makes an appearance on New Year's, as do Christmas trees. One thing Peace Corps forgot to tell me before I came to Mongolia is that I should have brought a prom dress, because that is the attire for women at New Year's parties. I told Uunee I didn't have a dress, and she said it was OK, so I just went with the typically-American jeans and black tank top. I did wear my high heel sandals from the Summer though, and I think it's the first time any of my coworkers has seen me in high heels. When I got to the nightclub where our party was held I found all the women in a back room busily changing into their dresses and using liberal amounts of glitter. They decided that even though I didn't have a dress, so long as I had glitter in my hair, on my face, my back, arms and chest, I would be Ok. So I let them douse me in glitter and we were ready.
The party was really fun, with lots of strange games and dancing. I even got to waltz with Gambaa, my favorite Mongolian. Waltzing in Mongolia is a big deal, everyone knows how and especially in the countryside it is an integral part of any celebration. I learned how over the summer, and was actually pretty good at it, but all my skills have left me. But Gambaa generously drug me around the dance floor and tried to make me look like less of a fool. I'm not sure how well it worked, but oh well. Being American you are allowed to look like a fool. :)
Actual New Year's Eve was an interesting experience. It was something like the 4th of July with no city restrictions on fireworks. From my balcony I could see fireworks going off all over the ger districts, and even fireworks shooting past my head as my neighbors shot them off of their balconies. It made me glad I live in a concrete building. I was really surprised not to see any gers go up in flames.
Now it's just a countdown to Tsaagan Sar, the Lunar New Year which is a much bigger deal in Mongolia than our New Year. Tsaagan Sar is February 8th this year, and will consist of three days of visiting friends and family eating lots of buutz and drinking lots of vodka. Uunee has agreed to let me help her and her family make buutz, each family usually makes between 1,000 and 5,000 buutz so I'm sure they can use all the help they can get. And hopefully I will be able to perfect my buutz-pinching skills.

Note: I added some new pictures to the December file.

Iiiit's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

2007-12-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

Well, Not really as there is no snow on the ground, no crowded stores blasting Christmas music and no Christmas trees or lights... But I did find out yesterday that I get to stay in UB for the Peace Corps Christmas Party, which is very exciting! Next week we have Peace Corps IST (Inter Service Training or something like that) at a ger camp outside UB, and then there is a Christmas party on the 23rd. I was going to come back to Tsetserleg on the 23rd because I felt bad about how long my friend Tuul would have to watch Sophie, but then a few days ago Tuul said that she would be coming to the city on the 20th, but Ochka (another friend who works at Fairfield's) would watch Sophie, and Tuul would come back with me on the 23rd and we would have our own Christmas in Tsetserleg. But then, last night Tuul and Ochka came over for dinner and Tuul asked if maybe I would stay in UB until the 26th, and that Ochka would watch Sophie until then, so OF COURSE I said YES!!! :) I was sad that I was going to miss the Peace Corps party, so now I am very excited!
IST should be fun too, it will be the first time that all the M18's are together again since August when we swore in, so there will of course be a lot of ridiculousness that goes on in the evenings at IST and Peace Corps ridiculousness is the best kind!

New Pictures!

2007-12-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

Here are new pictures from Thanksgiving in UB and riding horses in the mountains a few weeks ago. More pictures to be added soon!
Pictures

Home

2007-12-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

It's amazing to me that I have been in Mongolia for six months now. I have been living in Tsetserleg for four, and it just recently hit me that I consider it home. When I was on my way back from UB after Thanksgiving I just wanted to get home. My life here has settled into a pretty nice routine. I have a dog whom I love, and that certainly makes my apartment feel more like home. Sure we have our arguments about the acceptableness of peeing on the floor or jumping on my head at 6:00am and whining, but all in all she is super cute and fun to have around. I have also made good friends that I spend a lot of time with. We go riding on the weekends, or make dinner together during the week.
I've even started to feel like people in the community recognize me and are starting to realize that I live here, I'm not a tourist. There are certain little kids that always smile say "Hello!" to me as I pass, and some the delguur owners are starting to recognize me. There are also several kids around my apartment who know Sophie and anytime I take her outside they all swarm around saying "Soapy! Soapy!" (Mongolians have a really hard time with the "f" sound).
Realizing that Mongolia feels like home also makes me think about all the things that I have come to accept as normal, that only a few short months ago seemed so strange. One of the biggest is hand washing all my clothes. I have never before in my life hand washed clothes, and it really is a huge pain in the ass. I'm a lucky one though, I actually have a bathtub with hot water. I've gotten it down to a certain science now, and though my clothes don't ever seem as clean as they used to be when they were washed in a machine, it works out well enough. With the cold weather it's become a bit more of a hassle. I only have one short line over my bathtub to hang laundry inside, so I usually just hang it outside even though it almost immediately freezes. I have found, however, that if I leave it out for about three days it will be dry (even though it stays below freezing all the time now, the sun hits my balcony all day so my clothes can melt/dry).
It's strange to think that I consider a place where I understand maybe one third of what goes on around me home. I've gotten used to only communicating with my limited vocab and/or hand signals, and not understanding the conversations that go on all around me. It will be so weird to go back to America and understand everything everyone says.
I've even almost gotten used to buying meat at the market. I don't buy meat for myself, but I do buy it for Sophie (I hope she appreciates the lengths I go for her). The cold weather helps, because the meat market doesn't smell as bad as it did when it was warm. But I don't know if I can even call it a "meat" market anymore, it's more of a "fat" market. All the animals have fattened up from the summer, so now the meat table is a sea of white, with maybe a little actual meat snuck in some places. Usually the only meat I eat is that cooked by others, and I'm ok with that. Cooking meat is just way too much hassle for me.
Cooking in general is a hassle. Every meal I have to cook myself, and sometimes it's depressing to be really hungry and know that it will take nearly an hour to cook anything. That being said, there is Korean Ramen that I can buy in the Delguur in my apartment building, so when I get really desperate and lazy I can eat that. But it's nothing like at home where you can buy pre-packaged meals that only take like 10 minutes to make. Oh how I miss those frozen Bertolli pasta meals!
Probably the strangest thing that I have actually gotten used to is peeing in the middle of a flat, open field. Traveling in Mongolia is a whole different world from travel in America. There are no gas stations with bathrooms to stop at. There are some Delguurs scattered along the road to UB, but they do not come equipped with indoor plumbing. Maybe an outhouse, but usually not. So every time the bus stops everyone piles out and scatters. The older women in their dels are smart, a del is almost like your own private outhouse, the rest of us just suck it up and walk a little farther away and hope no one is watching. That being said, in this matter Mongolians respect each others privacy. Privacy isn't really a concept at all in Mongolia, but when it comes to the necessity of peeing in a flat field, people look the other way.
Mongolia is a strange country, but if you really think about it America is more of an anomaly. A good portion of the world lives a life that is much closer to what I experience here than that in America.

What Was Lost Has Now Been Found

2007-11-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

I had the most amazing experience today that reaffirmed my absolute love of this country. My cell phone and the bag I left in the mikr last night have been returned to me. I went into the office to tell Uunee what had happened, and she was so helpful. She immediately got on the phone and started calling people, asking me what the driver and car looked like and eventually she walked with me to the delguur in my apartment. We spoke with the woman there and found out that the wife of the driver has a delguur over near the hospital, so we went there. The delguur was closed but we walked around and peered through the hashaa fence, and while the dog was giving a very good shot at mauling us through the fence, we saw the mikr!! So we Mongol-style pounded on the gate and eventually one of the little girls came out, then her mom came out holding my bag!! I was so excited. I told her I thought my phone might be in the mikr, and we looked and there it was! This country is so amazing; everyone was trying really hard to help the stupid American who left her stuff in the mikr. And I'm convinced that my chat with Buddha that morning was also helpful.

Happy Thanksgiving and Mongolian Independence Day

2007-11-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

Last week I traveled to Ulaanbaatar for the Peace Corps Thanksgiving party, and also to get Sophie spayed. It seems that in Mongolia the only place to take care of a small animal is in UB. Wednesday morning Jeff and I walked through the first inkling of sunrise to the bus. I was really worried they wouldn’t let Sophie on the bus, but it turned out our only worry was actually the fact that the guy was going to charge us to bring on our backpacks. That didn’t happen last time I was on the bus, but apparently the system isn’t exactly organized and each bus ride is the sole domain of the driver, who can do whatever he pleases. So eventually we paid up, and Sophie, Jeff and I were off to the city.
The bus ride is always an interesting experience. We eventually filled it to 36 people plus one dog. And it’s really hot, so there is always a war about whether or not the vent in the roof is open or closed. For about 3 hours it went something like this: the guy sitting in the aisle would stand up and open it and everyone would breath a sigh of relief. Then about 10 minutes later the guy sitting next to the vent would stand up and close it. Repeat repeat repeat.
Probably about half of the total PVCs in the country were in UB for Thanksgiving and the M17s to get their flu shots. That basically meant it was a 3-4 day party, all of us acting ridiculously. It was fun to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in almost 4 months, and we celebrated accordingly. Our Thanksgiving wasn’t until Saturday, but the Peace Corps put on a really awesome party for us. PC got 6 turkeys and then everyone brought a dish. And Ambassador Minton generously provided several kegs and bottles of wine. We all had a great time and the turkey was almost as good as my Mom’s. Not quite though.
Being in UB in the winter was kind of a depressing experience. The air is so bad there some times you can hardly see in front of your face. One day I went to the black market with a couple other girls and driving back into the city the smog was so bad you could only see about 5 cars ahead. Just being there for four days was enough to give me a bad cough. My big Thanks for this Thanksgiving is that I do not live in the city. I love Arkhangai. From UB Mongolia seems like such a sad, depressing place. You don’t get to see the beautiful Mongolian sky very often, and the traffic is awful. There are over a million people living in a very poorly planned city. There are street children who have nowhere to live but in the sewers, families in the ger districts who can't afford coal or wood to burn, and sometimes freeze to death. There is also rampent domestic violence and child abuse that no one can do anything about because the government doesn't have a system for dealing with things like that. Many children have to put up with abuse so they can eat, because a lot of times the only place they can get food is from the man abusing them. It’s also sad because so many Mongolians want to move to UB. It has the sort of gold-paved streets draw that America has to so many. But the streets in UB are paved with trash and open sewer holes because people steal the metal to sell to China. There are many people working in restaurants that speak excellent English and hold four year degrees, because there are no jobs. It’s sad that they all want to live in UB, because anyone who speaks English has great opportunities in the countryside, many English teachers out here don’t speak any English, and there are jobs for translators that are filled with very under qualified people because no one wants to live in the countryside.
I don’t understand the rush to live in the city. Mongolia is such a beautiful country. People in the countryside are really friendly. Sure, sometimes they are rude and living here has made me take a sick pleasure out of shoving people. But people are always willing to help. If you speak any Mongolian people constantly compliment you on how great your language is. It’s nice to be flattered like that, and it helps motivate me to study.
They say that it’s a small world, but Mongolia gives a new meaning to that phrase. Mongolia is a huge country geographically, but it’s not at all uncommon to randomly run into someone you know on the street. While I was in UB I ran into Nabaa, who was Cady’s host brother over the summer. One of the Peace Corps program directors went to university at the same school in America where my sister goes. The strangest experience I had was the morning I drove out to the Dragon center to buy my bus ticket. My taxi driver was really nice and he spoke quite a bit of English. I learned that he is a student at the Police Academy, and his parents live in Darkhan and his grandparents live in Arkhangai. He was a really nice guy, I asked him to wait for me when I went in to buy the ticket, but the ticket office wasn’t open yet so I had to wait like half an hour, and he waited for me the whole time. Then when we were driving back into town he asked me if I wanted to drink some coffee with him. Sure, why not? So we stopped at a little guanz, and of course they didn’t have coffee so we drank tea. And he ordered some food which I didn’t really want, but ate anyway. After we were finished he wouldn’t let me pay, and then he drove me back to the Peace Corps office and wouldn’t let me pay for my taxi ride. Mongolian men are a lot different than American men. Anhaa (my taxi driver) said that he had a girlfriend, and while we were eating he said “I only love my girl.” But then he wanted to have dinner with me that night too, and I gave him my phone number. He said he would call me later in the evening, or maybe he wanted me to call him I’m not really sure but I wanted to have dinner with Cady since I never get to see her anyway. When I was telling another PCV the story I told him the guy had a girlfriend, and the PCV said that that doesn’t really matter to Mongolian men. It wouldn’t matter if they were married and it certainly wouldn’t matter if they only had a girlfriend. Oh well. I’m going to stick with the idea that he just wanted to practice his English.
My trip back from UB was an awful experience. When I got to the bus they wouldn’t let me on with the Sophie. Even though I had taken her on the bus a few days ago…. But like I said each driver is a King. I tried to tell him that she had taken medicine and would just sleep; she was really good on the first ride. I gave her some benedryl which helped her sleep and it also kept her from getting sick. Luckily Rob was there and he speaks really good Mongolian, and after arguing with the guy for awhile to no avail he helped me find a Mikr. We eventually found a driver going to Arkhangai, he didn’t have a mikr but he had a really nice car and he said we just had to wait for three other people. So we waited for awhile, then another guy got in the car and we drove a little ways off to where there was a mikr that just needed one more person. So I got on and we actually left RIGHT THEN, which is an amazing and delightful experience that is very rare in Mongolia. We actually picked up two more people, so it was four adults in the one back seat, three kids sitting on the box in the middle and then the driver and his wife up front. It was a little crowded, but Sophie and I both enjoyed our benedryl- induced happiness and we were on our way. The thing with mikrs that sucks so badly is that they will just stop randomly and wait. About an hour or two outside UB we stopped and waited for almost an hour to meet another car. I didn’t see any exchange of people or things, so I’m not sure what was going on. We stopped a few more times and there was something minor wrong with the mikr so the driver kept messing with the engine. It was really really cold too. UB is much colder than Arkhangai, so it was really miserable for me when we stopped. Sophie wanted to be outside checking things out and all I wanted to be to cuddle up in my coat and shiver inside the mikr. Finally we got to the guanz stop at around 8 (the bus arrives at that place around 12:30, and we left only half an hour after the bus…). We had to wait there for a really long time while the driver messed with the engine and then FINALLY we were back on our way. By that time I was so tired and had taken more benedryl and I began with the Mongolian-style sleeping on a stranger’s shoulder. I was sitting between two men and they both had very comfortable shoulders to sleep on. I think at one point one of them pushed me off, so I immediately moved on to the other. They didn’t seem to mind too much. I also had a kid sleeping on the knee, and Sophie on my lap so there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go… I think at some point in the night we got a flat tire, which was frustrating because we were only a couple hours from home. We eventually reached my apartment at midnight. Luckily I had had a conversation with the driver’s wife. Once I told her I lived in the Goi Bashen she told me that she makes the buutz they sell in the delguur in my apartment building. When they dropped me off, in my exhaustion induced stupidity I left one of my bags on the mikr. My cell phone also somehow fell out of my pocket. I was so upset, when I got into my apartment I realized I was missing my cell phone and ran back downstairs but they were already gone. I cried. The things in the bag I left were the really nice pillow, some cheese and a piece of fresh ginger that I bought in UB. Sophie’s last set of vaccinations was also in there. Nothing irreplaceable but it’s going to cost a lot of money I don’t have to replace them. The cell phone is the worst thing. Peace Corps gives us a cell phone but if something happens to it we have to replace it on our own dime, and cell phones are expensive!!! But, I do know that they sell buutz in my delguur, so this morning I got Rob to go with me and asked the woman who runs the delguur is she knew them. She tried to call them but there phone was off or out of service, but I have the phone number now and the lady at the Delguur said I could go back later and she’d try again. I hope it works out. I took a walk up the path of Enlightenment to the Buddha statue this morning in the hopes that would give me some good karma…

A Fun-Filled Fall Weekend

2007-11-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

When Tuul and Andrea mentioned that their idea for the next big adventure was to find some camels to ride, I immediately agreed whole-heartedly. I texted Rob, who lives in Battsengal where there were rumored to be some camels. He in turn found a herder who has three, so we planned to make a day of it. Three weeks later, when all of our schedules allowed it, Tuul found a driver to take us to Battsengal and Rob’s counterpart talked to the herder and it was all set up. We added a Korean tourist who was staying at Fairfield’s, who was also looking for something interesting to do. The five of us, representing four different countries of origin, piled into the Russian Jeep early Saturday morning (Andrea and I commenting that we really could have used another hour of sleep…) and headed to the countryside. After a somewhat bumpy two hour drive we arrived at Rob’s ger and added him to the jeep, then proceeded to his counterpart’s house where we were fed delicious currytae hoshur (hoshur with curry) and, of course; aireg, milk tea, coffee, and Mongolian milk vodka. About an hour and slight decrease in our level of sobriety later, we headed out to the herder family.
Once we arrived there seemed to be some confusion, the camels were nowhere to be seen and it turned out that they only had one available, which was currently being watered. So we gathered in one of the gers and enjoyed more milk tea, aireg and milk vodka. It then seemed that there might not be enough saddles for all of us. Eventually we went outside to see if we could speed things along a bit,and in the distance we spotted the camel coming back, loaded down with a cart of wood. We also solved the saddle problem by Andrea and Rob riding bareback. Our hosts were a little uncertain of this idea, but eventually we convinced them. I was elected to be the first to ride the camel, so once they "saddled" it up (tied a folded up blanket to it's back) and made it sit down with a slight tug on it's nose ring(?) and a firm "suk, suk" I climbed on.
Sitting on a camel while it stands up is a very strange experience. Luckily they have a hump that you can wrap your arms around and hold on tight. They stand up on their hind legs first, making you feel like you are about to be pitched over their head, followed by one front leg and then the other. Once he was standing, it felt very safe and secure sandwiched between his two humps. It took a couple minutes to figure out how to steer and make him go forward, and after one accidental sitting-down (The word for go, which is "choa" and "suk" apparently sound very similar, and we were close to the hitching post and I was trying to turn him... So I guess I can't blame him for being a bit confused) we were off. Camels seem to have about two speeds, meander and jog. To get him to "jog" took continual thumping with my legs and a constant stream of "choa, choa, choa." I'm pretty sure it was as much work for me as for him.
We headed off across the field, me quite a bit in front of the others. The horses were scared of the camel, so we had to keep them separated. After awhile Andrea took a turn on the camel. I rode her horse, which was possibly the shortest Mongolian horse I've seen, which is saying a lot. I think he was slightly bigger than a Shetland pony. But that made it easy to get up, and I could jump on him from the ground. They had put a pad on him, so riding bareback actually turned out to be much more comfortable than riding in a Mongolian saddle. Now that I was on a horse I could go faster than a meander, and so with my legs wrapped practically all the way around him we galloped ahead a for a bit.
We continued on our ride and eventually came to the river, I think the North Tamir. Even though all the grass is dead and the leaves are off the trees, it was still a beautiful sight. We rode along side a mountain, and passed where two rivers meet. We all took turns riding the camel, I'm sure he was pretty sick of sitting down and getting up over and over again. Tuul was the most determined of all of us to get him to run, and actually accomplished it for about five steps. I was laughing so hard I almost fell off my horse, she was kicking him so hard, it looked like a scene from a Thelwell Pony cartoon.
We rode for about three hours and eventually circled back around the mountains to the gers. By the end we were all pretty tired and sore, and worried about our ability to walk the next day. After we arrived back at the family's gers we drank some more aireg and milk vodka, and of course had some photo ops with the family. Eventually we piled back into the jeep and Rob's counterpart's car and headed back to Battsengal. Lee, the Korean tourist who came with us decided to stay in Battsengal and go fishing the next day, but Rob came back to Tsetserleg with us. The ride back was filled with constant laughter. Tuul loves to tell jokes and riddles, and for nearly the entire two hours we heard jokes and took turns telling riddles.
On Sunday morning we met up again to watch the opening ceremony of the "Pathway to Enlightenment." There is a large Buddha statue about halfway up Bulgan Mountain, which has been there for several years, but they recently completed a large stairway leading up to it. I took Sophie along, which turned out to be a great idea. There was a huge crowd of Mongolians, and everyone was gathered around the statue where there were speeches, musical performances and a traditional Buddhist dance. Being in a crowd in Mongolia is always a bit of an ordeal, and being foreigners pretty much made us a target for people to shove out of the way. Luckily we are all pretty used to that by now, and know how to stand our ground. I was holding Sophie, and most of the adults would back down once they saw a dog. It was great. The kids loved Sophie, but I think they were just as interested in the retractable leash that I have now (thanks Mom!!).
The traditional Buddhist dance was an awesome sight. The costumes and masks were impressive and brightly colored. There was also a man dressed up as the Old Man on the Mountain, who at one point walked around the statue throwing candy into the crowd. He had to have a Lama as a sort of body guard because there was a swarm of children following him, and it seemed pretty likely that if they got the chance they would mug him for the candy hidden in his del.

Pictures

9 Hour Bus Rides and Unexpected Visitors

2007-11-01T01:09:00.000-07:00

Last week was my first trip back to UB since I came to site in August. It was interesting and full of the usual unexpected frustrations of traveling in Mongolia. It was nice to be back in a city, with sidewalks and taxis. And the abundance of good places to eat and things to buy was amazing, though a bit frustrating with my severely limited budget. UB is the only place in Mongolia where you can find just about anything you want, from the extensive Black Market, the State Department Store and all the various food markets that have things like ginger and real cheese.
There is a bus that goes to and from UB every day from Tsetserleg, which is really nice because the Mikrs are miserable and take forever. The bus is much faster, we actually made the trip in 9 hours (compared to the 18 it took me by Mikr when I came to site…) They have also done quite a bit of work on the road to UB since last I traveled it. The road is an interesting story. They are currently working on paving the entire road to UB. Once that is completed it will be amazing, as the difference between driving on pavement and driving across a field is vast. When I say they are currently working on paving the road, what I mean is they have been working on it for the past two years and are a little more than half-way finished. Things in Mongolia don’t generally follow what Westerners would consider “logical.” Before they began paving this road they tore up the entire 500 kilometers of existing dirt/gravel road, leaving travelers for the past two years to take the bone-jarring driving-across-the-field option. The only reason for this I could come up with is that it’s possible there are only about two road-tearing-up machines in Mongolia, and they are also working on roads elsewhere…
I went to UB for a Mercy Corps training. We are going to start value chain analyses, which is apparently the new big thing in development work, of Yak wool and meat production in Arkhangai. We attended a three day training on how to do a value chain analysis. The training was, of course, all in Mongolian and I was the only American attending (except for one morning when Meaghan, a Fellow at the UB Mercy Corps office also attended). I struggled to really get much out of the training because my translator has, at best, weak English. The first day I understood almost nothing, but then the second day a translator from the UB office was there and she did a great job translating. And then the third day I found a woman who works at a Mercy Corps office in a different Aimeg who speaks nearly fluent English and she also did a great job translating for me. I was actually able to participate in the activities and understand what was going on, which made it a lot more worthwhile for me to be there.
I also got to see several other volunteers who either live in UB or were visiting for various reasons. I was hoping that I would see Cady, as CHF is also doing a value chain training this month. At first we expected to be there at the same time, but CHF kept changing the dates and we ended up missing each other by one day. Oh well. I did manage to finally (after several tries and calls to various people) find the veterinary clinic that is run by an American to buy shots for Sophie. Mongolians outside of UB generally don’t immunize their dogs, so it is impossible to buy shots out in the countryside. I’m a little nervous about giving Sophie her shots myself, but I think I’ll be able to handle it.
During my stay in UB I learned from another PCV in Arkhangai that he was under a Plague and Anthrax warning... I think Mongolia is one of, if not the only, place in the world where plague is still an actual threat. And anthrax occurs naturally. This past August a boy died from plague in another Aimeg, and the current plague scare was caused by a boy in Arkhangai who got sick after, I think, butchering a marmot. Not to worry though, the plague is now completely curable, and I actually have the necessary medicine in my handy Peace Corps-issued Medical kit. I think it might actually be kind of cool to get the plague. But I was a little worried that Arkhangai would be put under a quarantine, and I wouldn't be able to go home. Luckily that didn't happen.
My trip got interesting on Thursday. After finishing our training I asked Uunee when we would go to buy our bus tickets. You have to buy the ticket the day before, and you have to go in the morning or they sell out. I had been told we would leave on Saturday, and Mercy Corps had only given us a per diem through Saturday, so I was a bit shocked when Uunee said “on Sunday.” I then asked her “But aren’t we leaving on Saturday??” and she said no, that since it was the weekend we didn’t have to go back yet. When I asked her where we were supposed to stay (as Mercy Corps would not pay for our hotel longer than Friday night) she said she would stay with family. Well, thanks for thinking of me…. So I told her that was fine, but I was going back on Saturday. I could have stayed with another PCV, but wouldn't have had the Mercy Corps per diem to pay for my meals, and I was expected back on Saturday to pick up Sophie. Then a few minutes later Uunee said she had changed her mind and would also go back on Saturday, and that we would go buy our tickets the next morning at 9. I told her that if she wanted to stay that was fine, I could take the bus back by myself, but I would really appreciate if she would go with me to buy the ticket because I didn’t know where to go. She said she would.
So the next morning, at 5 till 9:00 I knocked on her door, only to find her bleary-eyed and still in her pajamas. Obviously having just woken up. So I asked if we were, in fact, going to buy the bus tickets. And she sort of nodded and closed the door. Then about two minutes later she sends me a text message saying she changed her mind and was going to buy her ticket on Sunday. So I knocked on her door again and reminded her that she had told me she would go with me… She seemed very confused by that and eventually I ended up calling the Peace Corps office where the receptionist explained to me where to buy the ticket. So I went on my own. After paying 4,000 Tugrik for the taxi ride out to the bus stop, I decided to walk back into the city center. As I was walking I got a text from Uunee saying that the hotel said we had to be out by noon, followed almost immediately by another asking if I had bought my ticket. I don’t know if she doesn’t think about what is going on, or just doesn’t care. So I called her and told her that Mercy Corps would obviously need to pay for another night in the hotel for me, since the earliest I could leave was Saturday.
The next morning I got a cab to take me to the bus stop. Since it was early in the morning I took a registered cab, because sometimes the unregistered ones are a little shady at off-hours. I thought everything would be fine, and the taxi driver and I even had a little conversation. Then we got to the bus stop and he tried to charge me 10,000 Tugrik for the drive. I told him that was too expensive, one kilometer is 300 Tugrik and it’s about 14 kilometers. He hadn’t reset his odometer, so didn’t know how many kilometers it was, but tried to tell me it was more. I told him that just the day before I had paid 4,000 Tugrik, and he said that was a bad taxi. We went round and round in my broken Mongolian. Finally I slyly pulled out all the money in my wallet except my last 5,000 tugrik bill (which amounted to about 6,000) and said "bi arlove miank bakgue" (I don't have 10,000), gave him 6,000 and got out. They always want to scam the foreigner, and it’s not even tourist season anymore.
The bus ride home wasn’t too terrible. On the way to UB I was sitting over the wheel well, so my legs were all scrunched up and the heater was on overdrive and blowing hot air all over my feet the whole time. Not only that but I had the two inevitable drunk guys sitting right behind me ashing their cigarettes all over me. They thought they were pretty clever, putting their vodka into water bottles, unfortunately they effectively blew their cover by giggling like schoolgirls when they passed it to their friend a few seats ahead saying "os" (water). That and the fact that they were completely wasted by the end of the trip, and getting progressively louder and louder.
On the way back I had figured out the little trick of asking for a good seat, and I got a fairly good one. Unfortunately, I found out that the overactive heater runs the whole length of the bus, so it was still ridiculously hot. And we couldn’t open the vents in the roof because of the four small children, who were also taking turns screaming their lungs out (probably because they were hot). But 9 hours of such misery is a whole lot better than 18, so I’m not complaining. The bus is actually the Post Bus, which is apparently how I get my mail. It has seating for about 25 people, but since (I presume) the luggage compartment is filled up with mail, all luggage goes under the seats or in the aisle. That arrangement can easily lead to a bit of claustrophobia, especially when it’s about 95 degrees on the bus. There isn’t really a limit on baggage, so though most Mongolians travel extremely light, when they are coming back from the city they have inevitably bought several things, or have 10 empty aireg jugs they are bringing home with them. So getting on and off the bus is a precarious adventure, involving climbing over seats and luggage and hoping the old lady in the del can make it.
I had assumed that when we arrived in Tsetserleg there would be a swarm of taxis waiting at the bus stop, as it is obviously a good opportunity to make some money. Much to my disappointment, there were only two, and I was not off the bus quickly enough to snatch one. And you can't just stand on the side of the street and stick your hand out to get a taxi here, like you can in UB. Since I don't have any drivers' numbers, I had to walk home, which is normally about a 10 minute walk, but as I had brought a good 20-30 pounds of books back with me from the Peace Corps office, it was actually a quite miserable 20 minute walk. But then I got to go pick up Sophie from Andrea and Konrad, who were kind enough to watch her while I was away. Sophie had some sort of amazing growth spurt last week, and is now quite a bit bigger. And is starting to put on some weight and has a cute little puppy belly now, instead of looking emaciated.

Yesterday I had the unexpected pleasure of some visitors. There are a few girls who live in my building who I've become friendly with (mostly over Sophie), and every now and then they will knock on my door and say hello. Yesterday Ako and Bukee knocked on my door, and after a few minutes of chatting, asked to come in. So I invited them in, and apologized for the messy state of my apartment. They quickly said that was OK and that they would clean it for me. Many TEFL volunteers have this experience, students come over and are appalled by the state of their ger, so quickly begin a thorough cleaning. As a CED volunteer, I don't have students to do my chores, so have not yet encountered this aspect of Mongolian generosity. Ako quickly set about washing my dishes and scouring my sink and counter top, while Bukee quickly organized all my various papers and things. I felt awkward, and bad that my apartment was not up to Mongolian cleanliness standards, so I fed them some left over spaghetti, which they loved. Jeff was in town for some sort of teaching thing, and he came back to my apartment while Ako and Bukee were teaching me Mongolian Hutzer (cards), so we all played a couple games. Then Jeff left and the three of us had an impromptu dance party to various poppy American music on my computer (all Mongolian teenagers know Beyonce, Snoop Dog, Akon and Fergie and absolutely love them).

An Early End to a Truly Mongolian Trip

2007-10-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I went on my first trip to the countryside for work. We planned to travel to several soums and visit some of our clients who have outstanding loans and monitor their business plans. We left on Tuesday morning and drove to Hotont soum. On our way we had a bit of trouble with the jeep. At one point we stopped, and then it wouldn’t turn back on. The driver opened the hood and thought that something was wrong with the battery because it was kind of smoking. So he took it out and messed around with it for a few minutes. He tried to open it, but couldn’t, so he ended up just putting it back, and then the jeep turned on. On the way to Hotont we stopped at a ger belonging to a herder family who are our clients. We drank some aireg and ate some aaruul and chatted for a few minutes and then were on our way again. Once in Hotont we visited a vegetable farmer client who showed us her gardens and her root cellar. She also fed us lunch and some of her homemade pickles. I talked to her a little bit about growing uncommon vegetables, such as broccoli and corn, and she seemed interested. I was excited about that.
After we left her we stopped in at a bunch of other places to talk to more people, and then headed out to the countryside to visit an aireg producer. She was milking the mares when we got there, so we got to watch that, and then were invited in for some aireg. We stayed there for quite awhile, because I guess Mercy Corps wants her to go to a trade fair in UB, and will pay her traveling expenses. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go; because she doesn’t have a whole lot of aireg left after our trade fair, but could maybe buy some from other producers. So we had to wait around while she thought about it and decided. Communication in Mongolia is difficult. Most of it, especially out in the soums, has to be done face-to-face, so you end up doing a lot of waiting. As it was evening, while we were waiting she started preparing dinner. I watched her pull a leg of some animal, presumably a sheep, off of a shelf and start hacking it up. Of course there was no trimming; she pulled off a few hairs and other pieces of dirt though. Watching her cut it up all I could think was that I would be expected to eat it, and I was terrified. Who knows when the animal was killed, or how long that piece of meat had been sitting on her shelf being eaten by flies. She finished chopping up the leg, and cut up some potatoes and put them in a big pot over the fire to cook. She must have said that she had decided to go to UB, because finally Uunee said “OK, let’s go.” I was so happy, but then the woman invited us to stay and eat, because the food was almost ready. Uunee asked me what I thought about that. I told her that I was worried about eating the meat, because if I did I would be sick. She didn’t understand, and first thought I had a stomach ache from drinking aireg. I told her my stomach was fine now, but that if I ate the meat it would be bad. She still didn’t understand and we went round and round, and finally I explained that Mongolians can eat meat that hasn’t been refrigerated because they are used to it, but Americans can’t, because we aren’t. She finally got it, and told the woman that I couldn’t eat meat, which was answered by an exasperated “yanna.” Uunee then told me that it’s OK in Mongolia to refuse a meal that you don’t want, that “it’s free.” I’m not sure that I believe that, because it is really hard to refuse anything in Mongolia. But we left without eating. I felt bad, but I knew that having food poisoning in a bumpy jeep would have been excruciatingly miserable, so I didn’t feel that bad.
After we left the aireg producers we drove on the Kharkhorin. There are some other PCVs who live there, so I was able to spend the night in Dwan’s ger. At first I was just going to go over for dinner and to hang out, but I guess Uunee thought I meant I would spend the night there when I told her I was going over to my friend’s ger. When we got to Kharkhorin we found a hotel, and Uunee was expecting me to stay at Dwan’s, but I hadn’t really planned on it. Fortunately, when I called Dwan to ask her she said no problem, because there was only one room available in the hotel. Getting to Dwan’s was quite an adventure. I got directions from her, and then had to translate them to my driver. Directions in Mongolia are a bit different than directions in America. More like “turn left at the big rock and when you see the drunk man in a blue del standing in the field go right” We were able to get in the vicinity of Dwan’s ger, which is by the school, but trying to find the right “road” in the dark was next to impossible. I was on the phone with Dwan and trying to tell the driver which way to go from what Dwan told me. It didn’t work out so well, and we took a wrong turn and ended up going in a big circle. Once we were back at the school the driver just stopped and turned off the car. I guess he had lost all confidence in my ability to know where I was going. So Dwan ended up having to walk to the school and get in the jeep with us and guide us to her hashaa. It was good to see people that I haven’t seen in a while. On Wednesday morning I was planning to sit in on one of Dwan’s classes to see what it’s like. She teaches all of her classes by herself, TEFL PCVs are supposed to teach their classes with a Mongolian counterpart, but none of her counterparts stay for the class. She has some trouble with classroom management, as soon as the Mongolian teacher leaves all hell breaks loose.
I had no idea what time Uunee and Hongoroo were going to come to get me, the driver was fixing some things on the jeep in the morning. At about noon, right as Dwan and I had arrived at her school I got a call from Uunee that they were outside Dwan’s hashaa. Of course they couldn’t call me to say they were on the way… So Dwan and I walked back and I got my stuff and left. Before we left Kharkhorin we visited the monastery there, which was really cool. Uunee even talked them into giving me the Mongolian rate to go in the museum. Foreigners pay about three times as much as Mongolians do, but since I live here they were willing to consider me a Mongolian person. After we saw the museum we walked to where a bunch of women had cloths set out on the ground with Mongolian and Buddhist trinkets. Kharkhorin is a big tourist destination, because it is the ancient capital of Mongolia. I walked along and looked at everything; all of them had pretty much the same stuff. Every vendor kept showing me this little turtle thing that is sort of like a Russian doll set, there is a big one with a bunch of little ones in it that pull out. Of all the stuff they had, I’m not sure why they thought I would be so interested in the turtle, but nearly every single one of them tried to get me to buy it. I ended up buying a bracelet with the 8 Mongolian symbols carved into yak bone, and then for the next couple vendors they kept pointing out all the things they had with the 8 Mongolian symbols as well as the turtle.
Uunee, Hongoroo and Me at the Monastary
Our plan for Wednesday was to drive back through Hotont soum, and then on to Tuvshruuleh and then to Tsinker soum to spend the night. On our way back to Hotont I had the most unpleasant discovery that, though the roof of Russian jeeps is padded, there is a metal bar on top of the padding that runs pretty much exactly where your head will hit should you be thrown against the roof. My head did in fact connect with this metal bar as we careened over a rather large bump in the “road,” and it hurt bad enough to bring tears to my eyes. When we arrived in Hotont, Uunee told me that we had to meet up with some driver who had switched batteries with us the day before. Our driver thought our battery was bad, so had switched it out with another driver. But it turned out that the problem wasn’t the battery. So we drove to this guy’s house, but he wasn’t there. We drove to someone else’s house, and he wasn’t there either. So we drove to the government building, only to find out that the driver had waited for us in the morning, but then had to go to some distant bagh with the soum governor. So the plan was to wait until they got back, having no idea when that might be. Uunee told me that if they got back soon then we would go on to Tuvshruuleh and Tsinker, but if it was later we would spend the night in Hotont. The only “hotel” in Hotont is a room off of a guanz with a big bed that every one sleeps on together… Needless to say I wasn’t too terribly excited about that.
So we sat in the jeep on the side of the road where we could see the road where the driver would come back from for about an hour or so. Then we drove to a delguur and sat there for awhile. Finally we were driving some other random place, and happened upon the head of the citizens’ kuural in Hotont. Togoo (our driver) talked to him for a bit, and it was decided that we would go on, and a few days later send the battery back in a different car headed for Hotont, and they would do the same with our battery. Why we couldn’t have come to that conclusion before sitting in the jeep for two hours is beyond my understanding, but I’m sure there is a good reason.
So that decided, we headed to Tuvshruuleh. We were to visit one client who is a wheat farmer, and then another man who is a vegetable farmer who is not a client but I guess Mercy Corps wants him to be. We drove out to the wheat farmer’s ger, only to discover that he wasn’t there, he had gone to UB several days before. But we were invited in for some aireg, of course. I have developed quite a taste for aireg and suutae tse (milk tea) from my trip, as that was pretty much all I drank. After a quick bowl of aireg we were back on our way to Tuvshruuleh. Another PCV, Greg, lives there so I asked if we could stop at his ger so I could say hi to him. I didn’t know where he lived, but as Tuvshruuleh is a small soum, we asked the first person we saw where the “American English teacher” lives, and they told us. So we stopped by his hashaa, but he wasn’t there. So we went on to the vegetable grower’s, but he wasn’t there either. He had also gone to UB, apparently last week was a popular time to go. So we went back to Greg’s to see if we could find him, and we ran into him walking along the road. Greg doesn’t have cell phone access at his site, and has to climb a hill to get it. I don’t think he climbs the hill very often, and I haven’t heard from him in over a month, to it was good to see that he is still alive.
After a pretty much pointless trip into Tuvshruuleh, we headed on toward Tsinker. It had started to snow, so the mountains were all covered and it was a really beautiful drive. By the time we got to Tsinker it was dark, and we stopped at a hotel only to find no one was there. So we drove around and tried to find another hotel, but all of them were “not working.” But then someone told us that the person who runs the first hotel we stopped at had gone home for awhile, but would be back. So we stopped in a guanz and ate some buuz and drank some suutae tse. Then we headed back for the first hotel, and though someone was there, that hotel was also “not working.” So they made the decision to continue on to Battsengel soum, where we were going to go on Thursday, because there are lots of hotels there. So off we went, in the dark in the middle of a snow storm. Sounds like a great idea to me…
After we had been driving for about half an hour of the two hour trip we passed the ger of someone that Togoo knows, so we stopped and he went in to visit for a few minutes. Then we continued on our way, but apparently Togoo lost the road and we were driving over a field of really big bumps. There are a lot of fields like that in Arkhangai, I’m not sure how they are formed but it’s kind of like driving over a slalom field, only about 10 times worse. We were driving over these giant bumps, hanging on to the “oh shit” bars of the jeep for dear life, trying not to be bashed against the roof or the windows for about 10 minutes when we got stuck. At first Togoo tried the whole drive forward and backward to see if he could get out of the mud, but that didn’t work. In my opinion, he did that for far too long, and only served to get us thoroughly stuck. Finally we all got out and were going to try to push the jeep. We saw another car off in the distance, and by blinking a flashlight (flashlights in Mongolia are usually lighters that have a small light attached, very useful little things) we managed to flag them down and they came over to help. It was another jeep packed FULL of guys. That was lucky for us. So Togoo and all the guys tried everything they could think of to get our jeep unstuck. They pushed it, pulled it, tied a rope to it and had the other jeep pull it, even lifted up the back end to try to move the tires out of the foot-deep ruts they were in. Nothing was working. All the while I was standing outside in the middle of the field watching this happen, and Uunee kept trying to get me to sit in the jeep because it was so cold. I kept telling her I was cold, but OK, and that me sitting in the jeep definitely would not help them get it unstuck. Finally they decided to go back to the herder’s ger and get some wood to try to give the wheels some traction. So Uunee, Hongoroo, three of the guys from the other jeep and I sat in our jeep to wait. The guys were smoking in our car, without the windows open which was pretty miserable for us. We couldn’t say anything to them since they were helping us, to we just endured the cloud of smoke circling our heads. About 45 minutes later the other jeep came back with some wood, and they tried the whole thing over again. They lifted up the jeep to put wood under the tires, and then tried to pull it while Togoo gunned the engine. That went on for probably another hour or so, and by this time we had been standing outside in the cold and snow for about 4 hours. I was regretting my decision to wear only one pair of long underwear that day, and pretty much cursing the whole country of Mongolia. Finally I went and just sat in the jeep, because it was pretty clear to me that they were not going to make any progress. They had been doing the same thing over and over, to no avail, and I was tired and grumpy and turning into a popsicle. After about 15 minutes Uunee and Hongoroo got in the jeep and I asked what was going on. Uunee said that they couldn’t get the jeep out. So I asked if we would be sleeping in the jeep, but she said we would go back and stay with the herder family. I said I thought the Mercy Corps rule about not driving at night was probably a good idea, and maybe in the future we should follow it. She felt really bad, and apologized. It really was quite a predicament, because there were no hotels open in Tsinker soum, so we may have had to sleep in the jeep. But in my opinion, that would have been better than getting it hopelessly stuck in the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm.
So we got our stuff and piled into the other jeep, I think there were 9 or 10 of us in there. I had to sit on Hongoroo’s lap, and of course, bashed my head on that damn metal bar for the second time that day. That did nothing to improve my already very bad mood. When we arrived at the ger we drank some suutae tse, and they let me sleep on the second bed. The herder family; husband, wife and two small children slept on the other bed and Uunee, Hongoroo and Togoo slept on the floor. Luckily I had my amazing Peace Corps issued sleeping bag with me, so I bundled up in that and covered my head with my coat and was actually quite warm. The ger was really cold though. It hadn’t been winterized yet, so there was only one layer of felt that didn’t quite reach the ground, and the hole in the roof didn’t have glass in it yet. It was cold!
The next morning I awoke in a much better mood, realizing that the experience I was having was truly Mongolian and you can’t pay for that kind of authenticity. Uunee and Hongoroo cooked a meal over the fire while Tuya and Dashka (the herder couple) were out tending to their livestock. Then they came back inside and we ate. Tuya was so friendly, she talked to me in Mongolian and I could actually understand most of what she was saying, and practiced my Mongolian on her. Then she had me help her separate horse mane that she would later make rope with. I have wondered why Mongolians cut the mane off their horses, and now I’ve figured it out. I wish we could have stayed to see the rope being made, because that would be a pretty cool thing to know how to do.
Me and Tuya
Around noon Togoo came back and said that he still couldn’t get the jeep out. So we came back to Tsetserleg in a borrowed car, and Togoo would go back later with some “materials” to get the jeep out. It was kind of sad that our trip had to end so abruptly. But, despite being cold and miserable for 4 hours in the middle of a snowstorm, it was a pretty cool experience. I might even go so far as to say I’m glad it happened, but that might be pushing it a little.
The rest of last week was finished off by the annual Peace Corps consolidation drill. Every year they make us practice consolidating so that they know how quickly they could make it happen should they need to evacuate us. It was nice, because it meant that I had the day off work. I am the subwarden of my Aimag because I'm the only PCV in the Aimag center, so I had to call the other PCVs in Arkhangai and tell them to come in as soon as possible, and I wasn't allowed to go to work, I had to stay at my "consolidation point" aka my apartment until everyone got there.
Consolidation is basically a good excuse for a party (it doesn't take much of one for PCVs). We went out to one of the night clubs in Tsetserleg on Friday night with a couple Mongolian friends and danced. You can't beat really old American pop and bad Mongolian pop for dancing.
On Sunday Rob, Jeff and I decided to climb to the top of Bulgan mountain. Bulgan is the mountain that is right behind my apartment building, it's pretty high (maybe 500 feet?). Definitely the scariest thing I've done in a long time. From the bottom it looks like it is pretty much impossible to climb without ropes, but in actuality it's mostly a pretty easy climb. There was one spot where we misjudged the difficulty a little bit, but once we got up to it we couldn't really turn around, so on we went. It was scary, but we made it with only one murdered water bottle. Rob was carrying the backpack, but he was trying to throw it up to me so he didn't have to climb that spot with it. It was heavy, so he took the water bottles out and threw them up separately. I caught the first one, but the second was not so lucky and bounced a couple times off the rocks before falling about 30 feet and exploding. Whoops.
The Hard Part

First Snow

2007-10-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

It seems a bit early for the first snow of the year, but not in Mongolia I guess. Friday night it began to snow, and didn't stop until Saturday morning. Winter is indeed here, hitting literally overnight. Last week was relatively sunny and warm, but now suddenly it is winter. It really is amazing how quickly the temperature drops here. Saturday morning I woke up to a snow storm that obscured my view of the mountain I can normally see out my windows, and it was bitterly cold. The snow made me a little homesick, thoughts of snowy winter mornings at home and Christmas were running through my head.
I had plans to go horseback riding with some new friends, which we decided to postpone about an hour in hopes the weather would clear up. It did stop snowing, though it was still really cold. So I bundled up in my long underwear and winter coat and went to meet up with everyone. Tuul, who is a translator for GTZ (a German company doing conservation work here) had invited me to go riding with them. I met her earlier in the week when Hongoroo took me to GTZ and Floam to meet other development workers in Tsetserleg.
We all piled into a questionable taxi, which did not yet have its winter tires. Supposedly drivers switch out their tires for the winter, although I doubt it does a whole lot of good as they are probably nearly bald. To get to the herder family whose horses we would ride, we had to drive over on of the mountains that surround Tsetserleg. Our first attempt was less than successful. We made it halfway up the hill and then the taxi couldn’t go any further and started to slide back down… But, as Mongolian drivers are ever resourceful and determined, we found a different road up the hill that worked out. We then drove down the mountain on the other side, through several half-way frozen creeks and over muddy hills and ditches. During the drive we discussed whether or not it would be possible to get BACK to Tsetserleg, and decided that we would see if we could ride the horses back. The family whose horses we would ride are well known to Tuul, Andrea and Conrad, who go riding there frequently.
When we arrived at the gers, the horses weren’t there. The family had figured no one would come because it was so cold, but they happily rounded them up from the mountains while we sat in the ger and drank milk tea and ate bread with orum. Orum is a sort of clotted cream that Mongolians love, and this was particularly good orum.
Finally the horses were ready and we mounted up. For the first hour or so of our ride it was really windy and cold, the sun was also very bright on the snow, which made it hard to open my eyes beyond a squint. We rode out across the valley, with no protection from the wind. Eventually we circled around and were at the base of the mountains, and the wind stopped. The scenery was gorgeous. The valley is scattered with gers and herds of baby yak and sheep and goats. The mountains were all snow covered, and the trees that haven't yet lost their leaves are still a vibrant yellow. Riding across the snow-covered Steppe was pretty incredible.
At one point we rode past some sheer rock faces that have a river running right next to them. Rivers in Mongolia are usually rather shallow but with very fast currents, and this one was shallow. It isn't frozen yet, so we splashed across it and then rode up the next valley toward Tsetserleg. We came over the mountain and looked down on the city. The horses were a little less than enthusiastic about the whole trip to the city, as they are clearly country horses. As we walked through the ger distract trying to avoid the possibly rabid barking dogs that assaulted us from every open hashaa gate, the horses took slower and slower steps. Eventually we arrived at my apartment building. It was pretty awesome to ride a horse directly up to the door of my building. I'm not sure where else in the world that is perfectly acceptable. It's actually pretty common for me to see horses tied up outside an apartment building on the weekends, people ride in from the countryside to visit friends or family, and just tie their horse up outside. Or they tie them to a tree outside the bank or next to the market. I'm kind of surprised I don't see more hitching posts, but I guess you don't really need one of those when you can use a tree or a rock or whatever else is handy.
After I got home I tried to thaw out, an endeavor that took several hours. My fingers and toes were frozen and my face hurt from the cold wind. That was actually the first and only day that I wore the gloves I brought with me, as Sophie shredded one of them while I slept the next morning... Oh the joys of having a puppy. :)
On Sunday I met up with Uunee to play ping pong. There is a place downstairs from our office that has one ping pong table and two pool tables, so we went there. Unfortunately the ping pong table was already in use, and they were going to be a long time. So we decided to play a game of pool. Both of us are abysmal players, and after about 45 minutes with several balls left on the table we gave up and went next door to have a beer. It's funny how pool halls are the same the world over. This one was full of teenage boys drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The legal age in Mongolia for both is 16, though I have never seen anyone carded to buy either.
Tomorrow I will venture out on my first trip to the countryside with my coworkers. We will visit several of our clients and monitor the implementation of their business plans. It sounds like we will be doing a lot of driving, we will go to 4 soums in Arkhangai and also to Kharkhorin to meet some people from another Mercy Corps office and deliver some papers or something to them. It should be fun though! Uunee said we will have a chance to ride some horses and visit a monastery. I think we are going to the soum with the hot springs as well.... And I'm sure that there will be lots of Mongolian food and aireg consumed, as that seems to be a trend in other PCVs' ventures to the countryside with coworkers.

Note: Blogspot rarely works for uploading pictures, so I've put up a link for pictures

Obsession

2007-09-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that some of you wonder why food is such a hot topic on Peace Corps Volunteer's blogs. Why do we always talk about what we eat when there are so many other interesting things we are experiencing in Mongolia?
I will tell you.
If you have read any other PCV in Mongolia's blog, you will find that they are nearly all centered around food. What we eat, what we can't eat, how we cook, whether or not we have a refrigerator.
We are living in a totally foreign world, trying to learn a really hard language and doing our best to avoid any major cultural faux paus, and all we can talk about is food? My friend Cady and I were discussing this very topic in detail one day over google chat (yes, we both work 40 hours a week with not a whole lot to do yet, so when our internet connections are both working we inevitably have strange and varied conversations). We came to the conclusion that the heart of our obsession lies in the fact that food is one of the few things we have any sort of control over in our lives. We have reverted back to infancy; our basic needs have become very important. Finding food, trying to stay warm and seeking human companionship have taken center stage in our lives. We don't control the heating in our apartments. Unless you live in a ger, you don't get to decide when to turn it on or how hot or cold it gets. Even in a ger you only have marginal control. It's pretty much either HOT or COLD. We struggle to find meaningful relationships with people other than our fellow PCV's (who are a lot like summer camp friends. Solid friendships form at the speed of light, but just talking to each other is not really what Peace Corps considers integrating into our community). We also spend A LOT of time thinking about, shopping for and preparing food. Part of this is just the way of life in Mongolia, but another part has to do with our situations over the summer.
During training we were at the mercy of our host families. We didn't decide what we ate or when we ate it. We were introduced to some truly wonderful Mongolian food which we have come to love, but we were also forced into eating things we would really rather not. There is no polite way to refuse food in Mongolia. No one ASKS you to eat, they order you to. A plate is set in front of you, accompanied by the words "eed, eed," which is the command form of the verb "to eat." So you eat, and hope that bad things don't happen later.
Toward the end of training we all fantasized about the day we would be able to cook our own food, when we would be able to ensure that knifes and cutting boards are actually washed, and leftovers are refrigerated (maybe). Now that day has come, and we are all in a bit of a state of shock as to how much time and effort is necessary. First you have to decide what you want to eat. And then you have to think about whether or not you can actually find the ingredients for your desired meal (or what creative substitutions you can make, such as using camel hump in the place of bacon, as called for in one recipe in our PCV cookbook). After deciding what you need to buy you have to go in search of it. Shopping in Mongolia is nothing like shopping in America. You can't go to the super Wal-Mart and buy everything you need plus a bunch of stuff you don't. You have to go to the market, one or both of the two "supermarkets" and random delguurs to find what you need. And, frequently, you simply can't find what you want. Mongolians also don't normally do the whole weekly mass-acquisition of food that we do in America. They usually buy in small quantities several times a week. The reason for this is not to ensure fresher veggies, as one would think. The vegetables available are root veggies, and it doesn't matter a whole lot when you buy them. They have probably been sitting in a burlap bag for at least a week, if not more, anyway. It has to do with one's ability to carry things. Most Mongolian's don't own cars, and taxis are expensive. So it's pretty much a "take what you can carry" kind of system.
Once you haul your food home, and are now REALLY hungry, you must prepare it. There is no such thing as the instant frozen meal in Mongolia. Everything you eat you slave over. It is also necessary to be either very creative or plan ahead well. The market where vegetables are sold closes around 5 or 6 pm and may or may not be open during the weekend. You can't really find vegetables anywhere else in town. I find this to be especially frustrating. I work until 6 pm, and sometimes the market isn't open on the weekend. Or maybe it is open at varying hours, but it's a good 15 minute walk from my apartment, and it's not like hours are posted. I ran into an interesting dilemma last weekend. Several other PCVs were in town visiting, and we were trying to decide what to make for dinner. I had cabbage, potatoes, a couple carrots and garlic. I also had some dried tofu. (The tofu is an interesting story, I can't get fresh tofu, but I recently learned that there is dried tofu at the supermarket by my apartment. It looks exactly like pork rinds, and the package even says meat on it in giant letters. But it also says soy meat. Luckily Natalie was here to assure me it wasn't pork rinds) We tossed around ideas of what to make, anything from a cabbage stir-fry to soup. The night before I had made tortillas and we made vegetable fajitas with some seasoning my Mom sent me (Thanks Mom!!!!). The tortillas were really good, and we decided we wanted to make them again. So then it became a matter of figuring out how to include them in something we made with what we had. Eventually we decided we would attempt a sort of cabbage-based fajita. I was out of fajita seasoning, so we used taco seasoning instead. It really is amazing the things you can come up with out of necessity. We fried the potatoes like french fries, and then stir-fried everything else with the taco seasoning and mixed it all together. We even had some hot peppers that Fahd had brought from his site, one of his clients grows them and Fahd is pretty much the only consumer of them. We all decided it was a success, and though we never would have thought that cabbage would be a good base for a fajita, I might actually make that recipe again.
Not only are we obsessed with food in general, we are also all completely obsessed with American food. We dream about it, we salivate over it, and we spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to make something that sort of resembles it with what we have. We only just got here, and already a good portion of our conversations with each other go along the lines of:

"I would kill for some Taco Bell nachos right now."
"STOP! Don't make me think about what I can't have!"
"Yeah, but wouldn't a Jimmy John's sandwich just be soooo good right now?"
"Any kind of sandwich would be good right now. *sigh* We have two more years before we will see such things."
"True, but only a couple of months before we are in UB, and we can have a CHEESEBURGER!"

You would think that in this part of the world we would have really interesting spices and flavors from China. Unfortunately, that is not the case. This is partially due to the lack of infrastructure in Mongolia. In UB you can actually find just about anything you are looking for. A jar of peanut butter may cost $14, but it's there. But if you are anywhere off the paved road (yes, that is singular) or rail line, your variety drops significantly in relation to the distance you are from UB. Another factor in the lack of variety is that Mongolians just aren't that interested in eating different things. A wide variety of vegetables can be grown here. In Darkhan some vegetable farmers are growing broccoli, corn, Brussels sprouts, okra and squash (thanks to a previous CED PCV). But they have a really hard time selling it. Mongolians don't know what to do with such things. Cady is the new CED PCV there, and it is now her job to figure out how to market these "exotic vegetables."
I know that reading about what food we eat may not strike you as the most interesting or informative thing we could post in our blogs. But to truly understand what life as a PCV in Mongolia is like, you have to appreciate our obsession with food. It is true that probably a ridiculous portion of our blogs and emails contain stories of what we can and cannot buy, what we cook and what we eat. But some of us are learning to cook for ourselves for the first time in our lives, and most of us are being hit with the realization of how much work it actually takes to feed yourself when you aren't in America where you can go to any number of fast food restaurants, buy pre-packaged meals, or go visit your parents when you want a good home-cooked meal.

Trade Fair

2007-09-27T19:11:00.000-07:00

This week was our annual Trade Fair. It's a pretty major event in the year for producers, they sell a lot of their products at Trade Fairs, and pretty much all Aimegs have them. Mercy Corps organizes Trade Fairs in every Aimeg it is in, and CHF International (the other NGO where CED PCVs are placed) organizes them as well. The participants in our Trade Fair had total sales of 75 million tugriks, which is pretty incredible. Last year's sales were 38 million.
Two of the other CED volunteers who work with Mercy Corps came with their offices to help out. Natalie works at a RASP office, and Fahd works with Gobi Initiative. It was fun to have some visitors for a few days. They both arrived on Saturday, and Rob was here as well on his way back to site from Japan. It was like a party! The Trade Fair preparation was a little strange for us, my counterparts were really busy, but didn't utilize me, Natalie or Fahd at all. On Saturday morning I spent about two hours blowing up balloons to hang in the sport hall where we held the Trade Fair, but after that I didn't really do anything. The three of us were asked to come on Sunday morning, so we did. There was a flurry of activity in the office with all of my coworkers and the visiting Mercy Corps employees. But we weren't asked to help at all or given anything to do. I asked Hongoroo what we should do, if we should stay at the office or go to the sport hall and help there. She told us to go to the sport hall, but when we got there no one was there. So we went and ate lunch at Fairfield's, and then went back to my apartment and took naps.
Monday was the first day of the Trade Fair, we went in the morning and it was a mad house! Just walking in or out of the door to the sports hall was a challenge, vendors were going through with all their stuff, shoving everyone else out of the way. Having a lot of Mongolians in a small crowded place is always a little stressful. When the customers started showing up it got really bad. The aisles between the rows of stands were pretty narrow, and walking down them we were constantly shoved from behind. Not even the sort of gentle pushing by peoples' shoulders that is inevitable in a crowd, but actual hands on our backs pushing us forward. It was a little frustrating. And it wasn't like shoving could really help, because there were hoards of people in front of us as well, so we couldn't go any faster. At this point I have begun to adjust to the pushing culture, and can shove my way through a crowd, or protect my space in line with my elbows with the best of them, but being actively pushed by a grown person is still beyond what I consider reasonable. At one point I started a passive-aggressive sort of slowing down as much as I could when someone put their hand on my back and shoved me. It certainly didn't help any, but I have to admit it made me feel better. I figure maybe I can classically condition some Mongolians that pushing an American will not help them, and maybe they will stop. Yeah Right.
The products at the Trade Fair were really cool. I would say the majority was felt and aaruul. There was an entire aisle and even part of another full of aaruul producers. A lot of them had Mongolian cheese and other strange milk products too, but they are really proud of their aaruul. They make it in fancy shapes and even different colors. There was even some chocolate aaruul. I tasted a piece of that, and while it didn't exactly taste like chocolate, it was pretty good. It's kind of one of those things where you have to get past the first bite and then it starts tasting better. The elaborate stacks of aaruul were really cool, and each vendor seemed to be trying to outdo all the others with how pretty they could make their pile of aaruul.
The felt products were really nice. There were a lot of felt slippers, wall hangings, purses and other random little ornaments and trinkets made from felt. I bought a pair of felt slippers, which might be my new favorite thing. Felt is amazingly warm. I wanted to buy a pair of sort of bootie-like slippers, but the only ones that I could find to fit me were slip on. It is frustrating trying to buy shoes and clothes in Mongolia. Mongolians are all quite short and have very small feet. I'm not that tall, and my feet aren't that big, but standing next to my five foot counterpart, I feel like a giant. Fahd got really into the whole felt thing; he bought a menagerie of felt animals, several wall hangings and some other random stuff. The felt producers loved him. Their eyes lit up when we walked by because they knew they would make a sale.
There was a lot of other stuff being sold as well. There were some really beautiful and ornate carved wood products, hand-made furniture, pre-made dels, Mongolian boots and jewelry. There were also bigger companies that came from UB, Darkhan and Erdenet with carpets, leather coats, electronics and cashmere. I ended up buying a cashmere hat. It was 10,000 tugriks, and though that is really cheap for a cashmere hat, it took awhile for me to talk myself into it. I didn't end up buying it until the second day, and I'm pretty sure the significant drop in temperature the past few days was a big part of the reason I ended up buying it. That and it matches my winter coat.
There were also several vegetable farmers selling vegetables. I was disappointed with the lack of variety, as my hopes were set very high from Cady's stories about her trade fair. In Darkhan they grow "exotic" vegetables like broccoli. I plan to bring that practice to Arkhangai for the next growing season. There is enough of an expat community in Tsetserleg that I think strange things like broccoli would be marketable here. The vegetable farmers at our trade fair did make up with their lack of variety with size. There were some of the biggest cabbage, potatoes and turnips I have ever seen. There was one person selling corn, but they had harvested it way too early and the kernels hadn't really formed. It makes me sad, because I know that adventurous Mongolians who buy it will think it's gross and not be interested in corn anymore. When to harvest corn is another thing I can hopefully help with here.
On Wednesday, after the trade fair was over, we had a client's day. Basically it was just a morning of presentations. It was pretty boring for me and Natalie, as it was all in Mongolian and we didn't have a translator. But I did get to give my presentation on Farmer's Markets. Uunee asked me awhile ago to prepare some notes on farmer's markets, because I guess the UB Mercy Corps office wants us to stir up some interest or help get one started in Arkhangai. So after I told my coworkers what a farmer's market is and how they are run etc. We had the idea for me to give a presentation to our clients. It seemed to go over pretty well; I'm really excited about the idea because it would be so much better for our clients. One of our clients told us that he sells his cucumbers to the market for 400 tugriks per kilo, and then they turn around and sell them for 1,200. I'm hoping that there will be enough interest and some people who are willing to take charge and we can get a farmer's market started by next spring.
Natalie's counterpart had told her that they were going to leave at 2 pm on Wednesday, so after the Client's day we rushed back to my apartment to finish getting all the pictures she took onto my computer, and went to Fairfield's for lunch again. Then we came back to the office, and stood around for awhile. I left because there was nothing for me to do. Natalie texted me at around 4 and said she was still here, but waiting in the jeep. Then at like 6:30 she texted me again to see if she could come over for dinner... she was still here. So she came over, and we waited around for awhile. She texted her counterpart to see when they were actually leaving and her counterpart said she didn't know. Then a little while later she texted again and said they were leaving at 10:30. That didn't make any sense at all. It's a 15 hour drive to Zavhan, and the only place where they could really stop for the night is like 10 hours into the drive. So Natalie and I figured that she would not be leaving that night, and she would just stay with me. Then a little while later Uunee and Saraa, Natalie's counterpart, showed up at my door and said that there was a party because the trade fair was so successful. So we got in the jeep, and after driving around doing random things for awhile we went out to a ger camp a little ways outside town. All of the Mercy Corps workers from my office and from UB and Zavhan were there. They were making a horhog. Horhog is a very uniquely Mongolian food. Basically you slaughter a sheep or goat, cut it up and throw it in a sort of pressure cooker-like thing with some vegetables and salt and other seasonings, add some hot stones and let it cook for awhile. When we first got there they were in the slaughtering stage. After we had been there awhile they brought the goat hide into the ger with all the chopped up meat in it, and started the horhog. I've been told that if you separate "horhog" into two words, it means toxic trash. But it's one word, so means something completely different. And horhog is actually really good! It was hilarious when they were adding everything into the big pot thing. They would open the lid and someone would throw some meat in, someone else would throw some potatoes or onions or turnips in, and then everyone else standing around would pour in beer or vodka. They got a kick out of it when I told them that in America we pour beer over meat when we cook it too. This process went on for some time, and they added some hot stones from the fire. The thing that amazed me the most was when a couple guys grabbed the handles of the pot barehanded and shook it around. It was all metal, so it must have been really hot, but you could never tell by the way they were holding it.
After about half and hour or so the horhog was ready. First they took the stones out and handed them out. Mongolians say it is really good for you to play hot potato with a scalding hot rocks, and I can sort of see why. It scalds at least one layer of skin off your hands, and surely kills any germs. And I never did see the people who were handling the raw meat wash their hands, so I guess it's the next best thing. After the rocks they passed around bowls of broth, which was possibly the most delicious soup I have ever had. Then they pulled all the meat out, put it in a cardboard box and started passing that around. The potatoes and onions and turnips were put in a different pot and passed around as well. Eating horhog is quite an experience. You have a big hunk of meat/fat/bone in one hand and a potato or onion or turnip (maybe all three) in the other hand. No plates or silverware. It makes you feel very barbaric, gnawing bites off the hunk of meat and eating whole potatoes and onions with your hands. It's pretty fun.
While we were waiting for the horhog and after we had eaten, there was drinking. There was a never-ending supply of Chinggis vodka (I think they actually bought a whole case). Everyone had a beer, and then one person would pour "shots" and pass them around. A "shot" in Mongolia is nothing like the little one-ounce shot glasses we have in America. They use a tumbler, and depending on how much the person pouring likes you or thinks you can handle, it can be up to half full. And they were having none of the whole touch it to your lips and pass it back, which is the polite way to refuse vodka here. One of Natalie's coworkers started it by challenging Natalie to finish her shot, which she did. Then I finished mine. When it was his turn, Natalie's coworker tried to only drink some of his, but Natalie and I were having none of that. So then we learned the words "khunter" and "gedee" which are basically the equivalent to "DRINK DRINK DRINK" in America. I have never seen such peer pressure to drink before, and it's totally acceptable. Every time anyone tried to not finish their shot there was a loud and insistent chorus of "khunter khunter." They especially loved it when Natalie and I acted as vodka police and made people finish their shots. And really, if Americans can drink giant shots of vodka, the Mongolians can too! The nice thing about the way Mongolians drink is that the glass has to go all the way around the room before you have to take another shot. And as the evening wore on and everyone got drunker, everyone would sing a song when it was their turn to drink, which prolonged the rotation even more.
Natalie was eventually told that she wasn't actually leaving that night, that they would leave at 6am the next morning. We had both figured as much, and I think they didn't tell her because they were afraid she would be upset. I don't see how continuing to delay the departure time made her any less frustrated... but then we are in Mongolia and they do things a little differently here.
The party was really fun, probably the most fun I've had at a Mongolian party yet. And Natalie did end up leaving on time the next morning, actually a little early. Saraa showed up at my apartment at 5:30. It was kind of amazing.

Trash

2007-09-20T18:30:00.000-07:00

Trash in Mongolia is an interesting phenomenon, as in there is a lot of trash and not many people. For a country with one of the lowest population densities in the world, there sure is a lot of trash. Walking out of a Delguur you see Mongolians unwrap their candy or ice cream and nonchalantly toss the wrapper on the ground. They have no concept of littering. In America you can be fined and put in jail for it, but here it is the status quo.
Recently this problem has come closer to home for me. The kid who lives in the apartment next door has started a new game of throwing trash on my balcony. I thought we were sort of friends. A few times I’ve been out on my balcony hanging up my laundry to dry, and he pops his head out his window and says “Hello” to me. I even asked him what his name was one day, and he blurted it out and quickly retracted his head. But lately, his new favorite game is throwing things on my balcony. Maybe it’s just the wind, because a lot of people in my apartment building just throw their trash off their balcony. I even do the same, with food scraps. There are several stray dogs that hang out behind the building just waiting for such events, and I figure they are going to get it one way or another, so why let it rot in my trash can and stink up my apartment? It’s better than beating them off when they smell meat scraps in my “trash bag” (aka plastic shopping bag that I PAY for at the grocery store when I buy food).
In Mongolia the most common way to get rid of trash is by burning it. In fact, that is the best way here. They don’t have landfills. The hills around cities, such as UB and Darkhan, literally sparkle with glass shards. When I first came to Mongolia and we were driving from UB to Darkhan I was quite confused as to why the hills were sparkling, but quickly figured it out. If you live in a house or a ger, you burn your trash in a metal barrel in your hashaa. Or maybe you just take it over the nearest hill. If you live in an apartment, you put your trash in a “dumpster,” where the dogs have their way with it, and then it is periodically burned. The smell of burning trash permeates the air. Sometimes I have to take a different way home from work to avoid walking through the smoke cloud of a burning dumpster.
Surprisingly, UB is one of the cleanest place I have been in Mongolia. Cleanest as far as trash. In UB they hire people to clean up the trash and with nearly half the population living there, if they didn’t they would be in big trouble pretty quickly.
I think the whole trash issue stems from the fact that it wasn’t too long ago when nearly all household waste was biodegradable. Nomads didn’t need to worry too much about just leaving trash wherever it lay, something would eat it. The prevalence of plastic packaging is a relatively new thing here, and children aren’t educated about the effects of littering. They don’t know it’s bad, and they don’t seem to mind plastic wrappers marring their otherwise beautiful surroundings. Another problem is that there just aren’t public trash cans. They are extremely rare. The only ones I’ve seen in Tsetserleg are two Penguin-shaped receptacles in front of the post office. The only time I have seen them used in any way is when kids push them to make them swing back and forth.
Part of the reason for the rampant littering may have to do with the fact that, in Mongolia, you don’t clean up after yourself. Unless you are in your own house, in which case it must be kept pristine. It is considered extremely rude to host guests when you house is dirty, a dirty floor is the utmost of disrespectful behavior. And, in Mongolia, guests are frequently unannounced. But if you are in someone else’s house, you never clean up after yourself. You leave your tea cup, your candy wrappers, and dirty plates where they lie. Even at work we have a woman whose job is to clean up after us and clean the office, who comes around to our desks and picks up our coffee mugs to wash them, and any candy wrappers. The first day I worked, we had a coffee break and after I had finished my coffee I asked where I should put my cup. I was told to leave it, that the cleaning lady would take care of it. As an American who is taught to, at least, strongly offer to help clean up, it’s strange to just leave things. And I guess, with so few people and such a big country, the ground is “someone else’s problem.”

Happy Birthday Amily

2007-09-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was my first Birthday outside of the US. What could have been a lonely day turned out to be quite fun! I have the disadvantage of being the only PCV in Tsetserleg, which leaves me with a bit of a shortage of friends to celebrate with. My coworkers were really nice and had a small party for me; they took me out to dinner and drinks and even got me a cake from Fairfield's (the amazing cafe in Tsetserleg owned by a British expat couple). Fairfield's spelled my name wrong on the cake; they spelled it Amily, which served to provide a good laugh for everyone. A lot of Mongolians have a hard time with my name, and many call me Amelia, so that was probably part of the confusion. My coworkers also bought me a teddy bear, which they said I can cuddle with at night, and I have come to enjoy cuddling with it in the short time I've had it!
On Saturday I was lucky enough to be able to visit another PCV in a close-by soum and ride horses! It was quite possibly the most fun I have had since coming to Mongolia. Jeff's hashaa family owns a tourist ger camp, and has a lot of horses. They are really nice people, and Jeff's brother, Ganaa, allowed us to accompany him on a trek out to the winter grazing camp. We didn't really know what to expect when we got on the horses, other than that we were going for a ride. Jeff's dad said something about mountains and camping, but we didn't really fully understand what was going on (an extremely common state of affairs for me).
After drinking a glass of very delicious aireg with Jeff's dad, we went out to help Ganaa saddle up the horses. Before we started saddling up, we got to watch them milk the mares. It was an interesting process. They had what looked like yearlings tethered in a line, and one by one they untied them and lead them up to a mare (presumably its mother) and let it nurse for a couple seconds, then pulled it aside and a woman with a bucket then milked the mare. I was amazed how well the horses behaved. They didn't put a halter on the mares or even hold them in any way, but they just stood there. And none of them tried to kick the woman doing the milking. After they had milked all the mares Ganaa started to saddle our horses for us. The horse that he at first identified as the horse I would ride was a small chestnut mare, and when he went to put the saddle on her she actively showed her displeasure at the whole idea by trying to bite him and kicking. Then he got on her really quick, I guess to make sure she wasn't going to kill me, and she started bucking. I guess he then decided the chances were good that she might just kill me, so he quickly changed saddles and put me on a buckskin gelding who was an absolute pleasure.
Once we were all on our horses we set off across the field. We were joined by another guy and four yaks pulling wagons, and Ganaa said we were going "hamt" (together). Once we got out in the field a little ways I started to experiment on my horse. He was really fast, and very excited about the prospect of a good gallop. With just a tiny bit of encouragement he would take off, but he was also really good (for a Mongolian horse) about stopping, basically meaning if I turned him in a circle he would eventually stop. After a bit of gallivanting around the field Ganaa told me to just walk, that we could gallop on the way back. So we continued across the field at a more peaceful pace, following the chain of yak carts. The yaks were slightly less than willing participants in the whole affair, and required quite a bit of yelling, rock throwing and other creative forms of encouragement from Ganaa. Mongolians say "choa" to make horses or yaks move forward, and it is amazing how effective that word is. If my horse even heard someone else say "choa" he immediately reacted by quickening his pace significantly. The yaks weren't quite as responsive, but then they were pulling carts and being dragged forward by the one in front of them by a nose ring. I can't imagine I would be very responsive or eager about that job either. After about two and a half hours we came to the beginning of winter herding camps. We continued back into the mountains, and went through a valley scattered with little wood pole barns and yak and horse herds. That yaks that we were following were beginning to show the strain of the long trip with their increasing unwillingness to more forward at anything more than a snail's pace, so Jeff and I had time to wander up into the mountains and explore a bit. Our horses were also starting to show some weariness though, and my horse was definitely less than enthusiastic about climbing any unnecessary hills, so I eventually fell in line behind the yak train. The mountains we were in were gorgeous. One side of the valley was covered in forest, mostly pines and some birch, and there were wildflowers scattered throughout the grass covering the valley and the mountains on the other side of us. I didn't really know Mongolia could look like that; I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting it to look like when I came here, but I was definitely surprised. It looked like it could have been some of the prettier places in rural America. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera with my on the ride. An unwise decision I am kicking myself for now.
We continued through the valley until we had surpassed all other signs of human existence. The road (wheel tracks through the grass) we were following started to disappear to just a faint hint that anyone had gone that way before. By that time we had been in the saddle for close to four hours, and I was really starting to feel it. Finally we reached the very end of the valley, where there was a small white tent (not a ger, just a regular tent) in a little clearing. We took a little break and had some water (most definitely unpurified, not sure where it came from and am a little scared about possible later repercussions in the form of giarrdia for drinking it, but I was thirsty) and some bortz (fried dough). The inhabitant of the camp wasn't there at the time, and failed to appear after several shouts from Ganaa, but Jeff, Ganaa and I left the yaks and the other guy out there to wait. The trip that took us four and a half hours out only took about an hour back, because we trotted or galloped the whole way. Mongolian horses do not have the smoothest gaits, in fact I might even go so far as to say they have a downright uncomfortable trot. My horse didn't have nearly as fast of a trot as Jeff or Ganaa's horses, and was definitely not going to be left behind so he usually kept to a gentle canter. This was fine with me, much more comfortable! It was amazing how quickly our horses perked up as soon as we were headed in the direction of home. From the way they were dragging their feet toward the end of the trek out, you would think they didn't have enough energy to even get back, much less canter the whole way. But the lure of home gave them the extra spunk they needed. Once we were out of the smaller valley where the winter camps were, Ganaa decided it was time for a race. So we all lined up and then with a chorus of "choa" took off at a dead gallop. It was amazing. Those horses were some of the most agile creatures I have ever seen. My horse was at a dead gallop going through a minefield of gopher holes, and he didn't once put a foot wrong. I am sure that any American horse would have broken a leg, but my trusty Mongolian steed didn't even trip. He wouldn't even slow down the first time I tried, so I let him gallop for awhile longer. Eventually he was willing to take a breather so we walked for a bit, but as soon as we reached the last field to cross he wanted to canter again.
Once we arrived back to the ger camp we got to help round up the rest of the herd of horses, who were out grazing freely nearby. So we cantered around a bit more and gathered all the horses near the corral. Once we were finished I practically fell of my horse, and my legs and knees were so stiff from the 5+ hours in the saddle I had a bit of trouble walking at first. But I managed to make it to the main building of the camp, where Jeff's hashaa family was hanging out and getting ready to have dinner. We drank some more aireg with his dad, and, though we tried to politely refuse, were fed some of the best hoshor I have ever tasted.

A Very Tired Mongolian Pony

My trip back to Tsetserleg was also quite an adventure. It looked unlikely that I would be able to find a car, because apparently they only go once a day and some days not at all. But I had some good luck and saw a bus stopped at one of the gas stations. I went over and asked if they were going to Tsetserleg, and they said they were so I jumped on. It was a bus full of Mongolians, which I learned were on their way to Kharkorin. They were really nice and friendly, the old man sitting next to me even took a picture with me. He was excited to find that I could speak a little Mongolian, and we had a limited conversation about what I do and how pretty the trees and mountains are in Arkhangai.
The drive between Ikh Tamir and Tsetserleg is beautiful. About half of it is through a valley, where it's mostly an off-road drive. They are working on paving the road, which means that right now it is unusable. So there is about a quarter mile on either side of tire tracks, where people created their own road in an attempt to not get stuck in the mud of previous "roads" and avoid as many bone-jarring bumps as possible. Mongolian drivers are adept at going as fast as possible on the (relatively) flat areas, and then slamming on the brakes to avoid being air born over bumps. At least they manage that the vast majority of the time. In the Russian jeep I took on the way out there were a few times when I was really thankful for the padded roof...
Once you get through the valley there is a very well constructed gravel road that goes up through the mountains. The bus was having a bit of a time of it, but we saw a biking tour at the top of the mountain, and I am quite sure they had a much rougher time of it. It was even snowing on top of the mountain.
Once we came into Tsetserleg the bus stopped by the side of the road for some random reason, and I told the driver that I would get out there and walk the rest of the way home. I asked him how much I should pay, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said "no money." Not only did I have the good luck to find a ride at all, it turned out to be a free one! Mongolia is so amazing that way. Much, if not most, of what happens seems to be determined purely by luck (either good or bad), and you never know when you are going to get completely screwed over or have someone do something incredibly nice for you.
To round out my incredible weekend, an M16 who now works for a tour company texted me on Sunday that he was in Tsetserleg and would I like to meet up for a beer. It turned out that his tour was the group of cyclists I had seen on top of the mountain. They are from the UK, and on an adventure holiday. They have biked here from Erdenet and are going to continue to Kharkorin before returning to UB by car. They turned out to be a really fun group of people to spend the evening with, and it was nice to spend some time with a group of people who speak my language. I could actually understand everything that was being said, and that is not a common thing for me here.
The one thing that put a bit of a damper on my weekend is the fact that I have been without running water for almost two days, so there went my plans for doing laundry on Sunday. Luckily I had stockpiled purified water, a decision brought on by frequent random power outages, so was able to wash my hair. Such is life in Mongolia I guess.

The Virtue of Patience

2007-09-10T23:44:00.000-07:00

Patience in Mongolia is a very strange thing. Mongolians are at once incredibly, stoically patient, and at the same time pushy and completely impatient. Last Friday while I was at the post office trying to buy more units for my phone I experienced just how impatient Mongolians can be. When a line isn't enforced (such as at the bank) there isn't even a semblance of order, just a swarm of people. So there I was, waiting patiently a respectful distance behind the person in front of me (really I should know better by now), while other people continued to just shove their up to the front. Rob, another PCV who lives in Arkhangai was with me, and he explained that the best, and really only, way to get service is to get your money out and basically shove your way to the front and hold out your money. Trying to buy food in the supermarket is a similar situation. A sort of line forms, but unless you are pushy and stand touching the person in front of you, you will find yourself continually at the end of a moving line.
On the other hand, Mongolians have the ability to wait for hours and hours in complete patience. When taking a taxi or mikr somewhere, the driver may give a departure time, but inevitably you can expect at least an hour wait sitting in the car. Probably more than that. And it is pretty much a given that something will break during the course of your journey. And maybe that is why Mongolians are so patient when it comes to cars and trips, Mongolian drivers all possess the amazing ability to fix ANYTHING! Broken axle? No problem, as long as you have some scotch (what we would call packing tape, pretty much the only type available in Mongolia) you can fix a broken axle, along with pretty much anything else that goes awry. Scotch is to Mongolians what Duct Tape is to people from the Midwest. There is, apparently, even a word in Mongolian for "fixing things the Mongol way." I think the best way I have heard it described was by Rob, who introduced me to the term "Monguiver."

Mongolian Buuz and Bagels

2007-09-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty busy weekend last weekend. Friday night I cooked Mongolian buuz. They actually turned out quite well! I made them with beef instead of mutton, because that is what I had. And I added some cabbage and carrots as well as onions. It took me FOREVER to make them. After chopping up the veggies and the meat (an awful experience, trust me) I had to make the dough and then shape the buuz and then steam them. Yanna! It is so much harder to cook here!

My first attempt at buuz, it almost looks like a Mongolian made them! Well, maybe a 10 year old Mongolian...

On Saturday I woke up early and climbed part of the way up Bulgan Mountain to take some pictures of Tsetserleg. It was a really pretty view. Part of the way up the mountain there is a big statue of Buddha, and there is construction going on around it. I'm not really sure what they are doing, but I think they are making a stairway all the way up to the statue and putting some tiles and stuff around it. I decided to climb a little further up. The mountain is mostly rock, and from the base it doesn't look like it would be very easy to climb, but there are enough little ravines from rain water that it's not too bad.

I had planned on making bagels and cream cheese on Saturday afternoon. I went to the market in the morning to get some things, and of course I could not find eggs anywhere! I went to the supermarket where I had seen them before, but they had none. So I walked all over town going into every Delguur that I saw asking if they had eggs. Of course none of them did. So I had resigned myself to no bagels, but stopped in the Delguur right in my apartment building on my way home, and they had eggs!! Amazing! But, of course, when I got back to my apartment the electricity was out. So I waited, and it never came back on. I finally did make bagels on Sunday morning. They turned out pretty well, though they are really labor intensive! And the recipe made like 20 bagels. I really just wanted one...
I also made something like cream cheese. It's more like milk curds with some salt and garlic, but you can spread it on a bagel and it tastes cheese-like! All in all, I would say it was a successful endeavor, but I won't be making bagels again until I have more people to eat them!
I went and visited Uunee, one of my coworkers on Sunday afternoon. My other two coworkers, Hongroo and Bayerhuu also went. Hongroo brought her 3 year old daughter, who is adorable. We basically sat around and ate and talked for 3 hours. Uunee kept bringing food out for the first 45 minutes or so. We had pickles, fried potatoes, fried hiam (a sausage-like meat that is very popular here), candy, suutae tse, blueberry juice that Uunee had made and also a glass noodle stirfry. It was waaay too much food! When it was time to go, we stopped in the Ger in Uunee's family's hashaa, where her Grandparents live. That was pretty cool, but of course I had to eat more. Her Grandma gave me some aruul and yogurt. The yogurt was DELICIOUS! The dairy products in Arkhangai really are the best.

My Existence Does Have a Purpose!!

2007-08-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

This second week in Tsetserleg has been much better than my first week here. Last week I suffered some serious bouts of homesickness and feelings of purposelessness, and those added to my continuing frustration with Khan Bank made me a bit miserable. I wasn’t able to buy any of the things I needed for my apartment until this Wednesday, because there were continuous screw ups at the bank. The PC uses the Trade and Development bank in UB, but since there isn’t one in Arkhangai, I had to have my money transferred to Khan Bank, which was supposed to have happened by the middle of the first week I was here, but last Saturday, after standing in “line” at the bank for nearly an hour, I was told my money was not there. So Monday I called the PC office, and was told that the bank had sent my money to some soum or other, and that it should be there by Monday afternoon. So Tuesday I took the afternoon off work so that I could go to the bank and then go to the market and do some shopping. But, of course, when I went to the bank; still no money. After three calls to the PC and as many trips to the bank, my money was finally there at about 5 pm.
Going to the bank in Mongolia is kind of a stressful experience. Mongolians do not know how to stand in a line, or maybe they do, they just don’t feel like it. So you have to stand there squashed up against the person in front of you, with someone breathing down your neck behind you. And it never fails that as soon as I am the next person to go, Mongolians come out of the woodwork and start trying to shove their papers at the teller from either side of me. I guess it’s because I’m a foreigner, and they think they can get away with it. But it is really annoying! Occasionally a bank worker will come and point out the red line on the floor about three feet back and insist that everyone standing in line wait BEHIND the red line. That usually lasts about 5 minutes. Because of the language barrier, as soon as the teller tells me “no money” I can’t ask questions or try to figure out what is going on, I just get shoved aside and my turn is up.
Luckily my frustration was somewhat mitigated by the fact that Jeff and Greg (two of the TEFL volunteers who live in soums close to Tsetserleg) were in town. Their directors had brought them in for a conference (so they thought) but it turned out they didn’t have to go to the conference, they just had time to do some shopping and “play with their American friend.” So, even though I didn’t have money on Tuesday, I went to the market with them and got a better idea of where things were. Every time I go to the market I see new things. Everything is pretty disorganized and just kind of piled on top of other things, so unless you look really closely, it’s hard to find anything. But by now I have been there several times, and am starting to get a feel of it. And also the fact that I was unable to do any shopping on Tuesday (the market closes at 6), meant that I was able to take Wednesday morning off work as well. I had to go back to work at 6 on Tuesday to teach my daily English lesson to my coworkers, so I told my counterpart what had happened and she said it was OK if I came in at 3 the next day. We also drank some Aireg during the lesson, which made it a little more interesting.
Wednesday morning Jeff, Greg and I went to Fairfield’s for breakfast. Fairfield’s is such an amazing place. The owners are super nice, and it’s kind of an ExPat/Tourist hangout, so I got to meet a woman who works at the German NGO here, and you get to see all the tourists when you go there. Also, they have breakfast! And good coffee. I had some delicious scrambled eggs on toast with fresh tomatoes. It pretty much made my day. And I had money so I was able to go to the market and buy a bunch of stuff for my apartment afterwards.
Shopping at the market in Mongolia is an experience. You can bargain for things, which is nice, but also kind of tiring. I bought my electric wok (an amazing and necessary device in which you can cook ANYTHING) and my electric water boiler from a lady who Greg had bought some stuff from the day before. When Greg was buying stuff he was bargaining with her, and she loved it. Mongolians seem to really appreciate it when they can’t pull a fast one on you. I’m sure they like the extra income when they can, but they respect you a lot more when you know enough Mongolian to be able to bargain with them. Profit margins here are extremely low, so you can’t really bargain much, but you can usually save a dollar or two on larger purchases (2,000 Tugriks is enough to buy a good meal, so it pays to bargain for them!). I bargained the woman down by 1,500 Tugriks, and she acted very put-out, but then gave me a huge smile and told me to please come again. It was most gratifying! I also made my first Mongolian friend at the market that day. I was looking at a blanket, and a girl came up to me and asked me, in English, what I was looking for. So we started talking and I told her I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, working with businesses and that I was going to be living in Tsetserleg for two years. She is a business administration student in UB, and studies English in her free time, and was there helping her Mom out that day. Her English is fantastic, and unfortunately she left for UB on Thursday for school, but I got her email address and she took mine. It was so exciting to make a friend here, it made me feel like I really will be able to integrate into this community.
Thursday was the first day I actually felt good about work. The past two weeks I have pretty much just spent the whole day playing on the internet and reading stuff from the UB Mercy Corps office. It’s getting old really fast, and I haven’t really felt like there is any point in me being here. But Thursday afternoon I got to visit two clients. First Uunee and I went to one of our newer clients, who dries meat. Dried meat is a big thing here. I don’t particularly care for it, my host sister made a soup with it once over the summer, and it was kind of gross. But it travels well and it’s a good way to have meat in the winter when they don’t really slaughter animals as much. Uunee and I visited the client’s apartment, where they had a giant pile of dried meat sitting on sheets in one of the rooms. It was a little gross. But he has contracts with several super markets in UB, and the profit margin is pretty good.
After the meat drier, we drove out to Bulgan soum, which is 36 km (or an hour and a half) away. We visited a client there who has a carpentry business in the winter, and a tourist Ger camp in the summer. The wife, Gerlee, is an English teacher at the soum school, and is pretty much fluent. So I talked to her, and she told me about her Ger camp. They are partners with an American couple who live in Nepal. The American couple brings groups of tourists every summer, and they stay for 10 days to 2 weeks. The Ger camp sounds really cool. They have horse trekking, and they organize a mini Nadaam and do all kinds of other stuff. They are also organizing a Polo team this summer. There is a French guy who owns a really big Ger camp in another Aimeg who is really big on Polo. He apparently sponsors Polo matches in Mongolia and brings in Polo players from Argentina and France. Gerlee was really nice, and when she found out that I ride horses, invited me to come out to their Ger camp next summer and help out. I can’t really think of anything I would rather do! And I will definitely take my family there when they come next summer. I think my sister will be really excited about the Polo playing. Polo would be a really great sport to start in Mongolia. The horses are small and hardy and everyone here is a superb rider, so once they learn Polo there will be no stopping them! And, currently, they don’t really have any organized horse sports. Racing at Nadaams is big, but it’s not an industry and there really isn’t any money to be made from it.
The jeep ride to and from Bulgan soum was also great. Uunee was absolutely thrilled to learn that I can, in fact, speak some Mongolian. She would say a simple sentence in English, and I would translate it into Mongolian (what is a simple sentence in English is always much more complex in Mongolian, the grammar is hard!) and she would giggle and clap her hands and just be SO excited. It was great! So we went back and forth with English and Mongolian. I taught her some new words and grammar, and she taught me some. And we talked about the education systems in Mongolia and America and healthcare. She also invited me over to her house this Sunday, which I’m excited about. I started to feel like I am a part of things here. Sitting in the office behind my computer doing nothing all day definitely does not make me feel like my existence has a point. I’m really excited to start visiting clients and getting involved in things.
I also pitched my idea for a secondary project, which Uunee was really excited about. I want to make a website for all the Arkhangai tourist camps (there are 13 in this Aimeg). I have been searching the internet, and I couldn’t find any websites for Ger camps. The only things I found were organized tours put together by tourist companies. And reading through the itineraries pretty much horrified me. One that I read through was a 15 day tour, and it went from UB up to Selenge Aimeg, to Hovsgul, down to Arkhangai, and then I think to the Gobi before going back to UB for 3 days for Nadaam. That sounds like fun, you get to see a lot of the country, but any one who has done any traveling in Mongolia knows that it would be absolutely miserable. You would spend your whole trip in a mikr, and probably a good portion of it on the side of the road with a broken down mikr. No fun at all. The tour had you spending one night pretty much everywhere you go, which pretty much means you will arrive somewhere exhausted and pissed off, and then leave the next morning. I think that if tourists could find their own Ger camps and plan their own route, they would enjoy themselves a lot more.
Now that I have some ideas and have experienced doing something productive, I am feeling a lot better about the next two years. I had planned to make my first buuz (steamed dumplings) on Thursday night for dinner (now that I have my magical Wok!!!), but I was fed at the client’s house in Bulgan soum, and we didn’t get back until 8:30 pm. So I guess it will have to be a Friday night project, it’s not like I have a whole lot else to do with my Friday night. :)

The First Week

2007-08-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have now been here one week. It's been interesting, but it is definitely going to take me some time to adjust. I did finally get a bed, and a bookshelf, and a kitchen table with one chair (I guess you can't have everything). I have developed a few new problems in my apartment though. Any time I run water in my bathroom sink or tub it floods my bathroom. I first noticed that when I did laundry last week, but then it would only flood sometimes... Now I can't even brush my teeth without creating a minor flood. When I got to work this morning I told Hongoroo about it, so we walked over to my apartment so she could see for herself. Supposedly the plumber will come this afternoon (maybe, if he isn't busy). More likely it will be "margash." I was also unpleasantly surprised to find out that in the Summer Tsetserleg doesn't get any hot water. I was first told that I would have hot water on Saturdays and Sundays, then when I got here they told me Saturdays. I didn't have any hot water this weekend, so much for my weekly shower. This morning Hongoroo told me that hot water comes on Sunday mornings and evenings, but then later she said that hot water doesn't come until September. I do have a water heater attached to my shower, but it currently doesn't work. She said that we can get it fixed though. Without a hot shower there is no point in living in an apartment, I would rather live in a ger!
My first week of work was pretty boring. I spent a lot of time reading through reports and other stuff that the UB office emailed for me to read. Then I read all of the client business plans that have been translated into English. I have learned that RASP mainly does trainings and helps to facilitate loans. We do technical trainings as well as trainings about business principles. And RASP has an agreement with several banks and will put up a portion of the collateral needed for clients to get a loan. The banking/loan system in Mongolia is much different than at home. The interest rates here are ridiculously high, usually about 2.5%-3% per MONTH, and the loaner has to put up collateral equal to about 1.5 times the amount of the loan. You can imagine it is really difficult for a lot of people to get loans. So RASP will work with small business owners, help them develop a good business plan and then put up a percentage of the collateral. That way the client can get a lower interest rate (because RASP puts up cash collateral, so that part of the loan is guaranteed) and build up credit with the bank. Our clients are pretty much all part of the agriculture industry, from herder cooperatives, veterinary clinics, vegetable growers, as well as tourist ger camps. From what I understand, tourism is our big thing this year, we are supposed to do a value chain analysis. I'm excited to help work on that. Arkhangai has 13 tourist ger camps, and a lot of cool stuff for tourists to see. We have hot springs, a volcano, a canyon and a lake with really good fishing. There are also a lot of herders, with yak, horses and camels. One of the main problems I can see with the tourist industry in Arkhangai, though, is that it is really tough to get out here. There isn't a paved road, and it is a LONG drive from UB. There also isn't a railroad or a working airport.
Once I finished all the reading, I didn't really have much to do. I'm really not sure yet how I fit into the office, and what I am supposed to do all day. I have started giving English lessons to my coworkers. Uunee and Hongoroo have pretty good English, so they want me to teach them grammar (gulp!). I created a worksheet on simple past tense this morning, so we will see how that goes over during this evening's lesson.
Last weekend I had big plans to do some shopping for my apartment. So on Saturday I went to the bank, and after standing in line for close to an hour was told that my money was not there. That was a bit upsetting, as the PC had told me it should be there by Wednesday at the latest. There was nothing I could do about it then, because it was the weekend. So I decided to just walk around town and scope it out. This morning I called the Cashier at PC, and it turns out the bank had made a mistake and sent my money to the wrong bank or something weird like that. I'm not sure how that is possible, since they had my account number, but oh well. Supposedly my money will be there this afternoon, and I will probably take an afternoon off work this week so I can buy some things that I need. The electric burners that were provided to me in my apartment are really crappy. One burner doesn't work, and the other will only come on high, but then randomly turns itself off and then back on after several minutes. It took me 3 hours to boil soup, so I'm probably going to just buy myself a new burner. I already feel bad about all the complaining I've had to do about my apartment.
Tsetserleg is really beautiful, and I'm really happy that I was placed here. I can't wait to do some traveling out in the country in Arkhangai! I'm hoping I will have a chance to ride a horse in the very near future!

Update:
It seems that all the problems in my bathroom are now solved. My landlord and Hongoroo came over after lunch, and my landlord showed me how to use the hotwater heater (apparently it's a bit tricky, and you have to do it just right or it doesn't work). Then the "plummer" showed up, with only a wrench. He sort of pulled apart my sink, and basically just stuffed a piece of one of my towels that he cut up down around the drain or something, and no more leaking! We'll see if that holds up tonight when I take a shower. And they even fixed my toilet! It didn't really flush before, I had to pour water down it while I flushed it. It took all three of them, some scissors and some string that we borrowed from my neighbor, and it's fixed!

A Bunch of Random Pictures

2007-08-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

The Sukhbaatar training group with our LCFs after site announcement

A crazy scary cloud in Sukhbaatar

Our Case Study presentation. Boloroo (our client who makes yak wool products), Jim, Me, Salomon, and Cady

Mongolian Traditional Food: boatz, with fly of course

Landscape picture from the drive between Darkhan and Sukhbaatar

Nadaam Hoshur (there are two ways to make hoshur, either as a hot-pocket like thing, or you roll it out flat after you put the meat in the middle of a pocket of dough)

Me and Cady painting chess boards at the school where we did our training. This was our training group's community project

Cady and Me at Oasis my last night in UB

Me and Dashzegve, my new boss

Cady and Me after Swearing In

Sukhbaatar Square in UB

Parliament Building in UB

Me, Tuya (LCF) and Cady at Host Family Appreciation Day

The CED group at our last training session

Melissa doing a Mongolian Traditional Dance at Host Family Appreciation Day

Me and my adoptive Host Family (aka Cady's host family)

The Garden

2007-08-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

I have finally made it to my site. Tsetserleg is beautiful. There are mountains surrounding the town, and there are trees everywhere. It is a pretty small town, my apartment is on the edge, and from my balcony I can see the other side. Getting here was quite an adventure. We swore in on Saturday, and then Sunday morning my supervisor, Dashzeveg, and I left. He called me at 9:30 (I have a cell phone now!) and arrived at the dorms to pick me up about half an hour later. We got in a taxi and drove to the micr stand. At the time I wasn’t sure if we were taking the taxi all the way here, because Dashzeveg had told me that he would find a car and then pick me up. I was a little scared about the taxi, because we had been driving for about 4 minutes when it died. It was raining really hard, and we were just stuck there in the middle of the road in UB for like 15 minutes while the driver got out and looked and the engine, then tried to start the car over and over again. Finally it started, and I was quite happy when we arrived at the Micr stand and got out of the dysfunctional taxi. We were some of the first people in the Micr. They wait until it is full before they leave. We packed it pretty full. There were 16 people in it by the time we were on our way, not including the driver. But that number did include about 3 small children, and they don’t really count apparently. I was squished in the very back seat with three other people. There were two other foreigners on the Micr, a couple who is touring Mongolia for three weeks. One was from Germany, and one from France. They seemed a little perturbed by the Mongolian way of doing things, and they spoke no Mongolian at all, which meant they had a hard time. They kept asking the driver “what time will we leave,” and it was all I could do not to laugh. Mongolian drivers never have a set time of departure, they may give a time, but basically it’s when the car is full.
We finally got on our way, only to get stuck in the mud after about 20 minutes. We weren’t really even out of UB yet, we were still in the far out Ger district. They are doing a lot of road work in Mongolia right now, which basically means they tear up the existing dirt roads, and people drive around in the field. And they don’t do it in sections, they tear up miles and miles of road and maybe it will be completed sometime in the next few years… The driver spun the wheels for awhile, and then made all the men pile out, and with the lightened load was able to get us out of the mud. So then we were REALLY on our way. We actually left UB at around noon, and were on the paved road for maybe half an hour. Then it was the dirt road. Being in a packed Micr on a bumpy dirt road is not exactly what I would call “fun.” I may have suffered a slight concussion from the numerous times I banged my head on the roof, and I’m a bit bruised on my left side from smashing into the side. I have always been to sleep anytime, anywhere, but in that Micr it was nearly impossible. I would doze off for a few minutes only to be thrown against the side of the Micr when we hit a bump. We stopped once at about 4 pm on the side of the road for a “bathroom” break. Basically everyone scattered and tried to find a bush (or not if they were men) and almost immediately the driver herded us back in the micr and we were off. Around 7 pm we stopped for dinner. There was a little strip of Delguurs and Guanzes (Canteens) along the side of the road, so we all had a quick bite. I had hoshor, I was a little worried that I was going to get the Gehdis Mo, because I hadn’t really eaten anything all day and who knows what the quality of the meat they used in the Hoshor was.
After dinner it was back in the Micr and on to Kharkhorin (that was where the European couple was going). We didn’t get there until about 10:30, and we had to drive around for awhile before we found a hotel. Then we were off again toward Tsetserleg. We got stuck in the mud again, and this time the driver made everyone get out. And they had tied a rope to the front of the Micr and everyone lined up and pulled. I didn’t really realize what was going on, I had sort of been dozing, and had been in the micr for about 12 hours at that point, so I got out and I was kind of stretching, then I started to notice that everyone was standing in a line in front of the micr. By the time I realized everyone was pulling, it was too late. I felt kind of bad, and one of the Mongolian men in the Micr was giving me a hard time about it. They had all warmed up to me at that point, because I was helping translate for the European couple. Mongolians love you if you know some Mongolian.
Finally we started getting closer to Tsetserleg, and we started dropping people off at their respective houses or gers along the way. The last 30 minutes of the trip were pretty nice, because there were only three people in the back seat, so I wasn’t squashed up against the window. About 20 minutes outside of Tsetserleg we met up with the Mercy Corps driver in the office’s Russian jeep, so we transferred all our stuff over and then went to my apartment. We finally got here about 4 am. We carried all my stuff up and then Dashzeveg and the driver left. Dashzeveg told me he would come and pick me up for work at 11 am on Monday.
My apartment is pretty nice. It is small. It’s just one room, then a little kitchen nook and a bathroom. There are a few issues though. First of all, I don’t have a bed, again. I don’t know what it is with me and beds; apparently I’m not supposed to have one. All I have this time is a pile of blankets on the floor. I think it will get worked out though. A bed is definitely one the list of minimum housing requirements, and it specifically says “bed and mattress,” so I will get one.
Monday morning my two counterparts, Unenbat (the Admin Officer) and Hongoroo (the translator), picked me up at 11. We walked over to the office and then we along with Dashzeveg piled into the Jeep and the driver drove us around town. They showed me the post office, police station and some other important places. They also drove me up on top of a hill that is right across the road from my apartment building where there is a statue of Buddha. There is a Monastery right there, which used to be a really big one, but now has 2 lamas. Then we went to the bank so I could open up an account, which took forever. Mongolian banks don’t move very quickly, and Mongolians aren’t really that great at lining up and waiting their turn. By the time we were done there it was time for lunch. The whole office went to Fairfield’s, which is the café run by the British ex-pat couple. I was really excited to see that they serve breakfast there. It’s nearly impossible to find a normal American breakfast in Mongolia, and I’ve been craving some eggs and hashbrowns.
After lunch we went back to the office. I was exhausted, and really just wanted to go home and go to sleep. But I read through some of the past few months’ monthly reports, and played on the internet a little bit. Then Hongoroo asked me if I could go through the monthly reports and check them for grammar mistakes, so I worked on that for awhile. Then Unenbat called a coffee break, so we had coffee and tea and chatted for about half an hour. After that they asked me if I needed to go shopping for some food, which of course I did. So they took me to the market and I got some meat and veggies and other necessities. Buying meat here is scary. It’s really hard to tell if it’s fresh, and it’s not trimmed at all. So you pay for a lot of fat and gristle, which the Mongolians don’t mind because they eat that, but it kind of irritates me because I don’t want to eat it. I wish I could have a dog to feed it to. I’ve been contemplating having a dog. But I don’t know if I’m even allowed to in my apartment, and I would feel bad for it being home alone all day locked up. That’s one thing that makes me really wish I were in a Ger, because then I could have animals. I could have a cat, but I just really don’t like cats.
After shopping Unenbat and Hongoroo brought me back to my apartment and we did a walk through. Unenbat was making an inventory of everything that was in my apartment, which provided a great opportunity for me to talk to her about the fact that I don’t really have a bed, or a kitchen table and chairs, or a bookshelf. So supposedly on Tuesday I will be getting those things. I’m also supposed to have a carpet, and technically I do have one, but it is hanging on the wall. I asked them if we could put it on the floor, and they said no. So I guess I am going to have to buy my own carpet, or just get along without one. I’ll have to price them at the market.
My last day in UB was really fun. We had swearing in in the morning, and then after that a lot of us and a lot of M17s went to pub next door and had a beer. Once we swore in all the M17s who had trained us were allowed to drink with us, which was fun. That night we all went to Oasis, which is a dance club. It’s kind of an ex-pat hangout, and you can get in free with a Peace Corps ID. It was really fun. I was really sad to leave on Sunday, a lot of people were staying a few more days. But UB was really expensive, and it was easy to spend way too much money there, so I’m kind of glad I left.

The Big City

2007-08-14T04:05:00.000-07:00

The day before we left for UB we had our host family appreciation day. It was fun, Jim Carl (our Country Director) gave a speech, and then one representative from each training community gave a speech in Mongolian, and some people did performances. Then we had a dance competition and a volleyball game. My family didn’t show up. I was kind of sad, but expecting it. My host Dad had told me that he and my host Mom were going to come, but the day I left Sukhbaatar my Dad told me that my Mom had gone to the hospital the night before because she was throwing up. I’m pretty sure it was from the weird Chinese diet pills she had been taking… but nevertheless, apparently she was still in the hospital on Sunday. Tuya said that my Dad called and said that he had gone to UB and my Mom was still in the hospital so they were not going to come. I think it pissed my LCFs off more than it upset me. I hung out with Cady’s family, which feels more like my family than my actual host family did. I think I will probably go back and visit Cady’s family, but I definitely will not go back and visit my own. I’m kind of sad that I don’t have that relationship though, because most PCVs are really close to their host families and it’s nice to have at least a pseudo-family while you are half way across the world from your real one.
For the final days before Swearing in and dispersing to the far corners of Mongolia we are all in UB. During the bus ride here we had an experience that I feel has allowed us to truly say we have "experienced Mongolia." We had a breakdown. We had a big bus and then a smaller bus to fit everyone, I was on the smaller bus because it had AC (a delightful thing, I was actually cold for a little while). But about an hour or so into our trip we had a tire blow out. And, of course, the spare tire was lost. So we all stood around on the side of the road for awhile while PC in UB tried to decide what to do. It's funny that they hired a vehicle with no spare tire, because I'm pretty sure in one of our safety and security sessions they made a point to tell us to check for things like that BEFORE getting in a car for a long journey. Maybe they were just testing us, and we failed. In the end the decision was made for all the Americans to pile on the big bus, and the Mongolians who were with us (some LCFs and other staff) would get on the small bus and "drive slowly" until they crossed paths with the PC Jeep that was being sent from UB.
We did eventually arrive in one piece. UB is an interesting place. It's sort of a big city, but not. The outskirts are all ger district, which pretty much means slum. There has been a huge influx of people to UB for the past several years, and a lot of people just load up their ger and put it up on the outskirts of town. PCVs aren't really allowed to go out there much because it's dangerous. There isn't much of a skyline here, the tallest building I've seen is maybe 16 stories, which is big for Mongolia. But there are a lot of stores and cafes and other such amazing amenities.
We have all been anticipating UB for several weeks now. Mostly because of the food. There are hamburgers, pizza, chicken, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Korean, the list goes on. After a summer of rice or pasta with slivers of meat/fat and vegetables if you are lucky, this is like heaven!
Once we finally got to UB we arrived at the dorms where we are staying and had to wait for the truck with our bags to show up. I think the PC felt bad that we had the tire issue on the way here, because they brought us mutton burgers. We were all really tired and grumpy, we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was around 3:30 pm. It was really nice that we got free food, because it meant we had an extra 2,700 Tugriks for lunch that we didn’t have to buy! We’re staying in student dorms, which are really terrible. It’s pretty far away from the PC office and pretty much all of the restaurants and stores that we want. The beds (if you can call them that) are wood frames with a thin, lumpy bed matt sorely failing to act as a mattress. And there is only one shower for the whole floor. Although I have to say that at least we don’t have to hold the shower head in one hand while trying to wash ourselves with the other. That is a nice change. It’s a lot easier to shower with two free hands!
After we all dragged our ridiculously heavy bags and all the random crap we have been issued by the Peace Corps up the stairs to our rooms we piled back on the bus to go to the PC office and get our meal allowance for the 6 days we are in UB. After that Cady, Peter and I went in search of this place called “Coke & Kabob” that one of the PCVs had told us about that sells really cheap gyro-like things. We got really horrible directions and sort of got lost, but eventually we found it, and the Kabobs were, in fact, delicious. But practically impossible to eat with any sort of grace. They are GIANT pita pocket things absolutely stuffed with shaved lamb, tomatoes, onions and lettuce, as well as a sort of 1,000 Island dressing. But they don’t give you plates, or a fork or a knife; just a flimsy plastic wrapping. Somehow we managed.
We ran into a bunch of the other Sukhbaatar trainees at Coke & Kabob, and after we all ate we went to a bar called Tse, where they have beer and wine for 50 cents. They also charge a 50 cent fee to sit, but if you have a couple beers, it is definitely worth it. The normal price for a beer is anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 Tugriks, while 50 cents is roughly 600 Tugs. Cady and I left earlier than everyone else, because I had my room key, and I was worried that Amanda, my roommate, would be locked out. Thank god we did leave while it was still light out, because it was a little difficult to find our dorms, and the rest of the group didn’t leave until after dark and got completely lost. After wandering around for about an hour and a half they finally had to call one of the PCVs who lives in UB and figure out where they were. In UB there are women who sit on the street with phones that look like normal land-line phones, but are actually cell phones, which is nice. Since we don’t yet have our Peace Corps issued cell phones, it’s nice to be able to use a phone in a pinch.
On Tuesday the CED group visited CHF headquarters and the Enterprise Mongolia Project Headquarters in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went to the US Embassy. The Embassy was nice. It was nice to step on a little piece of America. The building had AC, and there were beautiful flowers everywhere. I saw snapdragons, which made me miss home. The security was pretty intense, it was more elaborate than the Brussels Embassy I visited last summer, but at the same time the guards were not nearly as serious. They were Mongolians, but had very good English, and while we were standing in line handing over our PC ID cards he was joking about which ones of us had guns. I’m pretty sure there would never be jokes like that in America! After the Embassy we took a walking tour of some of UB. We went to the State Department Store, which is where you can get pretty much anything. The first floor has cosmetics and jewelry and then a big grocery store. The second floor is clothes, then appliances and then the 4th floor is house wares. It was an amazing store, but pretty expensive. It was incredible to walk into one store and be able to find anything you could ever want, including giant Chinggis rugs like the one that hung on my wall in my host family’s house. In a country where you have to walk into 6 different Delguurs to find one cold soda, I can see why all Mongolians love UB for having stores which such variety.
After the State Department Store we walked to Sukhbaatar square, which was pretty impressive. We saw the Parliament building, which is currently under construction. The Kuwaiti government is funding a project to add an elaborate façade. It’s really pretty, it’s right at the top of the square, and there is a giant statue of Chinggis Khan. Sort of reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial. Before we came to UB we had a safety and security session about UB. Pick pocketing is a serious issue here, everything from slashing the bottom of bags to the three man “delay, distract and snatch” gig. After that session I was really worried about being pick pocketed, but so far so good. I haven’t really even been in a shady situation. We did have street children come up to us and ask us for money. They are really annoying, they are horribly dirty and probably have scabies, and they get up really close to you (personal space is nonexistent in Mongolia) and sing or just say “money, money money money.” I tried saying “hoosh” to them, which is a word that pretty much means “get away” but that just made them get closer and start touching me and talking louder. Obviously not an effective word with street children.
Cady and I had pizza for dinner that night, which was incredible. It was actually real pizza, and a place called Pizza Broadway. I think that I will be able to get good western style food in Tsetserleg though, which is exciting. According to the Lonely Planet guide there is a restaurant there owned by a British Ex-Pat couple that serves pizza and burgers and other such delicacies.
Wednesday we got to visit the Mercy Corps headquarters. That was really interesting for me, because RASP (Rural Agribusiness Support Program), where I will be working, is run through Mercy Corps. It was really interesting to learn how RASP is funded. It’s funded by USDA, but what actually happens is that surplus wheat from the US is shipped over to Mongolia and sold "in a way that doesn’t interfere with the local market", and the proceeds are used to fund RASP. That is the only source of funding. RASP runs on a budget of just over 8 million USD per year, and there are offices in 4 Aimeg centers. I’m really excited to start work. I think that I will get to travel a lot out into the countryside, because nearly all of the clients are herders. I think I will also get to travel to other Aimegs. About a week after I start work we will have a big trade fair, so I will get to meet a lot of our clients. I think my job is going to be really awesome.
After lunch on Wednesday we had a tour of the Peace Corps office, and then we had the rest of the afternoon free. Altaa took Cady, Melissa and I to this place called Mercury Market and Good Price Store. We were supposed to go there in the morning, because they are stores that have a lot of food that you can’t find out in the country, but they decided against taking us then because it may or may not be open in the morning, so instead the CEDs got to sleep in! I bought some stuff that I won’t be able to find in Tsetserleg, like brown rice, cinnamon, granola cereal and vanilla. Good Price Store is even more amazing, but unfortunately, as Peter says; “it’s the store called Good Price, that has bad prices.” They have hot chocolate mix, some spices, peanut butter, frosted flakes, saltine crackers and even Doritos! You can’t even imagine the excitement that is involved in seeing such things in Mongolia. They even had Charmin toilet paper!!! Most of the TP here is more like sand paper. But after the initial excitement, you realize that you are poor and can’t afford to buy very many things. That is a sad realization. A large jar of peanut butter is 12,000 Tugriks, well beyond what I can afford for such luxury.
Wednesday was a bit of a splurge day for me. I went to dinner at a restaurant called “California” with a bunch of other trainees. It is an amazing place that feels like a little bit of America. It’s all American food and the waiters all speak English. We even tried to speak Mongolian to them, but they responded in English. A lot of people in UB are like that, a lot of them know some English (it was just recently declared the second official language of Mongolia) and seem to prefer it if you speak to them in English. Cady and I shared a Caesar salad appetizer, which was delicious. And then I had a cheeseburger. We also had Long Island Iced Teas, which were HUGE! I spent way too much money on my dinner, but it was definitely worth it. After we all ate, everybody else left to go to a bar, but Cady and I stayed to have another Long Island and split a piece of chocolate cake with ice cream. They were, sadly, out of chocolate cake. But we spoke to the bartender in Mongolian, so he added an extra shot of top shelf liquor to out Long Island, which was pretty sweet. We were sitting next to a guy from Germany who is here on vacation, and we talked to him a little bit. He was commenting on how cheap Mongolia is. He’s definitely right, if you are here on vacation, but when you are paid $126 per month to live here, it’s not so cheap. And volunteers can’t afford to eat at good restaurants. We are given 9,000 Tugriks per day for our meals while we are in UB. I spent 15,000 on my dinner and drinks. When we were doing our tour of the PC office, we were talking to Jim Carl (our country director) and kind of complaining about how we can’t really afford to eat anywhere good on our budget, and his response was “yes, well those restaurants are not for Peace Corps volunteers.” They really do mean for us to live poor. But, at the same time, we aren’t in UB very often, so if we save up for when we come, we can afford it. And it’s not like there are very many places to spend our money out in the hudoo anyway! Aimeg Centers are a little different, but nothing like UB. As long as you don’t go out drinking every night, $126 out to be more than enough.
It’s amazing how many foreigners there are in UB. They are everywhere! A lot of them are “Jesus people,” as the Mongolians call them. When we were in Mercury Market today there were a lot of Jesus people there, talking about how they were praying for a 3rd floor apartment, but got one on the 5th floor, so maybe God is telling them they need more exercise. Mongolians are really sensitive to the missionaries here. A lot of times PCVs get asked accusingly if we are “Jesus people.” There are some Mongolians who have converted to Christianity, but I would say the vast majority resent that the “Jesus people” are here.
When Cady and I left California and began our 45 minute walk back to the dorms, we discussed the fact that we had two of the three “A’s” that are almost always involved in incidents for PCVs around the world (alone, at night and alcohol involved). So we decided to get a cab. Cady also made the point that taking a taxi was something we should experience to familiarize ourselves with UB. As we were discussing this, we were crossing a street and there was an empty taxi right in front of us. So we jumped in. The problem with us getting a taxi is that we don’t know the name of the dorm we are staying in. They told us to say the name of the Monastery that is right down the street, but of course we forgot the name. So we told the driver to take us to a restaurant that is really close by. And we spoke to him in Mongolian, as much as we could. We said things like "Mongolia is very beautiful" and "I like fruit" (we’ve been told that if you speak to the drivers in Mongolian they may cut you a break on price, or at least won’t over charge you). We successfully arrived, and it was only 800 tugriks! Even better, it took about 5 minutes to get back, rather than the 45 it would have taken to walk.
Today was the first day of our supervisors conference. Everyone's supervisor came and the Peace Corps talked to them about American work norms and other stuff to make the cultural adjustment easier, while we had a Medical Session with the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer). Right before lunch we all went into the conference room and they called out the Aimeg, Soum and organization that we will each be working for one-by-one and we went up to meet our supervisor. After that we went to lunch at a restaurant near by and got to talk to our supervisors for awhile. Mine is really nice. His name is Dashzegve, and he has worked at RASP in Tsetserleg for 6 years. He speaks fairly decent English, which was nice. A lot of other trainee's supervisors speak no English, so they had to have one of the PC staff translate for them. He told me that I will get to travel out in the countryside a lot to meet with herders who are our clients, and we will be having a big trade fair on September 24th and 25th. It will be nice to get to meed a lot of our clients right off the bat, and get familiar with what they are producing.
I'm so excited to swear in on Saturday! I will finally be a PCV! And then on Sunday I'm off to Tsetserleg. It's a 12 hour drive, which is going to be rough. I think part of the road is paved, but not very well, so it might be even worse than a dirt road. I have no idea when we are going to leave, so I may not get there until the middle of the night and then my supervisor will probably want me to be at work on Monday... Yahnaa! The Peace Corps is kind of making things more difficult too... they are giving us our winter bags, our cell phones, our traveling money and a bunch of other random stuff on Sunday morning. And not until 10 at the earliest. It's ridiculous, because I need to pack strategically to get all the extra stuff I've acquired into a bag, and I only have extra room in my winter bag, so I need that to pack! The Peace Corps is not always the most organized... We are trying to get them to open up the office on Saturday after swearing in, so we'll see.

The Big Day

2007-08-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

Today was a big day in the life of the M18's. We moved out of our host families and came to Darkhan. For some of us it was a tearful farewell to the host families, for others it was a happy escape. I was much more of the later category... Other than my Dad no one in my family even woke up to see me off. I got a handshake and "bayertay" from my Dad. I will (most likely) see him again on Sunday though, we are having a Host Family Appreciation Day in Darkhan and all of our families are going to come. My Dad told me that he and my Mom are coming, but then this morning he told me that my Mom had to go to the hospital last night because she was throwing up (probably because of the weird diet pills she has been taking recently)... So who knows if they will come or not. But Cady's family will be here, and they are my adoptive host family. Last night I went over to Cady's house because I was really bored and my family was ignoring me (it's kind of a mutual thing, I can't really blame it all on them) and she and her Mom and brother and sister were having a little party. We kept making jokes that they are my family and that they have two American daughters. I love her family. If I go back to Sukhbaatar, it will be to visit them, and I probably will go with Cady for Naadam or Tsagansaar (the Lunar New Year).
As for the big news.... today the Peace Corps finally enlightened us as to where we will be spending the next two years! I will be working for RASP (Rural Agribusiness Support Program) which is run by Mercy Corps, funded by USDA, in Tsetserleg. Tsetserleg is the Aimeg Center of Arkhangai Aimeg which is in the Central Region. Tsetserleg is about a 10 hour drive from UB (give or take several hours depending on the road conditions, weather, breakdowns etc). From what the PC staff has told me it is really beautiful, with a river running through town and mountains on either side. I'm really excited to go there. I wanted to be sort of close to UB, because for pretty much any traveling you have to go through UB. Even in-country travel it's mostly all from UB. I am a little scared though, because I will be the only PCV in the Aimeg Center. There are about 4 other PCVs in the Aimeg out in Soums, two of which are M18s. So whenever they come into the Aimeg Center to restock on food they will come visit me. But I don't really have a site mate. That's good because it will force me to make friends with Mongolians, but it's a little scary at the same time. I'm used to having other Americans around me who I can talk to every day! I'm sure that it will mean my Mongolian will get really good, because I will have to communicate with my new Mongolian friends, so that is another definite plus.

Amarbaysgalant

2007-08-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

Amarbayasgalant

Last Saturday we went to Amarbayasgalant, the Buddhist Monastery. It was about a 4 hour drive there, and we actually weren’t packed into the Mikr quite as tightly as I thought we would be… Naraa and two PCVs who are our culture trainers came along in a PC Land Cruiser, so a few of the trainees rode in the Land Cruiser. We still had four people to a seat though, which made for a bit of a sticky ride. It was brutally hot, and even with the windows open it was just hot air blowing on us and we were all sweating and sticking together. The part on the dirt road was the worst, because either we were breathing in clouds of dust or sweltering. We chose to breath in the dust. Amarbayasgalant is in the middle of a giant field, out in the middle of nowhere. There are some tourist Ger camps there, as well as some herders that live there, but there are almost no trees in the giant field. I don’t know how people live there during the summer. There was a small stream running through the field, and there was a grove of trees where we parked and ate our lunch. We hung out there for about two hours, because we had to wait until one of the Lamas could see us. Apparently it was a holy day and they were reading a big sutra, so he didn’t have very much time. The Lama who talked to us studied in Sweden, so his English was really good. We thought he was going to give us a tour, but since they were reading a sutra he could only talk to us for about 20 minutes. The temple was built in the 1730’s, by the Manchu Emperor. During Communism it was closed (obviously), and the Communists actually destroyed 10 of the original 37 temples and statues. I don’t think anyone is really sure why they didn’t destroy all of it, someone told me that they tried, but it wouldn’t burn. The temple was reopened in 1991, during Communism no one was allowed to even go to the temple, and it was basically a haven for horses during the summer. Horses would go in all the buildings for the shade; I can’t say that I blame them.
Outside the main building of the monastery there was a thing (for lack of a better term…) that is supposed to symbolize a rebirthing. You crawl in between two stones, then you have to stand up inside and turn around clockwise three times (three is a big number here, three times around the Ovoo, three shots of vodka) and then crawl out the other side between two stones. It was really hard! Which I guess is kind of the point…

Me Reborn!

My family finally came back from the Hudoo on Monday night. They brought a few interesting things with them… Monday night I saw part of an animal which I assumed to be a marmot sitting on the kitchen table, which some hot stones that were presumably inside it. I also saw what I assumed to be innards boiling on the stove, so needless to say, I hightailed it up to my room and went to bed. On Tuesday morning when I woke up some of it was in the fridge, and there was another plate of “meat” (aka fat, skin, bones and a tiny bit of meat) sitting on the window sill. That worried me a little. When I came home for lunch on Tuesday the power was off, apparently all of Sukhbaatar was without power for most of the day, it happens fairly regularly. So there was no hope of me getting much of anything for lunch. My Dad asked me if I wanted some Aireg. I thought he had said “Taireg,” which is the yogurt I am so fond of. I sort of heard the word Aireg, but it just didn’t make sense to me that he would want me to drink that in the middle of the day. So I said “Yes!” and sat down at the table, and there was a pot of white milky stuff that was sort of frozen, it had chunks of ice in it. So I commented that it was “hueten taireg” (cold yogurt), and he quickly corrected me and told me it was, in fact, Aireg. And then he pulled out the marmot. I have yet to figure out how to politely refuse when ordered to eat, especially when it is the only thing available to eat, and I’m hungry. Mongolians don’t usually say “will you eat” or “please eat” they say “eat.” It was the plate that was in the fridge, so at least it had been refrigerated most of the night… So my lunch was marmot and aireg, with a little aaruul (really really hard milk curd) thrown in for good measure. The aireg was different from the stuff my Dad pulled out the day we all learned to chop wood and cook, that aireg was clear and looked like vodka. This aireg was milky and tasted really sour. I think maybe it hadn’t fermented as long, but I really have no idea. The marmot was OK, it tasted really gamey, and I didn’t really eat much because I was gnawing on a bone, trying to avoid the fat and gristle. But for the rest of the day I did have a bit of the “Gehdis Mo” (Literal meaning: Stomach Bad), which is a PCT slang term for anything ranging from an upset stomach to mild food poisoning (compliments of Bagh 5, they get the Gehdis Mo out there a lot more than we do in Sukhbaatar proper).
Our miserable heat wave has finally broken (at least for the time being). We got a tiny little bit of rain on Sunday evening, but it was really just a tease. It didn’t even cool off the night, it was still hot as ever. And on Monday we got a little more rain, but it was still miserable and hot. Finally, on Tuesday we woke up to a mercifully cloudy sky, and it was cool. Then in the afternoon it started raining and just didn’t stop. I was actually COLD!!! It was delightful. Tuya told us that August 1st is when it starts to get cold, and she was pretty close.

Me, my Host Mom and sister

My Host Dad, brother and me

The Necessity of Integration...

2007-07-27T01:17:00.000-07:00

This week has been so miserably hot. It's our second to last week of training, so we are all getting a little antsy and unfocused... add that to the unbearable heat and we are like a bunch of 5th graders who don't want to pay attention. The heat wouldn't be so bad if it would at least cool off at night, but the past few nights it has stayed hot and still, which makes it almost impossible to sleep. Mongolians wear wet towels on their heads when it is hot like this, and our LCFs keep telling us that if you don't wear a wet towel on your head, your head will get hot and then your stomach will hurt and you will be miserable, which pretty much sums up how we have all been feeling lately. So yesterday Cady and I went to the market and bought some 100 Tugrik towels, and today we have been wearing them on our heads. It actually does help quite a bit. Even though all the Mongolians are doing the same thing, they laugh at us. I don't really blame them because it does look quite ridiculous, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I am actually quite amazed at how effective a wet towel on your head is. It's almost like a little personal AC system around your face, because it catches any bit of breeze and cools down the air. It's delightful.
Hopefully it will cool down next week, I don't know if I can take the heat much longer. My family doesn't even own a fan, which I find a bit absurd. We have a toilet and a shower and a GIANT flat screen TV, but no fan. A few nights ago, at 4 in the morning when I could not sleep because I was lying in a pool of my own sweat, I opened the door to my room and then the door to this little balcony thing upstairs, so I could get some cross breeze. It was actually working quite well until Undarmaa came upstairs and closed the balcony door.
My parents have been gone all this week, they went to the Hudoo last Sunday and won't be back until this Sunday (maybe, who knows when they will really come back...) It's been interesting having just me and Undarmaa in the house. The first night the parents were gone she had a friend over until about 4:30 a.m. and was outside in the Hashaa laughing and carrying on and woke me up. I had to go outside and tell her to be quite so I could sleep. The next day I was giving her a hard time about it, she seemed really worried that I would tell her parents. I told her that I wouldn't, and I'm pretty sure she gave me a bribe, just to be sure... We were out of sugar, and I told her that I was going over to the market anyway after class because I had to go to the bank (the PC didn't pay us on time last week, which was really annoying because I walked to the bank 3 different days before I got my money...) So I told her that I would buy sugar if she gave me money. So she gave me the money for a kilo of sugar, and then she gave me 500 extra Tugriks. I asked her what it was for, and she just said "you take." It felt a bit like a bribe...
Tomorrow we are going to Amerbaysalon (not sure of the spelling..) It's one of the Buddhist Monasteries that the Soviets didn't destroy back in the 20's. I'm really excited to go, even though it will be a 3 hour Mikr ride there. I think the PC is trying to get us used to the "Mongolian Way" of travel, which basically means cramming as many people as possible into the vehicle. We get one Mikr for 17 people, not including the driver... I think that means we will have 5 people on each bench seat and two up front. In America the seats would hold 2 or 3 people. So that should be interesting. And we will probably have to have the windows closed for at least part of the trip, because it is a dirt road.
I'm really excited that training is so close to being over. I hope next week goes by quickly! I'm also excited to go to UB. We are the first training class in a long time to swear in in UB. All the PCVs are worried about us, because UB is really crazy, there is a lot of crime and the drunk Mongolians are even more prevalent there apparently. I'm a little worried about some of us too... some of us don't always practice the best judgement... Hopefully we will all make it through though. I think we may be one of the first classes in awhile not to have any ETs (early termination) before swearing in. Unless something happens between now and August 18th, we will make it through with everyone!

Three Weeks to Go!!

2007-07-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

In two short weeks I will no longer be living in Sukhbaatar. The thought blows my mind and excites me. I can’t wait until August 9th when we find out our sites. We have all started talking about where we think we will go/where we want to go. I have no idea where I think I will go. The married couples kind of have some idea, because their sites have to have a position for both (most of the couples are in different sectors), so they have some idea, and from what we have been told their sites are pretty much already determined. As for the rest of us, two days or so before site announcements are made two PC staffers will lock themselves in a room and go through out site placement questionnaires and throw darts at the map…. Then we spend several days in Darkhan and then a few days in UB and then we swear in and off to site we go!! I’m really hoping for Hovsgol, which is the Aimeg where Hovsgol Lake (the largest body of water in Mongolia) is. It’s in the Highland region, in the northern/center. I wouldn’t mind going to Erdenet, which is the 3rd/2nd (depending on who you ask) largest city, and it’s in the center region, connected to Darkhan and UB by railroad. In Mongolia there is only one railroad, from Russia to China going through Sukhbaatar, Darkhan and UB. Erdenet has a branch that connects it to Darkhan. I kind of want to stay in the central part of Mongolia, but really I think I will be happy wherever. Every site has good points and bad points. I just can’t wait to find out. The Peace Corps keeps us in the dark as much as possible. It’s like telling us things before they happen is the ultimate sin. For instance, we found out on Friday that on Sunday apparently we are having a big thing at the school where all our families are supposed to come and we are learning to Waltz (Waltzing in Mongolia is a required skill, Mongolians learn it in gym class from when they are little, and apparently it is the thing to do out in the country and really at any gathering) and to sing some Mongolian songs (also a required skill) and we are playing Volleyball. My parents aren’t going to be able to come, because apparently they are going out to the Hudoo (countryside) on Saturday and will be gone for a week. It’s just me and Undarmaa for a whole week. That’s pretty much the status quo in my house anyway, my Dad is always gone and I’m not sure where my Mom goes all day. I have still yet to figure out what exactly my parents do, but it gets sketchier all the time. Another trainee’s parents said that my parents deal in contraband between Russia and China, which wouldn’t really surprise me.
I am getting along a lot better with my family recently, I can actually talk to them sometimes. Last week it seemed like a lot of things clicked with the language. We switched around our language classes after the Mid-LPI’s (and last week was the first week we had language again, after a week in Darkhan and then Nadaam). I love my new class, Sukhbaatar had 5 people who scored Novice-High, and we are all in a class together along with Salomon. Ganaa is our teacher, and she is really good. She doesn’t speak ANY English to us, I’m pretty sure she is nearly fluent, but she is really good at her job, which is to teach us Mongolian in Mongolian. I really miss Tuya, my old teacher. She was so cute and sweet, and a really great teacher (obviously since our class had three Novice-Highs), but Ganaa is really great too. She speaks a lot faster, which is helpful because it’s more like speaking to my family or any other Mongolian that I speak to, so I feel like my understanding is getting a lot better. She is also teaching us a lot more grammar, so now I can actually form compound sentences!!! So exciting! I am nervous that the real LPI is in two weeks. I’m really hoping to be at least an Intermediate-Low, which I think I will be able to do.
Last Tuesday night Cady spent the night at my house. We were over at her house after class, and her Dad had had a little too much vodka with his friends, and was being kind of obnoxious and making us uncomfortable. We were sitting in Cady’s room talking, and he kept coming in and he would just sit down and go on and on about how he was bad, and Cady’s mom was bad, and Enknaron (Cady’s little sister) was bad etc. etc. It was weird. He had kind of been that way the night before too, so we left and went to my house and Cady just spent the night. Her Dad was supposed to leave the next day to go back to Mandel Soum to build a house, so we figured if she just left that night, the next day he would be gone and it would be all good. Her Dad is so much fun when he isn’t drunk, but sometimes he just over-indulges and he is not fun at that point. It’s sad, because when he isn’t drunk he will talk to us and teach us Mongolian. He actually didn’t leave the next day, because apparently the train didn’t come… That night he was sober and he talked to me and Cady for like half and hour. He is really good at speaking to non-native speakers, and we could understand what he was saying and actually have a real conversation.
When we got to my house my Mom and my brother were there. It was around dinner time, and my Mom told us that she doesn’t know how to cook, so she didn’t know what we were going to do about dinner. So Cady and I said we would cook. We made fried rice, which turned out to be delicious, but my family was very unsure about it while we were cooking. Living with a host family makes you feel like you are about 5. The Peace Corps tells them that they have to teach us how to cook, wash clothes and other “life skills,” such as chopping wood, so they get the idea that we are completely incompetent. When Undarmaa has me help her cut up meat or potatoes she is constantly telling me that I’m doing it wrong, and I wish I could tell her that I have lived by myself for four years. I have cooked my own food, washed my own clothes etc, just not the “Mongolian Way.” But, of course, I don’t have the language skills to say that, so I just have to let her teach me how to cut things. And every family cuts and cooks things differently, but all of them believe that their way is the right way (same as America), so it’s pretty much a lose-lose situation for us Americans. Oh well. So Cady and I made fried rice, but the problem was I don’t know how to cook rice, all I’ve ever cooked is instant rice, something which they definitely do not have here. Undarmaa was gone, she was at the Circus that was in town (more about that later…) So I asked Batusken (my 13 year old brother who has recently made more frequent appearances) to show us, and first he laughed at me for not knowing how to cook rice, but then he actually didn’t really know either. So he went in to the living room and asked my Mom, and she told him I guess, so we got the rice cooking and then Cady and I made some scrambled eggs to put in the fried rice, and then we fried some potatoes to put in. While we were in the process, Batusken came back into the kitchen and apparently thought things were going awry so went into the living room and told my Mom. She then came into the kitchen and saw what we were doing, and, I guess, thought things were, in fact, going awry and promptly started to eat some mayonnaise bread. I guess she was pretty sure our “American Rice Meal” was not going to turn out well. But we continued cooking. Then my Dad came in and started worrying about the rice, and tried to explain to us that it needed to boil and then we needed to turn off the burner and let it set for awhile. But it had already boiled, which he didn’t know, so after he turned the burner back up we turned it down again. Everything turned out fine, and my family seemed to enjoy the “American Fried Rice.” My favorite part was that I got to cut the meat, so I was able to trim it and I didn’t have to pick through the meal for the pieces that were mostly fat (as is usual). It was delicious! When Undarmaa came home I told her that there was a plate for her in the microwave, and she seemed really happy that I had cooked and she didn’t have to.
The circus was basically a big round tent that they set up in the square. Cady and I saw it when we went in to go to the bank, and the tickets were 6,000 Tugriks, which we obviously can’t afford on our budget (that would be about a weeks worth of our budget) But luckily, in Sukhbaatar everything is televised. So after Undarmaa came home, she called us down from my room and we watched the whole circus on TV. It was pretty cool at first, they had some contortionists, and other interesting acts. Then they got to the animal part, which was really sad. In America there are restrictions on what you can do to animals, but here there are not. The first act was a tiger that they made run around in a wheel, kind of like a rat, which was kind of lame. Then they brought out a bear and made it do some gymnastic stuff on bars. The saddest part was when they brought out two bears, with boxing gloves and muzzles on and made them fight. Undarmaa and Batusken were cracking up, but it was sad. The people would grab the bears and push them together, and then the bears didn’t know when to stop and they just kept going at it. It felt like some sort of Mexican cock fight.
After the bears they brought out a baby elephant that looked kind of motley and had a girl ride around on it for while. It wasn’t really anything special, and the elephant looked sad and unkempt. I’m glad that I didn’t pay to go see the circus. I wouldn’t want to support it. I can’t even imagine how they treat those animals while people aren’t looking. There is no concept whatsoever about treating animals well here. Animals are tools and that’s that.
On Friday after we got out of class I went over to Cady’s house to work on our case study that we have to present on Monday for CED. When her Mom came home from work she told us that we were going to drink a bottle of vodka. Cady’s Mom works 14 hour days, usually 7 days a week. That’s pretty common here for Mongolian women. Cady’s Mom works two jobs, she works at a pharmacy and also at a family clinic, and her husband doesn’t really do anything. I guess in the summer he goes and builds houses. He told us that he has built 8 houses, 3 of which are in Cady’s Hashaa; her house, her uncle’s house, and then the house that Jim lives in (I’m not sure how his family is related to Cady’s, but they are). So obviously, he doesn’t work a whole lot. It seems to be pretty common that the women work their asses off and the men don’t do a whole lot but drink. Cady’s Mom brought one of her friends over, and the four of us drank a bottle of vodka together. Then Cady’s Mom and her friend went to the Delguur to get another bottle. Before she left, Cady’s Mom asked Cady for some shorts. She said she needed some to go to the Delguur, and Cady went in her room and said she didn’t have any other shorts than the one’s she was wearing, so her Mom said she would take those. So Cady took off her shorts and gave them to her Mom. It was so funny! I wonder if Cady will get her shorts back….
I had told Undarmaa that I would be home by midnight, and Cady’s Mom wasn’t coming back from the Delguur, so I had her and her 19 year old brother, Nabaa, walk me home. Nabaa goes to school in UB to be a Chemistry teacher, but this summer he is working in Darkhan. Apparently a few days ago he got mugged and they took all his clothes, so he had to come back to Sukhbaatar so his Mom could buy him new clothes. The things that happen here are so very strange.

The CED Group and our Trainers

Ganaa (LCF), Salomon, Alta (our CED Technical Coordinator), Jim, Me, Vita (our PCV trainer for the first half of PST), Cady, Segi (LCF), Fahd, Tuya (LCF), Jason, Melissa, Natalie

The Week of the Dead Sheep

2007-07-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

Nadaam has been quite an experience. Monday was the first day, and my Dad took Cady and I out to Bagh 5 for the horse races. Apparently my family has an SUV that I didn’t know about, all of a sudden my Dad was driving around in it. My family has several out-buildings, and I think the SUV is kept there, and maybe they just take it out for special occasions or something… But he drove us out in the SUV, when we got there there wasn’t going to be a race for awhile, so he took us out to see the Mother Tree, which is this huge tree that has something to do with Chinggis Khan, I haven’t figured out exactly what, my Dad was trying to explain, but of course I only speak limited Mongolian so it didn’t work out so well… But the tree is a really big deal. It’s a sort of Ovoo (usually a pile of rocks that you have to stop at when you see and circle three times clockwise and usually leave an offering) The tree is covered with Khadags, which are silk scarves that symbolize the blessings and wishes of good luck. We walked around the tree three times, and my Dad would go up to the tree and part the Khadags that were covering it and put his head against the tree and pray each time he walked around it. From what I gathered the tree has been around for 800 years (that is how old Chinggis Khan is), although during communism they weren’t allowed to practice Buddhism, so for 80 years it was just a tree. I’m kind of surprised the Russians didn’t cut it down or something like that when they were purging all the Monks and Monasteries.

Me and Cady at the Mother Tree

The Mother Tree

After we visited the Mother Tree my Dad took us out to his Mom’s house, who lives in the outskirts of Bagh 5. He took us there because she had slaughtered a sheep, and it was lunch time. He was going to get us some Nadaam Hoshur, but I told him the PC said we weren’t allowed to eat it because people use bad meat or they make the Hoshur several days before and it will make you really sick. So we went out to Grandma’s house, and she had indeed slaughtered a sheep but I guess it wasn’t ready to eat yet so we just had some homemade yogurt and some homemade bread. I love my Grandma’s yogurt, it is so delicious!! After we ate my Dad took us back out to the horse races, and we had missed one of the races, but there was another one in like 45 minutes, so we hung out. Peter’s Mom had a Hoshur stand, and a bunch of the other Trainees were there, so we hung out there for awhile. Then Peter’s Dad showed up with someone’s horse, and was letting us get on and take pictures and stuff. I asked if I could go for a little ride, and he let me so I took it for a little trot. I think I caused quite a stir among the Mongolians!

Nadaam was really unorganized, and no one really knew what was going on at what time, even the Mongolians didn’t seem to know anything. Finally we saw a bunch of people gathering at what we assumed to be the start line, so we walked over, but of course as we were getting close all the Mongolians were leaving and going back to where all the food tents were. We could see the race kind of off in the distance, they had already started. It was the 2 year old race, and the riders are little kids, and most of them were bareback. The race was really long, the only parts you can see are the start and the finish, they ride out for like 4 km (I think) and then come back. So we stood around waiting, and finally we saw people gathering at a different place, so we went and it turned out to be the finish line. We saw them all come in, looking pretty tired. I don’t know how those kids can hang on for such a long race, bareback no less!! And the race horses are really skinny, I think part of the training is to not let them eat very much and make them sweat a lot. They award prizes to the first 5 and then to the last place finisher. They didn’t award the prizes right away though, on Tuesday at the end of Nadaam they all came to the stadium in town and were awarded their prizes. They gave away bikes and TV’s and DVD players and a couple of the winners got dirt bikes. The award ceremony was pretty cool. All the little kids came on their race horses, and the winner would sing a song and then all the kids got a sip of Aireg and poured some on their horse and then they took a victory lap around the stadium. Sometimes they would do so carrying their TV or DVD player on their horse, which was pretty funny.

After the racing on Monday night my family slaughtered a sheep. I think nearly every family slaughters a sheep or a goat during Nadaam. My family didn’t blowtorch it like Salomon’s did though. We hog-tied it and threw it in the back of the SUV and took it over to my Mom’s parents’ house. They slaughter them differently here than we do in the US. Two guys held the legs out while the sheep was on it’s back, and then a third guy cut a little hole right below the sternum and stuck his arm in and pulled the aorta out of the heart. It took him several minutes to find the aorta though, he had his arm in the sheep and was feeling around. What really surprised me was the sheep wasn’t making any noise, it was just kind of writhing its head around, obviously in some pain. Finally the guy got the aorta and then the sheep was dead in like 30 seconds. Then he skinned it and cut off the feet and cut it open and started taking out all the organs. In Mongolia the innards are considered the best part. My Dad kept telling me I was going to eat them, and I told him I would eat a little bit. But I was a little scared. I had told him how Salomon got sick after eating the goat that his family slaughtered, so I think that helped my case. The guy who was butchering the sheep took out all the organs and Grandma and my Aunt took the bucket and cleaned out the stomach and the intestines and then boiled the liver, heart, kidneys, lungs and stomach. They guy who was butchering took all the blood out of the sheep and put it in another bucket which they later mixed with flour and chopped onion. They hung the meat up on the side of the house, where I’m pretty sure it stayed all night. Then the next day two bags full of it were delivered to my house… and I’m pretty sure I’ve been eating it ever since. I was a little worried about eating meat that had hung out all night, but I figure it can’t be much worse than all the other meat I eat here, which sits out in the meat room at the market for a whole day, and who knows when it was really slaughtered…

Me, my host Dad and Dinner

When the innards were finished boiling they took them out and cut them up and everybody dug in. I ate a little piece of the liver, which was OK, and a piece of the heart. The heart was the best part, it actually tasted like tender meat (something that you really just don’t get here) and then I ate a really tiny piece of the lung. The lung was gross, it was squishy and slimy. They tried to get me to eat some of the Kidney, but I had had about enough innards to last me for quite some time. I think the reason they like the innards so much is that they are tender. I never saw what they did with the blood/flour/onion mixture, but Cady’s family also slaughtered a sheep that night, and then on Wednesday I was over there and her dad pulled out a plate of innards and microwaved them (gross!) and he kept saying it was the blood. Cady saw her family make the same mixture with the blood that my family did, and we figured out that they then stuffed it inside the intestines to make a sort of blood sausage. I don’t think I could eat that. Innards just kind of gross me out, and intestines full of blood definitely gross me out!
On Tuesday we had class again, and then a really pointless “administrative” session, and after that we went to the Stadium to watch some of the wrestling. When we got there nothing was going on, and then for about 2 hours they were doing the racing awards, and finally they got to the wrestling. It was the final round, so there were only 8 guys left. They all came out on the field and did the eagle dance and then all 4 matches went on at the same time. The rules of Nadaam wrestling here are that once a body part other than a hand or foot touches the ground you lose. And it’s single elimination. The next round was the 4 winners of the first round, and one of the matches went really quickly, but then two of the guys were taking for ever! They were just kind of standing there leaning against each other not really doing anything. That went on for like half an hour, they would lean for awhile and then break, repeat repeat repeat. Then finally they did a coin flip, and the winner of the coin flip got to have his arms on top, and then it went pretty fast after that.

The Eagle Dance

The final round took forever too. Cady and I left because we were bored, and we later heard that there was a bit of a scandal. Apparently one of the guys was the hometown favorite, and it got to the point of the coin toss and the other guy won the toss, and the crowd started to boo and hiss and people started leaving, and then the hometown boy lost, and the crowd started going out on the infield and more people left. But then somehow the hometown boy ended up winning or something, there was some talk about a bribe. I don’t really know what went on, something scandalous.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were UB Nadaam, so pretty much all that happens is people watch TV. I watched some TV on Wednesday morning with my family. It was just opening ceremonies, and I sat in the living room and was writing in my journal and watching, and then my Dad yelled at me for not watching, so that was the end of writing in my journal… They have also been making some weird food. When I came downstairs on Wednesday morning there was a big plate of weird yellowish stuff. At first I thought it was this thing that some trainee’s families have made that is gelatin with fat and meat and maybe some cucumbers or something in it. I was terrified! But it turned out to be made with raisins and this creamy stuff that usually we put on bread with sugar, which my Dad had heated up. It was actually not too bad, kind of sweet, but the texture was weird. My Dad also pulled out a plate of the sheep ribs and started eating huge pieces of fat and putting it in his Milk Tea. He knows that I don’t like fat, because every time we are cooking or there is fat around I say I don’t like it. So he didn’t try to make me eat any of the sheep fat. I did have some Milk Tea, I’ve had it a few times. It’s actually pretty good. Some people make it with a lot of salt, which makes it kind of gross, but when it’s not salty it tastes pretty much like heavy milk with a little tea in it.

One Month down.

2007-07-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

This past week has been a nice change of pace. We had our Mid-LPI on Tuesday, which went really well for me, and really for all of us who are training in Sukhbaatar. Then Wednesday we left for Darkhan for mid-center days. It was the 4th, so that evening we had a basketball game between the trainees and the current PCV’s who were in town, then they had a dinner for us of pizza, hot dogs and watermelon. It was great! The pizza was kind of the Mongolian take on pizza, and the hotdogs were a little different, but it was so nice to eat semi-American food! All the trainees were in Darkhan, and we had a nice celebration of America’s birthday, including a singing of the national anthem. :) There were plans to make our own impromptu fireworks out of toilet paper, but that never materialized, which is probably a good thing.
It was really good to see all the trainees who are in different towns! We hadn’t seen each other in almost a month. We were only in Darkhan for two nights though, and pretty much all day the three days we were there we had training sessions. Some of them were pretty entertaining (such as the hour and a half long session on condom safety during which we did skits where we all had to display our competence in putting a condom on a plastic penis, those were quite entertaining!) , but some were really freaking boring (such as the “grammar hammer” an hour and a half of extremely dry English grammar). It may have been made worse by the fact that it was really hot and we all partied pretty hard both nights so the early morning sessions were a little rough… I had kind of a scary experience one of the nights. We were down in the hotel bar and I went to use the bathroom. There are two toilets in the bathroom, each behind its own door, but only one of them is ever really used. The other one doesn’t have a light and seems more like where they store buckets and stuff. But I really had to pee and the good one was taken. So after waiting a few minutes I decided to brave the other one. So I went in and closed the door, and then when I tried to come back out I realized that there was no door knob on the inside… I didn’t close it all the way, but doors in Mongolia don’t always function quite like they should. So there I was trying to pry the door open from the top where it wasn’t shut all the way, but I guess I had pushed it closed a little more firmly than I should have, because I could NOT get it open!! After prying on it for a few minutes I decided I would just bang on it and someone would be bound to come along at some point and hear me, which eventually they did. Unfortunately I hadn’t quite thought ahead enough to not have my head directly in front of said door, so when Justin came along and saved me he pushed the door into my head. Two days later and I still have a bit of a bump on my forehead… but at least I wasn’t stuck in the bathroom of the Darkhan Hotel bar all night!
This week is Nadaam. I’m a little disappointed because Monday and Tuesday are the Sukhbaatar Nadaam, and we have some class. Today we only had language class from 8-9:30, and we are free the rest of the day so we can watch wrestling and then the horse races in the afternoon. My family said that we are all going out to Bagh 5 for the horse racing at 2. They have races all day long, and they divide them up into age groups. I'm not exactly sure how it works, there is some sort of track, but I think it's more of a cross-country race. Tuya said this morning that at 4 there is a race that "comes in" and one that "goes out" and the one that goes out at 4 comes back at 6. Two hours seems like an awfully long race...
Yesterday evening I went over to Solomon’s host family’s house where they were blow-torching a goat. They had slaughtered it and then they put hot stones and some onions and stuff inside it and then blow-torched it for like 4 hours. I didn’t get to see them slaughter it, but the whole blow-torching thing was interesting. Then when it was “done” they took the rocks out and passed them around. I’m not sure what the significance of that is, but you just take it and kind of “hot-potato” it between your hands, and then the Mongolians licked their hands after the rocks were cool. Then they took the innards out and ladled out the juice that had accumulated, put it in bowls and passed it around. It tasted like watery grease. I left before they got to passing around the innards and eating the rest of it. (Luckily, because Solomon was late for class today because he ate some goat and then spent a lot of time in the outhouse this morning...) I really have no interest in eating innards, and I also wasn’t too interested in eating propane saturated goat skin and fat. I think that is the true “Mongolian BBQ,” during the summer they cook a lot of animals by blow-torch. Goats, sheep and marmots.
I finally did get a key to my house last Tuesday! When I came home from going to lunch with Cady and going to the internet, Undarmaa sullenly handed me a key. I would love to know where that key came from, because last Monday my mom was pretty adamant that they didn’t have one for me, and she would have to go to Russia or UB to get one because there is nowhere in the Selenge Aimeg to get a key made (something I find slightly hard to believe…). But at least I no longer have to worry about being locked out of the house!

Oh Yahnaa!!

2007-07-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

One of my new favorite expressions ever is "oh yahnaa" It means "oops" or "oh no" I'm not exactly sure what the context in which you are supposed to use it is... But the day that Tuya (my language teacher) taught us the expression I tried it out on my family when I dropped something on the floor and they all busted out laughing at me. I'm really not sure why, but now it is sort of a running joke. Anytime something isn't going quite right I just say "Oh Yahnaa" and everybody laughs.
It worked especially well one night when my parents had some friends over and we were drinking beer, my Dad walked in with a giant bottle of Chinggis Vodka and set it in the middle of the table. I exclaimed "Oh Yahnaa" and looked terrified (in Mongolia once a bottle is opened it MUST be finished, and there is ALWAYS another bottle) So I guess my Dad made my sister go exchange the vodka for a case of beer, which is much more manageable. I'm lucky in that my family doesn't really drink too much. Although last week my Mom had friends over pretty much every night to drink. One night it was wine, and the other night it was beer. I'm glad they don't seem to have a great affinity for Vodka, because that is dangerous stuff...
This past weekend was pretty crazy... Saturday we learned how to chop wood, build a fire and cook some Mongolian dishes. All the parents had a meeting on Thursday with our LCF's and decided whose houses we were going to. Half of the group came to my house, which was really fun. Friday after classes we went to the market to buy all the food we needed (we had to buy meat, which was a little scary. Luckily our LCFs were with us to help) and then Saturday morning we all learned how to chop wood and then build a fire. My family has a second building which used to be a Delguur (small store) but is now closed, but it has a wood fire stove in it so we cooked out there. We made tsoyvin which is a really delicious noodle/vegetable mix that is sort of stir fried, a lot like Pad Thai, and montain buutz which are steamed dumplings with meat in them, and also tomstae hooshor which are basically handmade hotpockets with potatoes in them. We ended up with way more food than we could eat. The Peace Corps gave us a budget of 1,500 Tugriks each, which for my group added up to 12,000 Tugriks (or $12) and we could have fed about 20 people. After we were done cooking I made my Dad come out to help us eat some of the food, and he brought a bottle of Mongolian Aireg out that his Mom had made. Aireg is a word for Vodka, and Mongolian Aireg is the famous fermented Mare's milk. It is actually pretty good. It tastes a little like Sake, and is not very strong.
Sunday was a crazy day too...
Today we had our Mid-LPI (language proficiency interview) which went really well. It was kind of intimidating, we went in one by one and had to have a conversation with the tester in Mongolian. We weren't really sure what to expect, Tuya gave us a list of questions that we have learned, so we studied that a lot, but the interview wasn't quite like that. I went in and Naraa told me to tell her about my family, and then tell her about myself and then ask her questions. I did pretty well, but she said my grammar was a little off. Mongolian is a really challenging language because most of the meaning comes from endings to verbs and nouns, and the ending depends on which vowels are used in the verb stem etc... It's hard to keep it all straight. And native speakers drop syllables and vowels when speaking conversationally, so it's really hard to understand what is actually being said when half the word is missing!
I'm glad the LPI is over though, and tomorrow we get to go to Darkhan for Mid-Center Days, supposedly they are having a BBQ for us tomorrow for the 4th and they are going to make us Hamburgers!! We are all pretty excited about that. Then next week is Nadaam, so we don't have class very much and it's pretty much a week-long party from what we hear. I'm a little worried about getting locked out of my house, as I don't have a key yet and I have been locked out twice in the past two days... but hopefully that issue is getting resolved today...

Mongolian Horses

2007-06-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-18T03:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-11T02:43:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-01T18:07:00.001-07:00

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!