Mongolia or Bust

The End

2007-07-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

We have reached the end of our incredible peace corps experience. We finished in a fine fashion. We did a wonderful camping trip with a bunch of our peace corps people and mongolian friends. We rented a mini van and headed out. Our destination was a monastary at the top of the mountain. We stopped the first night at the most beautiful ger camp in Mongolia. It was located at the top of this cliff and at the bottom was a beautiful river with huge boulders everwhere. The boys went fishing (but caught nothing) and the girls looked cute. We brought along a special person to hunt a marmot for us. There was no other reason for him to be there, I don't know who he was, except that he can hunt a fine marmot. You cut the little head off, then turn it inside out, take out the guts and cut out the inside meat. Then you fill it with hot rocks and the bits of inside meat and the heart and liver. Steam was pouring out of this little marmot cooking sack. Then when it is all full you sew the neck up and blow torch the fur off. Then you cut it all up and eat it. It was the coolest bbq ever but the marmot meat is not awesome. Colin thought it tasted like squirrel which isn't a useful reference but there was not a lot of meat (mostly bone) and it was kinda wierd. The Mongolians think it tastes like horse. It decidely does not taste like chicken. That is about all I can say.

The next day we hiked to the monastary. It was 3k strait up a hill. Flys were everywhere! Millions of them! I just about died. But the monastary was beautiful, awesome views and pretty little temples. It was a wonderful camping trip.

Following was a series of goodbye parties. The first was jesse's work. We went out to dinner and fake disco. It was really nice. They gave everyone certificates of the heart to fill out about jesse and then they stood up and read them. We made a toast, recieved gifts, and then did some dancing in the resturant. At some point we were forced to teach a song and taught them the little green frog song.

Nadaam was fun but just kinda the same. We didn't stay long but my favorite part was the archery. I like it because they sing songs and stand really close to the target to make it more dangerous.

My office took us to the country side and we did a regular harhog (the hot rocks and meat in a container to cook) and we played traditional drinking games, in teams. They played with the mare's milk and since i can't drink it they made me take vodka shots instead. It was about 4 hours of drinking. It was really funny. I am actually quite good at the finger drinking game. It is like rock, paper, scissors but not.

The whole week we tried to say goodbye to people but no one wanted to say bye. So the morning that we left we met everyone at the square to say bye...but no one wanted to say bye still...so they followed us out to the very edge of town and we had wine and candy and then we said bye. It was sad and wierd. It didn't feel real so i was sad but not as sad as I might feel on the flight.

This week we have been in UB running around doing a bunch of paperwork and whatnot. Did I mention the whatnot? So much whatnot! So we are saying bye to PC people and are all ready to leave. One day left.

Thank you to our faithful and intermittent readers. Thanks to our friends and family who sent us yummy food, movies, and creature comforts. We hope that you enjoyed reading our random stories as much as we enjoyed living them.

Now to our next adventure...America or Bust.

15 days

2007-06-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

We leave site in 15 days and Mongolia in 22. How crazy is that? We have been busy getting things wrapped up at work, work plans and reports for the new volunteers, and cleaning out our ger of things we don't need or want. Our social life has also picked up. A few weeks ago we planned a big party for our VSO friend. It was a going away/wedding shower/baby shower. We played some dumb games, ate a ton of food and had a pretty good time. Last week we went with my work to a retreat center, whose main purpose is that it has a shower, and hung out for a couple of days. It was really nice and peaceful. I gave a presentation on child labor to the social workers with jesse, my boss, and a confrence attendee as translators. We also played volleyball but my team sucked. This weekend we are going to the countryside with a bunch of people. It should be good. We are planning on seeing a big monastary that was the summer retreat of Zanbatzaar who was born in our aimag and started the Mongolian alphabet among other great achievements. One of the friends we are going with is a lam so he should be able to give us some cool insight as to what we see, or at least that is what we hope. We will also go to the waterfall. We are planning a bbq for the 4th of july. Our neighbor is a missionary from Argentina and brought a grill back with her so we might even make horse burgers. Then we have our great ger give away and then nadaam and more parties with our offices and at least one more camping trip and then we are gone! Whew. Catch all that?

Lots of things to do in UB...medical, dental, paperwork, kitty things, thesis things, and last minute souvenier shopping so place your orders now.... Then we are out, for good. A wierd thing to actually process. We have been preparing for america for a while but ....we will miss our mongolia home.

Keep on keepin on....

Jesse's Big Bang

2007-05-02T00:52:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day in jesse's volunteer life. Having started community meetings last fall and working though to this spring on a Peace Corps Wheat Fund project today was the opening ceremony.

Let me back up and explain. Wheat fund is availabe in some countries where USAID serves. They designate an amount to Peace Corp for them to grant to volunteers for community projects. Jesse applied for and recieved this grant. It was for $2000 USD, with the community providing 25% in matching funds (which they met and exceeded!). The idea for the project came from area health workers. They identified our container (black) market as an area that needs to be cleaned up. So the project entailed getting a big garbage can (like half a ton) made and installed, 12 smaller garbage cans placed around the market area, implementing regular trash pickup of the big canister, and hiring 5 new garbage workers to pick up the trash, sort it, and generally keep the market areas clean. They also trained 20 new health volunteers and are opening an environmental health resource room in the market.

Today kicked off the beginning of their campaign. Radio & TV covered the event and the aimag governor and arvaikheer governor as well as jesse all spoke today. It was pretty cool. I was very proud. They were able to distribute many posters as well.

Jesse wanted to leave his mark on arvaikheer and finish his service with a bang. This accomplished both.

Thats all from us.
Cheers.

A blogging we will go

2007-04-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

so this blog is not because we have a lot to say but because we haven't blogged in a while. Today I gave a presentation about how to involve community in fighting child labor in our aimag. Now I am killing time waiting for jesse to be done with work, he couldn't finish earlier because his office was eating icecream. What a rough day. : )

We are happily planning our return to the states but are finding there are a lot of things to think about. We will land on July 22nd and be moved across country and jesse starting school by the 5th of Aug. Two very fast weeks. Everyday (now that my office has internet) I look at apartments on craigslist. Its fun. I know, I'm wierd. I also look at jobs, but it is disheartening. I will just keep crossing my fingers that something will come up that will be perfect...

We have our COS (close of service) confrence in two weeks. This is the time where PC tells us all the important info we need to return to the states and a big party with all of the M16s. Thinking about it, it is very similar to prom or something, once last hurrah before we all go our seperate ways in the big big world. Most of our class is leaving before the actual COS date (which is Aug 22). Like us, many are leaving in july.

The weather is getting nice. A cool wind but a warm sun. I think it is around 50 degrees F. Cinder loves it. Her hobbies are rolling in the dirt, shedding, and spying on the neighbors. She much perfers doing this in the sun but in a pinch dust storms and snow will do.

That is about it, like i said not a lot going on. Just wanted to check in.

Dip your day in awesome sauce.

Yakkity yak

2007-03-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

So we went to the Yak Festival and it was...awesome. We rented a car and driver for the day and caravaned out with two other cars (peace corps, VSO, and some counterparts). It was located in a soum about 80k from our town. We had a little car and had to ford two rivers and one 2k section of lava rock field, no roads. We got stuck in one little river when we fell through the ice but we got out no problem and we didn't get any flat tires from the lava field either (nearly impossible I think).

So we pull up to this spot that has yak herds all around, a bunch of horses, motorcycles, and cars. They are setting up a bunch of gers to serve food and stuff. Each bagh (kinda like a neighborhood) had its own ger (maybe 5 total). Everyone was in dels and sporting their really nice stuff (fancy belts and the horses are all decked out too). Really beautiful. It was the first time that year that many had seen eachother, there was a lot of formal greetings. Us and some french doctors (who we told about the festivities) were the only foreigners so it was pretty authentically mongolian. Yak herders were there from all over our aimag (state).

The day started out cold and windy and progressed to cold, windy, and super dusty. By the end of the day we gross. Dirty everywhere. I can't over explain how windy it was. It was really tiring.

The first event was yak racing (they are not really high endurance animals) so it was kinda slow. The yak and rider who took second, the yak just stopped moving right before the finish line, the rider pretty much had to get off and push him over the line. Yaks have really long tounges and they were hanging out of their mouths as they panted their way to the end. It was pretty funny. We were almost run over by one that decided to run through the people rather than the course. I was taking pictures at the time so i didn't even see him coming. They took bets on the animals number 9 won, he was a champion yak, but I am not sure what for, he had medals hanging from his head. Then we were invited into one of the gers for tea and food. They made yak khushuur (the fried meat pouches) which were awesome! They tasted so good, like high quality cow, kinda. Then we had yak milk products, also good, this coming from someone who usually hides the arrol (hard milk curd) in her pocket and can't drink the airag (fermented mares milk) without feeling violently ill. Yak milk is really creamy and sweet. It made everything taste nice, especially the airag. Wierd huh? Who knew i heart yak?

We were introduced to some yak twins too. They were identical, and the mongolians were really proud of them. I think twins are rare. They were really soft and pretty calm. I wussed out and didn't get on though. They were giving me the eye. Jesse didn't either so i didn't feel too bad.

After the race and the animals had a chance to rest or get switched out they had yak polo. That was pretty funny to watch because they don't really like to go where you tell them. They played with a tennis ball and sticks. While we were watching polo a drunk driver started racing around the spectators and drove through the game. People had to run out of the way of the stupid a-hole. After he terrorized us for a minute or two he sped off into the countryside. The police chased him.

So those two events pretty much took all day. We were tired and polo was taking a long time because it was a tournament. We missed the official yak lassoing competition but we saw some informal stuff at the beginning. I took about 200 pictures. Here are some of my favorites.

Spring spring everywhere

2007-03-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

That means it is cold and windy and sometimes snowy. In language training when we learned the seasons they would always ask what was your favorite season and why. I always said spring, and got the funniest looks. People hate spring here, and given the way the winters are, you know it's bad.

Not a lot going on here. Our town got wired (I think it is an election year) so I have internet at my office now and it is awesome.

Our kitty, Cinder, had a big drop in appetite recently for no good reason. We bought her camel but she wasn't eating it so we bought her horse again (what will we do when there is no more horse like in the summer and uh...america?) but she still didn't want to eat. She hates her dry cat food...so the only thing we found that works is pate. She will only eat pate if it is hand fed to her and you tell her she is a good kitty and a nice kitty and a pretty kitty. Jesse calls her is princess, yup, one spoiled kitty. And I think she is going into heat again, it is about one week on and one week off. So pretty soon she is going to wear us down and we will take her in to get fixed...

Next weekend is jesse's bday. We are going to a yak festival. How jealous are you? It is rumored they have yak polo, yak cart pulling competitions and other yak things plus a yak goods fair where you can buy yak purses and yak cheese or something. There are going to be three or so PC volunteers and about 5 VSO volunteers. It should be fun. It was supposed to be today but the government needed the yaks so they changed the date. Then yesterday they changed the town. So as long as we can find it we will be there.

I think that is all for now.

Year of the Golden Pig

2007-02-27T18:08:00.000-08:00

Well we have survived another tsagaan sar. For some reason this year was easier at people's houses. Less push to eat a ton and drink a ton, it was nice. We ended up visiting about 14 houses (!) I didn't know i knew that many people.

Last year we made pizza pockets for the work parties but this year jesse's work asked for sweets, so i made cookies. BIG mistake. stupid cookies. I borrowed our friends toaster oven and whipped up about 4 batches of cookies but we got our conversions wrong so it was super buttery...i had cowpie cookies not cookie cookies....and i could only bake 3 at a time. It took two days and much tweaking but his coworkers liked them, they don't make cookies here. For my work instead of a potluck present exchange like last year they decided to visit everyones home. So i had an 11 hour office party. Did I mention the 11 hour office party?! Jesse joined us (he ate 51 buuz that day and then groaned on the floor all night). The party came to our ger. I didn't make all the traditional things I made dessert. I felt like it would be less pressure if it was something totally new rather than trying to copy something they have been doing forever. So I made three awesome desserts (homemade chocolate pudding pie, pineapple upsidedown cake, and lemon squares). We served tea and soda, no vodka. They didn't really know what to do with it all but i think it was a nice break in the middle.

It has been crazy warm here, I think spring has started. Spring is not typically a nice season like it is in the states. Mainly it is just really windy and big temp changes, but this winter was not typical (warmest in 20 years) so maybe it will be a mild spring too.

I have some good pictures that i will try to post soon of tsagaan sar and such.

that's all for now.
cheers.

For Wally

2007-01-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

I was told that Wally checks our blog every week and calls Nan to let her know what is up in Mongolia. Well it has been a disappointing month of no new blogs, so this is for Wally.

We have lots of good news.

1) Jesse was accepted into STANFORD medical school. so that is pretty exciting, but isn't making the decision any easier. Although it is hard to say no to sunny cali and ivy league....

2) We got a new kitty as you can see. She found us. She was meowing outside our door and when we opened it up she dashed inside and refused to leave for about 7 days. Didn't even like to walk by the door. She was more than half starved. You could feel every bone in her little body. She ate 7 pounds of raw horse meat the first week! She has put on weight and isn't eating like a fiend anymore. We named her Cinder cuz within the first ten minutes she was curled up under the fireplace and covered in soot. She purrs alot and is quite cute. I call us her foster parents because we are not sure if we will take her home with us or not.

3) I got the resource room open. I am starting with a teachers club to improve spoken english and to have then utalize the resource room with their classes. We are right at semester change so we shall see who can make it. Thank you to those who sent books and materials, I couldn't have done it without you!

4) Work has been pretty good, for the last week or so jesse has daily given a presentation on quitting smoking and drinking to all the people who work at the government building. We also have been doing english club, getting ready for the english olympics in spring ( a big english competition in the aimag), and just completed our first pre-post natal parents group and health volunteers training. We did health topics (breast feeding, emotional health, choking...) and life skills ( money management, time management, exercise...). It went ok, more health volunteers than parents but i think it will be helpful to everyone in the end. The last day we did a 10 minute workout video with these 70 year old ladies. They were super cute and working hard. Wiping their brow when done. I am doing a soum social worker training tomorrow. Just found out this morning and not sure if i will have a translator, so it should be interesting.

I think that is it really. pretty good here, just got cold and super windy. i called in cold to work on friday afternoon... we are in pretty good health, my seasonal black lung is not too bad and jesse doesn't have a sinus infection.

ok thats all from us....
cheers

Funerals and Christmas

2006-12-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

On christmas we got a call that my boss's father died. So that night we went over to the house to pay our respects. The funeral tradition is very different from what we are used to so I thought I would write about it. When we entered the house it was full of people, close friends of the family and her father. The first thing that struck me is that it is very quiet. No one was talking and there must have been 15-20 people there. Sanchir and her mom were both crying. Hugging isn't big here and leaving people to their saddness is big so they kinda wept by themselves but in the group. I don't know if that makes sense. No one was comforting them i guess. We were served milk tea, candy, salad and soup. When they were able to stop crying they were hosting us. It is very inline with mongolian hospitality and ritual but so different from the states, I wanted to be doing something but couldn't. People would periodically come in and make an offering at the buddist shrine (there is actually a picture of her father and the shrine on our first photo CD, he is the man giving jesse a snuff bottle). They made an offering of yellow fat (I didn't understand this part or where it comes from) and money. The money is used to host a party 40 days after the death. When we left the image that broke my heart was of the younger daughter who was serving us all this food quietly sobbing into her sisters shoulder. We gave money and a hug to sanchir and then left. The family will go into mourning, no special clothes or anything but I think they eat white foods and refrain from drinking. This is supposed to help send the departed pure into the afterlife. On the 40th day friends and family will gather again, light candles and eat rice with rasins in it. Jesse and I actually did that part yesterday for the past governor. You typically recieve matches and incense as well. The bodies are buried away from the town and depending on your sign and his sign and the month, loved ones may not even be able to visit the burial site. There are only simple rocks to mark a site. Burial sites are not tended to the same way either because there is so much superstition around death and being near death. Usually there are candles lit in the home for rememberance rather than visiting the grave.

There are a lot more funerals here than in the states it seems.

So that was our christmas funeral lesson.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

2006-12-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

Friends and Family

We wish you a very merry christmas and a happy new year.

We have just finished up training and are back in UB for the day to get some books and food to last the winter. We are headed back to site tomorrow and plan on spending a very quiet christmas just the two of us (our site mates were distracted by shiny things in the city and will not be joining us). New Years should provide a couple of office parties and way too much kareoke.

It is officially cold here and i have gotten my first real cold of the season as well. Yay me. When boogers freeze in your nose it makes it really hard to breath, who knew?

Our other update is that Jesse got into NYU as well. That makes 5 of 7 so far. The other two will come in Feb or March.

Ok then call if you can on christmas cuz it will be depressing if you don't. : )

Short update

2006-12-12T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hiya,
Just a quick update before my meeting starts. We made it back to Mongolia just fine, and back to our site. It is cold but not the I-stepped-out-the-door-and-jesse's-beard-froze cold...yet. Right now it is more the immediate cough when i walk out the door and the slow freeze as i walk to work.

We are back in the capital to do IST training (in service training) for the M17s. Jesse is in charge of health and i am in charge of cyd. We are putting our sessions together this week and then on sat we start. It should be a busy but fine time catching up with all the newbies and not having to build fires and enjoying indoor plumbing.

Jesse has been accepted to two more schools since i last blogged....Georgetown and U Maryland. We sent in a tentative acceptance for georgetown but declined maryland's offer. We have created a decision matrix to size up all the schools and Maryland was always in the bottom three, so there you go.

I think that is all from us so far. Good luck to you as you do the holiday sprint.

cheers

Mongolia we go (again)

2006-11-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

hi all,
jesse and i have had a wonderful trip to the states. we started in Seattle hit DC, LA, and Denver plus jesse did a couple of quick jaunts to Ann Arbor, Chicago, NY and Palo Alto. He interviewed at 8 schools and has been accepted to two so far, UWashington and UMich @ Ann Arbor. We are waiting on more offers before making any decisions but will keep you posted.

We also had a wonderful time catching up with friends and family. Thank you so much to all of our hosts, without you it would have been one long uneventful trip.

Highlights:
Seattle: good conversations over pho, fakesgiving, LMW reconciliation, first interview, lady
DC: apples to apples, Liz's party, seeing the gonzali, sierra-tinis, tummy noogies, capital adventures
LA: Nana and papa visit, hanging out with dad, wine tasting, aunts, uncles and cousins, bday party and dinner
Denver: hanging with the crazy loar family, thanksgiving, and christmas in november

It is safe to say we are heading back to mongolia knowing that we are loved at home and with full hearts to serve out the rest of our time. This trip was a much needed recharge and we are (nearly) ready to brave another winter.

Cheers to all.

Gobble Gobble

2006-11-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

Jesse and I are wishing you and yours a very happy thanksgiving.

Things we are thankful for this year:
Health
Medical School acceptances
Spending time with friends and family
Not eating spam for thanksgiving
New opportunities on the horizon
New friends
Success at work
The support of our friends and family
Happy marriage

Cheers!!

America Bound

2006-10-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Are you Falling well? Are your animals fat? Are you cold?

Ok so we are super excited now. We have put all our projects to rest for the next month-ish, have gone to our four going away parties, cleaned our ger, put items-not-to-be-frozen at our friends, endured the freezing bus ride with a crazy crying mongolian man and dead sheep thawing all over the seat, and are now in UB waiting the departure of our plane. T minus 24 hours.

We have a 14 hour layover in Seoul and i brought a couple of books, my crotcheting hooks and yarn, the computer with movies, and cards. I think i will make it but it is hard to be sure. I will probably need a magazine or two to come out the other end sane.

The move went well and our new hashaa family has been really nice. Everything looks the same on the inside of the ger but when you open the door it is a totally different yard. Took some getting used to, its pretty trippy. Plus the sounds you hear are all in different spots now. We are closer to the market and things, further from my office and the shower hosue, and closer to jesse's work. I took a ton of pictures and *gasp* we FINALLY got the second pict CD burned so it has a little bit of everything from the last year including the move. We will get on the distributing of it all once we reach the states.

Jesse did get another interview offer, this time to Maryland so that makes 6. 6 seems like a reasonable number and we are looking forward to everyone coming to where we live (wherever that may be). Matthew, lady, and others are welcome! : ) Jesse and i both showered but are afraid the sheep smell might be harder than that to shake so i am guessing people are going to want to leave us alone until we shower some more and wash some clothes and THEN all are welcome.

Look out america the Loars are on the move.

It is what it is

2006-10-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hi ya'll

So Jesse and I have been keeping busy planning our trip to the states (what to eat, where to shop, what movies to see, did i mention what to eat?) and getting our current projects wrapped up or passed along. Jesse now has 5 interviews (UWashington, Georgetown, U Michigan, U Colorado, and Northwestern). Very exciting stuff, and perhaps a few more will come in before we go...

J has been working with the local AA chapter here and is giving a presentation today to the Technical college about safe and responsible drinking. Yesterday we had a training at a local hospital for new parents. It was a mix of new/young moms and neighborhood health volunteers...good capacity building opportunity. We had a good turn out and ended up on TV. Monday I am doing a training of trainers for my work on the mentoring program so they can do it while i am gone and have been working hard on getting the resource room put together. I think one more day and it's good. Jesse has started a new "wheat fund project" (a grant of $2000 given by the embassy from extra money generated by the selling of america's extra wheat or some such). He did a needs assessment with the community and they identified the open container market as a place they want to clean up. So they are proposing that regular trash pick up and garbage containers go in. The application process is pretty lengthy so he will be working on it in the states i suppose. But it should be good and a nice little legacy if it all works out.

Our world was turned a little upside down last week when we were unexpecdidly told we will have to move. Our hashaa (yard) is being sold and we needed to find a new place to live before we left for the states. We found out on Thursday and they wanted to move us that Sunday but it was too soon. Peace Corps happened to be here doing the fall checks on placements so were able to scope out some possible places. It ended up that most options (there were only a few since we still wanted to live in a ger) did not meet some standard. But we did find a new yard to pitch our ger, jesse's director's yard. Don't know much about the family. They just built a new house and there is the mom, dad, daughter and grandma living there. We move on Friday. We shall see how it goes. I think they will drop our ger, then pack the furniture (with all our stuff stashed in it because there aren't boxes or anything to pack into) and then move the furniture set it back up and then put the ger back up around it. I will take pictures to be sure.

Other than all that things are going well. A little stressful but that is ok. Hope to see many of you soon.

Cheers.

Trust me, I'm a doctor

2006-09-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

ok not yet but jesse is starting to get interviews to medical school! Yippee.....! Kinda nerve wracking actually. His first interview offer is to Georgetown and the second is to Northwestern. Both really good programs. The interview windows are for october but georgetown said whenever he comes home they would interview him and he hasn't talked to northwestern. so the earliest jesse would be coming home would be the middle of Oct. Few short weeks away. Hard to commit to a time without knowing if more schools will offer slots and when... blah.

On the Mongolia front we have been keeping busy at work. I just went on a trip to the countryside and gave two presentations durring "young family" day in a very remote soum. One was on baby choking and nutrition (sorta related) and the benefits of team building games to youth leaders at the secondary school. It was fun. I am making slow progress on the resource room (waiting on two book shipments and my counterparts to get a carpenter to come in) and am beginning training for our new "Big Brother, Big Sister" mentor program set to start the beginning of October. This weekend we hung out at the trade fair. They had zucchine like last year but this year we bought three not just one. And they had hot peppers so i think we will can some salsa. very exciting.

Jesse has been working hard too. he organized a presentation at the trade fair (one on dairy safety and one as an health info fair). He has also been working on getting some new AIDS programs up and going and getting a project planning workhop off the ground. Rumors of health TV shows also abound. We have both been working with kids at the new english speakers club and get some satisfaction from that.

Nothing new with the ger...we winterized last weekend and then it promtly got warm again but no complaints from me.

Ok I think that is all. Just a quick update.

Cheers.

the wait is over

2006-09-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

it snowed yesterday. the wait for winter is over. it is officially cold and windy.

: )

waiting for winter

2006-09-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

I think waiting for winter will be the title of my book on Mongolia. It pretty much sums it up. We have been enjoying the last moments of summer. School started on the first so everyone is back in town and kids are everywhere! Last weekend I did a girls weekend in the gobi. It was really fun. We ate, drank, and made merry. Went to an oasis and a old monastary ruin in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by a nasty bog that we had to wade through. Two people fell in and a couple of near misses. We were covered in mud and laughing our butts off. Jesse did a quick in and out of the capital for a pc training while I was away and then hung out with our new site mates.

We have two new site mates, both english teachers. They seem pretty cool. It is hard starting all over again making friends (especially when they live in the same apartment as our old friends) but it is working out fine considering my aversion to people.

This weekend jesse me and two of our site mates went with some mongolian friends to the countryside. We hiked up a couple of hills that were littered with petroglyphs. Someone did a count (not our group) and came up with a number of around 300. There were some really old simple drawings and some "newer" looking ones with a little more detail that were chiseled into the rock. Then we went on a picnic near some rocks. Had fun just hanging out but then one of the girls we were with got an allergic reaction and we hastily packed up and drove to the emergency room. She sounds like she is recovering ok but it was a little hairy for a while. New resolution: carry first aid at all times.

We are excited to start back to work in earnest and have some fun work projects on the horizon I think.

The weather is already seattle winter level but is just the start of fall. We had a rather wet cold summer so I think winter might be colder than last year. This morning we could see our breath in the ger. So gearing back up for winter and all that it entails but the break in the middle for jesse's med school interviews will help us make it through.

Hope all is well. Gotta get off the internet now.

Cheers!

Just Checking

2006-07-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I am wondering if people who have English Literacy Resource Room materials in the mail or in the back of the closet waiting to be mailed could respond to this post. I would like to get an idea of the types of things coming, amount coming, and timing so I can make plans for the opening ceremony and literacy room events.

Thanks!

My Summer Vacation

2006-07-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

So we are I guess officially done with our summer vacation...leave tomorrow to go back to site. To sum it up, it was awesome. Let me give you the low down:

Lady and Ken came in on Wednesday the 5th and I met them at the train station. Lady cried and I just had something in my eye. The next day, with the help of some friend of a friend action we were able to get into a car and go down to arvaikheer. The driver was super great. He was telling Ken all about things as we passed them (in Mongolian) and Ken smiled and nodded. Lady feared for her life in the back seat and we bumped our heads a couple times as the car became air born. At one point we turned around to pick up a dead marmot and place it in between the windshield and the windshield wiper. I think he forgot it was there because he turned the wipers on and the marmot went across the window like a little marmot flag. When we arrived at our ger jesse was there to greet us moments after putting the finishing touches on the ger. We relaxed, opened presents and made some good food.

While in Arvaikheer we had lunch with my boss, toured the children's center where I worked, Ken did music lessons for his new muurn huur, we climbed a mountain to look at petroglyphs (which rock), went to a concert (where the shaman guy caught the curtans and himself on fire accidentally, no one was hurt), and did nadaam for a day.

Then we went to Kharkhorum, the ancient capital and stayed at a ger camp. It was cold. Oddly cold. We hitched a ride with some tour company since we didn't have a driver coming until the next day and toured around the huge monestary. It was beautiful. Tragic history. At one point it had over 10,000 lams living in its walls, now it has like 30. It was mostly distroyed by the russian purges. The next day we took off for White Lake.

White lake was really pretty. Huge lake surrounded by volcanos. We stayed at a ger family camp thing with a couple of other tourists. We had some good cultural exchanges. My highlight was that the mongolians were tripped out jesse was speaking mongolian to them while Ken played the muurn huur and I fed them s'mores. White Lake however was colder and rainer than Kharkhorum so i stayed pretty close to the ger and fire. The boys did do a little fishing and everyone did a little hiking.

Then we headed back to UB but it was a two day trip so we made another stop at ulgii lake. This one has the thickest, largest swarm of mysquitos (sp?) that I have ever seen, so after soaking ourselves in deet we were back outside. Jesse got all wet trying to get some fish and mom and I drank wine and watched. Much better than fishing i think.

When we got to UB the next day we had a nice dinner and just hung out. On Saturday we went to this amazing performance called tumen ekh. They did all the traditional things: throat singing, dancing, shaman dances, all the cool instraments, and contortion. It was amazing. Really the best we have seen. Then right outside there was this kazak ger. So we went inside for another little show. The man told us all about the kazak traditions, ger, lifestyle, eagle hunting, and food things. It was really fun and informative. Then we went out to another nice dinner.

The following day we were scheduled to go to a nature reserve but we wussed out and stayed at the hotel. We were super tired.

Our last adventure took us to gan-galuut nature reserve ger camp. This was by far everyone's favorite I think. It had nice weather, right on the river (but no bugs) and beautiful hills and fun things to do. We did a horse back ride for a couple of hours. My horse was being a jerk. But everyone else seemed to have a good time. Jesse was galloping off (not on purpose) but looking like a master horseman. Ken knew how to ride so had a good time and lady's horse was used to following other horses so she was always riding someones butt. We fished, napped, hiked and ate harhog (the one where they put hot stones and meat in a pot to cook). It was really good.

On wednesday back in UB was lady's birthday. We just kinda dinked around the city and then took her out for a wonderful indian food dinner. Sat in a little tent and lounged on the floor pillows. It was fun, good birthday day.

That pretty much concludes the Loar summer vacation recap. We are now headed back to site and hopefully will be busy for a while.

That is all from us...over and out.

In loving memory...

2006-06-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

Byamba

September 05-June 06

Summer time in the city?

2006-06-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

It is so hot today. No joke two weeks ago it was snowing and now it is oppresively hot. Blah.

We are still in Darkhan. We just finished our first week of technical sessions. They are going well. I taught on how to give presentations when you don't know much. Which is most of the time. Jesse taught on health promotion in numerous settings. We both went on field trips to various sites and gave overviews of how it is (generally) in Mongolia. The trainees seem overwhelmed but good.

We have had the opportunity to host a bunch of people who bounce through Darkhan. So it has been fun to catch up with everyone who we hardly ever see. Still enjoying our awesome digs. Besides the fact that it rains inside when it rains outside and we broke the cold water knob in the bathroom it all seems to be going swimmingly.

Claire the puppy is doing well. She is huge. Swear she grew an inch overnight. Her bladder control is better but not perfect. Lots of walking up and down 5 flights of stairs to take her out to "get busy" (that is the go potty command). She sits like a champ and is learning "off" and "wait." Takes a lot of energy to train a puppy. Jesse and I have decided for sure no babies and puppies at the same time. That would equal no sleep and lots of grumpy.

We are quickly approaching our last weekend here. Jesse leaves next friday to return home. I follow a week later with lady and ken. A vacation will be really nice.

I can't think of anything very exciting to write on but that is the update nevertheless.
Cheers!

Oh Boy!

2006-05-31T17:03:00.000-07:00

So it has been a crazy crazy week, or maybe it has been two weeks? I don't remember. We have had very little down time but it has been good. Jesse and I arrived in Darkhan and moved into an apartment. It has a shower and hot water and is pretty awesome. The only downside is that there are only singe beds in seperate rooms. We pulled the mattresses off and are sleeping on the floor in the kitchen, so it is kind of ger like but square not round. We have been in TOT (Training of Trainers) last week and this week. Last week it was a lot of peace corps focused stuff but this week has been focused on getting session outlines prepared for the summer. Last wednesday my group went up to Sukhbataar where the CYD people will be training. It is right on the Russian boarder and is really beautiful. There are trees and a river up there. Almost everyone lives in a house because wood is so plentiful, which is the exact opposite of Arvaikheer. We visisted all of the host families and looked at where the trainees will be staying. Met with a bunch of organizations and I think training this year for CYD is going to be really busy but good. Jesse and I have been put in charge of our respective sectors to hash out training schedule, topics and whatnot. Balancing act for sure.

Today is a holiday in Mongolia, women and children's day. We have a staff retreat and will be going to a children's camp to do group bonding and sports. I have allergies now (never had them in the states) so i may sit stuff out, plus I prefer not to run for pleasure. So we shall see. Jesse has had lots of boy time (all the other trainers but one are boys) and has been playing basketball a couple nights a week so I am guessing there will be a hot game today.

Saturday we saw jesse's host mom and almost didn't recognize her. She lost a ton of weight and cut her hair. She looks good. She is getting another volunteer this year. She gave jesse a 5 minute hug. We are going out there on saturday to see the rest of the family. On sunday I randomly ran into my host sister at the black market. I had a feeling i would see someone and i did. crazy.

Last night we had mexican night and invited over some trainers and some of our new mongolian counterparts. They liked everthing. Amazing. I thought for sure they would just pick at food but everyone got their eat on. Then we watched the story of the weeping camel. Now that i understand mongolian the subtitiles are really funny, not quite a literal translation for sure.

Two nights ago our friends resuced a little puppy and we went over to play with her. They are going to Russia for the next three weeks so we may get to puppy sit. I am excited.

We head up to UB on sunday this week to welcome in the new volunteers on midnight monday. There will be a ton of current volunteers there at the airport. It should be really fun. Then training starts and all our preperations hopefully will bear out.

This has been a really random post and i don't even know if i covered everything but i gotta get in a micro so i will go. Hope the other half is living well. Cheers!

We are Off

2006-05-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Ok so it is 9am and we are ready to rock and roll our way to Darkhan. We have been in UB for the week doing medical stuff...we are both healthy and cavity free (for once)...and working on our training schedule. It is going to be a very busy time for the new PCTs but i think it will be 100 times better than our training was, or at least the technical sessions that jesse and I are doing. : )

We are training up in Sukhbataar which is right on the russian boarder. Supposed to be pretty but it is 2 hours each way so a little bit of a trek three days a week.

The newbies come on June 5th. There are a ton of volunteers to come up and welcome them at the airport. The M15 did it for us last year and it was crazy. Quite the welcome.

Ok we are loading up our car so i gotta go but will send some updates soon.

We are going to visit host families soon so that should be wierd and mostly good i think.

Cheers.

Goodies

2006-05-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

So Jesse and I sat down this weekend and put together another...drum roll please....picture CD! Aptly titled "Picture CD 2." So we will send it out to the Loars to make copies and pass along to friends and family. You will see amazing mongolian sights and your favorite PCVs. It is going to be huge.

As far as updates not a lot. It snowed yesterday and today so that is random. Working on Jesse's med school stuff and contimplating our lives so that is fun. The phone system is down today so I am going through texting withdrawls, not pretty.

Ok just thought I would let you all know to be anxiously expecting the mailman to give you something great in the next 7-12 weeks. : )

Words of wisdom today brought to you by John "Palindrome" Koehn: Step on no pets.

May Day

2006-04-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

Hiya hiya,

My internet is being dumb so I hope this posts....

Last week Jesse and I, along with our counterparts, participated in a Radio Broadcast training. It was really good, we learned how to write and read for the radio and at the end of the week produced a ten minute spot. Our group focused on Vit. A, and the other group teen smoking. The local FM station has agreed to air them. It was an intense week with lots of homework, felt like school all over again, up till midnight and then up early to finish reading. We completed the program however with a Radio Broadcast Standard Competancy level. So we are excited and more importantly our counterparts are excited at using the radio to advance our causes.

This week we are playing catch up and trying to get things in order before we are gone for seven weeks. We go to UB at the middle of the month for the one year health check up and then strait on to Darkhan for our Training of Trainers and to welcome the 17s. I am on the list for new 17s to email with questions. Lots of excited trainees on their way out. They are increasing the program this year to 65 people. Should be cool. Our site will be getting two new TEFLs.

Last week it snowed twice, more snow than we got the whole "winter" and today it is beautiful outside. Winter is like crazy mongolia winter and then spring is like a seattle winter but instead of lots of rain it is wind. However we had our first fire free night in over 8 months on Saturday. Winter is so long and then suddenly it is summer. There are a few green pieces of grass too.

Jesse's finger is healing nicely. Only a little scar I think but if you look at it strait on his finger is a new shape now. My cough is nearly gone, nothing like coughing for a month strait.

As for Byamba, her puppy playmate went to live in the hodoo so she was a little bored outside for the last week or so. Then on Sat. she found a new friend. We thought B was big but this new cat is three of her. SO big. Now they hang out in the yard and jump on the ger and chase bugs and such. Unfortunately the other kitty is in heat so she is a little annoying. Doesn't know what to do with B but keeps hoping she will get lucky. Our poor fixed kitty has no idea what is going on.

Well that is all from the LoarMongolia crew, for now. Cheers!

beautiful day

2006-04-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

It is so nice out today. The sun is shining AND producing heat. Amazing.

Some exciting things to report this week:
Health- Jesse did a doozy to his finger the other day chopping wood the fault of either the axe or broken glass on the ground. Nasty gross looking thing that is still bleeding two days later. We called the medical office but there is nothing they can do (doesn't require stiches or anything) so he is just keeping it clean and wrapped. Good news, he can keep the finger, bad news will leave big scar. : ) I have been sick for about two weeks with some dumb lung thing. But am on the mends now and should be fine by the weekend.

Summer- Jesse and I were both accepted as trainers for the month of June so we will be imparting all sorts of wisdom on the new M17 group. HA! We are excited about it. We will be attending the Training of Trainers in late May and then train in Darkhan and surrounding areas in June. So it should be a busy but nice way to spend a month.

We are also getting ready to say goodbye to our site mates as everyone will be leaving in June. We have had a lot of fun with them and will miss them alot. We should be getting 2 M17s to replace them so we are crossing our fingers for cool kids.

We then go from Darkhan to UB to pick up my mom and Ken for two weeks of fun. We are planning on doing Nadaam and the gobi (dino bones) and some places around our aimag. Should be cool because we haven't really had a chance to explore around mongolia much.

Work- I have been out of work sick off an on for the last two weeks so not much to report on my end. Next week we are attending a radio training to write radio spots, should be cool. Jesse is crazy busy however. Doing some work with the Dairy market trying to make it safer. Worked with an Australian guy this week and will be busy with that till we leave. Yesterday he took a day trip with a camera crew to check out sanitation of children's places in some area soums for a TV spot. One place was really nice and the other not so nice so it should be an interesting comparison.

I think that is all I have in the way of updates. Hope all is well in your world.

Cheers!

Shout Out!

2006-04-03T01:08:00.000-07:00

Hi ya’ll, I wanted to fill you in on a project I am doing and give you an opportunity to get involved if you are interested.

When I first got here my English skills were in high demand. Everyone wants to learn English and everyone wanted help to learn. Children and adults alike were eager for lessons. However I was reluctant to dedicate too much time to teaching English because 1) I am not a TEFL volunteer, 2) I didn’t want them to think that was all I could do, 3) I wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of teaching English because in some weird way it felt like proselytizing, the opposite of what I wanted to do. However, after many discussions with my counterparts and more careful observation I have come to realize that high English language ability opens the door to many opportunities. For example, English speakers get higher paying jobs and are able to search the internet for information or grant opportunities for their organizations. Mongolians are isolated from the rest of the world by their language. English helps to create partnerships and provide opportunities. So who am I to deny people who want to learn an opportunity?

Therefore, on the request of my supervisor, I am starting an English Literacy Resource Room. It is geared towards English learners, those who want to learn, and teachers. This is where you come in. We need books. Our goal is to open the center in September-October 2006 (the start of the new school year) with around 500 books. If you have children’s books or young adult literature (between the US grade reading equivalents of K-6), magazines, maps, dictionaries, teaching materials, or anything you think children would like to read send it my way. I say children but it is ages 8-18. Beyond books the center also needs literacy improvement tools like a CD or cassette player with headphones to listen to songs or speaking programs (like books on tape). Posters for the walls and holiday decorations are also appreciated. If you want to make a monetary contribution it will go towards tables, chairs, and bookshelves. A table and chair combo costs around $25 USD. Please email my mom, florence, for information on where to send a check...she will deposit in our account and we will withdraw equivelent in Tugreks here.

Once you have books and whatnot assembled send it via M-bags (you can ask your local post office more about this). The M-bags take 3-6 months to reach Mongolia but only cost $3 per pound. Time line wise if you send books by May or early June they should get here in time for the grand opening.

As we get things together I will post pictures and let you know our progress. Let me know if you have any questions.

The mailing address is:
Uvurkhangai aimag 212900
Arvaikheer city
P.O Box 626
Mongolia
Jesse and Sierra Loar

I appreciate your support, this project will not be successful without you. Thanks for all you do!

For all you Jesse fans out there

2006-03-22T18:50:00.000-08:00

I forgot to post important information about jesse. So here it goes....

When we were at our PDM confrence at the beginning of the month in UB we had the US ambassador come give a speech and have lunch with us. This actually happens everytime we get together as a group but it is still cool. Only a couple people are chosen to sit at the VIP table with her and Jesse and his counterpart were one of them. This is PCs 15th year in Mongolia so there were two newspapers and a TV crew or two there to cover the event. Jesse ended up being one of two people quoted in the paper (mis quoted actually, they said he works at the Children's Center but that is me) and was also on Mongolian national television. He was interviewed and answered in Mongolian. What a stud. The night it aired we got about 15 texts from people all over that saw him on TV and when we got back to Arvaikheer our veggie ladies were very excited to talk to him about it and let him know they saw him.

Today jesse and his office were part of a music video. One of the doctors is a singer so the camera crew came and jesse and his peoples walked out the door and got in a jeep and drove around the block. Some part of this i am assuming will go into the video. Look for it on MTV Mongolia. So jesse is famous now for at least another 15 minutes.

That is all for now. Keep on keepin on.

Spring (?)

2006-03-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

The weather is doing the manic spring thing, which I take as a good sign. Warm one day (it was in the 40s! I only wore one pair of pants and my fleece, it was awesome) then three days of unrelenting wind storm. If it ever rained here I would think that little green things would be poking through the ground, but rain doesn't come till june...so i will have to wait on that.

Since coming back from our Program Design and Management Training things have been pretty slow. Most of Jesse and mines co-workers are in the countryside or in UB. So no new projects to report.

On a positive free time side one of our friends came and stayed with us for the week. We had fun. It was a business trip for her so she was occupied durring the day and then we had fun in the evening. Our site mates and us went into a food frenzy and so we have been eating a ton of food all week. Our guest went away a little fatter and a little happier. She even got along with Byamba.

Not a lot on the horizon, I think I am getting sick, again but just mild. Jesse is sort of looking forward to his birthday. He doesn't really want to do anything but we have cake and some presents for him to open. 25 on the 25th. Whoo!

Jesse at present is working on his personal statement for med school admissions. So he is grumpy a lot. He is on his second version and feels a little better about it so 15 more versions and it should be really good.

Well, I guess that is all for now. I am super sleepy so if nothing makes sense then read next weeks post and maybe it will be better.

* In mongolia when the seasons turn they ask "Are you Springing well?"

So I hope you all are springing well. Cheers.

the darndest thing part two

2006-02-26T18:10:00.000-08:00

...so after returning from work for lunch my camel friend turned out to be what was for dinner. The head and neck in one part of the lawn, the guts in another. It was slightly tramatic and more than a little gross. So there you go, you never know what will happen in Mongolia.

Perhaps I won't put the pictures of him up.

The darndest thing happened....

2006-02-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

This morning, after feeding our cute but not smart puppies, Jesse and I headed off to work. Half way out of the hashaa jesse spots something out of the corner of his eye...a HUGE camel...next door. It was so random and so awesome. We were able to snap a couple of pictures before our camera died so i will pass those along as soon as the batteries recharge.

This camel is large. And he was tied up right next to our fence. He was lying down, still saddled, just chillin. He had sweat frozen to his fur so perhaps he just rode in that morning. He wasn't there last night!

It was just one of those cool moments that don't happen everywhere. Reminds me that I am living in Mongolia and liking it.

Hope all is well in your camel free lives. Cheers.

Picture Time!

2006-02-15T22:28:00.000-08:00

Ask 100 times and you shall recieve photos!

These are from Tsagaan Sar.

Picture 1:
Taken from the gandaan on one of our eating outings. Just a cool shot.

Picture 2:
Jesse and I in our cute outfits.

Picture 3:
Buddist shrine. One of the more elaborate ones I saw on our travels. The man in the photo is my boss's dad.

Picture 4:
Jesse and the dad exchanging snuff bottles. Note the fur hat.

Picture 5 and 6:
Traditional tables set for tsagaan sar. The sheep back and butt is supposed to bring good fortune the more fat there is. The stacks of bread I don't understand but they are also supposed to be associated with luck. They are toped with milk products and decorated with candy. All white food which is the pure and good food. Tsagaan Sar means white month.

Picture 7:
Half of our ger. You are looking at the kitchen.

Year of the Dog

2006-02-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

...or maybe it is year of the Dawg?

Well this will be my official report on Tsagaan Tsar. It had a lot of build up and was not as bad as i thought it might be. We decided not to host any parties at our house and that decreased the pressure but we were invited out a lot. We ended up going to eight houses and two work parties.

Tsagaan sar officially began on a Monday but there is a big family dinner that happens the tsagaan sar eve. Our site mate was alone durring this time so we invited her up for a tsagaan tsar eve eve dinner that was fun. On the true tsagaan tsar eve we were invited to our hashaa families house to share in the meal, or so we thought. We got there and we were the only ones eating. But she made all veggie food for me (I have a strict no meat in other people's houses policy now) which was very nice. I brought over pizza pockets and a cake, they ate those in record time. After we left they went to the in-laws for their dinner. The next morning at sunrise Jesse and our hashaa dad went to the sacred mountain and walked around the ovoo and threw "white food" (anything not containing meat, i think they threw candy and milk). The senior male of each family is supposed to make the pilgramage to bring their family luck for the coming year. Jesse and Saikhanaa were among the first on the mountain so we should be very lucky this year. They are also supposed to wear new clothes. Jesse recieved a new deel shirt from the family that he wore (very handsome) and his deel.

The first day of tsagaan sar is family day. You limit your visits to only family. We didn't have much to do this day but we were invited to our hashaa family's house to meet the extended family. The husband wife teams wore matching deels so it was easy to tell who belonged together.

The second day is for friends and the third day is for work. We went to three houses on Tuesday. The ritual is pretty much the same at every house. You enter, take off coat, do formal greeting (say amar sain yy and depending on who is older extend your arms and place them under the older person. The older person then "kisses" both cheeks, but "kisses" are actually sniffs), then you sit down, and eat white food first. Depending on the family what it is could be different. Some houses serve milk, or airag, or milk tea. Then they pass you the candy bowl. You recieve with two hands, as a sign of respect, and pass it along the line. Then you recieve milk tea. At some point in this process someone might bring out their sniff bottle and pass it to you. There is ritual involved in this too. You accept with your right hand, lift the cap and smell in both sides of your nose, then pass it back with your right hand making sure the top is loose. Sniff bottles are a very friendly form of greeting. Then comes the salads (mongolias make two kinds of salads and both are made with vinegar, smart since it is the same salad for a week, but at two houses we were served a fruit salad that we taught at one of our trainings on healthy eating, how cool is that? they didn't even know we were coming). Then comes lots of drinks. It varies on the house but usually people open new bottles for each group of guests. So they open new vodka, new wine, new soda, and give you mongol made beer (it is made with fruit, primarially rasions and reminds me of maasai honey beer). Buuz are put on to steam when you come in the door and usually arrive on the table 20-25 minutes after arriving. Then you are commanded to eat, eat, eat and drink drink drink. The command form of the word is considered polite. You are not asked if you want something it is provided for you. Usually a man takes up the position of drink pourer. For vodka for example he will pass you a shot, you can take it or you can put it to your lips and pass it back. Then he adds more to the glass, regarless of which course you choose, and pass it to the next person. The same goes for wine in most cases. Tea you are given your own bowl. After you eat your fill and drink your fill you indicate that it is time to go. They tell you to sit and eat some more and then they give you a small gift. We got candy at every place we went and then we also got scarves, sweaters, shampoo, necklace... Then you must eat a white food again before you leave. When all this is over you move to the next house and do the same thing all over again.

You will be proud to know that jesse ate 125 buuz over the course of the week. Based on the informal poll taken of the western region, he is one of the highest buuz eaters.

It was pretty fun actually, tiring and filling, but fun. We were invited out every day that week. The official holiday is monday, tuesday, wednesday but then for 15 days after people may visit eachother. This is usually the time when people go to the hoodoo to see their countryside relatives.

Jesse and I both hit the ground running this week getting ready for numerous presentations. I am doing a capacity training today (i found out wednesday, not enough time for my translator, i think we won't have all the materials we need but we are giving it to officials from out of town so it is crummy), and jesse is finishing up a poster and two flyers he put together for world vision, then on wednesday we have the kindergartener training, friday i have a meeting with my TAN boss from UB, and a scout training that day, the next day (sat) I am supposed to help with a TAN event all day and then on the 20th (mon) I have an all day life skills training. Whew! Peace corps is crazy busy followed by bouts of sheer bordem. The next week however we go to UB (again) for our PDM training. That is a week long. No one has talked about March yet but hopefully we can spread things out a bit more.

The weather here has been wierd. One day it was record cold at night, and our little ger everything froze, and then the next week it is nice (not above freezing but not -45 either). Today it is nice.

We have been entertaining a lot at our house which is fun but a little tiring. Last night we had my boss and her son over for dinner. It went ok. I made a stir fry and fried tofu. I only added salt and black pepper to the stir fry becuase i didn't want to make it too spiced for them but the son had trouble eating it because he thought it was too spicy. I can't win. Then I had made a cake (from scratch, so impressed with myself) and jesse was in charge of steaming it but it kept blowing our fuse every 15 seconds so he put it on the wood stove to steam and something happened in that process because when i served it last night it was pretty much all dough. Very sad, but it looked pretty. AND my boss has a phobia of cats because she started singing a song and yelling everytime byambaa got withing 3 feet of her. So it was an interesting night, not horrible but not super.

Next week or when we get back from pdm we have requests for cooking lessons. Our mongolian friend wants to learn how to make pizza and mexican. So we shall see how that goes.

Ok that is all from me for now. Take care.

weather report

2006-01-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

i am looking outside my window at work and i can't see across the street because the wind is blowing so hard the dust is swirling about and blocking all line of sight. If we were in twister country i would say there is a twister coming. it is crazy. i am putting off walking home because i am afraid that my ear might freeze off. Word on the street is that it is going to get worse over the holiday weekend. Snow is coming and more wind. Wind creates quite a heating challenge in the ger because it sucks all the heat out the top. blah.

However on the up side, at lunch today, it begins the start of a 5 day weekend. So bad weather or no, I am going to enjoy it.

That pretty much brings you up to speed on the weather happenings of arvaikheer.

On a puppy note: i have finished naming all of the puppies....flash & bernard you know, cole (he is all black, get it?), doogers, and scooter (he is small and walks really cute). I introduced byamba to them the other day but they didn't seem to hit it off. kitty sniffed and the puppies just sat there. oh well.

What's to know?

2006-01-18T18:28:00.000-08:00

Hiya, actually got some free internet time and thought i would make use of it.

The winter sickness is upon our household. Jesse has had a sinus infection that won't stop and i oddly have an ear infection. so, many calls to the peace corps medical officer. Oh, and i think we both have black lung. How cool is that? I am always trying to get illnesses that are old fashioned like black lung, consumption, grip, what have you. But for all my joking....black lung it is. The air is really cold here, you don't need to be reminded of that, so all the fire smoke and coal smoke that people burn just sits on top of the town. It looks worse that LA, really awful. Well it makes our little lungs irritated and so we have coughs and runny noses and the like. Just like Black Lung no way to be rid of it till spring. this is me self diagnoising here but i think i am on to something.

what else...byamba is recovering from her operation but her belly is still bare-ish. I am a little sad about it because she will look like chemo kitty when all our mongolian friends and co-workers come over, and since they dont like cats to begin with...she won't be winning any hearts.

The puppies are still really cute. their eyes are open and their feet point down instead of out to the sides so they can kinda walk now rather than scoot.

Work is pretty good. I have been working on some new presentations that are coming along. the next step is to present them to my work and some kids for feed back and training. At TAN i am writing surveys that are making me remember back to the Evans school and I think i did ok so that was kinda nice. jesse and i did another kindergarden parent training yesterday. Our translater was 45 min. late and we planned a pretty interactive session that ended up being like pulling teeth so we will have to rework something there. kinda a lousy way to end the day. Jesse is randomly busy. he is putting together posters for World Vision. The AIDS poster they want to be themed: happy families don't have aids. For a variety of reasons that is not the best message to promote so he is working on tweaking it. he is doing an anti-smoking presentation on monday with one of his co-workers.

We are stocking up on food for tsagaan sar. it looks like we can get away with pretty much anything because we are foreigners. so i am making carmel corn, mongolians like sugar (like me) and they get a kick out of popcorn so I think that will be good, pizza hosher (this could be hit or miss, the tomato sauce might throw them), deviled eggs (again hit or miss but pretty tame all around), and scones. something like that at least. i think they will be tired of boats and will get a kick out of our stuff. at least that is my hope. There is also a tradition, i just found out of having a big dinner of tsagaan sar eve. so we invited our site mate (minus her spouse who is in the states doing the foreign service interview this month) to our house.

Other than that we are just trying to keep up on our new years resolutions...keep the house clean, lose weight, study mongolian....the usual. Keep up the emails and the posts. take care.

Happy New Year

2006-01-05T22:48:00.000-08:00

Last time I posted I was in UB and we are back again. After a horrible micro ride home from UB two weeks ago (it took 12 hours, when it usually takes 8-9, and a guy was drunk and trying to pick fights and then passed out and drooled on everyone, and i didn't have a seat so much as a metal bar that gave me bruises) we discovered that our kitty was in heat. I don't know how many of you have tried to live with a cat in heat in a ger, but it is not pretty. So we turned back around and took her to the vet to get fixed and the last of her shots. She was so mad and so sore on Tuesday when we picked her up I wanted to cry. But we got her home and wrapped her in a blanket and a hot water bottle and she mostly slept the rest of the day and night. Now she is doing fine but her whole stomache is shaved so she gets cold pretty easily. Tonight we are taking a car back but it has no heat so she will ride in our coats pretty much the whole way.

It has been a good trip to the city. Lots of sleep in time and relaxing with friends. Plus unlimited free internet. So that is nice. Today we had our first salad since coming to mongolia and it was so good. : )

New years was good. We had friends over to the ger and we drank bad champagne out of a mug and lit sparklers at midnight. We also had a wonderful surprise on new years eve morning. Our hashaa dog had 5 puppies. So of course I was out there every hour to check on them. It was super cold that day with bad wind but mommy was doing a good job of keeping them warm. Jesse and I have taken it upon ourselves to feed her about 3 times a day so they all stay healthy. When we get back they should have their eyes open (I think). They are almost all black but one has little brown eyebrows and a white chest and one has white paws and a white line down its spine. I have named those two because I can tell them from the rest of the litter. The one with white is flash and the other one is bernard.

Monday we are back to work for real....for about a week and then it is tsagaan tsar and an official 3 day holiday which ends up to be more like a week or two. Most of the kids get pulled out of school to help clean the houses and make boats (think steamed meat dumplings). Our family is making 1500 boats. Then everyone gets in new clothes and goes to their friends and families houses to eat boats, drink vodka, and give presents. It sounds like it will make me tired. But it is the biggest holiday of the year. Most of the previous class (M15) are going to thailand durring this time because it is too much to go through twice. : ) Still not sure if we are supposed to host people at our house or not and how much money we are supposed to give to people we visit and what kind of presents we are supposed to give so this is giving me low grade anxiety.

That is all I can think of for now. Hope your new years bring joy and good health. Cheers.

Month in Review

2005-12-17T22:36:00.000-08:00

So I have been pretty bad about blogging this month. So I am doing a month in review to catch ya'll up.

The beginning of December was world AIDS day and jesse put together a cool program with his counterparts. About three hundred kids participated. There was a parade and cheers and competitions. It was pretty cool to see.

The weather is getting colder. Much colder. Did I mention it is cold? We don't have a thermometer at site but it is -33 in UB and it is colder at our site. The northern winds make things extra cold, think ice cream headache walking outside. I think I got frost nip on my ear after 5 min. outside. Jesse measures how cold it is by how quickly he gets icicles on his mustache. For a spell we only had really wet wood and it was taking a couple of hours for the fire to start so we just did stuff in our huge coats. Water would freeze in our ger at night and mornings weren't that fun. We got a little dry wood to limp us through this last week and threw the rest on top of the roof, we are told this helps. We shall see when we get back.

Currently we are in UB for a week long in-service training. The agenda looks to be long and rather painful. Hopefully however we will be better volunteers at the end of it. Our counterparts will be with us for part of it so that should be good too.

Work is slowly picking up speed. Jesse is working on some aids pamphlets and doing a men's health workshop on drinking and smoking and I put in a couple of proposals for things to do next year. One is a youth participation workshop, a mentoring program, and a collaboration with the health dept. on alcohol in the family and/or pre-post natal parent support group. So i am pretty excieted. Hopefully they turn out well.

Christmas is coming and it is wierd. Mongolia has adopted christmas things like santa and trees and not so christmasy things like fireworks, but they do it for the new year not christmas day. kinda a chinese new year meets america. dunno. I haven't figured out the gift situation yet. However we have brought a little christmas to the ger. I cut up our newsweeks and made paper chains and we brought our stockings so they are hanging. Byamba keeps trying to kill christmas and bring down the chains but so far she has not succeeded. Jesse cut a sort of charley brown christmas tree out of some firewood. Very cute. We are getting together with our site mates on christmas day for a potluck and general whatnot. I am making a camel stew. Nothing says christmas like camel (duh). **side note: we walked all around our meat market looking for nice meat and we hear camel was good. i asked a lady if there was some and she pointed me to this stack of meat. the cool part was they also had the hump all cut up. just solid pieces of fat. the hump and meat were the same price. funny huh?** Anyway lady sent me things to make fudge so that will be good. and i found a recipe for hasty pudding that we will make too. It should be fun. I tried to make marmalade last week but after 8 hours of back breaking work it didn't set. Can't say that I was pleased.

I think that is about all. Not a lot of excitement but this month has flown by. Crazy. Over and out cool kids.

s

I'd eat turkey in a big brown shoe

2005-11-23T21:26:00.000-08:00

Turkey, turkey, turkey, turkey for me. Hi all just wanted to put up a quick post to wish you all a happy thanksgiving. We are thinking of you all. Have an extra helping for us today.

We are doing a modified thanksgiving here. Jesse and I took work off (actually just jesse my work is in guatamala) and we are doing nasty chores like bagging coal, cleaning house, and shopping. But had a lovely morning drinking special rationed food (hot chocolate for me and real coffee for jesse, thanks mom!) and watching I heart huckabees. On Saturday we are going to a friends house for thanksgiving dinner, in the sense that we are making a lot of food, not so much that we are eating thanksgiving food. We thought about themeing it, nothing says thanksgiving like a 70s pimp party. But decided to just bring whatever food we want to eat and not worry about it going together.

Other than that not a lot going on here. Yesterday jesse and I both had a good day at work. Which is worth mentioning because most work days are not as exciting as yesterday. Jesse had two programs. The first was in the morning at the local technical college here on HIV/AIDS. The government is doing a 100% condom usage pilot project (borrowed from Thailand) and this, I think, is part of that effort. Plus world aids day is Dec. 1. He said there were around 80 people in attendance, I think they took a couple classes hostage. They did three activities. One was a skit, one was true/false, and one was a categorize behaviors (safe sex stuff). He said there were a couple of interesting misconceptions. One, people thought you could tell if someone had AIDS by looking at them. Two, that you will always know if you have a STI, and three that you can get gonorrhea from peeing outside. The last one, you would think less people would think of the outdoors as a big toilet but alas they insist on peeing or pooping as they need. Mainly men/boys and small children and sometimes old ladies. Then in the afternoon we did another kindergarten parents training. This one was on healthy eating. I made cute games and baked a carrot cake, jesse gave out the good information and the food ger (aka food pyramid). We had 49 people there including 8 teachers. Last month we had 5 people. So that was pretty cool. Better advertising this time. Then afterwards we gave out almost the rest of our warm clothes from the clothing drive. It was great. I felt like I was doing good work here, and that feels nice.

Ok so there you have it folks, our thanksgiving post. Also for your viewing pleasure we have included some more photos. Enjoy.s

Just another day in paradise

2005-11-20T22:48:00.000-08:00

so it may have been ten years since we last posted....internet has been limited. Since we last posted i celebrated my birthday. I am old. It was a relaxed weekend where all we did was eat. fun and filling.

Last week we went to UB (capital) and it was also fun and filling. We brought byamba to the vet and both jesse and i were nervous of the ten hour bus ride with her. We got a cute duffle bag and cut holes in it for her to travel in but she hated it and nearly had a heart attack. So once on the bus (the reallly cold bus) we took her out and put her in our coats. She was as good as could be hoped for. she only meowed for a while and then settled in to sleeping and cleaning herself for the duration of the ride. We didn't feed or water her past 7am since there wasn't really a place for her to go to the bathroom and she was very hungry when we got to our destination but otherwise a happy kitty.

The confrence I went to was interesting. It was a follow up as to how well Mongolia was meeting the UN convention on the rights of the child. They signed it 2 or three years ago and this was a sort of progress report. They are doing well in some areas but many areas are weak and need improvements. But it is difficult due to lack of funding and root level problems that can't be solved in a 5 year time frame. They are going to focus much attention in the coming 2 years to vulnerable youth (disabled, poor...). My boss was one of the presenters. I didn't know till she got up to speak.

Jesse's dentist appointment was fine. He gets to keep his teeth.

We bought a ton of food that we can't get in our town, so that was kinda fun. And we ate out a couple of times. Very good indian food birthday dinner.

Nothing else going on really. Back at work, weather is getting colder and days are getting shorter. Doesn't feel like holiday season with no one else excited about thanksgiving or christmas but it does feel like winter is coming.

I know I said no more boring posts but I can't help it. Mongolia can only hold so much fun at once. : )

that is all for now. buh-bye.

Riot

2005-11-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

glad to see that the dedication brought in some much needed comments. Good to hear from all the fans, you know. : )

I can hardly believe it is November already! My birthday is just around the corner! This month is wierd at my work, both of my offices will be gone from this sunday to the 20th or so. Not really sure where that leaves me. But I do get to go to UB for a confrence in a couple of weeks so that should be fun. No idea what it is about but will tell more after I go, if I figure out what it is about that is. Jesse bit down on a rock disguised as a fruit the other day and hurt his tooth so he will be coming with me to UB as well to get it checked out. We just found out that we will not be able to make it home in time for christmas from our training in December so we will be spending christmas in UB. Not really that excited about it but hopefully it will be fun. We shall see. The Hewes family asked about holidays...here you go....there are two major holidays in Mongolia. One is Tsagan Tsar, in Feb., celebrating the new year. People get really dressed up and visit eachothers houses like crazy. People bring money for the host and the host gives presents to the guests. People are pretty poor here but it all kind of works out in the end with the money present exchange. The traditional food is buuz (steamed meat filled dumplings). At the new year they often decorate in christmas themed items like christmas trees and santa clause but it has none of the religious meaning. In july there is a celebration called Naadam, festival of manly sports. There are some postings a while back that explain that. There are some halloween parties but people don't trick or treat and unfortunately no thanksgiving.

My coats for the community drive is going smashing. As of Wednesday I had recieved just about 200 donations. So that is pretty cool since it started on Monday. Today we are doing a major give away of items. Local bagh governors selected poor families from their district to recieve clothes. Different from the states in that people don't self select but it seems to be pretty standard here.

I taught another capacity building workshop on wednesday and it went well. Twice as many people as last time so hopefully they liked it and will tell more people about it. Thursday was our first grant writing workshop. Communication problem and the space we had reserved was being used by another group. But someone brought a 23 page proposal so we had something to work on. Will have to find another way to advertise. Not sure what the best method is.... still thinking on it. But Jesse felt good about it (pretty much his baby) and we had a lot of fun being dumb.

This last week has been difficult because I was sick. So jesse had more chores to do and I only worked half days. But today I think I am almost better. Thank god. With no movies and me being on my last book it was looking pretty hairy for a while.

Jesse is making great progress on his teamwork workshop and may do his first one in December, a month ahead of schedule. Running it by his boss on Monday. He has been working on translating documents to get that ready. And I think I have created a program that I can use as part of my thesis. So that is exciting too. It is a youth civil society indicators workshop. I am going to write a grant for it to get off the ground and I think the youth center will take it on as its project so will keep you posted on that. If it does work I hope to have most of my thesis written before returning to the states. Then I can focus my last quarter on finding a freaking job.

It is crazy windy today but the sun is shining. We are suposed to get coal today so we can stay warm through the winter. We have been working on our black lung and it is coming along nicely. Most nights we have to open the door to let the smoke out.

Byamba is still cute is growing like crazy. He got out of the ger the other day and was nearly killed in the first 20 seconds. One of our hashaa dogs was not on his chain. But jesse showed him who was boss and I rescued the cat. We just read in one of our newsletters that only 50% of peace corps pets make it to close of service with their owners. So we are scared to let him out of the ger. In the summer though it will be hard to keep him in since the bottoms of the felt get folded up to let air in. We are working on his self defense moves and let me be the first to say he is really good at jumping on heads and attacking belts and moving feet.

I have had a couple of requests for more pictures on the blog so I will see what I can do for next time. That is all from this side of the world.

loves,
s

ps. i got the spam stopped. so there shouldn't be anymore dumb posts.

This one is for Matthew

2005-10-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

I just want it to be know that if we were keeping score, matthew would win the number one fan award since his posts outnumber everyone elses. If we were keeping score. I have dedicated this post to matthew in honor of his number one fan-ness.

So we are fully in the Mongolia Mono. Get home and do....NOTHING. But we have been busy again at work so at least there is that. I am organizing a Coats for the Community drive and have been busy promoting that program. It starts the first of Nov. I hope it works out. Plenty of people need warm things but it is a little unprecidented to give clothes away here. No one told me that till after, so we shall see how it goes.

Jesse and I are teaming up on two projects. One is helping local NGOs write grants. Most international grants are supposed to be in english. so we are helping with the proof reading and organizing the proposals. We have been promoting that too. Our first meeting is next week. People seem pretty excited and it is good because we are improving the stability of services and also get to find out what people are doing, and get to meet all the movers and shakers in our community.

The second project is working with kindergarden parents. It is a monthly thing for me and jesse is collaborating with me for the next three months. Last month we did teeth brushing and hand washing. We were on TV and interviewed on the radio. Hopefully next month we can get more parents out for it. We are doing healthy foods for the body. I have some fun games and jesse has some good information. I am writing a tiny cookbook in mongolian for the parents with healthy alternatives to sugar and fat. Two staples of their diet. Me lecturing on sugar and fat! HA!

Jesse has been hard at work on his team building workshop and has just drafted the objectives, outcomes, activities. So that makes him feel good. It is going to be a great training.

Other than that we have been obsessed with byamba who is getting very big now, avoiding chores, and reading books, and building fires like its our job. Only now I am all out of books so I must find something else to do. I have started a new hobby of crocheting and have mastered the basic knot. i think I am going to make a scarf and donate it to my coats for the community program. At least that way I will have one donation.

Ok, I must give up the computer. Hope all is well. I will leave you with a quote John had on his last email and cracked me up...."sometimes a cowboy is just a man dressed up in a cowboy suit."
Its a think piece.

whatnot

2005-10-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

hiya,
just thought i would put up our weekly post. unfortunately for you i don't have a lot of new stuff to report. Both jesse and mines work has slowed this past week. My entire office was out last week, both offices actually, so i didn't have a lot going on. Jesse is making busy work for himself. We dusted off SPSS and he is doing some data entry this week. I caught up on some sleep. I call it the mongolian mono. I am tired here all the time, especially since Byamba because he likes to wake up and reposition to sleep on my face or make war with my peaceful toes at 2am. I am really lazy but am forced to do many chores here. Perhaps adding to my sleepiness. For the last couple of nights we have had dinners that take about three hours to prepare. That puts food in the belly at 9pm at the earliest. Plus we have been making oppresively hot fires at night and the power has been going in and out. Combination of a hot, dark house and last night i was asleep on the couch before 10pm.

The western region directors will be here today or tomorrow from Peace Corps so our offices have been doing things to get ready. For example, my office is writing my Oct. work plan (half way through the month), and jesse's office is in charge of putting our ping and coal together for the winter. The ping saga continues...we have the floor and four sides of the ping but no roof so they got a carpenter to come out and measure last week to build the roof. He was supposed to have it done on Monday this week but he went to the countryside instead so they brought out another guy yesterday and he is supposed to get it done this afternoon. We shall see. It is a really good thing we started the process a month ago or we might freeze to death. Since the PC people are coming however I think they will have it done. Wish i had some power in the situation but alas none is mine.

I was having a conversation with my co-worker the other day and she said that i was really good because I am just like a Mongolian and don't need to plan. Ha! If she only knew. Although training was pretty crappy it did train me to relinquish all thoughts of control. I am able to just roll with whatever is going on and not get uptight about it. My new philosophy is that things will all work out in the end. I don't know how, but they do. Its wierd. Very not like me but when in mongolia...

Ok i think i am done with my ramble. Jesse was saying something yesterday about us taking pictures of our town and offices and such and putting them on the blog so if we are good this weekend next weeks blog may be actually interesting. Here's to hoping....

We call him Saturday

2005-10-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

I figured out how to do pictures and jesse formated them for email so i thought i would put a few up for your viewing pleasure. The first one is the center of our ger. I told you orange is a hip color. This one as well as the first was taken while we were winterizing. I think it is funny and I hope you like it.

First a cultural lesson. Naming in Mongolia is a really cool process. Random like in the states but pretty cool. Typically people have several words rolled into one that is their name. Men often have strong or steel in their name (jesse's host bros for example, all three started with bat- meaning strong). Babies are named on the third day of life. Often the relatives will put their vote for a name in a bowl filled with rice. Then the bowl is shaken and a name comes to the top. Whatever the name is the father will whisper it into the baby's ear three times and that is its name. Other times people are named for their relatives or on the day they were born. This is where the good part comes in and an explanation of the picture.... so our kitty came to us on a friday. We wanted to call him the formal day of the week name friday (which is baasen) but the same word means pooped. Since we didn't want to name our cat shat we decided to name him Saturday instead (byamba). And that is the story of our kitty. He has been awesome and is the most spoiled cat in all of mongolia. We just watch him play for hours and we talk to him and he eats like a horse. We are in love. At night it is cold and he doesn't like the house I made him so he sleeps under the covers with us. I am always afraid we will crush him but so far he is ok.

Worker Bees

2005-09-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
sorry I have been so bad lately. We got poor the last couple of weeks due to some major purchases and have not had money for internet. My time away from you has bought however, a new suit and dress slacks, a new winter deel for jesse, an 8 pound zuchinne (sp?), and some candy to feed jesse whose sweet tooth has gotten out of control.

We have been super busy the last couple of weeks. Translating documents, creating learning games for parents and their kindergardeners, producing a tv show on child rights, doing an english call in show on the radio called "Speak Up!" (very funny), editing a research report for publication, developing a training for youth leaders on how to make their clubs better and teaching english. Whew! That is just me. Jesse has been doing stuff too but not as much. : ) He is working on developing a teamwork workshop for the health workers and got his first survey out this week as well as helping me do translation on a couple of documents, and we have teamed up to create some great activities for kindergardeners around washing hands and brushing teeth. Yesterday he left for the southern most soum in Ovorkhangai with his counterpart to watch her present on HIV/AIDS. They say there are only 9 cases of AIDS in the country but part of that is lack of diagnostic equipment and part is people don't want to get tested. However we have very open boarders with china and russia and both of those countries are in AIDS epidemic mode. So it should be an interesting presentation to watch. He is gone Wed night, thursday, friday and should be home Sat mid day. It has been quite lonely without him, so I have taken to talking with myself. It works out ok. : )

It is lunch time now so i should go. They are locking up.

ps. we got winterized (mostly) last weekend. It was very funny. We had to take our whole ger down and remove all the furniture so that we could fix the floor. the extra felt was supposed to be there at two but didn't arrive so at two when we were ready to put the felt back on and put everything together the rains came. Once everything was back on the extra felt came so we had to take everything back down again. This weekend we should finish up the project. Very mongolian. It is supposed to get really cold this weekend but the weather man is not that good so we shall see....

: )

Mongolia PCV's Unite!

2005-09-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

So we have had a very crazy friday here. First of all let me say that yesterday it was fall and today it is winter. Last night we had freezing rain and then snow and this morning the wind was blowing something fierce. Our ger was sooooo cold. I could see my breath all morning. Our ger is not winterized yet (to do this they add another layer of felt to the outside of the ger, add a vestabule to the door, and bury the bottom of the ger in earth) right now the bottom of our ger is just a tarp all along the outside so the wind and cold came through just fine. It is about 40 degrees but with wind chill I am guessing around 25. Coming to work this morning I got a brain freeze because the wind was blowing so hard and so cold. Yawna!!! (means: oh no, how sad, how difficult....good word).

After I got to work I got a call that said we are doing our consolidation drill. This means that everyone has to go to our sub-warden's house and await further instructions from peace corps (usually you would consolidate right before evacuation). It is a very good drill to do but very dumb for us because it is only the people from our town. So we walked over to their house this morning and sat around for a couple of hours and then went back to work. Further exposure to the cold cold day.

Everyone is worried about us because we are foreigners and don't know anything. Yesterday everyone was worried about me because Jesse was in the country on business. FYI: he had a really great time, went to a mineral shower, drank araig, and listened to a 70 slide presentation on TB. So every one was worried that I was home all alone and today they are all worried that I might freeze to death. Frankly I am worried about this too so have done nothing to assuage their fears. Actual text message from my boss: Hi. Good day. I am worried for you and your ger. I wrote back: I am worried too. I am very cold. Hopefully we will get winterized soon. : )

Other than that not a lot to report for the week. I had my first radio show and it went ok. I think I kinda sound like mickey mouse. Why doesn't anyone tell me these things? This weekend hopefully we are getting warm things for the house. But other than that no real plans. We are however, throwing our first dinner party in our ger. We invited our hashaa family over for pizza (6 people). So that should be fun.

Ok I am off. FYI to the next person to send a care package: please send hot chocolate and hot apple cider. Want to be warm on the inside too. : )

Working for a Living

2005-09-07T18:53:00.001-07:00

Sorry it has been so long since our last post. We are very busy and important people. I don't even remember where we last left off.... work has been good. I started on Monday last week. My co-workers are super nice and my boss is great. She and I share an office. She says things to me like, "I am always on your side." Which makes for a nice atmosphere. The first week was mainly tromping through town learning where other organizations are, what they do, and setting up meetings with them. I met with the governor and he told me to have babies here. Ha! My work week is divided between two organizations. M-W I am at the Children's Center and Th-F I am at Mercy Corps. There are three officers at the Children's center and I work with a different one each day. One focuses on Child Rights, one on Youth Participation, and one on Youth and Families. So I have many different programs to work on. I even have 3 monthly radio shows and a TV show. I am very popular. Today I had a meeting with youth leaders and we have decided to do monthly trainings with them to improve their org. capacity. I am pretty excited and think this will be a good project for me. Hey this is a shout out to teachers (I'm talking to you Doc) about getting some pen pal stuff going on with High School youth organizations. The kids here are interested how Americans do things and I think just want to talk with Americans. If you know of anyone who might be interested (Abby) let me know. : ) I also teach english three mornings a week to my coworkers. It is good, pretty informal but they like it. I have only been to Mercy Corps twice, go again tomorrow, and it looks to be pretty good. My first project is editing a report on local government involvement for our area. It should be good and it will be publish so that is cool.

Jesse's work is also going well. His first week was similar going around and meeting people and visiting hospitals. He was interested to discover that while the quantity and probably quality of health care in Mongolia is much less than in the states the basic structure of the health care system is vary similar. Basically it is divided into "Family Hospitals", the equivalent of family practices in the states. (They focus of pre- and post-natal care, delever vaccinations, perform minor procedures, and otherwise work to promote health living) More serious procedure and problems are taken care of at one of three regional hospitals in the area. We are fortunate enough to have our regions hospital here in town and he is excited about doing some collaborative work with them, he is not sure in what capacity yet but is sure he will figure something out. We also have a couple of diagnostic and infectious disease laboratories, his nerdy self loves to see the pipettes and biochemical whatnot. This week he has been busy working on a no smoking campaign for 13-14 year olds. He has worked very hard on translating English to Mongolian and will be running a life skills portion of the program on Friday. He is happy and manages to keep himself busy.

Ger life is going good still. We got a refridgerator the other day and that is nice. But our town has been cheese-less for the last week so there is not much in it now. Jesse, with swallowed pride asked how to build really good fires (rather than the puny ones he knew how to build) and now we have been very toasty most days. Sometimes we run out of wood but I am promised that will be fixed very soon. We went to the hodoo (country) last weekend and just kinda crashed this families ger. They were very nice and made jesse drink a lot of fermented mares milk (arag) which he likes and they made me dinner that didn't have meat in it (but really it just had tiny pieces of mutton and was rice cooked in mutton broth, definitions of meat free are really open to interpretation). We actually saw a horse being milked, so yes Matt, it is possible. Wierd but possible.

Monday was our anniversary and I have taken to calling jesse my one year and X number of days husband. I think he likes it. We had a very quiet night. Made fajitas (it took three hours) and apple crisp. Jesse was belly up on the couch for some time after the meal moaning. I think that means he liked it....On Tuesday we both got sick, some crummy cold. I stayed home yesterday morning and this morning but jesse toughed it out. Slowly on the mends.

Now we are off to harass the cheese lady and get measured for winter clothes. Take care.

Ger-riffic

2005-08-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

Hello hello,
so we are nearly a week into our site and it has been wonderful. I will provide the following highlights our trip to the site, our ger, our community/family, our work.

Trip to Site:
We were scheduled to leave from UB on Tuesday at 10 am with an estimated time of travel between 5-10 hours. It was raining (a lot) but considered a good luck omen in Mongolia. I just thought how wet my things would get... : ) We waited until noon for our ride to show. Then we drove around UB for an hour, went and picked up more people for another hour and left UB between 2:30 and 3. Then we proceeded to stop every 10 Kilometers. Most of the time I wasn't sure why but there were a lot of potty breaks. 1/4 of the way into our trip we got a flat tire due to the enormi potholes in the road. However we were back in business in no time. At the half way point we stopped at a roadside town/diner. We were there for about an hour. We finially arrived at site at midnight! It was a super long day but we were excited to finially be at our new home.

Our Ger:
Our place is really great. Ger life this week has been pretty easy. When we arrived we had most of our furniture but no kitchen gadgets. So on Wednesday we went with our hashaa mate, Uganaa to the "black" market. (more on that in the later section). We ordered a futon to be made to fit jesse's "height" and so we can both sleep on it and picked up a chest for some of our clothes. We also bought some kitchen gadgets. Tricked out the ger for a mere $70 USD. Pretty cool I think. Our ger is painted very traditionally in orange with multi-colored patterns. The poles and center wheel are painted as well as a matching chest and kitchen cupboard and coffee table with tiny stools. We have been practicing cooking and last night made awesome pizza in the wok. Today for lunch we practiced with the fire cooking. I can boil noodles on it like a pro. We got windows put in our skylight yesterday and it keeps the heat in and rain out now. Very nice. It is kinda trippy living in a circle but it is really cozy. It has brought out the "man" in Jesse. Who likes to make fire, chop wood, and generally do manly mongolian things. Ger life suits him fine.

Our Community/Family
Our hashaa family (aka also my counterpart) are really nice. Uganaa is an english teacher and has been wonderful showing us around and helping us get settled. Her husband works crazy hours and we met him last night. He seems really nice. They are a cute couple. The kids are starting to warm to us and come by the ger a little more frequently now. The boy, esoo, likes to check us out and then leave. last night he and his sister came over and jesse showed them pictures on the computer of our family and time in mongolia. They liked it but esoo didn't like our music and covered his ears and made faces. I understand the feeling. Today Uganaa's brother (who also lives with them) came over with his pictures. He is 17 and seems to be a really nice helpful kid. I think we are really lucky to have a family like theirs living so close. Oh...and we are close. The Ger pretty much takes up their whole yard. It is kinda wierd but we will get used to it. The hashaa dog's name changes daily but after the first night he doesn't bark at us and seems to do a good job of protecting his family.

Our community is nice. There is a small apartment district in the center of town but it seems most people live in gers or houses. We have really only been to the town center area so far, not a lot of exploring in the residential parts but the commercial area is pretty cool. The black market is staged out of rail shipping containers. Whole stores in tiny containers. Then they are arranged into alleys. It seems like much can be found if one looks hard enough. Really hard. Found the meat house (almost made me throw up but actually pretty clean) and the veggie area. Also found cloth and household items. Still discovering the area but so far we like what we see.

Our Work
Jesse and I visited his office yesterday. It is housed in the big government building in the center of town. People seemed really friendly and helpful. I visited my work today and it seems pretty cool. Everyone is shy but hopefully we can overcome that soon. Will both start work next week and are looking forward to getting started. We have had some good talks already about our ideas of projects and activities.

I think that is all for now. Good luck to everyone as they start school and summer winds down. Keep on keepin' on.

Bonafide Volunteers

2005-08-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

So the news has just kept coming. We love reading your blog postings as much as you love to read ours. Last week we were unable to read postings for some reason so we were sad but this week we are back in action.

On Saturday we were sworn in as volunteers. We took an oath and everything. The swearing in ceremony was an especially big deal this year because the president of Mongolia attended, gave a speach and shook hands with host families and volunteers. First time in Peace Corps Mongolia history. It was pretty great. He had no prepared speach he was just talking and his poor interpretor was writing furiously to keep up. We all looked very fancy with our new outfits from our families. We have a very talented crew of performers. I was able to save some friends and dignity by not singing at the ceremony and jesse was the cutest dancing monkey up there. Our families came and it was a very long good day. It felt just like graduation. Plus both of our supervisors were there. Lots of pictures to be had.

Speaking of pictures....At long last we have "Our Summer Vacation" pictures we are sending today so check your mail boxes in about ten years. Actually we are sending one CD with about 70 pictures to Mike who promised to make copies and send them domestically to interested parties. There are some really good ones in there, so now you will have pictures to accompany our stories. We will send another CD with our ger pictures in a few weeks. Once we move in and all.

We are pit stopping in UB for today and leave for site tomorrow! We are stocking up on foods we can't get in our town (beans, tofu, peanut butter, spices, cheese and the like). And some cloth to have some deels and shirts tailor made for winter. Jesse and I have both lost a bunch of weight and our clothes don't fit very well anymore. But tailor made stuff is pretty cheap and cool. They have these really old russian sewing machines here too that I might get and learn how to use for patches and what not...i need winter hobbies besides sitting next to the fire.

LMW's description of the araig (the fermented milk) and arrol (the milk product that is hard) are right on. I can't stand them. They often have the "candy" without sugar and in these hard little bricks. Very good for protien and on the go eating if you need to eat to survive but very hard to handle if there is ANY other option. Jesse however likes the stuff. Proving my theory that he has no taste buds.

To answer some burning ger questions... we have electricity (that can't handle more than two things plugged in) in the Ger but no electricity in the out house. The outhouse is shared with our hashaa family (5 people). We have a stove, a table, two chairs, a bed, wood floors, and a dry sink, oh and my boss said that we have a black and white tv but no english speaking programs.
It is a five "wall" ger. A wall is defined as a latice section. Four is the minimum we are supposed to live in so we have a little bit bigger ger. Our water is gathered at a communial well a 1/4 mile from the house. We have internet in our town so we will write more later once we see everything. Jesse starts work on Thursday and I start next wednesday.

Ok, I think that is all for now. Much love.

Happy Anniversary to Juli and Dustin....

Ta-Da! Site Announcements

2005-08-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

So after three long months of waiting today was a big day of announcements. First, we found out our language scores...I got the dumb kid score and jesse got the smart kid score. No surprise there.Then after a session of putting condoms on cucumbers, no joke, we were told our site.

We will spend the next two years in Arvaikheer in the Aimag of Overkhangai. This probably doesn;t mean much to you and quite franlky us either. However this is what we know:
1) It is in the south western region about 450 km from UB. That translates into a 5-8 hour car ride.
2) It is primarially agriculture and some gold mining.
3) The tourist attraction is a very old monastary and some mountains...and mark your calendars...the 800 year celebration of Nadaam will be held in the ancient capital this July. It happens to be in our Aimag ( Aimag is like a state or provience). Promises to be one hell of a party
4) We will be living in a GER! Crazy. Lots of work, cold, and fun. We are both looking forward to the challenge. We wanted adventure and rustic and boy did we get it. No running water or hot water, an outhouse, and a wood stove. But we have electricity 24 hours a day. Part of the deal with the Ger is that you will live in the same hashaa (meaning fenced yard family area) as another family. The family we will share our hashaa with is one of my counterparts and is an english teacher and leads the local scout group.
5) As for our jobs....Jesse will be working for the ministery of health. Primarially working on communicable and non-communicable diseases. Sounds like some good stuff with kids too.. I will be working for two organizations. One is the Government run Childrens center. I will primarially be working on staff capacity building. The other part of my time will be focused on a Mercy Corps (USAID funded) civic engagement program for youth. Everything is pretty vauge but it sounds fun.
6) this is all we know for now. On thursday and friday we will be meeting with our counterparts and on Saturday we will be sworn in as actual volunteers. Quite the job interview.

More to come in the week.

One week to site announcment

2005-08-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

For those of you keeping track of our progession through the summer we are almost done at host site. I really am unbelieving of just how quickly this summer has flown by. It seems like just yesterday we were stepping of the plane onto Mongolian soil for the first time and now we are about ready to leave the saftey of our host communities for the unknown adventure of site placement.

I can very easily say that Sierra and I have had a very successful summer. We should both have no problems achieving the necessary level with our language (something we were both a little wary of coming into our service). We have also both completed several community projects now and can consider all of them a massive success.

We both taught the same English lesson, a bit of a coincidence, to respective groups in our communities. She taught body parts (heads, shoulders knees and toes) to a group of school children, and I taught similar external body parts to a group of about 12 hospital workers in my community. We have both been told to expect to teach some English even though we are not TEFL volunteers so the experience was certainly a good one for us. Teaching English to non-English speakers also gave me a fresh and very interesting perspective on my own language learning ability. I am now hoping to start some English classes shortly after arriving at site in hopes that they will inspire my coworkers/students to give me a little more leeway in my attempts to communicate in broken Mongolian.

We both have also completed community develpment projects. I am not sure of all of the details surrounding Sierra's project, but I will do my best. Basically she and her site mates invited community members to submit either works of art or essays around the theme of "Mongolia's Future". They then invited some prominant local figures to serve as judges and themselves provided certificates and prizes to the winning submissions. After talking to her yesterday it sounded like they had some 20 enteries and had great attendence for the event. She declared it a huge success and was very excited about it.

My group identified two needs in our community that we worked to address in our project. First we spent about an hour and half on saturday morning teaching some of the local children to swim in our river. The river is one of the best places in town and heavily trafficed during hot days but a huge portion of the community can't swim. At the end of our hour and a half session the 10 kids that showed up for the event had learned a basic front crawl and the "dead man's" float. All in all I was very pleased by the results and wish we had started teaching earlier so we could follow up the session. The second project involved teaching about 10 local women the basic techniques for pickling so that they can save some of the harvest that is begining to occur. The diet here is so seasonal that often people eat almost no vegetables during the winter. We are hoping that pickling will provide them with at least some dietary variety and perhaps a bit of extra nutrition during the winter. This session was such a success that I am now in Darkhan to help buy supplies for an encore class on preserves tomorrow. On a personal note I am also enjoying learning these techniques so that Sierra and I can stock our pantry when we arrive at site.

I think that is all the new news for now. We are both realizing that we are about to say good bye to our families and so are spending lots of time with them now. We will be in town starting next monday for site announcments and then a week long conference with our counterparts. We will write more then.

Jesse

In for a Treat

2005-08-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

So we have 3 more days of language class and then a week of review before our final exam! Pretty stressful time and people are getting swiftly to the end of their ropes. I however took a mental health day this morning (which does not translate and the teachers were very confused) and am feeling very fine.

The swearing in Ceremony that graduates us from lowley trainees to full fledged volunteers is quite the production. Every site has speaches in Mongolian and Mongolian performances of song, dance or instrament. We have a group of great people but all are lacking performance talent. So yesterday the teachers tapped ME! to sing a duet in MONGOLIAN. I told them i can't sing or dance but it didn't seem to phase them. So I am the act for our town. Very very very scary. All of our parents are there plus the staff plus the ambassador and perhaps the president. Ha! So I have 13 days to learn this thing and meanwhile study for my test. Jesse's group is doing Kazak dancing. J says he looks like a dancing monkey, to which I replyed a very cute monkey, and he agreed. I haven't seen them practice and he wouldn't show me so it will be a surprise.

This last weekend I went to Jesse's house for the last time. It was a great trip out. We did nothing the whole weekend. I love doing nothing when the weeks are so full. We pulled weeds and played with his brothers and watched season one of sex and the city on my computer. It was super. His mom gave me chesse.

Not much else to report just a frenzy of activities and end of the summer things. Oh, and I think I am getting a del waistcoat. So not the full robe but a more modern looking jacket thing. We will send pictures once we get to site. Oh...so we find out our site placements two weeks from yesterday. Very exciting. J and I both asked for a ger or house so we shall see how it all pans out. Be expecting some exciting postings in the weeks to come.

much love to you all and happy birthday to lorie and grandma!

s

Small town boy in a big city

2005-07-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

Jesse here speaking from the Peace Corps Office in Ulaanbaatar. Okay, so I'm not really a small town boy. But after living in a small countryside community with only 5,000 inhabitants for the better part of the last two months visiting the capital with 1 million people made me feel like a midwest boy making his first visit to New York. Of course, all of our host families who rarely make it to UB were very concerned about my safety. So far though not even an inkling of a problem.

My days in the capital have been as packed as Sierra's were. We arrived yesterday morning at about 6 am after taking the night train in from the countryside. The train was actually not that bad. We managed to find enough fold out beds in the cheap section for each member of our group, so actually got a decent nights sleep during the trip. After arriving in town I discoverd that Sierra (who I thought was already out of the city) was still in the hotel. So we got a couple of bonus hours together before we set out.

Much of the trip here has been about eating. Our first morning we went to a restaurant owned by a ex-patriot named Millie. We managed french toast, omlettes, huevos rancheros and most importantly real coffee. It was a bit expensive by Mongolian standards but worth every penny. Lunch that day was "Fast Food" at a foodcourt bearing the same name. Think McDonalds and a bento bar all wrapped up into on restaurant. Dinner last night was pizza and salad with the Country Director. This morning real coffee at a very Americanish coffee shop. Lunch of Indian inspired Mexican food (still good though). All in all the food has been a much welcome change from my rather boring diet. As my language instructor puts in "Mongolians really only have two kinds of meals, soup and stirfry"; don't I know it.

Of course, the purpose of the trip was not all food. We have also visited with the Red Cross, the Ministry of Health, ADRA (some Australian NGO), and the UN Population Fund office in town. All said the groups have are all very interesting and have it together as far as we can see. General trends in activities tend to revolve around reproductive health issues, STI's/HIV, and alcoholism. Made me excited to start service soon. Site announcment in 4 short weeks, can't wait.

Think that is all for now. Days have been fun but very full. I must say I sortta miss the simplicity of my life in the host community. It will be nice to get home.

Take care all,
Jesse

Crazy Capital Confessions

2005-07-19T02:52:00.000-07:00

Ok not confessions, I just couldn't think of a third C word.

Have been in UB since Sunday. Took the train saturday night (it was fun I had never taken a night train before). There were 5 of us, 4 in a compartment. We stayed up talking till 3 and the train arrived at 7 so I didn't get too many hours of sleep. But we got in, dropped our stuff off at the dorm, and then just started walking. We walked all over and checked out a lot of cool markets and places of interest (money changer, guest houses, restaurants, state dept store). We met up with the rest of our group who drove and then went for dinner. We eat a lot here. Trying to get all the food I have been missing. Really wanted Mexican but the closest they come is a mexican/indian place. Really good but not muy authentico.

Per usual we have been kept pretty busy. We visited with the deputy minister for youth affairs, the National authority for Children, the embassy, and tomorrow will go to UNICEF. It was really good talking with them and has helped to solidify a little more the type of work we might be doing. Which up until now has been pretty nebulous.

UB is pretty cool. Half of the population of MONGOLIA lives in this ONE city. Isn't that crazy! Anything modern is in UB. But UB is still pretty shakey. Many sidewalks are just dirt and the slums/suburbs are gers. The drivers are insane. When it rains the internet goes slow. It is just kind quirky. However, the way a building or something looks from the outside is no indicator of how it might look on the inside. Things are really nice on the inside a lot of times even by American standards. Like I said quirky. It is wierd seeing white people all over. Not used to it. We definately lose our superstar status from our host community when we come to UB. It is very nice. In winter, however, I am told that Peace Corps people are the only foreigners in the country. Too cold for a normal person.

oops...it looks like I have to go now. We are going to a former Peace Corps Volunteer's appartment. He doesn't know us but is buying us pizza and cake. I think i like him.

Ps. bought a phone today but don't have a number yet. will post it tomorrow.

bye!

Mongol Camping

2005-07-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

So the last four days have been super fun on this half of the world. Jesse came back to Khutul for Naadam on Saturday. Naadam was kind of a dissappointment. It is kind of like the county fair that no one really likes but you go because there is nothing else to do. Naadam was like that. My town has 10,000 people and I think less than 500 showed up.

However, here are the highlights:
1) wrestling: the highlight here are definately the outfits. Speedos, fat man in a little coat and big big boots (with upturned toes). The fat man in a little coat came about some time ago when a woman (who are not allowed to wrestle) ended up winning the National title. All the men were ashamed so they changed the uniform to include an open chested coat so no women could hide.
2) archery: we were only there long enough to see the children's archery but it is a long way with a very small target. 'nuff said.
3) horse races: This was pretty crazy, there were about 100 people on horses waiting for their turn to race at the finish line. The races start 15 Km from where we were and we caught the end of one. The jockey was about 8 years old and wore a cape. Once he crossed the finish line he was mobbed by the aforementioned people on horseback who all wanted to touch the sweat of the winning horse. It is supposed to bring good luck.
4) I tried the femented mares milk in the VIP section of Naadam (were it is shady and all the old people sit). It is very very bad. I had one sip and it curdled my stomache for hours. Jesse drank two glasses. I don't think he has tastebuds. Poor jesse.
5) Two peace corps people M15's (we are the M16 class) wrestled. They both lasted about 15 seconds and the crowds laughed the whole time. I liked it.

After Naadam the real festivities began...We went camping with about 30 people. Under 3 feet people outnumbered adults 3 to 1. We camped in the shadow of an 1800 year old monastary. The monastary was so beautiful and colorful. One of the things we did there was a re-birthing process. There is a upsidedown urn thing placed on four rock blocks. You are supposed to enter (on your stomache) and turn clockwise three times then come out this tiny hole at the other end. Jesse and I are not Mongol sized (more mongol super size). It is very claustraphobic inside and everyone is standing around laughing at you.

At the campsite we did normal camping things till the dads came back with a live sheep! They finished killing it then started taking all the insides out. The inside of an animal stinks! The women cleaned the intestines and the men pulled out a blowtorch. They tied the sheep to the tree and then used the blowtorch for about an hour and a half to get all the hair and whatnot off. Then they chopped it up, put it in a large metal container with hot rocks and water and potatoes and rolled it around for about an hour. Then we all sat down and ate piles of meat. It was actually really good and I got picutes.

We also had a huge bonfire (Mongolians aren't hip to the "leave no trace" camping philosophy). They passed around the vodka (about the 5th bottle) and sang songs and danced (sort of). Then J and I had to sing. We were very bad but no one knew. : )

The weekend was pretty fun overall but Jesse got a little sick. I think it was the forest berries he ate (Mike didn't you teach him better?). He thought it was ok because everyone else was eating them, although he didn't bother to check if I was eating them. He threw up in the car! Everyone thought he was hungover even though he only had one bowl of beer. Ha! I nursed him back to health and he is much better today.

That is all we have for now. Cheers!

And Jesse Speaks

2005-07-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

Two posts in two days whatever will you do. For those of you afraid of information overload read yesterdays post first then read this next Sunday.

Since my wife loves to write in the first person I decided to write my own posting this week.

Not wanting to repeat Sierra two much I will say that we are having a great time these last few days at the first reunion of all 54 volunteers since we left for host sites. From the number of late night conversations we have all had it sounds like everybody is having a positive experience with their host families. As in America every host family has its own unique set of quirks but nobody has reported a poor experience to my knowledge.

As for my personal experiences everything is great. As I have mentioned before I live in a reasonably rural community (actually recently found out the economy of my town really revolves around sheep/goat/cattle herding and wheat growth). I live in a four bedroom cabin/house. We have a separate kitchen shack out in the yard, an outhouse, and several pins for the various livestock my family keeps. I have 3 younger brother (13, 10, 4), although the middle one has been living in the countryside tending the sheep most of the summer so I don't see him much . The four year old and I have become really close, he eats meals in my laps, runs to give me a hug when I get home, and talks a mile a minute as four year olds are prone to do. His language skills still far surpass my own, but at least I understand some of the words that come out of his mouth. The older brother is really great. He doesn't speak much English now but it very smart and interested in learning. This means that I h ave had many language exch ange sessions with him during the last several weeks. He has also sort of included me in his group of local friends. This has led to more than one trip to the river, stone skipping contest, grasshopper collecting session, or wrestling match. The time with him and the other kids has helped me to feel at home here as well as to improve my language.

Perhaps my coolest experience thus far though was my trip to the countryside on tuesday evening. The whole event started when my mom decided she wanted to visit her middle child at in the countryside. So about 10 o'clock at night (as the sun was setting) she and my dad loaded the family in the cart for the tractor, fired up the tractor and drove us into the country. We ended up parking next the railway and hiking a bit into the country to the gers where my extended host family lives with the huge family herd (about 90 head of sheep/goat combined). My parents and I were paraded into the ger and welcomed in the traditional fashion. To begin with the ger was really incredible. It was really the first time I have been in a ger that wasn't set up specially for tourists. It basically consits of a mans side and a womans side. On the mans side is a bed, all horse riding materials, the saddles, the TV and Radio, and other manly devices. The womans side contains a bed and dresser where all food prep items are kept. Between the two sides is a alter with photos of elderly family members, and other valuables. And of course in the middle of the ger is a wood stove where all cooking occurs.

Once in the ger we were able to participate in the traditional greetings. We passed around beautiful marble snuff bottles ( worth about 2000 USD),and a bowl full of homemade whiskey (I learned how to politely accept and return the alcohol with out actually drinking any) There is so much tradition and formality surrounding everything here is always feels a bit daunting. After being greeted I spent the next two hours talking about my job, my family here and in the states, and generally what I am doing here. This conversation took place using my broken Mongol, a lot of help from my family, and a mime routine worthy of an academy award. All said the night was an amazing experience

Of course being mongolia the ride home was as exciting as the trip itself. Basically it consisted of me hold on in the front of the tractor cart, while talki ng to a drun k Mongolian who came with us from the ger. All this occuring while a sheep that was destined for the dinner table roamed the cart behind. Oh yeah, did I mention it was 1am, we were driving crazy back dirt roads, and the headlights kept going out. But we arrived safely at home and I only have fond memories of the experience.

Okay, that is all for now. Hope everybody has a good few weeks until we post again.

Jesse

Manly Sports and Other such things

2005-07-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

Hiya kids,

sorry this post is a little tardy, I have been a little low on funds (just got paid yesterday) and a little short on time. We just had our mid-Pre Service Training Language evaluations. Pleased to announce I don't super suck, I am on par with everyone else...except Jesse and a few other super stars (who we all hate) who recieved a Novice-high score. This is the score that you need in order to be sworn in as a volunteer. We are currently having a renunion with all 54 trainees in Darkhan for the week. It is nice to see everyone and how far we have come. We all kinda smell like sheep and the hotel that we thought was awful when we got here feels pretty good now. How quickly standards change.

Life in general is good. I think, for me this past week was a little rough. Kinda out of the honeymoon stage with Mongolia, or maybe just with training, and was feeling pretty homesick. Got a letter from Liz and John yesterday so that was awesome (blink blink). Will let you know when the package arrives and when your letters come riggaloo (I wrote you a letter about two weeks ago but it is still in my binder...I will mail it before I leave darkhan, promise).

Last week one of the things we had to do was cook over a fire. So we all got together and made hosher and boats. Hosher is meat packets deep fried and boats are steamed dumplings, of course meat filled as well. It was super fun. The pinching them closed is a little tricky and mine turned out very ugly but as I tried to tell the Mongolians it doesn't affect the taste. On Monday (the 4th of July) we had a birthday party for one of our fellow trainees and raised our glasses to the all of you at home. Then we lit some matches and called them fireworks.

On Tuesday we had dinner at our language instructors house and it was pretty fun. Ate hosher and drank milk tea and sang "American Folk" songs. I don't think I realized how many songs I don't know all the words too. The only songs we can sing as a group we learned under the age of 7.

Last week (skip reading if I posted this last time) we went to the cultural center and got a tour of all the traditional folk arts (singing, dancing, instraments). Peace corps said they will pay for music lessons for us so I am going to learn the Horse Head Violin (like in weeping camel) (I saw two camels on my way into to town the other day, they are so cool). I like it because it just sounds aweful so americans won't know if I am really bad at it or really good. It will be a mystery. Hopefully I will stick with it longer than the two weeks I was able to muster with the clarinet (sorry dad).

On Saturday Jesse is coming back with me to my town and it is Naadam! The manly sports festival (John I will send you pictures). From what we hear there is a lot of drinking, horse racing, and wrestling. People come in from all over and dress in their finest del's or in new clothes. My family measured me for a del waistcoat moments before we left for Darkhan so hopefully I will have something to wear at the Naadam. I will take pictures. Speaking of pictures, I have not figured out how to upload them here because our jump drive is not recognized by the operating system. Will keep working on it, however we can view pictures people send in email just fine. So I am excited that J will meet my family (they are all back now so the house is nice and full again) and it should be pretty fun to participate in Naadam. Learned how to refuse vodka in Mongol.

Next week my group goes to UB. So that should be an adventure. I think we are taking the night train and touring the town and going to some technical training sessions there. On my next post I will have some more interesting stories to tell about our time there. The way people talk about it it is some magical fairy land of a place.

And, this is pretty cool, J and I are both getting cell phones when we go to the capital. That means that people can call us (free for us) and we found a site where you can get $.05/min to call from the states to us. Everyone here has cell phones, mongolians and PC volunteers alike. Anyway will send more info once they are purchased.

I think that is all from me for now. For some reason I am blanking on stuff that I have done. Jesse was sad that people think he doesn't blog (or maybe that people think my blogging is so clever) so he is going to do his very own post tomorrow without me, with all of his stories. Stay tuned for more adventures from the Hoodoo (countryside)

Cheers!

At long last a weekend together

2005-06-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

SO, first of all, good on all of you for posting to our site. it is really great to read everything. blogging is fun.

So this weekend I (sierra) traveled from my host site to Jesse's house. It is like night and day. Jesse's site reminds me a lot of Addy. Pretty rustic. It was GREAT to see him. We played with his brothers, watched some dvds on my computer (I have a birthday coming up if anyone wants to send some Dvds), and made pizza for his family. at least we called it pizza, it was was more like a bruchetta (spl?)with local ingredients. It was fun to make and i think they liked it too. then we got schooled playing cards with his brother and mom, i think the brother was trying to cheat because we never figured out the scoring system. : ) today (sunday) we are in Darkhan eating tofu and emailing on fast(er) computers.

Mongolian language is going along well. We can now read at a 2nd grade level, can succesfully introduce our family members, and say that they all like fruit. Immersion really is pretty amazing.

The summer seems to be flying by, can't believe it is already the end of the 3rd week. We have a mid training inservice in 10 days, followed by a half week off to celebrate manly sports, and then sort of a whirlwind set of travels and classes before swearing in Aug 20th. We are having a really great time though and are still very pleased with our decision to be here. Much happier after a weekend together.

Jesse got good news today, his MCAT scores are in the 98th percentile (scored a 37) so he is pretty awesome and we are excited.

Technical training is going along. We do cross cultural, sector specific and community development on top of our language. The youth development secotor is really interesting because we are the first ones here. It will be a year of discovery and research before starting a big project i think. For most our our in country counterparts it will be there first time working with americans, and my first time with mongolians. Language will be really important. Also testing the boundaries between what people say they want, what they actually want, and what we are able to do will be an exciting challenge. looking forward to it and ready for the challenge.

Jesse's training sounds super interesting. He is learning a lot about the challenges in the health care system here. It seems like a large number of problems stem from a lack of specialized education and a general want for the specialized diagnostic tools and facilities that we are all so accustomed to in the US. (There are only 3 specialized diagnostic centers in the country). It looks like a lot of his focus will be on reproductive health and nutrition, primarily from the educational side. Although there are some rumors of matching him into a more laboratory setting which would be great. He realized he has a lot to learn but most of the necessary resources are readily available to things should be fine.

One last thing that i thought you would all enjoy. We have ger competencies that we have to learn durring the summer. One is chopping wood, buildng a fire and cooking. I made " boats" with my host mom which are kinda like potstickers. They have a specail way to fold them and it took me a long time to get it. We made about 50 and my host mom said i did 5 good. Ha! We went to the country to chop wood and i milked a goat. It was kinda wierd. But I can do it two handed like a pro. And I was the best wood chopper of our group. I think because I am so short and close to the wood. We also rode horses and ate yogurt, cheese, and hot milk. It was fun.

ok that is all from us for now. will write more in ten days or so.

take care.

The Longest Week Ever

2005-06-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

Good to hear about the other side of the world. Keep it coming. Rain and sun here too. Really hot. Boy, I am so excited that you got a new apartment. It is like you are a real person, but I will still think of you as 9. Also glad to hear that you cut your beard down. I have pictures of you in my photo collection here and they don't believe you are my younger brother. Dad they just point and say really, you look alot like Chingis Kahn, I think. and mom they think you are too young. Ha!

Internet is slow here in my town and there are only two computers. Imagine dial up networks in Mongolia, not so good. But I think I can manage a weekly update. Jesse doesn't have email and I have no idea what is going on with him. I get to see him in a week, going to his host family for the weekend so that should be awesome!

This has been a super long week. I have been sleeping a ton. I am slowly learning Mongolian. Learned the alphabet this week (cryllic) and then that day we were reading at a first grade level. So things are moving pretty fast. I am not discouraged yet but I am not that good. Talked to my Community Youth Development people about the type of job I want. I think youth in government would be cool here. I think we will be placed in the capital. Not that excited about it, wanted to live in a ger, but it sounds like they are trying to place jesse in a lab setting. not sure about the details on that but that is what it sounded like. i am guessing the only labs are in UB. and the government is in UB too. So I guess that will be good for when people visit.

I just took a shower at the town bathhouse. WARM water! I think it was the highlight of my week. The soviet apartments don't have hot water in the summer. So it is brain freeze cold trying to wash hair.

Last night we went over to a fellow trainees house and set up the laptop and watched Monty Python. English! Yes! There is a lot of american television and chinese television but it is all dubbed in Mongolian.

Anyway, I should check email before my hour is up. Take care!
s

4 Crazy Days

2005-06-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hiya!
Good to hear from you all! Jesse and I have had a wonderful time at our host families and training. I will tell you about mine and then let jesse tell you about his.

Sierra:
I live in a town of about 10,000 (including the ger suburbs) but I live in the apartment district. TONS of kids everywhere. My apartment is nice and i like my room, I have a bed and desk. My host family is great, really patient and laugh at me a lot. I have three host sisters and they are wonderful. The eldest reminds me of Abby so that is nice. and the youngest is perhaps the cutest thing i have ever seen. They help me every day with homework and pronounciation. we walk around town holding hands and they are always in my room hanging out. we play a lot of cardds, i taught them egyptian rat screw and they taught me a mongolian game. they are very impressed with my shuffling abilities. they also taught me how to play this game with bones. my host parents are nice and very accomindating. they don't make me eat things i don't like (mostly) and i eat a little meat. the first night there i cooked beef noodle soup from scratch (from the careful instructions of my host mom) and that was pretty cool. the only seasoning is salt or sugar however and my family is pretty keen on mayonnaise in eveerything. language is going slow. everyone in my class is super smart and pick it up right away but i am very slow and still working on it. haven't given up hope yet.

we have limited computer time so i will let jesse get his two cents in...

Jesse: My host family experience sounds fairly similar to Sierra's. I am living in a 4 room brick house in a more countrsidesk location (our fence backs up to a large empty hillside). I have 3 younger siblings that belong to my host family and a multitude of other kids of various ages wondering in and out of our home. they seem to be firm believers in the "it takes a village to raise a child" philosophy here. I live about a mile from the school so I don't seem to have much free time, especially lately with all of the cultural and health related training we have been recieving on top of the four hours of language. when I am at home though I usually have been talking to my host mom (primarily by pointing our phrases in our phrase book or going through the dictionary) I am however begining to learn enough words to make myself understood at least a bit. My host siblings have warmed up to me very quickly, especially the four year old. they are afraid to come into my room as of yet, but I will soon break them of that fear. I haven't had the chance to learn to cook yet, but I did do laundry by hand the other night and also learned the ankle bones game that sierra was referring to. there are so many stories and thoughts I want to share but don't think I have the necessary hand strength to type all of those things. simply stated though I am having a fantastic time with my family, the remind me a lot of my own family when we were all a bit younger, and am loving every moment of my time so far here in Mongolia.

P.S. for those trying to find us on a map. We are both located within 60 km of Darkhan. Sierra is to the southwest and jesse is about 20km to the southeast. both area are little soum (small communities surrounding larger imeg(city) centers) and may not be on any maps except Mongolian maps. If I figure out how to type cyrillic on these computers I will spell the names for those who are interested, but right now I don't have all of the necessary characters.

Host Family Bound

2005-06-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

Hi kids,
we are here in Mongolia in a town called Darkhan a few hours from UB. We are off to our host families tomorrow for the next 8 weeks. We have been busy learning mongolian, how to stave off drunks and wild dogs. pretty cool. mongolia is a beautiful place. first night here we stayed at a ger camp (really pretty yurts). it was crazy cold but really awesome, got some good picts. they call it the land of blue skys and it is. gently rolling hills and no pesky trees to block the view. looks a lot like colorado. we are in a town that is the second largest in the country but it is still not that big. takes thirty minutes to walk from one end to the other. lots of throw back russian apartments. jesse is taking to the food but i am considering vegetarianism again. we shall see how receptive host families are to that. : ) went to the black market yesterday and it was a crazy giant flea market. you could find anything there if you looked hard enough. it was really nice because no one was a pushy salesman and there is no barganing. mongolian is coming along slowly. jesse is doing great and i am running to catch up. yesterday my language break through was a rolled "r" so that was pretty cool. we can count to ten, talk about our family, if we like or dont like about 7 foods and how to say hello and good morning. i think there will be a lot of awkward silence tomorrow in our host families.

Jesse is in a town called khongor. His host dad works for a local company driving a tractor. His host mother is a herder. They have three children, all boys between the ages of 4 and 12. He is living in a 4 room wooden house, and is told it backs up to a beautiful hillside. I am in an apartment in Khutul. My host parent own two stores and have three girls between the ages of 14 and 6. I think it will be really good once i learn about 700 more words!

ok, that is all from us for now. feel free to post to this or send us and email (disappointing lack of emails people). we should have internet access weekly or so.

-sierra

On our Way!

2005-06-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

We are in Seoul right now, have been traveling for 24 hours. Got the middle seat for half way around the world...doh!

The Seoul airport is full of Duty free shops and not much else but it is nice. Didn't find a "South Korea has Seoul" shirt. I think something is lost in translation.

We arrive in UB (the capital) tonight around 11pm. Spending our first night in a Ger camp and then having lunch with the ambassador. Then off to our new staging grounds about 45 minutes from the capital. Jesse and I will be in seperate houses but they promise we can visit on the weekends, so that's nice.

Pretty much all to report for now. Cheers!

- The weary wanderers

Intro

2005-04-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

This will be my spot to update friends and fam about my adventures in Mongolia for the next two years. Hope you like it.