I swear (or affirm)

I (state your name) am now an official Peace Corps Volunteer. The swearing in ceremony last Saturday was pretty impressive. The US ambassador and the President N. Enkhbayar both gave speeches and all the host families were there to say goodbye to their trainees. People from each training site got to perform traditional Mongolian songs, dances, and poems. The audience couldn't believe that we'd only been in the country for three monthes. It was great to see everyone in all in dels or Mongol shirts and the host families really enjoyed it.

I've been at work in Tsetserleg for a almost a week now. I had heard from other business volunteers that you spend the first 3 months reading and getting familiar with the operation and I thinkthey were right. Right now my Rural Agro-Business Support (RASP) office works with about 12 businesses in Tsetserleg and in nearby soums (towns). I've been reading their business plans and in a couple of weeks I get to travel to the soums to help with trainings. Tsetserleg is nice and there are a lot of foreign tourists passing through. I'm not sure how many I'll see in winter though. I'm still getting settled in my apartment and figuring out where things are. I want to go hiking and check out the mountains also.

More pics

Some shots from our business seminar. I can send you my presentation if you want.










Some pics of my host family and I plus a little going away party with Curtis and his family.











Big group shot. Some trainees at our Darkhan pub crawl. All the Khotol people at Vita's birthday party. .

Training Wrap-Up

Training is almost over and we're all back in Darkhan for our last medical and technical sessions. On Monday we got our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) scores and site placements. It was a great day because I got an Intermediate Low (up from a Novice High at Mid LPIs) and I found out that I'm going to Tsetserleg, Arkhangai. It's supposed to the nicest provence and I'll be living in the capital in an apartment. We swear in and officially become Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) on Saturday. The ambassador administers the oath and various dignitaries as well as all of our host parents will attend. Each group of trainees is doing a performance and one representative from each is doing a speech in Mongolian. I have a Mongolian shirt and hat to where. After that we get to go to UB for a couple days to buy stuff for our sites. I'll do another post about swearing in with more pics from swearing in. Now, though here are some pics from my summer in Hotol and from our two trips to a monastery nearby. Click on the pictures or links to get to the galleries.

Business Seminar

Things are really good here. We had our business seminar yesterday and it went great. We had a full house (almost 20 small business people and students from our town) and all three of our presentations went over well. Peace Corps let us use their LCD and I used my computer for powerpoint on two of the presentations. I'm really glad I brought it because we wouldn't have been able to do the seminar with out it. If I get the chance I'll post my presentation which was on marketing. We had it translated into Mongolian and we got to work with a translator during our seminar. That took a little getting used to. It was really satisfying because one of the audience members got up at the end and said that she wanted to thank us for trying to help thier businesses. That's what we're here to do.

I'll put up my new address once I know it, probably at the end of August. Thanks for the comments and emails. Look forward to more blog posts and pictures.