Khansella

Back by popular demand

2008-04-07T13:58:00.002+08:00

Hi guys,

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I've been really busy. I've been in Washington DC since September enjoying all the inside the beltway intrigue and "what do you do?" conversation starters. Not quite. It was a little rough settling in, but now I share a two bedroom apartment with a middle-aged Tunisian man who is rarely at home. Thanks Craig's List!

Anyway, I also have a job working for a large-ish international development company. Several people (AKA my mom) have suggested that I restart my blog. I won't be able to write too much about work, but I will try and fill you in on what I'm up to in our (maybe not your) nation's capital. Highlights so far include mastering the mail merge and lots of pub quizzes. Please send a link to the blog to anyone you think may be interested in Mongolia or what it's like to live in DC. More soon.

PS. Please read down to "Almost Heaven" for a slice of slice of life inspired by someone else's video blog post. Expect a lot more videos.

Almost Heaven

2008-04-07T12:05:00.006+08:00

When we would all meet up in UB to A) resupply, B) eat pizza, C) check on the possibility of a medevac to Thailand, D) fraternize with tourists, or E) all of the above, nights often ended with a trip to the Apollon karaoke bar on Peace Avenue. After some momentary attempted disambiguation, we would descend the precarious staircase and traverse the maze-like catacombs that led to one of many private rooms where we could indulge our need for American music and, not to mention, beer and cheap vodka.

The bar had obviously purchased the equipment and song book from Korea or China and the choices ranged from standards like Guns and Roses and Bon Jovi to bad Europop that Mongols would insist we should already know all the words to (because it was in English). One song in particular was a crowd favorite, because it was good for a sing-along and we often got the feeling after being in the city, or on the road, too long that we should have been home yesterday...yesterdaaay. I am writing, of course, about Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver.

This choice of crowd pleaser would probably amuse and confuse all of those who weren't going through the same experience we were, especially those who had already been born when the song was first recorded which most most of us had not. No matter. Just being in a room full of people who all spoke English and knew (more or less) exactly what you were going through was enough to inspire a new found sense of common cause and (ahem) camaraderie that none of us had known before or might know again. And all of this because of a 3:00 minute song written about a place most of us had never been.

This post may be one of the worst examples of "you had to be there", but just try and picture a roomful of freshly-showered or still dirty from the country Peace Corps volunteers huddled in a basement barroom belting out a song released in 1971 and understanding exactly what it meant and you may know what it was like to be there then.

To help you along, here is the original and a couple examples of just what this song has meant to people from Jamaica to Japan.

I took my first trip to West Virginia last week when I went to Harper's Ferry with my friend Aaron. I didn't know exactly how to express the strange sense of kinship I felt standing under the Blue Ridge Mountains and over the Shenandoah River, so I described most things I saw as "neat". These words should get me at least part of the way, but as they say...you really had to be there.

August and Everything After

2008-01-13T05:12:00.000+08:00

Greetings from our nation’s capital. Since my last post from Mongolia, a lot has changed. I’m not writing from Mongolia anymore, obviously. After getting back to Florida, I spent about two weeks at my parent’s house in Florida. I got to go diving with my dad and practice driving with my mom again. I missed driving more and I’m kind of spoiled by public transportation. Not that there’s much mass transit going on in Florida. I moved up to Washington, DC in the middle of September. I slept on My friend Aaron’s floor for a couple weeks while I looked for jobs and an apartment. Surprisingly, Craig’s List is useful for more than just casual encounters and I found a place pretty easily. I share a two bedroom in a cool neighborhood close to the metro and some friends who also moved back to DC. The place is also crawling with returned Peace Corps volunteers looking for work in development. That makes the job hunt pretty competitive, but there are a lot of job fairs and other resources to make it easier. For what I want to do, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I’ve had a lot more job interviews this year and I should have something permanent soon. Getting temp work with non-profits helps me stay in that world and make new connections.

This will be the official last post of my blog. I know I’ve been talking about this for a while, but the blog will soon be turned into a book. My brother was kind, and patient, enough to do the heavy lifting and now I have to send him the final edits. If you’re reading the book, thanks for making it this far. Or, if you just flipped to the back to see who did it, bad mystery reader. Bad. It makes more sense if you begin at the beginning. Thanks again for coming with me on this journey. Enjoy the book and if you think you’re doing something important, tell the world about it. You never know who’ll listen.

Peace Out,
John “Steel” Kinsella

Sweet Sorrow

2007-08-19T21:16:00.000+08:00

Well this is it folks, my last post from Mongolia. I've been busy this past month showing my dad around the country, helping out with the training of new volunteers, and finishing up my close of service paperwork.

My dad was here for 12 days and got some really good stuff. We visited several monasteries and got to see some real countryside life. Check out this gallery and his website to see some shots from his trip. I was a little nervous about showing him around, but everything worked out great. I arranged two cars for our road trips and was able to talk my way into some cool places. I think he was impressed by the hospitality of the Mongolians...if not by their cuisine. He also got to meet a lot of my friends who were leaving the same week he arrived. All in all we traveled around 1600 km in 10 days, about half of which was on unpaved roads. Definitely check out his site and keep checking for updates to the Mongolia portfolio.

Soon after my dad left I traveled up to Sukhbaatar soum in Selenge aimag near the Russian border to help with the M18 business volunteer's final project. They did a business seminar similar to the one we did our first summer in the country. I was able to give them some useful tips on their presentations and the seminar went well.

After leaving Sukhbaatar, I went back to Arkhangai for my last week at site. I thought it would be painful, but I didn't know the half of it. I somehow caught viral tonsillitis that lasted 7 days. I couldn't really eat or drink anything all week. I did manage to lose a few pounds, so it wasn't all bad. There were some going away parties, but all my packing and crying was confined to my last night there. Saying goodbye to Nasaa was the hardest part and I had to do it all over again on the phone a little while ago. I'm not sure if we'll see each other again, but being with her was a great experience. Parting is such...

Writing this blog over the past 27 months has been an experience in itself. I hope it's been as enjoyable for you read as it was to write. I always enjoyed reading your comments and emails of support, but honestly I'd have kept it up even if I knew no one was reading it except my mom...hi mom. Once I get home I plan to turn the blog into a book using software from Blurb. I'll post some late updates once I get home too. I have a one night layover in Beijing and I'll be home the night of the 21st after being away from the states for 27 months. As for right now, I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece and short.

Metropolis

2007-07-29T17:08:00.000+08:00

It's time for another three post marathon. These are, hopefully, more painful to write than to read so lets get to it. My dad just left after a 12 day trip. He got some great stuff for his website that should be up in a couple weeks. I'm trying to get caught up. We went to Amarbayasgalant monastery in a Russian Jeep and all over Arkhangai in a Toyota Prado (smaller land cruiser). It was definitely worth the extra money. We stayed two nights at a ger camp started by Rob Shore and his counterpart. I was going to book us a ger to ger trip, but he was most interested in shooting - IOW: photographing - monks. I'm glad we didn't have an actual translator with us because it could have brought up some painful memories.

Before we left for Arkhangai, we got to compete in the weekly pub quiz at Dave's and I got to go to a new club to see off a large group of M16s who were leaving early. Metropolis was a really big, nice place, but the guys were also really aggressive even by Mongolian standards and I won't be back. I was able to do a series of self portraits with most of the soon to depart and I'm happy with how they turned out. Check out the pictures.

Anyway, keep reading down for two more new posts and check back later to hear stories from my dad's trip. Believe me. There are plenty.

Dude, you're getting a deel

2007-07-29T16:44:00.000+08:00

Before I left UB, I went to the market to pick up some material for a new deel. (side note - this word is pronounced like the computer brand which once prompted a question from my mother about why I needed a new computer in the first place.)

Nasaa's friend, who also made my last deel, was able to have it ready in time for Naadam. I got a new hat to go with it, and yes, Mongols do where cowboy hats as well as fedoras and sometimes baseball caps with deels. Naadam itself was typically sedate. There was a group of fans watching all the wresting and the end of horse races, but I didn't even see any archery. I did get some pictures of gar shagai where men flick sheep ankle bones and try to knock over tiles across a small playing field. All in all, I wore my deel for a few hours the first day. Oh well, there's always Halloween.

You Tube

2007-07-29T15:22:00.001+08:00

After I got back from Tsenkher with Nasaa, I got a text message from my friend Danny asking why I wasn't up in Erdenet getting ready for the tubing trip down the Selenge river. I wasn't planning on going on the trip which had been talked about since our first summer. I'm not much of an outdoors type (I prefer calling it "between-doors") but I had just enjoyed my first non-work related trip to the countryside in a while and wanted to get away again. Plus, work was really slow and the water and power would be out for most of the week anyway. What was I going to miss?

So, I bought the last bus ticket, told Nasaa and my office that I'd be away for a week, packed a bag, and thought about buoyancy. After a 12 hour drive to UB, a night on a friend's floor, and another 7 hour drive to Erdenet, I was in the market haggling over the price of inner tubes. We gathered supplies - beer - and drove to the soum, home to Colin one of the trip's architects, that would be our embarkation point. We camped next Colin's ger and began inflating the tubes the next day. One Mongol, who had completed a similar trip from upstream on the same river, would accompany us. He had secured three huge tractor tires which we would use to make a raft. Check out the pictures.

We had intended to travel up to 200 km and reach Sukhbaatar soum near the Russian border, but that proved overly optimistic. We ended up going 70 km, as the crow flies, in three full days of tubing. The river was mostly shallow and winding so it would have taken us over a week for the whole trip. We had already lost five out of our original 13 members due to bad skin reaction caused by our chosen Chinese inner tubes. In the end, we stopped 10 km from the nearest soum and were lucky to encounter a group of farm workers who agreed to drive us into Darkhan where many were scheduled to take part in Peace Corps training. I got to see all the new trainees and dry out before heading back to site. It was something I won't soon forget. Thanks to M17 Hanna Kim for providing most of the pictures in my Flickr set.

Time enough at last

2007-06-28T17:40:00.000+08:00

The power was off all this week so me and Nasaa decided to go to the countryside (in Mongolian-hodoo) to visit some of her family. I haven't been out to the hodoo for a while, so I was looking forward to relaxing and doing some reading. I managed to finish one book, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People by Toby Young, before we managed to find a driver. Mind you, I'm no speed reader. It took us three days. We eventually found a driver who would take us out with just one other woman. That was a good start, because drivers usually try to fill their cars beyond the recommended capacity. Picture a clown car and add a sheep and three bottles of vodka.

We were to visit three families, all relations of Nasaa's mother. My ideas about reading quietly were put to rest when we got to the first camp. Everyone was excited to see Nasaa and almost as excited to see a foreigner. I was never really alone, but I wasn't disappointed either. My only other hodoo trips have been with work when there's always some kind of training going on. Now I also realize that the clients we visit must be well off. They can afford luxuries like bread, sugar and, vegetables. Those trips were also in the winter when it gets dark really early and you can't do much outside. On this trip I got to go horseback riding, try on an assortment of deels, and even herd some animals. Seriously. Take a look at the pictures.

On the last night two of the families came over for some group pictures. Everyone got dressed up in their best deels and I got to play photographer aka foreigner with a camera. Mongolians are crazy about pictures, overfilling albums and putting special shots up in their gers. The only place you can get good prints made now is in UB, so they were all anxious to know when my next trip was. I thought it wasn't going to be until after Naadam, but I just decided to go in tomorrow. I'm not staying in town this time. No, I'm headed northwest to Erdenet for the first annual, and hopefully not to be known as memorial, Selenge River inner tube trip. The plan is to start off north of the city and see how far we get. I'm betting on being out for three days, but who knows. That should be the next thing I (or my executor) blogs about, so check back for updates and pictures.

It's a nice day to start again

2007-06-09T16:22:00.001+08:00

Hi gang. I know it's been a really, really long time since my last post, but I have been really, really busy the last two months. Seriously folks. No foolies. I'll try to get you all caught up in the next three posts. In other words, keep reading down to the next posts to read about my latest exploits.

I left Moscow on May 25th for my brother's wedding in Canada. The flight from Moscow to Toronto was 10 hours, or the same amount of time it takes me to get from UB to Arkhangai by bus. I'm not bitter. Immediately after getting off the plane I dropped my stuff off at my brother's friend's place and headed out for his bachelor party. Bardia and I had been organizing the party (a pub crawl through downtown Toronto) for a few months. The group ended up being smaller than I thought it would be. There was Bardia, his brother, their friend Jenya, Alex and I. So there were two Persians, two Irishmen, and a Russian. It was a very international affair and in the morning we even had pancakes. My memory from the end of the night is a little fuzzy (jet lag and all) so I can't take responsibility for all the pictures in the album.

The next day Alex and I drove back to his house in Kitchener where his friends were planning another pub crawl. The jet lag was seriously catching up with me, so I went home after the first bar. That was probably a good idea, because I needed to save my strength for the next week of events. There was a dinner for the bride and groom's families, a rehearsal dinner, the ceremony and reception, plus numerous gatherings at Alex and Laurie's house. I was a the best man and got to handle the rings and give a speech. It was a really great event and all their planning paid off. Be sure to check out all the week's pictures.

So that brings us to more or less the present day. I got back to UB on Wednesday morning and went right to work where I had to make a PowerPoint presentation on the catalog project. All the catalogs had been printed and I got to take home a whole set. My presentation on Thursday went well and I'm all set to go home to Arkhangai. I haven't been there since April 22nd and I'm sure I've been missed. I'm not sure what Mercy Corps holds in store for me in my last weeks in Mongolia, but my last Naadam should be fun and my dad is coming for a visit right after that. Keep checking back for updates. I'll make sure to post more often.

From Russia with great admiration

2007-06-09T15:23:00.000+08:00

I was in UB for another two weeks before I left for Moscow on May 23rd. I had been working 24/7 to get the catalogs finished and they were pretty much ready to be printed by the time I left. It was definitely good to get a break, because I knew I'd be busy right when I got back to Mongolia.

We have some friends, Marina and Natalia, in Moscow from when my father and my brother used to travel to Russia and Central Asia in the 90's. I got to stay in Marina's apartment for three days and Natalia's son Sasha took me around the city. His sister Olga had stayed with my family almost 10 years ago and they still have all the pictures from her trip. Marina and Sasha showed me the metro and Red Square. I got to go to history and art museums, St. Basil's, the Kremlin Armory, and of course Lenin's tomb.

It was a great trip, because I got to see a lot of stuff in a short time. I was surprised by how big Moscow was (over 3.5 times the population of Mongolia) and by how many words I already knew because they're also used in Mongolian. On my last night there was a birthday party for Sasha where I got to meet some of his friends. I'll be sure invite them to DC when I move back after Peace Corps.

End of an era

2007-06-09T14:13:00.000+08:00

We had our "Close of Overseas Service" conference from May 7-9 at this really nice ger camp called the Secret History resort. I'd already been in the city for two weeks working on the second edition of the Client Product Catalog. We're doing all 10 Mercy Corps aimags this time and it's been a lot of work. More on that later. It was great to have our whole group together one last time at the conference. Our official COS date is August 20th and I'll be sticking around until then, but a lot of people will be heading home early for grad school and other reasons. Overall, I have to say this was the best Peace Corps event we've had. The scenery was nice, we had a big lodge to hang out in, and the sessions weren't too demanding. The overall atmosphere was "you've come this far, enjoy it".

It was kind of depressing to think that this whole experience is almost over, but I know I'll always have my memories. And for what I can't remember, I can always refer to this blog. Anyway, most of the conference sessions were about what it will be like to readjust to life outside of Mongolia. There were some cautionary tales about returned volunteers just lying on the couch watching Tom and Jerry, as well as mock job interviews, and final language proficiency interviews. On my LPI, I scored an intermediate high, up from intermediate low at the end of training. I think that's a good improvement considering I don't really talk about things that don't involve work, travel, food, or shopping.

Right after the conference, we went to the Ambassador's residence for a reception. The Ambassador wasn't there, but several people from the embassy and our new country director were. Our old CD is leaving to take up the same position in Romania. It was sad to see him go, because he was our first director and got here shortly before we did. These events are also good because they always lay out a good spread at Star Apartments. And we all know, there's never a plate big enough for a Peace Corps volunteer.

Carnivorous

2007-04-02T11:34:00.000+08:00

Hi gang. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I've been really busy. Two weeks ago I went to Khenti aimag where 3 volunteers held the 2nd annual pig roast. Over 20 volunteers from different parts of the country braved an unusually bad snowstorm and usually bad Mongol transportation to get there. The Khenti people really did it up right this year with an actual spit for roasting and a separate fire for grilling. It was good to have two fires, because it snowed all day. We kept ourselves warm with impromptu sumo wrestling and by throwing around the old pig...head.

As I was headed back to site there were already people arriving at my apartment who were on school break. There wasn't really an event planned, but the week culminated in another barbecue that might become an annual event. Needless to say my apartment was a little the worse for wear. Nasaa described it (in Mongolian) as looking like a war zone. As you can see from the picture though, my friends did decorate one of my rather bare walls. Not sure about the slogan, but I appreciate the effort. My friend Jeremy also organized a career fair for Mongolian students who were in town for some academic competitions. It was held over two days and covered study abroad, interviewing and work opportunities. Nasaa and I helped get some speakers for the second day and the kids really enjoyed the whole event.

Right now a few Arkhangai people are in for resupply. Two of them can bike in and not have to wait for cars which is nice. The week after next I'm going back to UB to finish the latest catalog. I'll have some samples up later. Then we have our close of service seminar. At the end of May I go back to UB fly to my brother's wedding via Moscow. I have all the visa materials already so it should be easy.

In other news, I got a new hot water heater put in. This one heats the water as it flows through instead of holding it in a 50 L tank that threatens to fall off the wall. Plus it came with a smaller unit that goes in the kitchen so I can wash dishes with hot water. We're commin' up in the world here in Arkhangai.

We're very big in LA.

2007-03-17T14:53:00.000+08:00

Just saw this in an article about one of my favorite blogs:

There are blogs for baseball teams, for fast food, for God and for Satan; there are lots of blogs on politics and Hollywood and at least one that deals exclusively with pharmaceutical industry research. There are hundreds of blogs on Iraq and more than you would imagine in Mongolia.

Glad to see they've finally caught on out west. Now lets see if I play in Peoria.

Tsagaan Sar 2007

2007-02-28T12:34:00.000+08:00

Last week was Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian Lunar New Year celebration, and I got to go back to my host site in Hotol. Tasagaan Sar = (Thanksgiving + pub crawl) x 3. I spent the three days of the actual holiday in Arkhangai and visited Nasaa and her relatives. Compared to my friends who are English teachers, I had it pretty easy. I only visited a couple houses each day and didn't have to drink too much. As you can see from the pictures I had a deel made for Tsagaan Sar and got to where is to Hotol also. It's something nice I can take home. I may have another one made to bring to my brother's wedding in May.

In order to go to Hotol, I had to take the bus to UB and then a train. I made the whole trip in 20 hours and that's because the train trip itself took seven hours. I passed the time by reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's over 1,000 pages long, but was recommended by a friend. I can't really tell you what it's about except that by page 300 it involves tennis, French Canadian Separatism, and drug and alcohol rehab. I made it into town at 4:30 am and went right to bed. The next day two friends, Curtis and Danny, who also trained in Hotol drove in from Erdenet. We visited each other's houses and had some left over buuz. We also got to see our language teacher Undraa. A lot of people from the town remembered us and it was good to see the place again. It looked a lot different than in summer.

In other news, the business book is finished and will be distributed to the new volunteers at PDM next week. Based on their feedback, the book will be revised and handed out at the M18 training this summer. Hopefully we get to go in and help out. I am also starting work on a new version of the catalog. There are a lot of new businesses that want to take part, so we should have plenty of good stuff to choose from. That's all for now.

Indochine

2007-02-12T18:25:00.000+08:00

Hey gang. I know its been a while since I rapped at ya, but I just got back from south Indochina. We were gone for three whole weeks and moved around a lot, so I might not mention every thing we did. Overall it was a great and relaxing trip. There was lots of beach time and sleeping in. That meant we didn't do a lot of tours and boat trips, but that was fine. We were on the same plane with a group of girls who got up before 8:00 most days and that doesn't sound like much of a vacation. I'll do a quick rundown of our activities and let the pictures speak for themselves. Go to my Flickr page for all the sets or click on links as they appear.

The trip started and ended in Ho Chi Minh City, which most locals still refer to as Saigon. We only had a night there before taking a night bus to Nha Trang. We really wanted to go SCUBA diving and that seems to be the best place. There are a bunch of dive companies and they all do refresher courses which is good, because I hadn't been in the water for two years. Nha Trang kind of reminded me of Miami beach with a string of hotel, shops, and bars right across from the beach. Apparently Summer is the high season so we got cheap rates. I'm sure its hotter and rainy then too.

From Nha Trang we booked a highland tour down to Dalat and then back to the coast at Mui Ne. Our driver/guide didn't have the English we expected, but he showed us some cool stuff including rubber and coffee plantations, silk worm growing, and a long house village. We actually stayed in a longhouse for a night and got to see the minority tribe that lives there. The government recently moved them out of the hills and is trying to settle them more. The highlight of staying in the village was probably crossing a river on an elephant. Check out the pictures. We also took a cable car across a valley near Dalat. That was good for some aerial shots. Dalat is a nice little city that was set up by the French as a kind of alpine retreat. I'd like to spend more time there, but after one night we went to Mui Ne. It is another beach town, but much more laid back. There are some cool looking boat tours and sand dunes you can go see.

Another cool thing we saw during the tour was the Crazy House built by a Vietnamese architect. It's not even finished yet and it's already pretty crazy. And I can't forget the waterfall on the way to the long house village. We actually went behind it and swam around, but I couldn't take any pictures there.

After another night in Saigon, we headed to Phnom Penh before heading straight for another beach town called Sihanoukville. You can tell where this is going. More sitting on the beach enjoying cocktails and not much else. One thing that amazed us was how well all of the people trying to sell you things spoke English. If you don't buy the little girl's painting she'll deliver a surprisingly effective insult and try to impress you by counting from 1 to 10 in five languages. While sitting on the beach we also ran into the Imans (the coolest married couple in Peace Corps history). They'd flown into Bangkok and just happened to be in Sihanoukville that day. Needless to a great time was had by all.

We managed to drag ourselves away from the beach after three days and headed back to Phnom Penh so we could make it to Angkor Wat the next day. We only got a one day pass, but the three day one would be worth it. We'd heard it was easy to rent bikes and see the main things in one day. That's good, because I was just about dead after that much biking. Plus, with me being slow and bad with directions, I lost the rest of my group for about four hours. Luckily, I could buy a map and figure out where the sites were. I was about half way through when I come out of a bathroom to find the others on the side of the road looking at their map. They'd gone left at the start when I thought they went right. We got to see the biggest two temples together and share our pictures of the rest of the park.

After yet another night in Phnom Penh, we went back to Saigon and booked a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. That was one of the tours we really wanted to do and it was only a half day. You have to watch a propaganda movie before you go on the tour, but I didn't see any anti-Americanism elsewhere on the trip. Our guide had actually served with the South during the war. The tour itself was interesting, because you saw how they adapted from fighting the French to the Americans and how they responded to the jungles being leveled by bombs. I just about squeezed through a few of the tunnels, but not the original door you can see in the pictures. Out of respect for Peace Corps rules, I did not go to the firing range.

That night at 12 am we flew back to Korea and then to UB. I'm here now finishing up the business book and starting the next version of the catalog. Tsaagan Tsar is also almost upon us, so I won't be getting much work done next week. I may come back to UB and go up to Selenge to see my host family. There's also a dual birthday party a bunch of people will be going to and I haven't been back there since swearing in. I'll have updates later.

UPDATE: Just so you don't think my trip was all drinks and pony rides, I thought I'd mention that I read three books while on vacation. There were some long flights and bus rides so I had plenty of times.

Those books were:

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson - 784 pages

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - 240 pages

The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens - 161 pages

Other volunteers brought some books and many hostels have exchange programs. Remember kids, Reading Is Fundamental.

Korea

2007-01-21T13:20:00.000+08:00

Sorry I couldn't get that file to upload. I'll try a different service later. I'm at the airport in Incheon, Korea where we had a 20 hour layover. There are only a few flights a week out of UB so this happens a lot when people are traveling. One of the people in our group has friends teaching English here so they met us at the airport and showed us around a little. We didn't even make it into a major city, but it is really developed around here compared to Mongolia. Last night we checked into a hotel and 11 of us slept in one big room. We also went to a karaoke bar. You can check out the pictures. I'd like to see more of the country, but it was good to just leave the airport for a while. I'll have more news and pictures once we get to Saigon tonight. That's all for now.

Sledding

2007-01-16T16:47:00.000+08:00

We went sledding again this weekend and I was able to take some pictures. Jeremy was in on his way to America and Nasaa was able to come as well. The sleds, which are just big pieces of hard plastic, took quite a beating, hence to duct tape. My beard froze again from all the snow flying in my face, but it wasn't really that cold. I don't have any other news except that I finished our Kindling Submission. Click on the link for a PDF. I'm still leaving for UB on Thursday and heading to Saigon via Seoul on Saturday. We're thinking of heading to the coast and then looping west through Cambodia. I'll do a post once we get there. It should be a good time.

Happy New Year

2007-01-12T12:55:00.000+08:00

I've been home for a week now, but haven't had a chance to post yet. I've been busy getting the business book and our Kindling submission together. I'll post them in some form once they're done. I had another full house this weekend and I'll have a few more guests this week too. Tsaagan Tsar should be even crazier this year, but that's not until after I get back from Vietnam. I'm heading to the city on Thursday in a Mercy Corps Land Cruiser. That makes the trip so much better. We leave for Vietnam on the 20th and will be gone for three weeks. There are nine of us going on the same flight and we'll be at the same hostel that night. Should be a good time. I'll do a post once I get there. Other news from this weekend is that we went sledding down the big hill in the middle of town. We used these big plastic sheets another volunteer had left behind. My camera wasn't working, but I'll get some more pictures if we go again. My whole face froze. Should be quite an image.

My New Year's in UB was really fun. After being in Arkhangai last year, I wanted to see what the city was like. I also wanted to be there with Nasaa since it's the one year anniversary of when we met and we'd never been in the city together. We didn't actually meet up until the 31st which is fine because the city is expensive enough on my own. That night we went to a UB volunteer's party. It wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be, but I did have to translate UB volunteer Mongolian into regular Mongolian for Nasaa. Most UB people have English speaking counterparts and hardly ever have to use the language. After the party, we went to Dave's for a drink before going to Sukhbaatar square. There were people setting of giant bottle rockets and general craziness. We headed right for the new addition to the Government House to see a concert on the steps. I haven't mentioned it before, but they just finished the addition. It's this giant pavilion with two Mongol horseman statues and a big statue of Chingiss Khan oddly reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial. The concert was all Mongolian hip-hop. It's good to see parts of American culture catching on here.

That's all for now. I probably won't post before we're in Vietnam, but check back for updates.

Christmas 2006

2006-12-29T14:41:00.000+08:00

Like I said before, I'm in UB from Christmas through New Year's. There were a lot of people in for IST and a Christmas party at Star Apartments, but now I'm on my own until Nasaa gets here tomorrow. I'm going to a friends apartment to celebrate New Year's Eve Eve. Then, Nasaa and I will go to Sukhbatar Square to see fireworks and drink champagne. I'll have more on that later. Christmas in UB this year was fun. We didn't have any seminars or anything so I just came in two days before and hung out. My friend Rob's parents and girlfriend came in from the states on the 26th. They (his parents) are very understanding. Anyway, he had a hotel suite for an extra couple days and I got to stay there. The UB Guesthouse can be a bit much when it's full of volunteers. Rob's parents even took a group of us out to dinner at this nice Indian place called Hazara. I love visiting parents. I also love the new duty free shop they opened right down the road from the Peace Corps office. They really knew what they were doing.

Vita and I had a good meeting with Ken, our country director, and Miriam, our new programming and training officer, about the business guidebook we're putting together. They're really enthusiastic about it and want to roll it out at PDM. I think that's good, because some volunteers will be doing income generating projects. They told us to show it to a Peace Corps guy in D.C. who is in charge of all business operations. I'll post more about that next week when we're ready to send it off.

I'm all set to go to Vietnam with my friends on the 20th too. We bought the tickets and are waiting for our visas to go through. We'll be going to Saigon and Cambodia and hopefully get a few dives in on an island off the coast. After that, I'll be doing some new catalog work and getting ready to go (almost) home to my brother's wedding in Canada. I think next year will go by fast. Stay tuned.

No room at the inn

2006-12-14T16:01:00.000+08:00

This has been a really weird week as far as guests go and it's only Thursday. First, one friend came in from his site for the first time in two weeks. This would not be surprising except that he had not that much time there since the beginning of the summer. He's engaged to another volunteer who lives in the eastern part of the country so he spends a lot of time on the road. He does a lot when he's there and got a large grant for new construction at his school though.

We got some good work done on the newsletter we're putting together. Until this year the PCVL (one volunteer who stays a third year) put together a satirical newsletter, called the Kindling, based on volunteer submissions. Recently several aimags have begun to put their own newsletters together that would have competed with the Kindling. So, in a "if you can't beat 'em join em" move, the PCVLs (we have three this year) decided to have two aimags' submissions compete against each other in each issue.

The first contest was between Dungov and Zavkhan. I've visited both places, but I have to say Zavkhan won handily based on their uncanny parody of an issue of Newsweek. To explain, all Peace Corps volunteers in Mongolia get a free subscription to Newsweek's Asian edition delivered to their site. Some people have no other access to world news so conversations can quickly devolve into "Did you read (blank) in Newsweek?" "Yeah me too." Anyway, they were very faithful to the design and tone of Newsweek and were still able to work in Mongolia and Zavkhan specific jokes such as having the "quotes of the week" section consist completely of Mongolian children saying "hello" and "goodbye" at random to any passing American. The Dungov submission was funny too, but couldn't compete with the standard set by Zavkhan. For me, the standout was a word of the day joke in which one volunteer thought the term Quisling meant a baby quiz used to prepare students for a final.

In the spirit of the Zavkhan group, our submission will be an Onion style newspaper call the Songion (onion in Mongolian). We have a few things done and will have it ready after the newbies finish IST. Rob, one new volunteer, came in shortly after my first guest left. He sprained his ankle playing basketball with Mongolians and needed to go into UB early. He stayed one night and we exchanged some Kindling ideas as well as movies and prank phone calls with fellow Arkhangai volunteer Lizzie. A few hours after he left, Michael showed up to resupply and share some more movies and Kindling submissions. He has a lot of time on his hands (and photoshop) so he produced some cool montages and a few oddly detailed articles on hunkering (a common pastime in Arkhangai) and his love of Ramen. Then, last night, Nasaa showed up drunk at 1:00 AM and wouldn't calm down until I asked Mike to relocate to my room so we could have the living room (not exactly complaining).

So, we'll see what happens the rest of the week. I'm not expecting any other visitors, but who knows. I'll be going into UB on the 23rd and staying through New Year's. There's a Christmas Eve party at Star Apartments and I hear New Year's eve in UB pretty fun. Nasaa will be joining me for that and our 1 year anniversary. Wow. I'll try and post a copy of our Kindling submission and also a copy of the business guidebook we're preparing later. More news and photos on all fronts coming soon.

Thanksgiving 2006

2006-11-28T11:54:00.000+08:00

The picture to the left is of my winning Pub Quiz team at Dave's. I'll going to Vietnam with the two guys in the middle in January. God help me. I spent most of the week in UB for Thanksgiving. My mom sent some cloves, so I was able to make our traditional bread sauce. It turned out really well and everyone liked it. There was more food, but less wine this year. That was probably good, because the party was a Star Apartments. Star is this gated compound in UB where all the embassy people and other expats like our Peace Corps country director live. They didn't want us staying there after 6 so we moved the party elsewhere.

Several of us also got to go to the new ambassador's house for drinks the next day. Danny (in the Hawaiian shirt) invited him to a hair cutting ceremony when he was in Erdenet and he wanted to return the favor. We talked about his work and foreign service stuff. He'd never worked in a country with Peace Corps before, but he has done recruiting. We told him he should talk to our country director about having a session with volunteers and they just announced he'll have one after IST. I think I'll take the exam again, because it would be good to have the Foreign Service as an option if I don't find a job right away after Peace Corps. As you can see from the picture on the right, it's now quite cold in Mongolia and UB is one of the coldest palces. Send me warm thoughts...and DVDs.

Middle of the Gobi

2006-10-26T17:09:00.000+08:00

I spent the past week in Mandalgobi, Dundgobi aimag working with my fellow Mercy Corps business volunteer Denise. We're working on a guidebook to give to non-business volunteers who get approached by Mongolian businesses or otherwise want to help a business at their site. It will be presented to the new volunteers at IST in December. The book will be based on real questions we've received plus things we've developed in our work. It should be something we can leave behind to help future volunteers and the Mongolian business community.

Of course to reach Dundgobi, which really does mean middle of the Gobi, we had to drive 20 hours from Tsetserleg to Mandalgobi. I'm not too sure how long it should take, but the trip probably shouldn't include stopping at every ger to ask for directions and not stopping until 3 AM. But I'm not bitter. The rest of the trip was really good. Densie and I got a lot of work done on the guidebook and I got to hang out with her and the new Mandalgobi volunteers. They took me to this place they call the "rainforest bar". It was real pine bark paneling and this wierd moss hanging from the cieling. It was quite a surreal experience.

On Tuesday I left Mandalgobi with a USAID car that had an empty seat. I got to go along when the guy was talking with clients of AID funded projects. It was good to see the impact Mercy Corps has outside of Arkhangai. The best part of the trip was learning about the Ger to Ger project. It's a nomad centered tourism company that tries to improve herders livelihoods without making them dependent on handouts from foreigners. They have routes in the gobi and arkhangai now. They may have more by next summer. You get to travel between pre-determined points by horse, camel, cart, or car based on where the route is. I think it's a good way to see real mongol life and sites away from cities and towns.

On the last night, we slept in a herder's ger at a place called Ikh Gazariin Chuluu. It means place of many rocks and is made of huge rock formations. It was really cool to wake up to see the sunrise and see these big rocks in the background. We also got to see what a positive effect responsible tourism can have on Mongolian's lives. Everyone should check out Ger to Ger if you're considering a trip to Mongolia.

Changes

2006-10-10T16:44:00.000+08:00

Fall has, um, fallen here in Arkhangai and it is getting noticeably colder from day to day. We've had a little bit of snow, but nothing that stays around should happen until Spring. There aren't as many tourists around and most of the ger camps have closed for the year. The new volunteers are settling into life at site and discovering the wonders of Mongolian transportation the joys of the re-supply weekend. The remaining UB expats have probably all retreated inside Dave's pub and I should face less competition next time I'm in town for the pub quiz. Lastly, my good friend Altai is leaving town on Monday for UB and then on to Switzerland to be with her new husband Chris. Altai was the one who brought Nasaa to Enkhee's bar last New Year's Eve when she was sitting home with her parents. We probably wouldn't have met otherwise and Altai was a good intermediary while we bridged the language barrier. She's been a good friend to all Peace Corps volunteers here and she'll be missed.

There are a new buildings, of undetermined purpose, going up around town, but the biggest physical change is the new Buddha statue that was set up on Bulgan Mountain this weekend. There was a big ceremony on the hill with prayers in the monastery and chanting by local monks. Judging by an artist's representation and a brochure I saw, it will be part of a complex of stone steps and pagodas leading from foot of the mountain all the way up to an expanded monastery on top. I'm not sure when it will be completed, but I'll be taking pictures of the progress. I've uploaded a gallery from the ceremony and I'll add to it from now on. I also added some galleries of pictures from over the summer so check out my Flickr page. I'll be editing my old posts to make them look better in the new template also. Check a few posts to look for changes or just start at the beginning to catch up.

The last change is that I have less than a year left of Peace Corps and I'm thinking of what I want to do next. I know I want to work in international development and I'm looking on job boards, but I could use some more advice. Here's a copy of my resume. I'm interested in NGOs, consultancies, and relief agencies.

Ocotber...SUPRISE!!!

2006-10-03T11:15:00.000+08:00

I spent all of last week in Zavkhan for their trade fair. I was kind of excited to drive there, but after 17 hours in car each way I think I'll fly next time. The trade fair went well. People from my office and Bayanhongor came up to help. They had a parade and an opening and closing ceremony that ours didn't really have. I didn't have a lot to do so I just explored the city and hung out with Zavkhan PCVs. They have six people, three new, all in the aimag center. Last Friday was our annual consolidation drill. Peace Corps wants to make sure volunters can make it to certain pre-arranged locations in case of an emergency. Since I was in Zavkhan, I had to go to a volunteer's ger and wait for peace corps to call. All the Arkhangai volunteers came in and partied all weekend. They even hung in there for a third day since I missed the first two. They're some fine hyper-socialists.

I've been kind of slow at work lately, but I'm lining up some new trips and making plans for travel and after Peace Corps. I'll keep you updated. Enjoy the Zavkhan Flickr gallery and check out the photo album I added. I'm going to try and upload all my photos from before too.

Mongol Wedding

2006-09-18T10:58:00.000+09:00

The plague quarantine was lifted on the 12th so we were able to go to Altai's wedding and hold the trade fair as scheduled. You can check out pictures of both on my Flickr Page. The wedding was really just a big party. People do an official ceremony then go out to the countryside, set up some gers, and receive visitors. Family members visit the first night, then friends in descending order of closeness. It's sort of like how Tsagaan Tsar works. We went on the last night, because the quarantine had just ended. There was one main ger for the party and a couple others where people could make food and sleep. Part of the tradition is to have two bowls in the middle of the ger with, one with mare's milk and one with Mongol vodka (a liquor made from whey). There is also plenty of real vodka going around and they fill various smaller bowls and pass them around. Once you drink, the bowl goes back to the middle to be topped off, and then passed around again. I tried to drink as little of the mare's milk and vodka as possible. The Mongol stuff is much weaker so I stuck to that. I don't know how the wedding party lasted three days, but they seemed ready to get out of there. The tall white guy in the pictures is the groom, Chris, and Altai is the little Mongolian in the red deel. They're probably moving to Switzerland were Chris is from. He already has a ger set up.

The Trade Fair went really well too. I was gone for a whole month before it happened, so I didn't get to help prepare. The staff had been working with other aimag staffs and the local government so they were on top of everything. There were over 70 businesses from the aimag and UB selling everything from vegetables to electronics. I got to help out a little and take pictures. There were some competitions like wrestling and mare's milk drinking, but I missed those. I'll try to put up some other pictures later.

In other news, we're driving to Zavkhan on Monday morning. We'll be there for a week to help with their trade fair and I may stay on another week to work with their clients. I also might go to Bayan Olgi to see the Golden Eagle Festival, but I won't know until next week. I'll keep you posted.

It's my birthday, my b-b-b-birthday!

2006-09-10T12:07:00.000+09:00

As you can see from the subject, today is my birthday. My 27th birthday to be exact. It seems like only yesterday that I was 26... My site mates and I did some celebrating last night and Nasaa is coming over tonight. She has to help me finish the ger shaped cake my awesome mother ordered from Fairfield. It's huge and chocolatey and delicious. I uploaded a new set of pictures from our party last night so click on the Flickr link on the left. The pictures speak for themselves. The new guy is Don. He's working in the children's center here in Tsetserleg. You can still order me stuff of my wishlist and my parents will send it along.

In other news, we are unable to leave town because of a quarantine. It seems a student at the Teacher's College came down with the plague after coming into contact with a marmot. Mongolians really like to hunt and eat marmots and they harbor fleas which carry the plague. Peace Corps always tells us to stay away from them (marmots not Mongols) and this is why. There are only three people sick in town and if they are all confirmed to have the plague the the quarantine may be extended. All the volunteers are fine and Peace Corps is on top of the situation. I'll post an update later after I talk with my coworkers and hear from Peace Corps again. If they extend the quarantine, we will have to postpone our trade fair which is happening this weekend. That would suck, but oh well.

Oh, one more thing. My blog has been included on a site called Peace Corps Journals. It lists Peace Corps volunteers' blogs by region and country. Check it out to see what other volunteers are up to. Enjoy the new pictures and check out the wishlist too.

Pardon Our Dust

2006-08-23T12:08:00.000+09:00

As you can see, I switched to a new blog template as part of an upgrade to Blogger Beta. There are a few new features that make finding old posts and adding links eaier. And I even like the color. The link list is now on the left and I've added links to my mailing address, Flickr photo page, and Amazon wishlist (my birthday is on September 10th) plus some political blogs and sites I read. Hope you like the redesign.

In other news, my office just got full time high speed internet. Add that to my free hot water heater and having Fairfield nearby, and I have it pretty good. I am so, so spoiled. Work has been slow this week, but that's ok. I was putting in 12 hours days trying to get the catalog finished and traveling a lot. Now the first ones are being printed and we're planning other trips to make more catalogs for RASP clients. The whole office is going to drive over the mountains to Zavkhan for their trade fair next month. I'll probably go on my own later to work with clients. I've been looking all year for something special that I could contribute to Mongolia and I finally found it. All those years assisting my dad on photo shoots and hanging out at ad agencies really paid off. The free lunch and movies didn't hurt either.

Not going to swearing in proved productive. Nasaa and I took a car out to visit Michael in Ih Tamir. His school director (who he lives next t0) also owns a ger camp so they moved him out there for the summer. We hung out and got to see this big rock called Tiger Choloo. It's just sitting in the middle a field. I blame aliens, aliens or a glacier. Check out the Ih Tamir set on my flickr page. Also check out the Ming Wax Museum that was part of our Great Wall tour. All the sets are lined up on the right and the newest photos are in the middle.

There are a few people visiting Arkhangai for vacation and the new volunteers get here today. It should be a fun week.

Home Sweet Home

2006-08-17T17:16:00.000+09:00

The main catalog is done, but won't be printed until after the aimag level ones are finished. We will be distributing those at aimag trade fairs being held in the next month. The one here in Arkahngai is September 15-16. I was figuring out little quirks in PageMaker right up until we sent the files to the printer, but I guess that's the best way to learn. There's been a good repsonse so far. I can't wait to see the finished product.

I'm back in Arkhangai now a day earlier than I expected. There was a Mercy Corps Land Cruiser headed this way with and empty seat and you don't pass up a chance like that. It's a matter of 10 hours on a bus and 7 in air conditioned comfort. It'll be quiet here until new volunteers and my site mates arrive on Sunday or Monday. I think I made the right decision by not going to swearing in. Nasaa is going to the city for a week on Monday, so I would have just missed her. Plus, I'm looking to save some money after spending 3 out of the past 4 weeks in UB.

As promised, I posted galleries from my trips to Beijing and Hovd. Here are some samples to click on for links to the Flickr galleries.

That's all for now. It's good to be home.

Homesick

2006-08-14T17:08:00.000+09:00

I'm back in UB (as if I ever left) finishing up catalog stuff. We're making one main catalog with all seven aimags represented and seven smaller ones for each aimag. We should have all aimags and the main one to the printers this week. I had a welcome break last week and went to Hovd in the far western part of Mongolia. I worked at the local RASP office and produced catalogs for a sausage maker and two furniture makers. I could almost spend the rest of my service doing catalogs, but I'm sure I'll find other stuff I'm good at. The mongols understand the concept, but most have almost no idea how to put them together. Plus, there's really no quality printing outside of UB. That will change eventually. Hopefully my work will encourage businesses to spend more on marketing and maybe even demand local design and printing services. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

There isn't as much work to do here as I thought there would be, so I'll go home soon. I haven't been in Arkhangai in over a month and I want to see Nasaa and get back to work in my office. My friends are trying to convince me to stay in town all week and go to the M17's swearing in ceremony, but I really want to go home. I can still see everyone as they come through town on their way up to Darkhan. The only attraction would be to go to the ceremony and I've lived through one already. We'll see.

In other news, I ended my summer losing streak at Dave's pub quiz thanks to a nautical round and a table round about US license plates. We also went to a free Scorpions concert on the main square which was quite an experience. I haven't had a chance to post any pictures lately, but I'll put some up once I get back to site. Until then, enjoy these ones my friend Mike sent me from our trip to Beijing.

Mike, Curtis and I at the Summer Palace

Mike's friends from Orlando and I at the Great Wall

Mike and I at Starbucks...ah Starbucks

Mike and Curtis having a private moment at the Summer Palace

That's all for now. Look for some new Flikr galleries next week.

Flickr link

2006-07-14T12:38:00.000+09:00

I thought I'd just post a link to all my Flickr sets. This page should be updated automatically. With the uploading tool I'll be able to put up more photos at a time. Enjoy.

Smile and Naadam

2006-07-14T12:10:00.000+09:00

Hope you enjoy the new town pictures below. This past week was Tsetserleg's Naadam. In case you're not familiar with it, Naadam is the annual festival of the three manly sports ie wrestling, horseracing and archery. I'm always surprised how laid back the Mongols are about Naadam. They come out to watch it the first day and on TV from UB, but by the second day you're just as likely to "Europe people" as Nasaa would say. Anyway, it was good to see Naadam in a new aimag and I missed the crush of people in town for the UB's Naadam. The city seems oddly deserted now. Guess it's because most of the banks and government offices are closed. As per usual, follow the picture to picture to the gallery.

We also took some visiting tourists to the mythical cave bar located in a nearby ger camp. You really have to see it to appreciate the glorious ambiance. Hope the pictures do it justice. It was definitely worth the trek up the valley to get to it. Hopefully the kareoke is working next time we go. Follow picture the the gallery.

Our Town

2006-07-14T11:25:00.000+09:00

Hey gang. I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but I've been hella busy. I'm still working on that catalog which I have to finish right after I get back from China. I'm leaving on Sunday for Beijing and most likely going to Shanghai as well. Hopefully there are no surprises there. I'm looking forward to experiencing socialism again, but I also want to distribute some literature the Chinese might not be familiar with. I'll be back on the 24th so expect some pictures. Speaking of pictures, I'm using the Flickr uploading tool now so I put up several new galleries. This post's title refers to my site, Tsetserleg, which means garden and does not refer to an anatomical preference. Click on the picture to find your way to the gallery. I'll put up another posts with more links soon.

This isn't actually an aerial photo, but it gives a good view of the place. My friend Mike and I climbed a big hill to get a look at the town's cell phone tower and found an old graveyard behind it. I got some pictures of that and some of the towns wildlife. We also got pictures of our very own windows background. The place looks a lot better now than it did when some of the town pictures were taken. We've had a lot of rain lately so everything's really green. I put up some Nadaam pictures too. I'll link to those in another post.

Welcome to Fungolia

2006-06-13T18:39:00.000+09:00

We went to the airport last Monday night to greet/scare the new trainees (they aren't volunteers until swearing in). First we all met at a UB volunteer's apartment to drink, eat pizza, and make signs. I did more of the first two. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

A good time was had by all. We got to talk to a few of them before they left the airport, because there was almost 60 of them and they came on two planes. There was even a girl from Tallahassee who went to FSU. Wierd.

*Update-Check out this Flickr gallery for even more arrival pictures.

I celebrate his entire catalog

2006-05-18T18:03:00.000+09:00

Sorry this is the first update in a while, but I've been really sick and really busy. I was in UB for 10 days this month. First I had my yearly check up then another business volunteer and I put on a catalog development workshop. The new Mercy Corps advisor saw a catalog from a similar NGO here in Mongolia and wants us to make one. We invited the best English speakers from the aimag offices and taught they about layout, Photoshop, and Pagemaker.

I made these little pictures for a memo that was translated and sent out also. I wanted to explain how to photograph priducts using background paper. All those photoshoots with my dad finally paid off. I'm feeling a lot better and going into the city again next Thursday for one last exam. I'll stay in until Tuesday morning to greet the new trainees at the airport. Then I have to come back and go on a four day trip to the countryside to take pictures and gather information for the catalog. After that I have to put the catalog together and go back to UB to get it printed and attend our biannual meeting the last week in June. It's going to be a busy month.

I'll post some pictures from the airport and maybe some stuff from the catalog later. Gotta go.

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

2006-04-26T17:47:00.000+09:00

Spring is a really weird time to be here in Mongolia. It can be warm one day, then windy and cold the next. First there were dust storms caused by high winds and lack of vegetation. And starting this week, we've had our first precipitation in months. During the winter you can count on it being clear and cold. It's been snowing almost non-stop for three days now and it looks like a traditional winter back in the states. Once the sun comes out things should turn green fast. I've kind of forgotten what grass looks like.

In addition to (and maybe because of) the snow, the town has been without running water all week. People who live in the ger districts don't really notice, but value my sink and toilet. A water truck showed up outside yesterday. I hope he comes back. Enkhee says the water might come back tomorrow. I'm not sure if something actually broke or if they're just doing maintenance. There is plenty of drinking water around. Every store sells bottled water although I rarely see Mongols buying it. I also put some water from the truck through my distiller. If the water's not back tomorrow, I might make my first trip to a well. Here's hoping I don't fall in.

UPDATE: The water came on around 12 last night and the weather is clearing up. Doin' fine.

Sports

2006-04-10T09:20:00.000+09:00

I was back in UB at the end of last month to meet with a satellite internet company about my community project. I’m still waiting on an estimate for service, but I might be coming to you for donations. Peace Corps has a system where we can make a free web page for solicitations and I have a (regular?) readership already. One of the benefits of being in UB during the week is the Thursday night pub quiz at Dave’s. I can get my full English breakfast, answer trivia questions, and feel like I’m in…south Florida or any other place British people live. So far, I’m two for two and should start demanding a free beer from teammates. I think naming the first woman in space and knowing all the major party presidential runners-up since 1948 put us over the top. Although, an insidious pictionary round almost did us in. No one on my team knew what snake+plane+tent meant. Luckily, I guessed our other two in under a minute so we still won.

Last week, Nasaa invited me to another athletic event that was slightly more…athletic. The schools, banks, government, and offices were all playing volleyball against each other. My office wasn’t competing, so I sat in the cheering section. Here’s Nasaa, lucky number seven, serving and making a save. I didn’t get a picture of the bruises she had on her arm afterwards. She’s very sensitive.

My big boss is coming out from UB next week with our dairy expert and a consultant. Hopefully, we can finally put this market plan to bed and I can move on. I want to start working on a web site and catalogs for our Tsetserleg clients and then do the ones on the soums. If it turns out well, I’ll have something to show people at the June meeting and have an excuse to visit other offices. I have to see more of the country before next winter.

“So you’re the one they call Steel.”

2006-03-20T09:26:00.000+08:00

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I’ve had a Peace Corps nickname since staging in LA: Steel. Like any good nickname, or tattoo, origin story there’s drinking involved. Most volunteers being recent college graduates, whenever a group of us gets together there’s a lot of drinking and what my friend Denise likes to call “hyper socializing.” This was even truer when we got to LA, because we were getting to know each other and saying goodbye to America. One night we split into random groups and went of to explore. My group appointed Arni as our navigator, because he was the tallest. We made it almost to the Santa Monica Pier where we were waylaid by bars. That night was pretty tame, but on our last night in the states, we made the most our Peace Corps per diem. A group found the nearest liquor store and did some comparison-shopping. I was captivated by a big shiny can in the
cooler label “Steel Reserve.” I bought it and brought it back to the hotel where I was informed that it was a really potent and distasteful malt liquor. Being the malt beverage aficionado that I am, I said I’d drink it anyway. To this, a couple guys said that if I drank it they’d call me Steel from then on. I’m not sure if this was to be a reward or a penalty, but needless to say, I drank it and have been known as Steel ever since. Possible substitutes include John Steel and sometimes Steely Dan. It became so prevalent over the summer that people who didn’t know the origin started using it and one girl wondered why I wasn’t sitting with the S’s during swearing in. Now, second year volunteers (M15s) use it even though I haven’t met most of them. One M15 actually walked up behind me when I was on a computer at the Peace Corps office and said “So you’re the one they call Steel.” An introduction doesn’t get much better than that. A bonus is that the Mongolian word for steel is bold. This is also the name of a Mongolian rap star, so I haven’t tried to explain the name to Mongolians. There’s only room for one Bold in the country.

Despite being the man of steel, I’m nothing without the love, or vague acquiescence, of a good woman. This was demonstrated when my girlfriend, Nasaa, had to call a repairman for me when I tripped the circuit breaker in my apartment and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. I should have known that running my hot plate, rice cooker, water heater, and water distiller at the same time was a bad idea, but I was hungry, thirsty, and dirty, so very dirty. When all the power went out and I realized that other apartments still had electricity, I spent the rest of the night sulking. I can change the fuse in my apartment, but when I saw that it was ok, I had no other idea what to do. The next morning, Nasaa sent an electrician over. It took him all of five minutes to find the breaker box and flip the switch. To my defense, the box was locked and located downstairs, and had a sign on it reading, “beware of leopard.” True story.

It's all over but the dust storms

2006-03-09T14:03:00.000+08:00

Our Project Design and Managment (PDM) workshot went really well. I think it was more useful than our In Service Training (IST), although that probably wasn't Peace Corps' intention. At IST, unless you were an English teacher all the sessions were just information about what other sectors were doing. At PDM, they took us through all the stages of a project from an original vision through action planning, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation. Instead of bringing another Mercy Corps employee, I decided to bring Enkhee who you might remember is awesome. Mercy Corps gives all it's Mongolian staff plenty of training so I thought it would be a good idea to spread the wealth. I won't be seeing most of the other volunteers until we finish service next year, becuase this was our last big Peace Corps event.

Enkhee's idea is to bring the internet to a nearby soum with the help of a local bank. Khaan bank is in every soum in the country and they sometimes allow people to piggyback on their connection. Another volunteer just completed a similar project so we have a model. I still have to go to the soum to get an idea about where the cafe would be and what local support is available. Enkhee is more ambitious than I am, he wants to build a whole new building, and I'm wary of the "if you build it, they will come" ethos common in development work. But, if the need and community support is there, I'll help achieve the goal. I might be looking for help and donations from people stateside, so stay tuned.

In other news, it's been a pretty warm winter especially here in Arkhangai. Because it's so dry and windy, I can look forward to a couple monthes of dust storms. I here it's not as bad as the Gobi, but then again they have dinosaur bones. I should also say that work has been a lot better since I got back. I have a work plan now and, combined with the internet project, plenty of things to keep me busy.

Oh, I have to mention the chili cook-off I went to last Saturday. That's right, a Texas style chili cook-off in UB. It was help at the Star apartments which houses a lot of ex-pats and embassy staff. They had pinatas and guys in cowboy hats and even a kegerator. I almost thought I was back in America until someone snuck some buuz onto the baked goods table. I'll be here in Tsetserleg until May, so it was a good way to say goodbye to UB for while.

Hodoo fever

2006-02-20T09:33:00.000+08:00

So, it was Valentine’s Day last week. I realized it was V-day when Naasa gave me a card and some candy. Yes, I’d forgotten. It’s just not the same without the guilt inducing consumerism. I actually had checked the date earlier in the day and February 14th didn’t register at all. Luckily, I had some heart shaped candy (thanks mom), wine, and candles so I managed to salvage a romantic evening. I also cooked dinner, so give me some credit. Naasa asked if I could cook any Mongolian food. I told her that I’d made buuz and hosher last summer. Of course, that was part of my cultural training and we were heavily supervised. She said that she would come over later and show me how to make Tsoyvin (usually noodles, mutton, and vegetables). It was good and I helped. I pretty much just cut the meat and vegetables. Those months as a prep cook at Bradley's are really paying off. I tried taking a picture of Naasa cooking, but she didn’t want to look at the camera. Women.

Actually, it’s amazing how many things about dating a Mongolian are the same as they would be with an American. People gossip so she doesn’t want to tell people at work we’re dating. She tries to introduce me to her friends and I don’t have much to say. Of course, she doesn’t want many people to know she’s dating a foreigner and I’m bad enough at small talk in English. I thought about the whole interracial dating issue after we’d been going out for a while. I mean, technically, I’m dating an Asian girl, but I live in Asia. You’re perspective really changes when you live outside of America. Maybe these issues should be thornier for me, but now I’m just concentrating on learning more Mongolian so I have more to talk about. Naasa is working on her English too and using the dictionary hasn’t gotten old yet. We meet each other halfway in text messages. I guess that’s a good sign.

It should be a big week. People from Uvurkhangai are coming up to help make a work plan for me. I’m not sure how much will change though. Mercy Corps has had volunteers for a while, but they’ve always been in Gobi Initiative offices which are much bigger. There’s always someone to work with the volunteer and several English speakers around. With my RASP office, they’ve never worked with a volunteer before and they just hired me a translator with passable English. Naturally, they don’t understand why I don’t perform like other volunteers they’ve heard about. It’s as if you took a top athlete and said “he performs really well here on Earth. Let’s put him on Mars and see how he does…oh, he’s doing so good. He must be lazy.” The Peace Corps seminar I’m going to next week is about project development and management (PDM). I’m taking Enkhee the bar/restaurant owner. He wants to set up an internet café in Tsenkher soum. If things don’t pick up at work, I want to spend more time on outside projects. After this trip I have three months with no travel planned. I should have a chance to teach more and get things done. I hope.

New Moon

2006-02-13T12:49:00.000+08:00

Yesterday Tsetserleg celebrated the first full moon of the (lunar) New Year. A lam from UB came out to our monastery to bless people. At least that's what I think he was doing. I still don't know much about Buddhism. I didn't even know it was a special night until Naasa came by and said her and some friends were going to the monastery. She did a little prayer bow to make sure I understood what she meant. Cute. When we got there, I saw something I'd never seen in Mongolia before. Mongols were in a line. Usually they just elbow up to a counter and shove whatever their holding at the teller/clerk. I even wrote an onionesque story for our newsletter about a volunteer spending his entire service in a store, because he thought he had to wait his turn. Anyway, it turns out that the line was being enforced by the police, because the president was on his way. I didn't actually see him, but a nine SUV convoy with police escort did come and go quickly. He also went by the government house later and talked to Naasa and other workers. I didn't go though. I'd seen him before. After the president left, everyone lunged through the one door through the fence. The police did a good job of making sure no one was crushed and once inside the fence there was a reasonable line.

Inside the monastery people filed by various shrines and approached the lam. His bouncers let one person through at a time and then he tapped you on the head with a little brass thing. Funny, I don't feel different. There was also more candle lighting on the mountain. Hopefully, this marks the end of the new year season. People are still trickling back into town/schools from greeting in the countryside. The market manager, who I'm working on a business plan with, checked into the local hospital last week. She may be sick, but I think she just went in for a rest. My teacher this summer scheduled a three day stay after training was over.

No other news for now. Next week, people from the Uvurkhangai office are coming up to help my staff do a work plan for me. They have a lot more experience with volunteers and how to use them. I want to be a lot busier. RASP offices have a lot fewer employees and no dedicated translators (until my office hired their first for me) so it's hard to get one on one attention. I just want to accomplish as much as other business volunteers here. Working with new clients this year and helping with the trade fair should give me the opportunity.

Meet the parents

2006-02-03T14:16:00.000+08:00

I made it through Tsagaan Sar reasonably unscathed. The Peace Corps training and advice from other volunteers came in handy. I only visited four homes, so I wasn’t overwhelmed. The holiday itself revolves around visiting other people’s houses. It’s kind of a cross between Thanksgiving Day and a pub-crawl time three. Each household prepares the exact same food and goes through the same rituals. In America, people would try to make theirs unique and outdo each other. Here things are very tradition oriented. You go in and greet everyone in the room by holding your arms out palms up below (or above if you’re older) the other person’s. Then, you eat potato salad, some sheep meat, and finally buuz. The whole time you’re also drinking milk tea, berry juice, and rounds of vodka shots. At the end of the visit, you look at photo albums and exchange gifts.

When I went to coworkers houses, the visit was perfunctory. It was just like any other work party. At my girlfriend’s brother’s ger, things were more festive. Oh yeah, I have a girlfriend now. I haven’t really told anyone back home, so this is my coming out post. I was going to tell my brother, but he’d probably blog about it before me. He’s even worse at keeping secrets than I am. We’d make terrible, terrible spies. Not being an incrementalist, I didn’t think it was worth the time to tell people individually. Hope you don’t mind.

Here are some preemptive FAQ answers:

Here name is Naasanjargal
She is 26 and her birthday is February 28th
She works for a judge and plans to be come one herself after getting work experience
We speak mostly in Mongolian so my language and texting has had to improve
We are not married

Peace Corps had a special cross-cultural training session about sex and dating. They went over what Mongolians expect from a relationship with an American. A lot of them expect you to stay or take them home with you. We discussed me leaving in two years and it hasn’t come up again. It’s common for male volunteers to have Mongol girlfriends. It’s less common for female volunteers to have Mongol boyfriends, mostly because young Mongol guys tend to be assholes. That is, except for Enkhee who owns the bar where I met Naasa. Enkhee is awesome.

This post should be the talk of the water cooler tomorrow. Feel free to comment. Here’s one last thing. When I was in grad school at UW, I had a friend named Paul who had taught English in Korea for several years. He had a girlfriend who he stayed with even after he came back to America. I was joking with him once about it and I said he was like a GI with a local girl. When he heard I was joining Peace Corps he said, “just you wait”. Thanks for the heads up Paul.

Next year in Vegas

2006-01-27T14:17:00.000+08:00

The January meeting in UB was kind of surreal. It was held in the Chingis Khan hotel, not to be confused with the Khan Palace hotel around the corner. You can’t swing a marmot in UB without hitting something named after Chingis. The hotel is really nice and if it weren’t for all the Mongolians, you’d think you were in any other hotel conference room in the world. The meeting itself was 9-4 Monday to Friday. All the aimag and UB staffs were there. Each section got to give a presentation. I had a reputation for making good Power Points in grad school, not to toot my own horn. So, it was kind of painful watching the Mongolian presentations. It takes of almost twice as many words to say something in Mongolian than in English. Most of you know what it’s like to see a someone read and entire slide worth of text. Now imagine that and then having a translator repeat three sentences into your ear. You feel gypped and bored at the same time.

All the other Mercy Corps PCVs got to give presentations. I feel kind of out in the wilderness sometimes, because the word RURAL is on the front of my program’s name. I asked the new country director to send an experienced counterpart out to my aimag to help my supervisors make a real work plan for me. I should be careful what I ask for. This week they’ve been pressing me to write a plan before I have more help and I’ve had more offers to teach English all over the place. I want to concentrate on teaching at the market and doing some computer lessons. I’ll have a better idea of what I’ll be dong after the final Peace Corps training in February.

Everyone in the country is busy preparing for Tsagaan Sar. It’s the Mongolian celebration of the lunar New Year. Regular new year’s, which the Mongols absorbed from the Russians along with vodka and bad dance music, is celebrated in the last week in December with big employees only work parties. You’d think a people so prone to gossip would let spouses in to tamp the rumors down. New Year’s eve itself was weird, because around 12:00 almost everyone left the club I was at and went home. They all came back a few minutes later. Apparently, it’s bad luck to be out at the stroke of midnight. Tsagaan Sar officially lasts three days and mostly involves visiting relatives’ families in the order of seniority and giving gifts and such. It’s supposed last three days, but I get the impression that in the countryside it turns into a month-long mutton induced bender. Should I hyphenate mutton induced?

There are some other developments that I won’t get into now. I’ll see how Tsagaan Sar goes. Then I should finally get started teaching at the market and working on a long-term non-mercy corps project. I look forward to comments and mail as always. Don’t click on the envelope unless you want to send a post to someone else. And no, it’s not as cold as they say.

New address and wishlist

2006-01-13T14:39:00.000+08:00

My office moved to a new building so I had to update my address label. It's pretty much the same except that you don't need the name of the building anymore. That never really mattered, because they don't have direct mail delivery anyway. Also, here is a new wishlist on Amazon. I'll add some more stuff to it, but this should give you an idea of stuff I'd like. Going to UB tomorrow for a big Mercy Corps meeting. I'll do a post from peace corps and let you know how it went.

**Editor's note - fixed the link to the wishlist

Your comments are welcome

2006-01-11T16:34:00.001+08:00

In case there is still confusion about how the comment system on blogger works, here's a better explanation.

You do not need my email address to comment on a blog post only to send me a private email.
To comment just click on the word comment(s) after the post regardless of how many comments have already been made.
You have three options after leaving your comment. If you have a blogger account, enter your username and password. If not, click other and enter your name and website if you have one. It would be a good idea to enter your email address here, but use the words "at" and "dot" instead of the @ symbol and "." in .com. This will make it harder for someone to add your address to a spam email list. Finally, you can select anonymous and not leave any information other than your comment.
The word verification feature makes it harder for people to send me spam posing as a comment, because a computer (so far) can't figure out that the picture contains letters and/or numbers. Prove that you're smarter than a machine. Make it happen people.

Holiday Roundup

2005-12-29T11:39:00.000+08:00

I got back from IST on Monday. It`s good to be home, because the air is much better here and I`m not spending my month`s living allowance in a week. UB is kind of in a bowl surrounded by mountains and the smoke from the ger districts in the hills settles on the city. We go through money so fast because all the food is more expensive and there`s actually stuff to buy. I didn`t do any shopping this time, but I`ll stock up in two weeks when I go back for a mercy corps meeting.

IST was a mixed bag for me. Every day we had language and technical sessions plus the odd medical and admin meeting. All the language sessions were really good. I learned a lot of new stuff and filled in some holes from the summer. I was disappointed with the technical sessions. The point was to get people to go to sessions that were outside their area, but I thought that the business sessions were too general for us and too specific for anyone else. We`ll be the last business volunteers in Mongolia so we can`t change anything for next year, but we have had a few people come up and ask how they can help businesses at their site. We talked to peace corps and they`re letting us come in a bit early for our next training to work on some general business sessions for other volunteers. This also fits in with their goal of integrating business with the new youth development program. We hope to do some work with new trainees this summer to replicate some of our training.

Spending Christmas in UB was more fun than I thought. The medical officer had a party at his house on Christmas eve with good food and there was even a gift exchange. On Christmas day, I went to a friends aparment and help make pancakes and hot chocolate. Here are a few pictures of Nukht and holiday decorations around UB. You`ll be glad to know that the war on Christmas hasn`t reached Mongolia.

PS, here`s a comment I got from my friend Jeremy`s father.

I'm Jeremy Green's dad and I came upon your blog a couple months ago while surfing the Web and checking out Mongolia-related sites. I very much enjoy reading your blog, particularly since you're based near Jeremy and are in the same class as him; reading about your experiences gives me a better appreciation for what he's going through as well. All of us admire what you and the other volunteers are doing in Mongolia. I know it can't be easy, but I hope it's rewarding. I'm sure the experience and confidence you and the other volunteers gain will help you the rest of your lives--no matter what you end up doing after your tour is over. Keep up the great work, and happy holidays.

I`m never sure who actually reads my blog so it`s good to hear from new folks. Please comment with suggestions and encouragement (especially encouragement) and send the link around to anyone interested in Peace Corps or Mongolia.

Pre IST

2005-12-18T15:55:00.000+08:00

I'm leaving for IST (in service training) tomorrow morning. We get to spend four days at a resort called Nukht. It't 20 km outside of town in the mountains and they refer to it as a "three star" resort. That should mean hot showers and tiolet seats. Score! It's the first time all the remaining M16s are together since swearing in. We've had a few ETs early terminations), mostly for medical reasons. IST will consist of hours of playing in the snow, drinking, and some kind of "training sessions". Each volunteer is supposed to bring their "counterpart" or main coworker. I've heard stories of hanky panky involving volunteers and counterparts so some of us have started refering to IST as prom. We'll see what happens. There should be plenty of gossip by the time the week is over. I got a glimpse of that when I took a Mongolian girl to lunch last week. Actually, my tutor fixed us up. A few days later I hear about it from my counterpart. Apparently, she heard about it from a friend who heard about it from the owner of the restaurant we went to. It's a very small country.

Well, I'm looking forward to spending some time with my fellow CEDs and attending a session about teaching large, multi-level classes. That will be valuable when I start teaching at the market when I get back to site. I'll post some pictures when I get back to site. For now, here are some from a trip I just took to Khangai soum.

Oh, and thanks to who ever followed by brother's orders and sent me a card. The only ones I've gotten so far are from Nicole of worththetime. Thanks again Nicole.

21 Months to go

2005-12-06T12:40:00.000+08:00

Today is the 6 month anniversary of my arrival in Mongolia. So far I've made a lot of new friends, learned the language, and seen a good bit of the country. Since my trip to UB I have a lot of new ideas for what I want to accomplish at work. And after interviewing transalators all day on Friday, I think we found someone I can work with. I should get a lot more done now. I'm also starting my english lessons at the market. I got some advice from a sitemate who's been teaching here for a year. She said that with mixed ability classes you should start with the basics. I've never taught reading before, but I think she's right. I'm not sure what to expect, but I'll keep you posted. Wish me luck.

Hands Down

2005-11-29T12:32:00.000+08:00

What an amazing trip! After I finished work on Thursday I went over to our country director`s house to catch the last of Thanksgiving dinner. I managed to get a turkey wing, some veggies, and pie. Then we went to a party at a volunteer`s apartment nearby, then to kareoke, then to a club. It was a preivew of what IST (in service training) will be like in three weeks when 40+ volunteers from my group are all together for the first time since training. IST is being held at a resort outside UB then most of us will go into town to celebrate Christmas. There`s bound to be plenty of foreigners to talk to again. I`ll have to pace myself this time. Combined with the bad air in the city my throat was soar from talking to British people about British politics and an Israeli guy about Israeli politics. Hopefully there are some Canadians there next time.

I noticed one more contrast in UB that I forgot to mention in my last post. Check this out.

Yes, that is the Grand Khan Irish Pub where I enjoyed breakfast with my Irish VSO friend Lorraine. I suggested it was like naming a Mongolian restaurant after Brian Boru.

Update

2005-11-24T12:17:00.000+08:00

I'm staying in UB until Sunday, but I thought I'd let you guys know how my trip is going so far.

Visiting Arvaiheer was definitely worth it. My office hired a driver for me so I had the car to myself. Drivers usually cruise around trying to fill every possible inch of a vehicle before leaving town here in Mongolia. The trip only took six hours on mostly paved roads and I had a great fried chicken meal when I got there. No restaurants serve chicken in Arkhangai and Peace Corps medical has lifted the ban of eating it. I then checked into the my friend Laura's office. She works for the Gobi Initiative, another Mercy Corps operation. Their offices have a lot more people and are more established. Most have them have a few English speakers so it's easier for volunteers to get stuff done. I don't even have a dedicated translator so I can't interact much with clients. They're working on finding me someone though. The visit was worthwhile, because I learned more about their operation and the kinds of activities and trainings they do. Laura has been involved in two trade fairs and brought a county fair feeling to both. I'll be working on one for my aimag most of next year and I got plenty of advice and examples to take back with me to Arkhangai.

On Friday, we went to the Loar's (Sierra and Jesse) ger to watch a movie and eat pizza. Apparently Laura and her husband, Hector, do this every week. Jesse made the dough and we each got to cook our own pizza in an electric wok. When we arrived there was an exchange of goods that the Loar's had just brought back to UB. Living in Mongolia outside of UB is kind of like being in prison. You're always waiting for a package from your family or ordering contraband deliveries.

I took my first Mongolian bus from Arvaiheer to UB on Saturday. I got there on time and waited an hour and a half for the bus, aisles included, to fill with people and cargo. This was a more typical Mongolian travel experience, but at least I had enough leg room. This trip took eight hours on good roads and my ipod lasted the whole way thanks to my tune juice. I got a cab to the UB Guesthouse, which except for being really hard to find the first time, is a great place to stay. They have hot showers, free DVDs and internet, laundry service, and a plethora of foreigners to talk to. Sadly, they lack sexy, sexy dancers.

This is my first trip to UB since July and on that trip we were sheparded around by our trainers. Now I really have a chance to explore the city and, believe it or not, I can find my way around pretty well. I've been working most of the day, so I haven't been able to do many tourist things. I'll have to wait until I'm actually on vacation. At Mercy Corps headquarters, I've learned more about the whole program and now I realize why RASP doesn't have the same programs as Gobi. We're a much younger program and our offices are smaller. I'm hopping to bring some of Gobi's methods and input to my office though. That's how volunteers can help, because the two programs don't really talk to each other enough.

I'll have more to say about UB after our Thanksgiving dinner at the country director's apartment tonight. A few things that have struck me so far are all the contrasts that exist between UB and the rest of the country and within the city itself. First, to understand how important UB is to the country you'd have to put the 20 largest cities in the US into one and place it around St. Louis. Everything in the country goes through UB including most roads and rail lines. It's the only place you can get luxury items like real cheese and coke light (diet coke) so every volunteer comes here with a shopping list.

The contrasts within the city are small, like a guy in a del selling time on a mobile phone, or just odd like Los Bandidos the Mexican/Indian Restaurant, Strings the club with the incredible Philipino cover band named Nightshift, and Marco Polo the Italian restaurant with the strip club upstairs (so I hear). There's also the fact that most service workers speak English so when I ordered "sharsen toomc" at Dublin Irish pub the Mongolian waiter replied "yes, french fries".

The driver picked me up early so I didn't have time to burn pictures, but I'll take more and put up some galleries next week. For now, you'll have to enjoy this picture my friend Amazing Ben made of me as Ghengis Khan.

Priceless.

I don’t do windows

2005-11-14T12:36:00.000+08:00

I had dinner at my tutor’s house with one of my sitemates last night. Otgoo, my tutor, brought some fish from her family’s house by Lake Hovsguul. Being in a landlocked country, I haven’t had fish in a long time. It was good, but the highlight of the evening was getting to watch cable TV. They have a few random English programs like this channel called NOW which just has weird shows about racing and video games. Then there is the German channel that does Deutschcentric news in English once a day. I am always surprised to see what American things they choose to dub into Mongolian. I watched, in a ger with a bunch of herders, the movie Wonderland with Val Kilmer as John Holmes. That was helpful. I was not sure how "wad" translated before.

Oh, you are wondering about the headline. Over here, all the apartments have two sets of windows and you have to seal them well or else you will lose all your heat. I tried before, but after a lot of banging and caulking (hee hee) there was still a draft. So, Otgoo said she would send some of her students over to help me. Apparently, that is normal here. So today three teenage girls come over, I give them a bucket (to clean the windows) and some duck tape, and they went to work. Luckily, I got two rolls in the mail, because they used it all. Now all the windows are sealed and it is a stable 67 degrees. I might have to break out the space heater later though.

I have plenty of warm clothes to wear on my trip next week. I (actually my mom) bought four pairs of long underwear of varying weights before I left. They go from silk to fleece, but I only wear the silk ones when I’m alone. They make me feel sexy. What? Oh well, I think I will post a bunch of galleries when I am in UB and the internet is faster. Expect more from there next week.

Traveling Man

2005-11-08T12:31:00.000+08:00

Hey, gang. I know it’s a while since I rapped at yeah, but I’ve been really busy. The business plan for the dairy market is coming along. I have a much better sense of what goes into a plan after working on the word and excel portions. Other than that, work has been slow and I was somewhat disappointed that I did not have more too. I think the main thing is that my office has never worked with a volunteer and my job was always going be less well defined than a teacher’s was. That’s why it was good that one of the Mongolian program staff came out from UB to check on me. She gave me some good ideas as to how I could be more productive. For instance, I didn’t know that my counterpart was translating stuff into English herself and leaving sections incomplete. Now she asks me for more help and our respective language skills are getting better.

One of the other suggestions was for me to teach a community class. I sort of resented the idea of having to teach English at first, but now I see that it can really businesses. Therefore, I came up with idea of teaching a class at the local market. I could teach the vendors how to say the names of all the items they sell in English and how to give prices etc. By the time all the tourists come back next year, they will be able to talk to them. We talked to the market manager and he said it was a good idea. My counterpart also suggested I teach at the government building. I will see what the demand is, but with two classes and work, I should have plenty to do.

I also heard that Mercy Corps approved my big Thanksgiving trip so now I will be going to visit another volunteer at a Gobi Initiative office and spend a week in UB. My sitemates are already jealous that I get to visit other parts of the aimag. Most volunteers just go from home to school and only travel on Peace Corps business and for vacation. This trip means I will be going once a month from hear until February. I’d better save my money now.

Here is a map of the trip. Tsetserleg is the farthest west. Averheer, in the Gobi, is in the south and UB is the easternmost point. After this trip I will have made a big circle through the center of the country. I might get to go to more places in the Gobi and maybe even out to the far west next year. (Update: This map shows all of my travels as of November 1st, 2006.)

Here is a picture of me out side a hotel shaped like a giant ger. It was in Choolot soum. I got to go along on a bakery technology training there this weekend. I basically just watched a bunch of women bake cookies, bread, and cake for two days and was repeatedly ordered to taste everything. I love my job sometimes.

Turn the page

2005-10-23T13:12:00.000+08:00

I just got back from another long trip and after being on the road for a week I can understand ow Bob Seeger felt, minus the groupies and song writing of course. We went to seven soums in six days and all the trainingins were conducted in gers. I didn't get much of an introduction to the students, but afterwards they all wanted to see is I would vodka. This isn't regularvodka, mind you, it's vodka made from milk. In fact, they have a wide variety of products all made from milk, curd, or whey all of which I managed to sample on the trip. They were all pleased to see that I would try each of them. I didn't have to speak much, but I did sing the one Mongolian song I know. I have to learn some more before the holidays.

I might have a big trip to UB and one of the Gobi offices coming up before Thanksgiving. That would be good, because it wouldn't come out of my leave days and I didn't think I'd get to see te Gobi at all. I'll still be in UB for Thanksgiving and Christmas too. In other news, a blurb about the Ambassodor's visit to my office last month made it into the quarterly report to the USDA, which funds my program. Also, I'm finally working on a new business plan after just reading plans and reports. It's for the dairy market I wrote about earlier. I translated financial section and did a spreadsheet for it. I might get to meet with them again and work make some comments this week.

In honor of my last trip, and because I didn't take many pictures, I uploaded all my pics from the last trip to Tariat in this gallery. Click on the collage to access the gallery.

I'm dreaming of a white...Day of Liberation from the French (Laos).

2005-10-12T18:01:00.000+08:00

Thanks earthcalendar! If it had snowed yesterday, I could have used Antifascist Uprising Day (Macedonia). Oh well, it's cold now, but it will probably warm up again this week. I'm going on another trip this Friday to seven soums. I know I don't need work clothes this time. I'm not sure if I need long underwear. I've been wearing my lightest pair when it looks cold out. They're all silk so they're light and they feel like wearing an all-body silk stocking. Not that I've ever worn silk stockings. What?

I got a new package with the Lost season one DVDs and a bunch more food. I now have every single Asian side Lipton makes. I won't have to go out to lunch for a long time. There's this place called Fairfield here that I usually go to. They have good food and desserts. It's not so good for my waistline...er...budget. They say it's run by a British couple, but I think it was put here by the devil.

I finally got a language tutor. Right now we're working our way through the book Peace Corps gave me. It's a lot harder than the one from summer, but it's good to speak with someone outside of work. Munkjin from Peace Corps in here now to check on us volunteers. I get to sow her my office and apartment tomorrow.

I'll do a new post once I get back. I've been thinking of recounting some stories I forgot to mention before. I'll start a lost posts feature later too.

How I'm livin'

2005-09-26T16:45:00.000+08:00

Editor's note: Invisotext ON!
Hey gang. I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but I've been really busy. We had a huge party/consolidation drill at my apartment complete with trivial pursuit peace corps conference calls, drinking games, and sexy sexy dancers. I had to leave for a week long business training trip in Tariat, but the others from my aimag stayed behind to drink heavily and contemplate the three peace corp goals. I didn't have much to contribute to the training, because my Mongolian hasn't reached the economist level. The curriculum was really comprehensive though and RASP brought in trainers from UB who have a lot of experience. We got to visit a national park and see a volcano, a bunch of caves, and white lake which has really cool. It was better because I had forgotten about the volcano and just thought we here climbing a hill. It took me a while to figure out what the big round cliff was. I'll post some pics in a gallery.

After getting back from Tariat, I got to go around with this consultant from Australia who was advising our clients. It was his second time here so he could tell me how they had changed. The meetings took up the whole weekend, but now I have more first hand knwoledge. One of our new clients will be the local dairy and meat market which is a hellhole and has some problems. I think that will become a long term project.

I'll post some pics of my apartment which have only been slightly photoshopped in another gallery.

Me Teach English? That's unpossible!

2005-09-23T18:56:00.000+09:00

Most Peace Corps volunteers in Mongolia right now are here to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL). I'm a Community Economic Development volunteer, but during training they told us that no matter what your title is your coworkers would want you to teach them English. The trainers had us prepare a short lesson on a basic English topic to teach to a class. I chose introductions as is "hello, my name is" and "how are you?". I wrote down all the words in a conversation, one each, on pieces of paper and copied them. My students were older and they could read all the words. The hard part was getting them to come up in front of the class and practice. Apparently it's because it's not how they did it when the schools were taught "Russian" style. I though I took care of that by liberally sprinkling my dialouges with comrade and decandent westerner. It worked out fine, but I still didn't know what to expect when I got to work.

Sure enough, during my first week they asked me to teach English. I'd heard about other volunteers organizing once weekly classes, but my office is pretty small and I didn't think that would work. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to have a counterpart who speaks English. When I asked which person that was one of the Mongolian's pointed at my counterpart who then started giggling. This continued for a while and I thought she really didn't speak English, but it turns out she's just shy and wanted me to help her with speaking.

I borrowed a couple TEFL books and copied a few pages I thought she could use and gave them to her to read. I wasn't sure what level she was at, but she understood everything and read better than she thought. Now the hard part is getting her to pronounce "f's" and "th's" which aren't really used in Mongolian. That's something I can correct without holding a class. Needless to say, I have more respect for TEFL people now. Just don't tell them.

New Address and Mongolia FAQs

2005-09-04T14:38:00.000+09:00

Here is my new address which you can print out and stick on packages and letters. I look forward to hearing from all of you and to receiving many packages. And now on with the questions.

Many people (ie my mom) have been asking questions about what life is like in Mongolia. So, I decided to answer them all (hopefully) in one round-up.

Q) What language do they speak in Mongolia?
A) In Mongolia they speak Mongolian. I wasn't quite sure of this myself until I got a practice CD in the mail from Peace Corps. The language is in the Ural-Altaic family of languages which also includes, Finnish, Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek, and Korean. Don't ask me how Finnish got in there. The language now uses the Cyrilic alphabet and the Mongolians seem to think it reflects their language better than the old vertical script. I've met some Americans who are very good at speaking Mongolian and I'm making pretty good progress.

Q) Are all Mongolians nomads and live in yurts?
A) First of all, in Mongolia the large, round, felt tent is called a ger. And no, despite what Julia Roberts would have you believe, many Mongolians live in cities, drive cars, and have cell phones and cable TV just like anyone else. In fact almost half the countries population lives in the capital Ulaan Baatar. Everywhere that isn't a city or town is referred to as the Hoodo (think country), but herders often come into cities for supplies, information, or to visit relatives. Many of them own jeeps, trucks, or motorcycles.

Q) Isn't it cold?
A) That was the first thing I thought about too, but there are seasons here. Summer was pretty hot. There was some rain, but the climate is generally pretty dry. Fall has already started and it's a bit cooler. I've heard of snow in September so you won't have to wait long for winter pictures. It can get down below -40 degress F, but I here it only reaches -20 F where I am. It's as warm as the Gobi!

Q) What's the food like?
A) Meat is such a large portion of the diet here that they don't consider sausage to be meat. They call it "hyam" and it's a regular feature of meat-free dishes. They use lots of carrots, onions, and potatoes and make a lot of dishes with a simple dough of water and flour. They don't use a lot of spices, but do use lots of fat, salt, and oil. They're kind of shocked when you alter one of there recipes to add flavor. You can get all kinds of food in UB and Peace Corps gives you a cookbook that I look forward to using.

Q) What about the mare's milk and milk tea?
A) Dairy products are also a large part of the diet, especially in Summer. The fermented mare's milk, called "airag", tastes just the way you think it would. I don't much care for it, but I've heard two regions claim to have the best. I'll let someone else decide. The milk tea, called "soo-te-tse", is OK. It means "tea with milk", but it is really a bit of green tea mixed with a lot of milk and salt. If you are offered tea, you will get milk tea.

Q) What are you doing there?
A) Good question. I've asked myself this many times. I'm working for the Rural Agro-Business Support Program which is run by Mercy Corps and funded by the USDA. They concentrate on helping small, agriculturally related businesses through training, loan facilitaion, and business planning. I'll be helping with some computer and English training soon, but I'm still finding my place. It's a great operation that mostly lets Mongolians help each other and it should be a great experience.

Well I hope that that answered a few of your questions. Feel free to comment or send me an email.

I swear (or affirm)

2005-08-27T12:14:00.000+09:00

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

2005-08-16T18:33:00.000+09:00

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

2005-08-16T17:40:00.000+09:00

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

2005-08-06T12:16:00.000+09:00

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.

2005-07-22T18:15:00.000+09:00

Here is the label as promised. The address will be good until September. Also here is my latest photo album and a wish list I set up with Amazon. Just click on "add to cart" and ship to the gift registry address. If you think of anything else I might like just send it to 1010 Andrews Rd West Palm Beach, FL 33405 and my parents will send it along.

Thanks for checking in. More posts to come.

Hoodo Tales Part II

2005-07-16T15:19:00.000+09:00

Part of Peace Corps training are so called "survival competencies". Here in Mongolian that means can you; chop fire wood, winterize your ger, and cook for yourself. To that end I've so far cut and chopped fire wood, cooked traditional Mongolian food, plus ridden a couple of horses and milked a goat in the process. I'll try and post photos of all these things when I go to UB this week and find a computer that will accept my USb drive. Or I'll break down and burn them to a CD. Either way, look for an action packed post at the end of the week.

Otherwise training is going great. I'm already at the language level I need to be at the end of the summer so now I just have to keep it there. On the business side, my group is putting together a business plan for a local shop and after UB we have to a small business symposium. It should be great practice for when I get to my real site.

In UB I'll post my new cell phone number which you can call with a calling card (incoming calls are free) as well as my Amazon wishlist and a mailing address. Comment on whatever you feel like or just email me at jrkinsella@gmail.com

later.

Hoodo Tales

2005-06-29T14:22:00.000+09:00

The Mongolian word "Hoodo" means countryside, but since this is a place with a lot of countryside we translate it as anywhere more rural than where you are right now. Two weekends ago we went from Hutul, which has aparments with running water and paved roads, to Orkhan, which has none of these. The plan was to visit some other trainees and maybe see the river which shares its name with the town. That's where the trouble started. We found a taxi to take us to Orkhan, but the driver wanted more money than we expected. He said it was because he would have to wait for us. We said he wouldn't and we started driving. Eventually we pulled of the road (we were expecting to take a dirt road eventually) and pulled up to the riverbank. At this point we realized that he thought we just wanted to go to the river (I had been holding a towell). This struck us as odd and kind of like having someone bring you to the Mississippi river instead of to the state of Mississippi. Dan, one of the four trainees in the car, said he knew the word for city, as in Orkhan city, and told the driver "Orkhan mot". We then went back on the highway and across to the other, shadier side of the river. At this point I looked in our dictionary and saw that "mot" and "hot" meant city.

After that we had a little laugh with the driver and ended up making it to Orkhan to see our friends. We swam in the river and played frisbee and had two lunches (one with each trainee's host family). On the way out of town the wheel of a second taxi fell completly off and we had to find another ride. This week learned more word to use when arranging transportation so hopefully we can use them soon. Well, I have to go learn how to play a Mongolian musical instrument . I'll more Hoodo tales in my next post.

First Week of Training

2005-06-15T10:41:00.000+09:00

I'm back in Darkhan for some shots (ouch!) then we go back to Khutul. My first week of training has been exciting. I'm living in an apartment with and mother, father, and three kids. It's kind of small, but I have my own room. Everyone in my group has the same situation and we get together to trade our cross cultural experiences.

The language classes are going fine. We started on the alphabet this week after learning some useful phrase like "I like eggs" and "I have explosive diarrhea". It's hard, because a lot of the letters sound the same. My host family helps me though.

We might go out to the country this weekend or try and climb this mountain that only men are allowed on. I'm not sure what that is about, but I'll try and post pictures later.

Seacrest out!

PS, I haven't read any American news since June 3, so I don't know what's been going on. I want all readers to comment with what think has been the most important story and I'll post the results as a poll. A little description would help also.

Greetings from Mongolia!

2005-06-08T17:33:00.000+09:00

I'm in an internet cafe in Drakhan and Gmail just kicked Hotmail's ass. In other news, I made it here fine after a layover in Incheon airport near Seoul. We stayed in a ger (Mongolian name for a yert) camp that night. We didn't know where we were until morning, but it was really cool. I can't post any photos now, but I will soon.

Right now we're in a hotel in Darkhan. On Sunday the Youth Development and Economic Development people move to Khutul for 11 weeks of training. I'm not sure if I can post from there, but we'll be coming back here and going to Ulaan Baatar (UB) a few times.

The food is fine, but it has all been in the hotel so I'll have better reviews after Khutul. I'll probably be living in an apartment most of the time from now on unless I visit someone in a ger like a TFEL teacher. That's it for now. Thanks for the comments.

My Photo Album

2005-06-05T11:32:00.000+09:00

To amuse you all in case I can't write for a while, I've uploaded images from a photo album I put together for my host family. Peace Corps said the families love to see volunteers families and homes etc. Hope you all enjoy.

Here's a sample.

Aren't I cute

Ice-breaker, dead ahead!

2005-06-04T07:58:00.000+09:00

Today was the last day of staging in LA and we did a lot of "get to know each other" activities. It was better than some of the other team building stuff I've done before, because the activities were all geared towards our Peace Corps Service.

We got to practice what is like to be scrutinized by others and what it is like to be part of (or not part of) a group. There was also a lot of info about our Pre-Service Training (PST) which starts after we arrive in country on the 6th. PST lasts 11 weeks and I'm not sure I'll be able to post. If I can't, I'll write about it and post a long summary (and maybe pictures) after I'm swore in n August 20th.

Thanks for the emails and support. I'll work on the comment option and write more later.

And so it begins...

2005-06-02T12:57:00.000+09:00

Welcome to my new blog. I'll be uploading photos and updates on my progress so check back later. My first stop is LA, then Seoul, and finally Ulaan Bataar (UB). Feel free to comment on any post or email to keep me posted. Thanks for reading.