Traveling Man

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.