Our Town

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

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

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

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

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.”

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

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.