Tsagaan Sar 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.