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.

Thanksgiving 2006

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

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.