Teaching on Khongor TV

Our new site mate, Anna, and old site mate, Peder, have been teaching English on TV with a Mongolian teacher for a couple of months now. Last week, Leslie was asked to play and teach a song.




On the studio's chalkboard, Leslie wrote the lyrics of the first and most recognizable verse of the Woody Guthrie classic, "This Land is Your Land." After reading the lyrics aloud, the Mongolian teacher, Dashka, translated the words for the over-the-air students at home.

Then all together, they sang the whole verse through:

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

To break it down, first Leslie read the lyrics for pronunciation. Then she sang the lyrics, putting the tune with the words. And then finally, to cement each new portion, she accompanied herself on guitar and sang.

With the first line sent out and happily sung in gers throughout Bayankhongor, she continued likewise with the next three lines, finishing by once again singing the whole verse from top to bottom.

And that's how you teach an English song when you can't see the students.

Because the schools have been shut down all month due to the H1N1, teachers have commandeered the airwaves to teach lessons from UB. Regular classes start up next Monday bringing those to an end, but Anna and Peder's regular English classes will still air Tuesdays and Saturdays at 7p.m., so tune in to Khongor TV and learn your ABC's.

City Night Magazine Pizza Review

During our marathon summer in UB, Nathan ate some pizza, and then he wrote about it for City Night magazine where the editor-in-chief for the English section is a former Peace Corps Volunteer. Click on the thumbnails or read the copy here.

"Za" in the Mongolian language is a word used much the same way Americans use the word "okay."

UB Pizza: Taking Za to a Whole New Place

Do you know where to get a good slice of pizza in UB?
That is the question I asked around town when I came in after thirteen months in my countryside soum center of Bayankhongor, where pizza is not a real restaurant option. I like pizza, and in the States, I especially go for non-franchise, local shops that work hard to provide good pizza for a thrifty budget. I also occasionally respect specialty pizzas that take a chance to be more than just crust, sauce and cheese. Fortunately for me and those who like pizza, Ulaanbaatar has something for everyone if you know where to look for what you like.

Where did pizza come from before it wound up in UB?

I will let the historians and food anthropologists fight over the exact details, but topping flat breads with oils and other ingredients has been part of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern diets for centuries. The modern version that has been adopted as perhaps America’s most favorite food, though, is fairly young and owes its roots to Italy.

As the famous story goes, an Italian baker named Raffaele Esposito created a dish to impress a visiting King Umberto, and his wife, Queen Margherita in the late 1800s. He achieved this by topping his flat bread with the national colors using red tomatoes, white mozzarella cheese and green basil. The monarchs were complimentary of the dish, and it was heavily copied. As with the office Canon, the copies of copies of copies started to become new things all their own.When Italians began immigrating in large numbers to the United States in the early 1900s, they brought their national dish with them to large cities like New York and Chicago, where they morphed to meet the differing demands. But it was not until after WWII when GI’s, who counted on the food to supplement their rations in wartime Italy, came home with hankerings for their familiar cheese-topped chow, that the dish really joined the national diet.

What makes a pizza a pizza?
Sometimes called simply a “slice,” a “pie,” or “za”, it is a whole meal in one dish. It is easy to make, it has a wide variety of nutritional necessities, and even when it is bad, usually it is still pretty good.

For me, pizza has to have a flat baked dough, sauce, cheese and toppings. With those general guidelines, almost anything is possible.

The basic varieties to look for in the States, depending on your tastes, are the New York style flat pizza in its many incarnations, mostly characterized by wide, thin, and foldable slices. There is the also flat but cracker crust variety typically made in brick ovens, which come more sparsely topped, are generally much smaller and are considered by some to be a more gourmet option. On the other end of the spectrum is the Chicago style that typically has a super deep, doughy, buttery crust and is generously topped. Chicago’s culinary cousin, which is not to be forgotten, is the square or rectangular-shaped Sicilian style pie with a tomato sauce on top of the cheese.

You might also find various varieties of white pizzas where the sauce is made of butter, cheese, milk, flour and heavy on the garlic, or the younger barbeque and Buffalo wing pizzas that use those sauces as their base under the cheese and other complimentary toppings.

No matter how you slice it, everyone has their own definition of the perfect pizza. The key ingredients of crust, sauce and cheese leave room for imagination, and that room takes pizza to an all new place: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where I visited all the best pizza places as they were recommended to me by friends and strangers.

Pizza Romano – mutton on the Hawaiian, delivery, decent price, showed up hot, no English

In the interest of experimentation, I ordered a Hawaiian pizza for delivery from Pizza Romano. This is my wife’s favorite variety, so throughout our years together I have eaten my fair share of this adaptation, though this was the first time I ever had mutton beside my pineapple. I appreciated the sweet flavor of the fruit and the pizza showed up piping hot from the driver with ample sauce, but nothing will erase the unexpected taste of sheep meat from my mouth’s memory. Also curious about this particular convenient way of getting dinner straight to my door was that even though the menu was in English, no one on the other end of the phone spoke any English. So, if you want to enjoy a slice of hot pizza in your house clothes, brush up on your address and directions in Mongolian before you call.

Nayra Café – good price, lots of options, good amount of cheese, undercooked, limp crust

Especially for the price and variety of options available, I like going to Nayra Café located on Tourist Street. Their pizza offerings are not the best in town, but they are good. They now have a petite pizza that provides the perfect portion for a lone eater looking to fill up or two light eaters, making it the best value among the UB eateries I visited. They also recently started serving beer by the bottle for those who enjoy a cold one with their hot pie. As is common among UB pizzas, though, the pizza was a little undercooked leaving the crust a little doughy and the cheese too limp. Even still, this little café holds its own against the big guys. Go to Nayra if you want a comfortable vibe with good, laid back English speaking staff, but keep in mind that you may not find the perfect pizza.

Marco Polo – bland, brick oven, overpriced, white pizza option, little sauce, biggest disappointment
Probably the most disappointing pizza trial I wrapped my taste buds around was at Marco Polo, near the circus. For my preference, the pizza was simply bland. The brick oven margherita had a good thin crust perfectly suited for this style of pizza, and the toppings were fresh. Those qualities aside, there was not a hint of garlic, oregano or anything else resembling flavor. If your palate is less demanding of these spices, this could be your place for a nice evening out. And for the lover of the unorthodox white-sauced slices, Marco Polo has your pizza too. If you are an American looking for a taste of the old familiar from the mother country, you could do better to save your tugriks for tastier food.

California –pretty good, 10% VAT, good size but moderately overpriced, great cocktails

California has some pretty good pizza. For the price and the 10% value added tax, you might want to suck down one of their many tasty cocktail options first as to better tolerate the equally high price tag. Rich with fresh ingredients, a respectable amount of cheese, and a relatively full fluffy crust, this pizza is not quite worth it when you consider more affordable options elsewhere. You might better enjoy some other menu items as California also churns out good salads, various chicken fair, burgers, and Buffalo style wings. This restaurant, on Seoul Avenue a few blocks east of the circus, is a good option if you have money to spare and enjoy a somewhat formal but relaxed atmosphere.

Pizza Broadway – pretty good pizzeria atmosphere, well prepared, relatively expensive, lacks pizzazz

I visited the branch of the UB franchise, Pizza Broadway, tucked in a comfortable cave-like basement on Peace Avenue, just east of the state department store. They have quite an extensive menu of pizzas and the deepest crust I found around town. The service here was uncharacteristically attentive, catering to mostly foreign patrons with wait staff that spoke English well. Disappointingly for me, I had to wait almost an hour and a half for a pizza that was promised in twenty. As my tablemates sat around ready to leave, they mercifully allowed me to sample their cold remainders while my waiter apologized for pizzas after pizzas that went to other tables full of customers who had arrived a full hour after I did. Kitchen blunders aside, I was afforded quite the sampling during my wait, and what I found was reliably decent pizza that just lacked pizzazz. No bite I chewed underwhelmed me, but for the price and the pomp, it did not overwhelm me either. Pizza Broadway is a pretty decent pizzeria.

Pizza del la Casa –good price, English speaking staff, good pizza, root beer

Pizza del la Casa on Peace Avenue was heralded by many as THE place in town for a good slice of pizza, and is credited as being the first real pizza option. The atmosphere with brick accents over the doorways, hand-painted Italian accents in the corners, and various Italian food items displayed within cut-outs in the walls, is a was a little forced, but actually quite reminiscent of a 1960s style New Jersey pizzeria, which I ultimately decided was a plus. Besides that, the pizza was pretty good too, though I did not feel the menu items were that strong. The vegetable pizza I ordered was topped with spinach and broccoli that were both quite fresh and tasty, but once again, they took it out of the oven just a few minutes early leaving an actual layer of uncooked dough just under where the sauce should have been. I was really expecting spectacular pizza here based on the recommendations, though really it just met the middle of the pack. The saving grace for my meal, I felt, was an ice cold glass of root beer. Go to Pizza del la Casa if you want some decently priced, passable pizza with an eclectic American-inspired ambiance.

Granville – surprisingly good, cheese perfectly browned, crust perfectly cooked, tasty

A favorite place for me and my friends to dine is the relatively new Irish Pub, Granville, just north of the Flower Center. Though the restaurant more resembles an Applebee’s or TGI Friday’s or wannabe sports bar rather than an Irish pub, Granville provides diners with ridiculously large portions, as you might expect in an American-style casual fine dining establishment. This enclave has a plethora of delicious options, including a surprisingly awesome pizza, which until recently, I had unfortunately overlooked for the head-sized burgers and buy-three-get-one-free cocktails. The Granville pizza I sampled sported perfectly baked cheese that was beautifully browned and hardened on the surface, and it still managed to retain the stringy elasticity I expect from a good mozzarella smothered pie. Underneath, the sauce was sweet and flavorful and the fresh toppings were even and sparse enough not to overwhelm each bite. It was simple, good and a moderately priced option with the characteristic UB-style thin, flat crust. Sporting a decent menu and friendly atmosphere, Granville’s got some good pizza.

No matter what you prefer on your pizza, it seems UB has its own style. UB pizza tends to be a little doughy and limp, and the sauce is conservatively served up underneath cheese that is usually removed from the oven before a splotchy, deep brown layer sets in. Despite this characteristic style, I look forward to a UB that is able to incorporate truly deep dish, buttery Chicago-style and the unorthodox Sicilian style pizzas. These heavier versions have a hearty quality that the thin, more pedestrian pies, cannot quite deliver.

I only tried the pizzas that were recommended to me, and despite some deficits, there are surely some good pizza options among this group for the differing palates among the international travelers, foreign expats, and both countryside and urban Mongolian pizza enthusiasts. There are more out there to discover for yourself, though, so ask around and find that perfect pizza – za yu [ok]?

Thanks to:

Slice/seriouseats.com

Menshealth.com

Wikipedia.com

Brian O.

City Night

Bayankhongor American Culture Center Opens!

Excerpts from the grant we helped Tysen and Oyuntugs write:

"The Bayankhongor American Culture Center (BACC) is the brainchild of Oyuntugs, PCV Tysen Dauer’s counterpart. She noticed that Bayankhongor Aimag [Province] lacks a public English education center and adequate English resources. Community members have requested several English based classes. Over twenty five Bayankhongor residents requested a TOEFL preparation class. There have been over two hundred fifty requests for English courses ranging from elementary to advanced conversation classes... There have been numerous requests for English literature, TOEFL resources, computer classes, English language films, American popular culture magazines, and above all a safe and engaging space for Bayankhongor youth.

"To address these needs, Oyuntugs approached the aimag government in January 2009 about acquiring a space for the BACC. The local government has given the BACC two rooms in the aimag government center and has promised to provide rooms in the future Children’s Palace, which is currently being built in the aimag center. [At the time of the grant], the BACC [had] limited resources: four sets of benches, five tables with broken legs, a small desk, and a blackboard. Resources are being accumulated through additional grants. These resources include books, DVDs, CDs, music scores, computers, internet access, and electronic English language learning programs."

From the grants, we were able to get all of these items, paint the room, install electricity, and have desks, chairs and shelves made. And this made for a great atmosphere for the sample classes we taught during Saturday's open house.

PCV Peder and his counterpart teach a lesson together during the open house.

(Left) New PCV Wally teaches with his counterpart, Boldmaa, the head methodologist for the aimag. (Right) Students actively participate during a class.

The open classes were well attended, but the opening ceremony was the highlight of Saturday's events. Our Peace Corps Country Director Jim Carl flew in special to offer his remarks. He was set to come to Bayankhongor for a routine, periodic site visit and was able to arrange his schedule to accommodate our needs. He and one of the medical officers, Amy, stayed in a hotel in Bayankhongor for 5 days.

(Left) Peace Corps Country Director Jim Carl makes his opening remarks praising the work of the community and emphasizing that this is just the beginning of a new step toward bringing the USA, which is often referred to as Mongolia's third neighbor, closer to Bayankhongor. His counterpart representing the provincial government reinforced the same.


Nathan's counterpart Undrah, who has a commanding voice and personality, was the master of ceremonies. Here, he is making notes.


Leslie accompanies a group of students on "This Land is Your Land."



(Top left) A performer from the 4-member group, Baby Girls, from new volunteer Anna's school, stands in her school uniform anxiously awaiting a resolution to technical difficulties for her song and dance to "Eternal Flame". (Top right) Dancers from Tysen's business school danced to an upbeat number you might hear behind cheerleaders at an American sporting event. (Bottom left) A Mongolian dancer from Leslie's theater cuts an impressive rug. (Bottom right) Undrah holds the microphone for a student from Leslie's theater who is playing the horsehead fiddle or "morin huur".


Jim Carl and a Mongolian girl cut the ribbon to open the Bayankhongor American Culture Center on September 19, 2009.

A Special Thanks
We called out to our friends and families to show us Americana. With their help, we were able to print and display over 260 photos on the wall of our culture center. Here are some of the highlights:

Please check out all the photos here and here.

Thanks to our professionals:
Eric George
Piper Robbins
Rob Shore
Ashlee Christian

Thanks also to our keen-eyed amateurs:
Melody McFarland
Lydia Godfrey Donovan
Melissa Munoz
David and Melissa Reeder
Paige Robbins Elwafi
Cat Kruszka
Kristen Chamberlain
Mary Lou Chamberlain
Kendall Glouner
Cipperly Good
Jen Sokira
Nancy Nally
Bonnie Gruttadauria
Cynthia Rack

(Top, bottom left) Attendees gawk at the photo wall courtesy of our friends and family. (Bottom right) Students, teachers and Peace Corps volunteers and Peace Corps Country Director Jim Carl pose to commemorate the opening of the culture center.

Classes began this week, and the third consecutive week of American Movie Night hosted by Leslie, is set for this Friday! You can come, but just a warning, it will be packed like last week.

MST 2009

After we finished training all the newbies, it was our turn to get together with our training class of M19s to discuss our successes and challenges during our first year at site. To date, we have been here just over 15 months - three months of training, and a full year in Bayankhongor (pr. "buy-in-hunger" for those scoring at home).

This three-day mid-service training (MST) was also designed as a working retreat to help us recharge our batteries. Thankfully, the budget our Peace Corps office requested for this gathering was accepted, and we were actually treated to a pretty decent few days in Terelj National Park, just outside of UB. We had some good food, meaningful collaboration, and believe it or not, one of Mongolia's two golf courses.

Thanks to Garrett for most of these pictures.

The driving range left a little to be desired, including a fence to keep out the animals and a machine for collecting the balls.

It wasn't exactly the best course ever, sporting hard as brick artifical greens, but beggars can't be choosers.

Fellow PCVs and great fellows, Brian and Patrick joined Nathan and Garrett for the walk and some picture taking. Their golf-like commentary was hysterical, especially Brian's, whose dual citizenship as a Brit grants him a native British accent - twas perfect for a day at the links whilst on holiday.

The skins game was spit almost even with Nathan upping Garrett by one. All 6 balls were lost in the impossible rough, which led to only eight of the nine holes being successfully completed. but who's counting?

During our down time one evening, there was also a Settlers of Catan tournament. It's a board game kind of like Risk meets Monopoly launched from the mind a super nerdy German guy in the 1990's. It was a blast, and though Nathan was knocked in the first round, Leslie and our site mate, Fahd, made it to the finals in this double-elimination extravaganza.

Thanks to Amber Barger [white sweater, bottom right] for these pictures and for organizing the tournament.

But it wasn't all fun and games. We spent from 9-4 everyday meeting in various small groups discussing our last year and developing strategies for next year. Despite the concerns from some of the Mongolian staff that there was a lack of strict structure, this open format proved to be really worth while and worked extremely well for us. Sections of the day were used for sector-specific meetings, fundraising/grant writing, safety and security, cooking, mental health, and of course, the Mongolian language.

Leslie, Patrick and Garrett have a silly moment during an otherwise very productive Mongolian lanugage session.

Leslie enjoying the cooking demonstration/class with Matt (with the hat) and Evan (with the classes) put on by the medical officer, Paul (kneeling, far left). Thanks to Matt for the photos.

All and all it was a great way to get new project ideas, and the much needed rest and relaxation gave us great energy coming back to site. Thanks to the Peace Corps Mongolia staff for a well orchestrated event from start to finish. Year number two at site is officially off to a good start.

The Belle Tuul's in America

A special bitter-sweet goodbye and good luck to our dear friend, Tuul Sukhbaatar. She worked as a translator for GTZ a German NGO. Tuul has just left the country for graduate school at Antioch in New Hampshire.

We love you Tuul! Good luck! Now you’re an authentic cool “east coast” girl, for sure!
Туулаа бид нар чамд хайртай, амжилт хүсье! Одоо чи жинхэнэ саак “east coast” охин болсон шүү!

It was all worth it...

Sometimes the clichés are clichés for a reason.

“It was all worth it!”

But let’s start from the beginning.

As you might have heard, we put on a few concerts in the last year. Planning for the initial concert began as a request from my theater boss in Bayankhongor that eventually involved our friend and vocalist Julia, and our friend, site mate and pianist Tysen. My boss wanted the people of our rural province to experience live classical music, which wasn’t hard to talk me in to. Julia, couldn’t wait to get on stage again either, and since Tysen had begun preparing solo piano pieces for his graduate school auditions and was looking for an opportunity to practice those pieces for an audience and to work with vocalists for the first time, he was easily in too.

We had the request from our Bayankhongor community and the interested parties, but we wanted to take it a step further by taking the show on the road and donating the proceeds of our concerts to charities. After some negotiating with other volunteers who would eventually act as our hosts and concert agents at the several performance sites, we decided on a few different organizations where the ticket money would go. The two big concerts were the one in Bayankhongor, where the Association of Parents of Disabled Children (APDC) is attempting to build a therapy center, and in Ulaanbaatar the National Center Against Violence (NCAV), which is always in need since the funding they receive for facilities does not cover food for the women and children who stay there.

For the NCAV Ulaanbaatar concert we worked with Muugii (pr. MOW-gee), who Julia had been speaking with for the past year about collaborating. We had a great time working with Muugii! She convinced Khan Bank to donate their gorgeous theater space to us, got a local school to donate their piano, and she talked 5 Mongolians into performing with us. And she was just a joy to be around. I was really impressed when I met her and the entire NCAV staff, so since most of the new community youth development (CYD) volunteers I’m helping to train will be placed at sites that have NCAV shelters, I arranged for them to meet at the staff’s office.

The visit was fantastic, completely informative, and helpful for the trainees! They were able to learn how the shelter system works, who the volunteers are that work there, the education and outreach they do, and how we as volunteers can help it meet its goals and further its mission.

At the end of the meeting, Muugii stood up and presented me with an unexpected certificate in appreciation for our concert and the money we raised. Julia, Tysen, and I thought at best we probably only raised about 400,000 tugriks ($275), but instead we raised 900,000 tugriks (approx. $620), which we felt was great, but how far could that money really go?

Then Muugii sat down, and with very little pomp and circumstance she calmly said that our money paid for two months worth of food for two shelters! I was shocked! I was so happy and so pleased. That’s more than I ever thought possible. Many of us began to tear up. Then she said:

“Oh, yeah, and also it paid for a boy’s…….how do you call it?.....hmmmm…..OH, yes, a boy with cancer’s bone marrow transplant .”

BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT?!?!?!?!?!?!

How could it be that $620 paid for two months of food for two shelters and a bone marrow transplant? I couldn’t believe it! I still don’t believe it. But I’m glad it did. Wow.

I’m so thankful for the opportunity to work with the NCAV (and also the APDC)! In the coming year I plan to work with our local center against violence in Bayankhongor to find more ways I can help this great organization!

Putting on the concerts was hard work, and it took a lot of coordination. I’ve had some very challenging moments and some great moments here in Mongolia over the last year, but that must be my proudest! It was all worth it!

CYD Camping & Training

Our weeks keep getting busier and busier. Last week the PST (pre-service training) CYD (community youth development) coordinator and I presented 4 sessions, went to a children's camp for 3 days, and evaluated 2 days of life skills sessions. I can officially say I am worn out!

In order to help the trainees bond with the campers and practice verbal and non-verbal communication as much as possible, we created a scavenger hunt for the first day at camp. Each team consisted of 8-9 Mongolian campers and 2 Americans (each American with a digital camera). To really make the communication happen, we made the scavenger list in Mongolian. The campers needed to find ways to let their Americans know they needed to:

• Get a picture with the entire team touching one of the yellow rocks (half way up a mountain)
• Lift one of the campers in the air
• Know the names of all their Mongolian teammates
• Sing one verse of a mongolian song
• Create a team pyramid
• Take a picture of 4 campers and an american doing a cartwheel simultaneously
• etc.

A gaggle of teams racing up the mountain to be the first team to the yellow rock.

Carolina & Kara's team make a pyramid.

Molly & Aleta's team's mountain side cartwheel attempt.

My personal favorite part was when the teams returned. The Mongolians had to explain what a "S'more" is based on the desciption their American teammates provided for them with their limited Mongolian skills.

(all in Mongolian)
ME: "What are S'mores?"
MONGOLIAN KID CAMPERS: "*name brand cracker* then chocolate then hot white candy then *name brand cracker."
"like hot bon-bon"
"with fire chocopie" "sweet cracker (miming on top) chocolate (miming on top) white on fire candy (miming on top) more sweet cracker then yum yum tasty"

After each team explained it, we let the campers know that we would be making S'mores the next day during the camp fire. They were all impressed and very pleased with our "jinkhin" (authentic) American camp food. During the camp fire we sang Mongolian and American songs, including both national anthems, as prompted by the campers.

One of the most difficult parts of being a Peace Corps volunteer is learning how to work with a counterpart, and the greatest role of a Peace Corps volunteer is to build the capacity of your counterparts. The process of working with your counterpart and your host country organization to find the needs of the community and work with your counterpart to help them effectively do the work that is necessary is time consuming, frustrating, and typically doesn't work how you want it to. But, what WE want is not the point. This is a hard concept to teach. I know the trainees have been very frustrated by it, and I have been frustrated by trying to teach it. Luckily, it was a highly successful few days in at the children's camp.

Allison presents on HIV/AIDS asking students to place cards with behaviors in the "high risk" "medium risk" "little risk" and "no risk" catagories.

Megan presented on the topic of Self-esteem asking the campers to write postiive things about each other on papers on their back.

Molly's presentation on friendship went remarkably well as she had to present to teenagers and was able to help facilitate a great conversation the campers brought up about romantic relationships.

One of the most important things to teach as a CYD volunteer is life skills, and counterpart work is essential. Uugana, the PST CYD technica coordinator for the summer, had to work major overtime to work with each of the 8 trainees to help them prepare their life skills sessions. Each trainee was instructed to use Uugana as they would their counterpart at site. Unfortunatley for Uugana, much of the work is supposed to be on the shoulders of the counterpart. Thankfully, she's a good sport, and did an excellent job with the trainees. The trainees & Uugana presented on topics such as:

• Self esteem
• Communication
• HIV/AIDS
• Decision making
• Planning
• etc.

Though I'm completely pooped (as are the trainees), I feel as though they will be much better prepared to create sustainable work at site! Now to sleep!

Training in the Land of a Hundred Trees

Leslie and I have been trainers in our respective fields for the second half of pre-service training to our the newest round of prospective volunteers. They arrived in the middle of June, had 4 weeks of language, culture and "tech" training (I'm a business volunteer so my tech training is micro to medium business), and now we've embarked on our 5 weeks. During this time we have been out of Bayankhongor, the provincial capital where we've been volunteering for almost a year now. We've been in the country nearly 14 months to date.

Leslie is away at a children's camp all weekend, so I thought I share a little bit about what this tech training is all about.

All the trainers for the different tech areas (English, health, youth development, business) have office hours during the week at the Peace Corps office in UB where we prepare sessions, and then three days a week, we travel to their training site in a nearby provincial capital called "Hundred Trees."

There are some classroom hours spent talking about Mongolia's history, most of the which is introductory topics about the switch from the planned economy from the 1920's to the relatively new free market system that's been in place since the early 1990's. We also talk about how to work with Mongolian counterparts, translators and the expectations of the work ahead of them.

Meet the crew:
Of the seven trainees, we have two women, both with exellent creditials and advanced degrees in business. We also have two married guys with some good experience between them, and whose wives are CYD trainees (youth development), just like Leslie and me. The other guys have business related backgrounds and perhaps more limited experience, but have a lot to offer our program.

During this day of training, we got out of the classroom, as we like to do, to visit some working small to medium-sized businesses. The trainees ask questions about the businesses and get an idea of what they're in for.

Mola translates as we visit a family with a small garden of carrots and potatoes and greenhouse with tomatoes and cuccumbers for sale. They are supported by the NGO World Vision. We were excited to see them growing peas and green beans outside, but for now, those are just for personal use.

My counterpart for the summer, Mola, has a great background in business and is a real task master. She makes all the phone calls to set up these visits. In this case, we contacted three NGO's in the area and asked them to connect us to a couple of their clients who'd be willing to talk to us.

Our second visit was to a car repair shop that also has the town's only car wash, operated by the son. Notice the motor on top of the blue metal container.

Mom does the tire repair using a fancy piece of equipment they were able to purchase with a loan, and Dad does most of the welding with an electric torch they recently purchased. He was trained in Russia many years ago and seems to have it all down, though he's not wearing a protective mask, but rather a cheap pair of what appear to be off-the-rack sun glasses. He's making repairs to the ramp he use to elevate the cars.

Mola does all the traslating during these visits and is an intrgal part of our training. She's a real pro, having lived in the Colorado for a while.

The first business was a micro business on a very small scale, the second was a small family business on a larger scale, and the third we visited was a member of the chamber of commerce and a well established dairy farm with a barn, stables and some pretty modern equipment, something I had not seen before. It was a real education for me.

[Left] The indoor stables are not heated in the winter, but provide a great place for the 30+ cattle to while away the -30 degree cold. [Right] A two year old cow stands on some "handy work." Cows aren't fed hormones and only feed off the native grasses during the summer and prepared grass fodder in the winter. We all agreed that a two year-old cow in the States could eat this cow for lunch. The owners were a little surprised.

Leslie and I carpool in the Peace Corps microbus with the health trainers, whose site is on the way. We drop them off, then pick them up on our way home. Each way the trip is about an hour and a half, so after our 3-4 hour sessions, we usually don't get home until after 7:30 in the evening. This particular day, there were some host family issues with one of the health volunteers, so we hung out in the microbus for a few hours while the trainers worked to resolve it.

Mola passes a volleyball back and forth with the school's caretaker while I lounge in the microbus. We made it home by 9 that evening and were back at the grind by 9 the next morning.

Trainees still have until the middle of August in training where they'll set up a community small business syposium attended by local business owners and do some practical consulting with individual businesses. They are up to the challenge, but they are also eagerly looking forward to where they will live out their days as volunteers, which won't be finalized until the middle of August as sites continue to be developed.

Stay tuned for Leslie debriefing of training a the children's camp.

Eagle TV: The Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our TV Debut

As our fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Kevin put it with tongue in cheek, the best part of sharing the celebratory meal afterward, is that no one in the restaurant knew what big stars we were.

For the big summer festival of Naadam, Eagle TV, a Christian TV channel, wanted to do a show about foreigners performing Mongolian music. After seeing our swearing-in videos on youtube, they called Peace Corps. We met to discuss, and this weekend six of us made the magic happen. It will air on cable and streaming on the internet at 8 p.m. (8 a.m. EST in the States) during the third day of Naadam, July 13, 2009.

We were supposed to meet at 8:30 in the morning at the Peace Corps office, but the camera crew didn’t show up until hours later. We weren’t all that surprised because they’d shown up six hours and four hours late for the previous two meetings, but we were nonetheless naively prepared for a reasonably on-time arrival. They did send a handler at about 9:15 to make sure we were all there.

When the camera crew finally arrived, they took a quick shot of us heading out of the office and we headed out of UB to Tereelj National Park. The ride through the winding road included a few random stops along the way like when we parked near some folks selling camel rides to tourists, and when we checked in on an overturned SUV that had recently driven off the road scattering and trapping passengers and gear (everyone seemed miraculously OK).



















Our Trailer
We arrived at the consummate countryside oasis complete with a stream, trees and large birds of prey, including a pair of large hawks. For our “trailer” they set us up in a nice ger where we were able to relax and nap for a few hours before our lunch of tsuivan (how Mongolian's do chow mien).















Costumes
The rest of the crew arrived with costumes soon after, which we got to play around with. These are the finest quality traditional outfits, made by perhaps the finest tailors in UB, according to our producer. No one took our measurements, but everyone's deel fit well with the exception of the boots, which were a few inches too small for the guys.

Julia and Leslie pose in their fancy deels.

Nathan's feet are mostly up in the legs of the boots, high-heel style.

We all got a bit of the "pose fever" in our awesome costumes. Jaime [left] pauses for a moment at least a dozen feet in front of the trained eagle.

Jaime Ly
Once we were in costume, the real filming began. First was Jaime Ly performing her traditional Mongolian dance about nature and animals while the rest of us enthusiastically watched. Jaime, whose parents are Vietnamese, hails from Washington, D.C. She had some costuming problems because the outfit that was appropriate for that ethnic group was not the dance outfit, and there were no dancing shoes for her. No problem, though. Take after take using the cassette tape deck in the mini-van as her accompaniment, and despite having no formal dance training, she made do with what she had and put on quite a show.

Jaime performs her dance beautifully
in the afternoon sun as the crew rehearses how they'll film it.

Leslie and Nathan
Next, they set the two of us up with some creative direction. All in Mongolian, the producer pulled Nathan aside and described how the shot would work. He would sneak up from behind Leslie, pick a flower and hand it to her as a surprise before the music began. In two takes, with no accompaniment, we sang our love song. We haven’t seen the footage yet, but we felt the second take was about as well as we could do it. Fingers crossed!

You'd never know that the microphone is under that pile of leaves on that tree trunk.

It only took us two takes to get our performance on film. Hopefully they were the right two. We were a little nervous.

Julia Cannon
Despite delays, once the shooting began, there was no stopping – they moved right into shooting Julia’s “Ankhni Hair” (First Love). You might remember Julia from our Bayankhongor concert from a few months ago. Julia is from Winston-Salem, NC, and has a theater degree. For her performance, she and the crew crossed the stream, and she was set up in a bright little clearing. It took several takes for them to get what they were looking for because they started with her walking, but because there was just a boom microphone (that captures all sounds in the immediate area), they were picking up the crunching of twigs and leaves beneath her feet. She sang quietly seated a few times, and that seemed to do the trick.

No pole for the boom mic? No problem as long as you have a ger and mailing tape nearby.

Julia and the crew had to cross the stream for this shot. I was no problem once the shoes came off.

Amber Book
Next, for Amber Book, they went to a new location with fewer trees and more mountains because Amber has been volunteering in the far West in Hovd that has a different landscape. This region is heavily comprised of ethnic Kazaks, so though Amber learned a little Mongolian two years ago during her Peace Corps’ Pre-service Training, she has primarily been speaking Kazak since she went to site. Amber sang, “Tulan Jer”, a Kazak song about missing ones homeland. Amber, who’s from Pittsburgh, PA, and has a vocal performance degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.














The Eagle
In the Kazak region, eagle training and hunting using eagles is a big deal, culminating with the annual Eagle Festival in October. On the way through Tereelj National Park, we saw a guy with a trained eagle sitting next to the road, so the camera crew stopped and hired it and the trainer for the day. This thing was huge, standing about two and a half feet high with a wing span of over a few yards. At one point, one of the hawks that lives in this area was swooping down trying to provoke the competing bird. Thankfully, it was blinded with a leather mask because I would not want to get on its bad side.

The handler moves the eagle. What an impressive wingspan.

Julia, Jaime and we take turns posing
with the blinded eagle from a safe distance.

Kevin Johnstone
We took a moment to enjoy a specially prepared horhog, then the final sequence began with Kevin Johnstone from Cleveland, OH. He’s been playing guitar for about 16 years. He is mostly self taught with some intermittent formal education smattered in, and he recorded an original album in his ger this past winter. He’s been in Selenge Province (the same where Leslie and I trained) in a small village for about two years, and just like Jaime, Julia and Amber, he’s an English teacher. He’s set to leave in August after he finishes helping a monastery develop marketing materials.

Kevin entertained us and flawlessly performed a more modern selection, "Cetgeliin Jiguuree" (Wings of My Heart), on Leslie’s Martin guitar. We all stood by and cheered him on, dancing and acting a fool to finish the filming day.

Kevin's performance was the final of the day.

Deep in the trees, it began to get dark pretty early.

After some van problems, we finally made it back to UB after midnight, 15 hours after the day began. We Americans agreed that in the States, the amount of filming we did probably would have been done in just a five or six hours including travel, but we also all agreed that the day was a resounding success.

Studio
The next day, we made it back to the Peace Corps office by 10 a.m. to meet the camera crew that was also supposed to meet us there at that time. When they showed up after noon, our collective patience was a little frayed, but we sucked it up nonetheless for a ride out the airport. One shot of us coming out of the airport, and we headed for the studio.

In the studio, we each sat down with a reported who asked us various questions about our backgrounds. Five out of the six of us conducted the interview in Mongolian, but they asked Nathan to do his in English for the English speaking audience.

Finally, with our fates sealed in the hands of the editors, we all went out for hamburgers, salads and a cold drink to celebrate the making of our first music video in Mongolia.

Broadcasting – When, Where, How
To check out our performance live on cable and internet July 13, 2009, tune in to:

Streaming video at 8 p.m. in Mongolia (8 a.m. EST) http://www.eagle-tv.mn/mn/

or

Eagle TV in UB on cable and terrestrial broadcast at 8 p.m.

Summer Camp at Uvgun Jargalant: WE CAN DO IT!

After some administrative problems including being told we would have three quarters as many, then twice as many students as we'd planned, we had a good 5 days in the countryside at Uvgun Jargalant, "Ol' Blissful," a summer camp for children nearly 70 kilometers from Bayankhongor.

(Thanks to Peder for this photo). For more photos from the camp week, click here.

Our particular camp focused on English and life skills, and there was some physics rolled up in there too. As you might imagine, the planning and compromises that went into making the camp were many, including a surprise early morning flight back from UB for Leslie because two of the English teachers and the life skills teacher dropped out two days before we were supposed to leave. We nearly canceled the thing altogether because of the many frustrations and misleading, fanciful assertions made by some of the Mongolian staff, but like many kids who are forced to go to camp and then end up loving it, we found ourselves sorry to see the camp end.

The first two days were treacherously cold and it snowed on and off, sometimes for over an hour. We were advised to bring clothes as if it were winter, and we did a pretty good job layering. Unfortunately, we didn't quite take them as seriously as we should have because as it was snowing through the broken window of our room and we were hunkered down in our sleeping bags, our faces were ice, ice cold. We never thought it would snow in June, and in fact, the other two Peace Corps volunteers who went with us (Peder and Fahd) were so convinced it wouldn't be that cold that they didn't even bring sleeping bags. Brrrr.















Peder & Fahd took some of the kids on a day hike up a smaller peak on one of the surrounding mountains. Notice the storm clouds with snow rolling in.

Nathan, clad in every piece of clothing he brought to camp, waits to receive a pass from a student showing off his best Boomer Esiason.

Despite the cold, we and the 27 campers were outside much of the time. And much of the time was flexibly structured so we knew about what things should happen around what time. Thanks to some last-minute but pretty comprehensive planning, we came up with a schedule for the week and a theme for each day.

Our Daily Schedule at Uvgun Jargalant Camp

9-10	Breakfast
10-11	English lessons in 3 groups by level
11-11:30	Tea, butter crackers
11:30-12:30	Life Skills (1/2 hr), Physics (1/2 hr)
1-2	Lunch
2-3	Free time
3-4	English (language games)
4-4:15	Tea or yogurt
4:15-7	Structured play time (hiking, football, sports tournament, scavenger hunt)
7-8	Dinner
8-11	Event (drag show, dancing, plays, poetry-off)

Themes included family, sports, nature, weather, and incorporated several grammar points based on class level. Each American was partnered with a Mongolian English teacher so the teacher could learn from the lessons as well. With some mixed results among us, the system seemed to work OK, though if we had had more time to plan, the Mongolian teachers could have been more involved.

The first day we arrived at camp in the afternoon, so after a quick break for some soup and the first of many yak milk teas (not even as good as you might think), we interviewed each of the 10-17 year olds and grouped them according skill level resulting in some of the older kids winding up with the youngest kids. No matter, though. All the students were motivated and energized for each lesson, and we didn't have a single discipline or attention span problem.

Students used their bunks as desks and chairs. Much of the teaching was active and involved speaking or drawing, so they got along just fine.

The classroom was useful, but we were outside a lot. In fact, many of the highlights of the week for us included:

1. Nathan's hike up a steep mountain with 4 kids.

The five hiking guys stop for a quick photo.

[Left] The grounds of the camp. [Right] The kids found wild onions and a kind of sour wild leaf vegetable they called red cabbage. It was like grocery shopping on the mountain.

2. Football, including an 11 on 11 game.

Teaching and playing football was a big part of our camp. It started with just throwing the ball and ended in an 11 on 11 game, culminating in a well defended long bomb that hit its receiver on the run for a touchdown!

Early on we taught the campers some sports words and phrases.
Here you can hear them shouting, "Pass it to me!" and, "Throw it to me!"
They had the throwing part down, but receiving never did catch on.

3. And teaching music outdoors.

The kids do their best James Taylor on this Carole King favorite of ours, "You've Got a Friend."

One evening, Leslie and I turned in early while Peder and Fahd attended the camp drag show. We heard they were going to have a "Miss" competition, but didn't know it would be the boys dressing up as girls. Some of them really committed and pulled it off. The one older student dressed his version of Middle Eastern garb won the competition. Maybe less IS more.
















Another day was filled with a Mongolian sports tournament that pitted us against each other in a tug of war. We broke the rope with our awesomeness leaving the competition in a draw.






And at the end of the evening, Leslie put on her dancing shoes to teach the Cha Cha Slide. Think of it as a kind of hip-hop line dance, where the recorded announcer instructs dancers when and what to do, like a solo square dance. It was a big hit.

"Clap your hands. Now hop. Slide to the right. Slide to the left. Cha-cha-cha," and so on.

On the final evening they put on English language skits of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears (which they knew through Russian influence), and The Boy Who Cried Wolf was new, but a big hit. In the two latter skits, they came up with original dialogue and memorized it in between readings from the narrator. We were impressed.

What Nathan thought was most stunning from the week was how well Leslie was able to really instill some positive qualities through life skills training. Most notably, she taught them about sportsmanship, being a role model, and positive language. After the second day, the motto of the camp was "We Can Do It!" in English. This flavored everything we did from then on as kids happily shouted the moniker to their friends while hiking, working in class, and competing on the field of play.

It was a good week filled with more than we can put on one blog, so check out more of the action here. We look forward to doing the camp again next year working from the strengths and weakness of this year.