First Week in Mongolia

SAIN BAIN UU?

We’ve arrived in Mongolia and have already had some remarkable experiences.

Our first night after over 16 hours of flying, we arrived in Ulan Bator (UB as they say here) and spent the night in a very posh ger (Like Gary without the “y”). We were quickly informed by the current volunteers who ceremoniously met us at the airport that we shouldn’t get used to the cement floors, connected bathrooms with running water, fruits or electricity complete with chandelier. It had four beds for us and another married couple, Darren and Laura from Colorado. Like the other married couple, Ben and Faye from Alaska, we’ve enjoyed getting to know the other “marrieds” and have been automatically bonded by our unique situations among the 64 volunteers.

In fact, last night, the married couples from the current volunteers (we’re still considered trainees until we swearing in in August) treated us to a spaghetti dinner at one of their apartments. Like almost all the buildings here, it’s a big Soviet, communist apartment building lacking aesthetics. The inside and the hospitality were nice.

Since that first day in the ger, we’ve been in a hotel, three hours north of UB learning more about the culture, some “survival” Mongolian and introducing us to our jobs. The hotel is a little different than we’re used to in the states in that the beds are much, much harder than we prefer, there’s no hot water right now and the doors only lock and unlock with a key from either side, but there’s a balcony and the walk to class is about ten minutes.

One thing we’ve noted right off is that the temperatures in Mongolia are much higher than advertised during the day, though the swing into evening is pretty severe as promised. It doesn’t get dark until about 10:00, though the sun is up bright and early at 4:30.

The first day of orientation we were treated to a ceremony put on by local students including dance, contortion, singing, more dancing and more singing. All were impressive, all were endearing, and all be learning as much of them as possible in the coming months. Leslie is especially pumped to learn the traditional two-stringed instrument we’ve yet to put a name to.

This weekend we ship off to our separate host families for some intensive language and culture training. We’re eagerly looking forward to some awkward meals, playing with our host siblings and bonding with our hosts.

Until next weekend…

P.S. We have a ton of photos and some videos we'd love to share on here, but the upload speed is too slow where we are right now. We'll see what we can do going forward.