Spring is here! Kind of!

This post is for you, Uncle Alan.

"The weather in Mongolia is always changing: some days you can experience all four seasons."

-Traditional Mongolian Proverb

The last few weeks, the weather has been awesome. It snowed about 10 days ago, but it quickly warmed in the late afternoon to temps high enough for a light jacket. Routinely since then, the it's been in the 30's at night and in the 60s-70sF during the days. Consequently, we've put away the long underwear for the season and have now embraced Spring. However, Spring, while it does include mild summer temperatures, also includes mild winter temps as well. This Friday is the last day the city heating plants will be running heat, but it's only 55F in our apartment, so I think they gave up a little early.

It's 55F in our apartment, but the smokestack shows no sign of life.

Leslie's curled in a sleeping bag sarcophagus on a chilly morning.

So you can keep up on all the latest weather in beautiful Bayankhongor, we've added a widget to the left side panel or our blog. Check it out.

Bayanhongor Weather

Bayanhongor Time

Spring = Dust Storms
In all seasons in Bayankhongor, we've noticed that it is windy. But with Spring in Mongolia comes dust storms without warning. We went for a pleasant Easter hike down to the river with one of my counterparts Sunday. We lazily ate jelly beans and chocolate (courtesy of our benevolent site mate Tysen), and shared bread, peanut butter, pickle salads and huushuur. It was a good thing we left when we did, though, because in rolled a storm worthy of a name.

As we walked back toward the city, we could see it enveloped by the flying dirt and debris. Our faces were pelted with small rocks and the whirring wind was so loud in our ears, we could barely hear each other speak. The more we walked, the more intense it became.

And just as suddenly as it had appeared, the clouds of sand and whirling trash came to rest back down to the ground, merely rustling as the wind continued to quietly blow around us.

The Sky is Gray
Since Spring has rolled around, the sky has been noticeably gray and gloomy, but the sun is coming up much earlier now. At Tsagaan Sar in late February, the sun came up at around 8:30 and during January it wasn't up before 9 o'clock. Now in mid-March, it's pleasantly up before 7am and doesn't go down until almost 8pm. This is a good feeling as we climb out of the winter blues.

Spring has been a little gloomy so far, but more people are out and about as the weather eases from the below zeros to the triple-digit summer heat.

A child walks to school next to our building on a gray morning. The metal thing on stilts is where we burn our trash. This is also the field where we've been playing whiffle ball recently.

Construction
Spring is also the time for construction to begin, so of course, they're putting a third floor on our apartment building. It's been a bit noisy as they've been welding and knocking down wood walls to brick up the full loft above us. It will be a welcome addition come next winter. There was no insulation up there, just a slat wood floor, so the heat from our place bled right out.


Our landlord has begun adding a third story to our building. Here they've welded the frame for the next flight of stairs.

As you can tell, construction in Mongolia is a non-specific art. We're not sure what's level here on the new support beams. Try coming up those stairs with no light in the stairwell. We didn't know we'd miss American building codes so much.

Care Packages
Thanks to the Reeders, Michelle and Cindy, and Leslie's parents for awesome care packages full of leisure and travel books, socks, macaroni and cheese, bagged/canned salmon and tuna and chicken, fruits, dry soup and dry soup makings, nuts, peanut butter and all the fun personal notes. We really appreciate it!

And a big thanks to Julie and all the folks at Easter Seals of SE Pennsylvania for sending a box chock full of instruments for the center for children with disabilities. They are quickly being put to use. We can't wait to show you some pictures. (The peanut butter and Mama Mia DVD were awesome surprises too.)

Who's On My Valentine?

On Thursday, just before Valentine's Day, we got a package from my mother filled with Hershey's Kisses, various small candy bars, heart-shaped candy and little Disney themed Valentines.

Thursday night, we wrote the names of our counterparts on the one side, our names on the other, and sealed them with a cute little heart sticker.

When I got to work on Friday, I took out the bag of Hershey's Kisses and began handing them out with the cards to my 6 counterparts, who wore general looks of interested confusion. My supervisors, who speak English, were in town from UB, so I said in English, "Do you guys celebrate Valentine's Day?"

Then the mood changed as the ones who speak English became giddy and quickly filled in the rest. Everyone who was busy clacking on computers and yacking on cell phones stopped what they were doing to get a better look at what was going on.

I explained to them that the cards I gave them generally used to end up in the homemade decorated shoe boxes, cylindrical cardboard oatmeal containers and modified bags of every elementary school child when I was growing up. Most of the fun of Valentine's Day was making the boxes and trying make sure I wrote down the names of every classmate, especially the cutest girls, so that everyone had a Valentine.

Though Mongolians know Mickey Mouse, my favorite part of giving the cards to my counterparts was explaining the Disney character, Minnie Mouse. It was no sweat in English, but in Mongolian, it was hysterical. The word for "my" in Mongolian is "minii", pronounced just like Mickey's tart, high-heeled love interest, but with the emphasis on the second syllable.

So, in our perfect Abbott and Costello, Who's On First banter, I asked one counterpart if she knew who the character.

"Your mouse? I thought you were giving it to me," my counterpart said.

"No, her name is Minnie Mouse."

"So, I can keep it. It's my card?"

"Yes, it's yours, but her name is Minnie," I insisted and so on until we agreed that it was not my mouse, her name is Enkhee, and the name of the character was Minnie.

Some other things I hadn't thought about were the sentiments on the cards and on the special edition Valentine's Kisses of "be mine", "I'm yours" and "I'm there for you", etc. They were really hard to translate because they're so corny and some of the meaning is lost, so I wasn't sure they really got the whole meaning, but they were appreciative nonetheless.

I learned that some Mongolians do celebrate Valentine's Day and almost everyone I talked to knew about it, but it's limited to a lover's evening sort of deal that some people celebrate with flowers and candy. It's not the forced, empty affection ritual we enjoyed as kids with little cards and chalky candies. Leslie and I personally didn't do anything special other than scarfing the chocolates with our friends and denting a huge bag of mixed nuts that also made its way into the care package.

Thanks to my mom for a fun little culture exchange.

All good gifts around us....

As we are in the month of November, the month for giving thanks, we felt it was important to mention all the people who have been so thoughtful and generous in sending us care packages. We DO have everything we need to survive here, but the packages and letters from home really help us to make our place in Bayankhongor a more familiar American home!

Let's first start with the new home for our fresh fruits and vegetables. As you may know, food in Mongolia is slightly complicated and usually involves frequent trips to several stores across town to acquire all the food to make meals we like. Thanks to Sister-in-Law Kendall, those trips are not in vain, and our fruits and veggies have a place to "hang." Notice the wide variety of potatoes on the bottom section. Thanks to China, we have apples available as well!


This will be our first Christmas away from home. One of the most creative items we have received is the "plant your own" Christmas tree from Amy Wills! Amy is the sister of one of Nathan's former roommates, and Leslie's unofficial little sister. Leslie has attempted to make a trade for Amy in exchange for giving her brother Mike back as a friend. No such luck. We're stuck with Mike Wills forever now! :)

Bayankhongor is quickly getting colder, and as we have learned, Mongolians do not account for wind chill in temperature. You never really know what you are going to get! Luckily, Carmela Almquist, Leslie's mom's best friend and Leslie's unofficial aunt, sent her possibly the warmest pair of footwear in the history of time! Plus, look how cute Leslie's feet look in them!

Holy crap, we got pancakes!!! Kendall is a genius! This is something we didn't even know we wanted until they got here. And then we almost cried, along with our site mate, Tysen, and near site mate, Leila! Our tears were controlled as we ate the pancakes.

Please note that we really DO want pictures of everyone! Mongolians love to look at our photos when they visit. Plus, we miss all your faces! Now we get to see Nephew Harrison and his rock star attitude whenever we want! Thanks, Kendall!

This is the "Gee, Bayankhongor is close to the Gobi and thus drier than you think" table. We were not prepared for how dry it can get here! Thanks to Kendall, Leslie's Mom, and Mama Wills (via Amy) we can fight the dessert dry air!
In addition, this lovely table in the second room sports our sweet new pens, bobby pins, ziplock bags, candies, and wash clothes from Kendall, Leslie's Mom, and Nathan's Mom! Thanks everybody!

One of our favorite things is the quote in the PC Mongolia Cookbook that states "I just don't understand how it's possible how an empire that nearly conquered the entire world managed to not bring back any spices..." It's true! It doesn't make a lick of sense. We can't begin to explain it. Thanks to Kevin, Nathan's brother, Nathan's Mom, Leslie's Mom, and Kendall our lives are much spicier! Who knew that black pepper was exotic?

The beverages of choice in Mongolia are milk tea and airag. Milk tea is mostly milk with the lovely added bonus of salt and filtered black tea. It's not even as tasty as it sounds. And I don't imagine you think it sounds too tasty. Airag is, of course, fermented mare's milk. Which is also an acquired taste. In two years, sit us down and maybe we can explain to you the flavor more precisely. Thanks to Kendall and Amy we now have great ways to flavor the 4 hour filtered water! Cocoa! Man, another thing we didn't even remember how much we missed until it got here! Thanks, you two!

Fruit! There ain't nearly enough of it here! Thanks to Leslie's mom for sending great dried fruit! She also managed to pack great snacks and peanut butter! Just like when we were little!
To make life even sweeter, Nathan's Uncle Steve sent glorious natural chunky peanut butter! Did we mention it didn't take long for the snacks he sent to disappear? Thank you, thank you, thank you!

So, Mongolians don't drink so much coffee. The only coffee regularly available around here comes in small packages of pre-sweetened instant "coffee-like-substance" with American Flavour. No joke. We went to the market to purchase the coffee press we had seen. Our site mate asked the store owner if she knew what the contraption was. She was very honest. "No," was her answer. He explained how it worked. She simply responded with an uninterested "oh." Thanks Mom, for a little flavour of Jolly Ol' New England! :)

The only type of tape they have here is Scotch tape. They even call tape "scotch." Luckily, we now have lots of duct tape to assist with our every Mongolian need, such as insulation, taping the plug into the outlet so it won't fall out, making shelves out of boxes, and taping the shower curtain in the faux shower so it doesn't stick to our butts. Ah, the glory of duct tape! We even have fancy schmancy designer duct tape, the envy of PCVs world wide!
Thanks Moms, Amy, and Kendall!

There is nothing like a nice, fluffy, well constructed towel to make the tumpen bathing experience a little more like home! Thanks to Nathan's mom and brother Kevin we don't have to use tiny Chinese towels that easily come un-stitched!

Thanks to Nathan's mom and Kendall, our Halloween party was really a hit when we had real Halloween decorations, Halloween wind-up toys, and Halloween candy! Everyone was really in the spirit!

Best. Socks. Ever! Thanks Georgi, Chamberlain family friend, for making it your quest to keep our toes bright, warm, and happy! We adore them!

Notice the fancy faux shower rigging. Thanks to Nathan we don't have to sit in a tumpen to bathe anymore! Thanks to Kendall and Leslie's mom the shower process is much better with the mitten washclothes and the 3-1 coconut shower wash. And yes, Kendall, it works to remove the funk. You're right, if that didn't work we would just have to smell like dust and coal smoke for the next 2 years! Thank you two for keeping us clean!

Candles, photos, and faux leaves. Now we really feel at home! Thanks to Leslie's mom and Kendall for the candles that our site mate commented "smell like Christmas." And thanks to Nathan's mom for adding the fall leaves! When we are surrounded by the sights and smells of home we feel almost like we are there! Thanks to Kendall and Amy for the photos in frames!!

Please know that this list is not exhaustive! We even removed some things from our wish list because you all were so generous! We've received many amazing care packages filled to the brim (more than we thought possible in those boxes!) We are so very grateful for everything our friends and families have spoiled us with including packages, letters, calls, emails, thoughts, and prayers! We're so thankful for all of you! We could never thank you enough!

The night the lights went out in...Mongolia.

It’s been an interesting week what with all the moving into our apartment that we didn’t move out of and so forth. But, thanks to the Parents Shaffer, we are wired up now. Well, not now exactly – we were wired up for about 10 hours. Then, something went horribly wrong.

Even still, there’s a pretty bright silver lining.

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that we share an ADSL internet modem with our NGO neighbor by running a network cable out their window and in through our window, into our apartment. When they’re not around, they are kind enough to swap out their cable from the modem so we can use it. Also, we had a brand new 280 gig external hard drive crash with almost all our music, pictures, movies and TV shows.

Leslie’s folks sent us a care package to help solve these problems and more, but since it had been six weeks since they sent it, and we’d received other packages with much earlier departure dates, we were pretty sure it had been plundered - arrgh.

Last Friday, after a pretty short, but trying week, we got the package we’d been especially waiting for. – We convinced ourselves with half-empty glasses that certainly, since it had come so late, things would be missing. Also it had been cut open, re-taped and had a bunch of Chinese writing on it. But, much to our surprise, our faith in humanity had been restored. In it, not only was there peanut butter, warm socks, assorted dried fruit, hair ties, and a PILLOW, but there were two couple hundred gig external hard drives (flash, no moving parts), and the crown jewel of the package – a wireless router. Ta-da!

My body was buzzing, I was so excited. Really. We jumped around, high-fived, screamed like little children and then got to work putting it all use. We made a date with the director of the NGO and he let us set up the wireless network. Twenty minutes later and viola! Poof! Abracadabra! Shoot-bang! We both had internet at the same time. We mused about starting an internet café and all hassle this new device would circumvent. All was right with the world and we were wired to it.

Meanwhile, our dead hard drive sat lonely in the computer bag like a genie in a bottle ready to be coaxed back to life. But instead of rubbing it, we put it in the freezer compartment of our mini-fridge. As the theory goes, there were some moving parts in our hard drive that either got gunked-up with dirt or had been jostled around enough that they were quite connecting right to make the magic happen. When you freeze it, those minuscule, microscopic parts shrink enough to do its thing. Sure enough, it worked! We now have over a hundred gigs of mind-numbing entertainment back at our fingertips.

Soon, we were watching old episodes of “The Office” from our hard drive and ravenously downloading free NPR podcasts with the newfound glory of our wireless router – and we could do it from anywhere in the apartment! We checked our email, sent mocking messages to our friends on Facebook, and taunted our mere mortal site mates. We had conquered the power of the interwebs, moo-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Then, around midnight that night, the world went dark. Our NPR podcasts stopped downloading. No more taunting on Facebook. There was no signal from the modem. What happened? What happened?! Leslie jumped up and checked the locked door of our neighbors, who were of course not there working at midnight. Oh, bother. Rats! Dodbabit!

No problem, we told ourselves. It’s late. We’ll figure it out tomorrow. Then tomorrow came and went. And then Sunday came and went. Still nothing doing. Then, early Monday morning when our neighbors returned to work, Leslie ran over there to reconnect the router. Surely a cable was unplugged or the power had come loose from the wall, as can happen. Maybe the modem just stopped, as can happen. Whatever it is, it will be an easy fix. Soon enough, we’ll be able to find out what stupid thing Sara Palin said now or whether oil was selling ridiculously high or ludicrously low these days. We’ll absorb all of Terry Gross’ “Fresh Air” and almost know the news and pop culture answers on “Wait…wait… don’t tell me”. It would be just a matter of minutes be we’ll be able to read all the interesting happens with Shane Victorino and the rest of our NL Champ Phillies as they prepare for the World Series. Yes, easy fix. No problem. Reconnect a cable, that’s the ticket.

That was not the ticket. Soon, she discovered no life in the dead white box; the giver of inter-continental joy; the bastion of normalcy; the way we get our news. Then she plugged the network cable directly into the modem – forget the router, let’s go straight to the source. It logged on just fine, but nothing was downloading. After a while, we learned that the internet was down in the whole town, so there was hope yet. We’ll just wait it out. Yet another tease.

But what’s the deal with that wireless router? Was the whole thing fried? Did Carl Cassel explode it with his awesomeness?

It’s interesting how out of diversity comes opportunity. When we left Leslie’s parents in May, we brought all parts of our computer but its power supply. There was no turning back to get it after we got to Buffalo, so we went across the parking lot from our hotel to a Best Buy and claimed ourselves a universal charger with myriad tips for all your PC laptop needs. Back in Mongolia, a light bulb went off in my head. I got it! I rifled through the computer bag for the supplementary charger tips. I eyeballed what looked like the right size and connected it to the charger. I then picked up the dead carcass our reneging Netgear and with one sweeping and dramatic movement of my hands, I breathed electronic life back into it.

It turns out that the old universal power strip on the floor of the NGO that only had two of the five plugs in working order fried our AC/DC adapter but left our precious router unharmed, for now. We’ve sent a friend on a hunt in Ulaanbaatar for the appropriate adapter. If we can’t find it, we’ll have to wire something up.

Here’s to hoping…

Please stay tuned. We are experiencing technical difficulties

It has been a few weeks since we posted because of some technical difficulties. The main difficulty is our lack of internet and the fact that our apartment was sold underneath us. Oh, and though we were permitted to stay there, the old landlord wanted everything he owned out of it, including the fridge, the dressers, book shelves and even - and I'm not joking - the linoleum flooring. He took everything. So, it's been a process trying to procure us some new stuff. We'll post more when we can. We made a video of our sad circumstances. All and all, it turned out for the best, though, because much of our new stuff, including the flooring, is much better.

Briefly:
Go Phillies!
Go Obama!

A shout out to my Uncle Dan in Florida, just for saying hello's sake. Miss you.

And a big thank you to my uncle Steve in Portland who just sent us some books, peanut butter, candy and lots of newsy, fun things.


~Nathan

Please, Mr. Postman...

We've been hearing from several people about care packages, so we figured we would dedicate a single post to that subject.

Our Address:
Leslie Ann Shaffer Chamberlain, PCV
Nathan L. Chamberlain, PCV
Bayankhongor Soum Governors Office
Office #158, 2nd floor
Bayankhongor aimag, Mongolia
(VIA CHINA)

FACT: Yes, PC Mongolia can be a little rough.
FACT: Though we have very little variety in food and it will get insanely cold, we have
everything we need to survive!


Notes on best ways to send packages:
1. Always write VIA CHINA at the end of the address. PCVs in Mongolia have had quite a bit
of difficultly receiving packages when this is not used. The fact of the matter is, packages end up in other "M" countries. For some reason, no one knows where Mongolia is, expect for Chinese, I guess.
2. Tape the box well! You don't want the chance that anyone could go through it easily!
3. Be careful about listing things like electronics or DVD's on the list that goes on the box. It's
an easy target for people to steal out of a package.
4. Save yourself money! Always use USPS FLAT RATE BOXES! I can't emphasize this
enough! The other options are ridiculous and astronomically expensive. I've been told that
you can literally save over $75 by just shoving as much as you can into the flay rate boxes. Anything over 8 pounds and you are saving a fortune!
5. With that in mind, don't use any other postal service for packages other than USPS. They are all too expensive. My father had a package priced at FedEx (I believe) for over $300! They sent it in a USPS flat rate box for $38. We received it with no problems in about 10
days.

The following is a list of wants. We are not in need of anything, but, care packages are GREATLY appreciated! Also, if you choose to send a care package, don't feel you must ONLY send these things. We like surprises! Most importantly, we adore hearing from you!

• Cumin
• Chili powder
• Peanut butter
• Movies on DVD (if you know Kevin Chamberlain, contact him for the wish list)
• TV Series on DVD (once again, see Kevin for list)
  
• Independent & Documentary movies (if you are my brother, Stephen, this is for you! Anything you like, we'll like!)
  
• Baking dish
• Bobby pins
• Dried Fruit
• Duct tape
• Gladware
  
• Coffee (ground, not beans)
• Emails
• Hair ties
• Letters
• Razors (Mach3Turbo, Venus)
• Solid shampoo
• Socks
• Lotion (we're near the Gobi, it's real dry here!)
  
• Vanilla
• Fragrant Candles
• Fabreeze (We don't have a shower. We bathe in a bucket. You get the picture.)
• Curry
• iPod speakers (nothing fancy. I had some in the states that cost $8)
• Curry powder
• Baking powder
• Jello Instant Pudding
• Brown sugar
  
• Hard Candy
• Cinnamon
• Nuts
• Music (Ryan, this one is for you)
  
• Pictures of my niece and nephew! (THIS IS A MUST!)
  
• Zip lock bags
• Books that seem interesting
  
• Pens that are not from Mongolia
• Powdered Drink Mix (crystal light, etc)
• SHEET MUSIC (note: Musician friends. You can either scan music and send it via email, or copy and send in a care package, if you choose)
• examples: Anything from Singers Anthology, First/Second book of Sop/Mezzo/Alto/Tenor/Bass Solos, 24 Italian Songs, Musical Singers Anthology, Richard Hundley, our site mate wants us to do a Glass piece (he’s a pianist and big into 20^th century) and good choir music such as Randall Thompson's Alleluia, Sing me to Heaven, etc.

Thanks. We miss you.