Tripping Off to Tsetserleg; Getting More Than I Bargained For

While Leslie was in UB for an HIV/AIDS conference and watching the inauguration on TV last week, I spent 4 days in the province capital to our north. Tsetserleg for an inauguration party and some business-related things. We didn’t have the same media access, so we just celebrated with good American comfort food and each other's diasporadic company.

Tsetserleg is generally considered the most beautiful of the provincial capitals. The city of around 20,000+ residents enjoys tree-lined streets and a beautiful temple that you can see atop a small mountain. There are volcanoes and other geological fascinations in the province making it a destination for domestic and foreign tourists. Tsetserleg means "garden" in Mongolian.

Unfortunately, cars don't go there directly or regularly and there's no public transportation from Bayankhongor, and Peace Corps volunteers are not allowed to drive while serving. To get there, I was advised a couple times to take a bus 14 hours to UB (391 miles) and get a bus 10 hours (261 miles) back from there or take a bus half way then wait on the road in the below zeros for the UB to Tsetserleg bus. In the hitchhiking scenario, I would pay the same as the trip from UB, but cut off much of the time. Patient as I am neither were options I was willing to consider just to go 145 miles north-northeast (about the same distance from Bowling Green to Xenia, OH or Philadelphia, P.A. to Washington, D.C.).

Thanks to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_mn_arkhangai_aimag.png
for the map.

Instead, I got some help from an English teacher friend of mine to hire a car and driver. Tsetserleg also means "kindergarten" in Mongolian, so there was a little communication problem at first as he thought I wanted a taxi to go 100 feet. After we got that straighten out, we went to the market and announced our need over the loudspeaker where messages are constantly streaming much like an auctioneer’s speedy, monotone cadence. Two brothers answered the call and we met at my friend’s restaurant to discuss a price. I negotiated pretty toughly and the price we ended on was even much lower than the buses if a couple of us went together, so to offset the costs, I got some other guys to join me. One guy was already in Bayankhongor traveling during his week off so it was an easy sell. He went to Tsetserleg with our bearded sitemate Peder and I, but found his own way home from there.

In the States, this direct trip would be about 2-and-a-half hours in decent traffic. Needless to say, it took a little longer and the road was less traveled.

Tuesday morning we headed out on our adventure in a old Russian Jeep, a GAZ 69 or what sounds like "Jar in use" in Mongolian, the number 69. These cars are cherished for their simplicity, which makes them easily fixable, but they do have a tendency to break down frequently requiring lots of fixing.

The older of the brothers driver, Ganbold, checks under the hood while Brandon and I stretch our legs and pose for Peder's camera. Brandon was already in Bayankhongor and joined us on a whim. He only went one way on the this trip then made his way back another way.

The younger of the two drivers, Altangerel, fills up the radiator. It was a two man job keeping our Russian jeep going up these mountains. In the background, notice the "Ovoo", or sacred mound of rocks with the branch sticking up adorned by a blue scarf called a "hadag." Always pass on the left, and if you have time and/or someone's looking, circle it three times for good fortune: 1 for your ancestors, 1 for yourself, and one for your future generations.

During our trip over the roughest terrain possible, crossing (mostly frozen) streams, up mountains, through rocks, in the snow with no hardly more than a suggested path than a road, our only major obstacle was a leaky radiator that our drivers were able to keep sufficiently filled. There wasn’t much heat toward the back so my feet were a little cold, but nothing to complain about. We moved at a labored but consistent pace, never stopping longer than to fill up with water and pee and get back on the road. We did stop one time for about 30 mins to help some loggers traverse a wide river, whose efforts were futile.

Our drivers and the loggers look for the best place to cross the heavy truck loaded with wood. They did what they could, but the truck became stuck and we had things to do so we left the loggers to fend for themselves.

After 8 hours of punishing travel in the middle of nowhere, we got in at dinner time Tuesday for hamburgers, French fries, onion rings, coleslaw, cold Coca Cola and hot homemade apple pie a la mode. The dinner was pretty good. We've made better in beautiful Bayankhongor, the undisputed culinary capital of Mongolia as far as Peace Corps volunteers go, but it was fun to share in the joviality with Americans and their good American fare. The three of us who showed up late were on dishes duty.



For the next few days we hung out, ate pot pie and tacos, went dancing, attended an aerobics class and wandered around the town in the frigid -30s. Like Bayankhongor, it’s nestled among some mountains, but unlike our fair provincial capital, Tsetserleg doesn’t have coal or coal smog. What they do have are trees and tourism dollars making it a little more Westernized and modern. They even have a couple traffic lights, which weren't on. It’s quite a fine city and I enjoyed being there.


After three days there, with one left to go as per our agreement with the drivers, one of them showed up with a buddy at my friend’s apartment requesting to leave right then. If fact, the one guy who I’d negotiated with and who knew our agreement well, simply said, “Okay, let’s go.” I was completely baffled and explained to him that we would be leaving in the morning because I had things I was still doing. After a minute or two he calmly agreed and sat quietly on the couch with the other guy. It was a little awkward.

The custom for the host when someone visits your home in Mongolia is to offer them something to drink, usually Mongolian milk tea if you have it, and candy of some sort, usually aarul (hard, dried sour yogurt) if you have it, but hard candy or chocolates will do. I've never been to someone's house where this did not happen. Thinking that's why they were still sitting there, my friend offered them coffee and candy, which they quickly ate and drank in virtual silence. I tried talking to them, but I couldn’t understand them well. It sounded to me like they were asking me for more money. Feeling weird about the whole thing, I called my Mongolian friend, who’s a translator, to help me talk to them.

I was correct. She told me the driver said that since they’d been in Tsetserleg they’d lost 25 liters of gas and that I would have to pay for it or else we couldn’t get home. On my behalf, she explained to them that their stupidity was not my problem and I wasn’t paying them anything more than I owed. We both thought the whole thing was totally bizarre and agreed they probably lost 25 liters of vodka since coming to town, not gas. In the end, they agreed to leave at 8 a.m. the next morning and quietly left.

After an evening of tacos and dancing at a trul posh, newly renovated club, my traveling companion Peder and I were foolishly packed and ready to go with shoes on at 8 a.m. for the the trip back to beautiful Bayankhongor in the 69. Not surprisingly, we didn’t leave then. It's not uncommon for Mongolians to be a half an hour late so we waited. When I called them at 9, they said the car had frozen overnight and they would be there after they built a fire under it and got it started. Figuring we had some time, Peder went to the store and bought some fixings for breakfast. We made hard boiled eggs and toast, napped and left around 11:30.

Apparently to offset the costs of their lost “gas”, the one driver picked up a few extra passengers for the way home, which was fine with me since I’d told them it would be OK to have other people in the car with us. There was only one driver at this point, which gave us more room, so it worked out. When we got in, my lanky buddy Peder hopped in the front with his knees to the dash, and I hopped in the back where I had ample leg room next to an older woman in three younger women, one of whom was riding on a lap. We were packed in, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Just when I thought we were as full as we were going to get, from the side of the road on the outskirts of town, we picked up the other driver and the other friend who I’d met the day before in the false start attempt to get out of town. And then a half hour later we picked up an incredibly old man who sat nestled beside me in the center of the jeep. If you had your fingers ready to keep track, that’s 4 women and 6 men for a grand total of all your fingers worth of people in the tiny jeep. The woman who was on my lap was a young math teacher in her early 20s and small, with an accommodating seat of her own. I didn’t really mind the ride for the first few hours.

Despite the late start and the crowded conditions, Peder and I were having a good time. About two hours into the trip, we stopped a random ger in the middle of nowhere for a break. As per the custom, they offered us some milk tea and aarul and we went on our way. An hour later we did the same, this time at a beautiful spot overlooking a deep valley.

We stopped for a break and climbed up this hill to enjoy some milk tea with a herder family whose ger was just behind me. We didn't take any pictures of the gers or the families because we didn't feel it was appropriate.

An hour after that we stopped again. Since it was getting dark and near our 4-hour mark and midway point, I figured we wouldn’t stop again. With that in mind, I drank as much tea as was offered and ate some bortsog (tasty fried bread) expecting that to hold me over until we got back home. The drivers talked for a while with the ger family and the rest of us sat in mostly quiet except for polite platitudes. Satisfied for the remaining half of the trip, I crammed snuggly back into the jeep enjoying the most authentic, warming Mongolian experience one could ever have.

Then 20 minutes later we stopped again. Now, at 5 o’clock, the trip was losing its romance and I was beginning to lose my patience for all the stopping. People were expecting us back at 8 and we were still at least 4 hours away. Politely we drank our tea. The three young teachers were becoming restless, and we were all sleepy. Peder and I and the teachers sat on a bed and drifted in and out of consciousness. One girl took them up on the offer to lay down right about the time the lady of the household started chopping at a kilo of frozen meat. For the next twenty minutes she used a clever to hack off little shards of meat and collected them on the cutting board as she chatted. I turned to Peder, annoyed, and we agreed it sure looked like we were staying for dinner. We shared a laugh about how we thought the last ger would have been our last. Several older men wondered in, seemingly from nowhere, rolled and smoked cigarettes and enjoyed their milk tea and conversation.

As 6 o’clock rolled around, the teacher to my right asked about the time in a little bit of a huff and rolled her eyes. 15 minutes later she did the same. It was obvious to us about this time that our drivers actually knew our hosts and they continued to talk and have a good time while the rest of us sat silently observing.

7 o’clock came and went, and we continued to drink tea and guess what we might be having for dinner. It looked like soup: meat and water and some vegetables. Then she added some oil, and then some more. It probably wasn’t soup.

Mongolian stoves sit in the center of the round ger and have a round hole cut about two-and-a-half feet wide in the top, which is usually covered by a flat peice of metal with a handle. When they cook, they open the top and place a cast iron wok in the whole directly over the flames. They make everything this way, including tea.

At 7:30, I still wasn’t hungry after the bortsog and liters of tea I’d drowned myself in by this point, but we were treated to a tasty, but noticeably oily, rice dish with some little chucks of meat and root vegetables, a pretty common catch-all dinner here. Eagerly waited to leave despite the kind gesture from our hosts, I ate my portion and pocketed some fatty gristle to offload later.

I asked one of the girls if she was ready to go yet, and she affirmed her exhaustion with a pitiful head nod to the affirmative and a sigh. I asked why we were still there and she said she didn’t know either, but she was tired and ready to be home.

Soon after that, the old men of the ger and our older driver pulled out paper and seriously discussed something, which went on for about 20 minutes. Things got tense for a few minutes, but resolved. Then from a cold cabinet in the back of the ger emerged a bottle of vodka. As per custom, they offered it around the room starting with the men, oldest to youngest, then the woman, who politely refused their offering by lightly touching the glass to their lips and returning to the pourer. It was obvious then that the reason our drivers agreed to take us was so they could conduct this business on our way home.

Thankfully, we made it through the bottle pretty quickly. Certainly we were ready to go now. It was already past 8, the time we were supposed to have been back. As the second bottle came out of the cabinet, the three young teachers groaned their disbelief with us in chorus.

Bottle number two made its rounds. Luckily there were about 15 people in the ger, so it would be a quick ordeal, I thought. But every time it reached the second oldest man, instead of drinking it and keeping the rotation going, he would set it down and continue talking or rolling a cigarette or ignore if for no reason, and only one of the women was drinking. Telepathically, I tried to will him to pick up the glass and drink. My eyes focused on the tiny shot and drew a line from its place on the floor to his face. My patience had run out.

Finally, at a little after 9, the driver stood up and said, “Okay, let’s go.” We left the old lady there, so we rearranged the car a little. The old man in the back went to the front seat with the small driver and Peder rode between the seats on a wooden box. I still had a woman on my lap, but the other ladies got a chance to spread out a little bit.

The rest of the ride was a blur of pain in my leg from my lap passenger and frozen feet. Because there was only heat on the windshield, every other surface in the car had frost and ice on it. Where I was, I couldn’t see anything, so as we shook and weaved and banged around in the dark, I could only see the driver’s head in front of me and a little sliver ahead of us where the headlights hit the dirt and snow. At one point we lost the road for a while, which the driver eventually found it by driving wide swaths back and forth through the valley.

We were about an hour outside of Bayankhongor approaching a small village around 2:30 a.m. when we regained cell phone service when my phone started receiving text messages in sequence from Leslie (who was in UB), my site mates, the volunteers from Tsetserleg we’d left in the morning, my friend who had helped hire the driver and the Peace Corps safety and security officer. Thankfully there’s no voicemail in Mongolia or I would have had some of those too. As quickly as I could, I called or texted everyone to let them know we were still fine.

We stopped in the village and offloaded the old man, but picked up another woman and a baby.
By 3:30, Peder and I labored into my apartment, recounted our crazy trip, contacted the safety and security officer and crashed for the night.

As far as 8 hour car rides that turn into 14 hours, it could have been worse. We didn’t break down once, we got to see some beautiful countryside, we met some interesting people, and we had the most authentic Mongolian experience anyone could ever have just short of actually being Mongolian. We left late, we sat ten people in a car meant for five, we stopped at random countryside gers for generous hospitality accompanied by tea and aarul, and we sat around while two bottles vodka sealed a business deal.

All and all, I wouldn’t say I’d love to do it again anytime soon, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Smog

There are many beautiful things about the different seasons in Bayankhongor. Autumn was nice because the few trees we do have turned all sorts of familiar Fall colors and the weather went from unbearably hot to perfect during the day. Now that we've been in Bayankhongor for our first Winter, we know that it's much prettier with snow on the ground to cover up the sandy, flying dust, but there's another menace in the air these days: Smog.

Our apartment, like all the permanent business, residential and government buildings in our sprawling town of around 30,000, is heated from one of several shared coal-fired hot water stations. Unfortunately, this usually doesn't get our apartment over 60F (15.5C) in our warmest room and our kitchen barely ever gets above 50 (10C), so we supplement with an electric space heater (electricity comes from UB, incidentally). Everyone else, probably 70% of the residents here heat their gers mostly with coal and some wood. Add that to the omnipresent pits of smoldering garbage, and it's not a fun situation to breath in.

There are few trees in our province at all and those are to our north by a few hours drive at least. Coal is available here relatively cheaply and represents a life line to warmth in the Winter because it burns hotter and longer than wood anyway. Both put off a lot of soot and smoke into the air and since the weather has been consistently cold (though relatively mild for Mongolian Winter with temperatures at or around zero for the last couple weeks), and perhaps do to other meteorological and geological factors not moving the hanging air from our tucked little valley, the smog has really become a problem. In fact, in the early mornings and late evenings, the city is blanketed by a layer of white and gray so thick we can't see more than 60 or 70 meters and sometimes less.

I didn't really notice the smog so much until Tysen and I went for a little hike up one of the mountains on Sunday afternoon. You can really tell from these pictures what a menace the coal and wood exhaust can be.

On our hike, Tysen and I were on the mountain in the background here. Tysen took this photo around Christmastime from the Stupa that holds radio towers.

This is a similar shot we took in early September.

The river is frozen over and this is a pretty scene made slightly ominous by the smog.

As dusk approached, we made our way back toward the city. Tysen posed for a photo.

Once we were back to the city center, I was actually a little lost. There is a huge building to the left about 50 meters that you completely can't see.

Obviously we're not alone in this smog problem. Virtually every developed and developing city in the world has a smog problem from time to time. The problem has been around for centuries, probably as long as people have been living closely and burning things to stay warm. Thankfully we don't have many cars here in Bayankhongor or millions of people.

I have to say, though, we really did enjoy those S'mores we made over Tysen's fire last week.

Shower the People

Today we came to the realization that we never explained the showering process for us (non-ger dwellers, yet apartment residents with no bath tub or hot water). Yes, it seems like an awkward subject, but as with the clothes washing process, it is involved and layered.











It begins with our toilet room arranged as it is on a daily basis with the tumpen tipped against the wall on the shower curtain.




















Then, Nathan attaches the string that connects the shower curtain to several points in the toilet room to allow the showering individual to shower without the curtain touching their body.








It is now time for the water heating process. We must fill the solar shower approximately 5 times to fill it with enough water to shower. We can't simply boil water for this process. We boil one liter at a time and fill the rest of the electric tea pot with cold water from the tap as to not melt the solar shower.














The first time is easy enough. You simply have to keep the plug open on the solar shower and let a little air in to give room for the water.










Going through this process 5 times can be tedious. Trying some fun ways to fill the solar shower can fill your time.






















Some times short folks have to stand on a chair to practice the "under the leg" move.

Other folks do not require the chair for such fancy moves.

Did I mention it is a tedious process?





















I apologize for this version of filling the solar shower, but it has a purpose. Every New Years since 2003 we've gone down to Georgia to spend it with our friend, Mike Ray. Nathan thought this was just the sort of thing Mike would LOVE! We miss you Mike! This 5th filling of the solar is for you!
















Then comes the new technology, the extra strong clothes hanger. The hanger is attached to the solar shower so it can be hung on the pipes in the toilet room.

The next step is one that a "non-full sized woman" can't do by herself! The very heavy solar shower filled with warm water has to be hung near the ceiling on the pipe.












The kitchen and toilet room are two of the coldest places in our apartment. With the help of the Peace Corps issued heaters the shower process becomes a more pleasant experience!


Now, it's finally time to shower!

Poof! You're clean! All that hard work is over, right?
NOPE!

The next step requires the tallest person in the apartment to return the strings attached to the walls of the toilet room to their original "at-rest" position.

Finally, the process finishes by emptying the tumpen into the toilet!
Congratulations, you are now clean!

We Wish You a Happy New Year and a Happy New Year

We've been trying to figure out why there are Christmas trees and lights and "Jingle Bells" and George Micheal's "Last Christmas" playing non-stop wherever we go, but not only is there no Christ in Christmas, there's no Christmas in Christmas. All the fuss around here is about New Years or "Shin Jil". I've had the sneaking feeling this is a Russian thing - since most of the 20th century, Mongolia was closely aligned with Moscow.

Determined to get to the bottom of it, I brought it up over lunch with a Russian/English teacher last week. I asked him and his wife how long Mongolians had been celebrating New Year's. They agreed that they began celebrating this way when they were in the first grade. They're 54 now, so it's been about 48 years or so by their reckoning.

He explained that since Mongolia had such close ties to Russia, they gladly picked up these fun cultural things and celebrated them as their own. They giddily recounted their childhood plays and dances where she always played a dancing "Winter Girl", and one year he was "Grandfather Winter", complete with a big sack of presents, white beard and red outfit.

So, my suspicions were confirmed - it is a Russian thing. But why do the Russians not celebrate Christmas? Why does New Year's look so much like Christmas?

The answer lies in the Communist era with the Soviet suppression of religion and non-state oriented celebrations. According to this site:

"Before 1917, Christmas was celebrated in Russia in much the same way as it was in the rest of the world: on December 25, with Christmas trees and Christmas gifts, Saint Nicholas and the like. During the years of Communism after 1917, all formerly Christmas traditions were transferred to New Year's Eve, which became the traditional winter holiday. New Year's Eve is now to Russians what Christmas is to most people in the rest of the world, with one exception: there is no remnant of Christianity in the holiday. New Year's Eve is simply a chance to celebrate, to bring in the new year and get rid of the old. It is a chance to exchange gifts, have a day off and enjoy oneself."

The Mongolians (and Most Russians) continue to celebrate on the 31st of January, and from what we've heard, it's not the raucous debauchery many of us enjoy in the States, but a family affair just like we might recognize as Christmas. So, when your kids ask how Santa Claus can get all the way around the world in one night, you might tell them he does half the world, takes a week off to restock, and then does the other half around New Year's.

As a staff we'll celebrate together during the week of New Year's, but my work celebrated "Shin Jil" last week with many of our clients. There was dancing, singing, and ceremonial presentations of certificates announcing the year's "best ofs".

All the ladies were decked out in their Shil Jil outfits and the table was stocked with buuz, huushuur, fruits, champagne, vodka and soft drinks.

The Mongolian Waltz is something different than the waltz we know. It involves lots of tight spins and can be done to all kinds of music, not just the 3-4 "oohmp-pop-pop" waltz music we're used to.

My counterpart making some last minute adjustments to the decorations using a makeshift ladder.

Here's a small Shin Jil tree drenched in decorations inside the city government building, complete with official hand-carved government seals in the background. Shin Jil trees are usually pretty small like this.

Whenever you celebrate it, we wish you and yours a Happy New Year!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Le Merry Christmas Eve

A quick Christmas Eve breakdown, mostly in photos!


What did you do for Christmas Eve?

Really? Well, we spent it with French Veterinarians in Mongolia.
Actually, French vets and their 2 adorable children!

Lawrence made us a very yummy chicken and mushroom dinner on our sad little Russian oven.

Chef du jour, Lawrence! Notice the empty bottle of wine in the corner that his wife Catherine is holding.

The light in our family room burnt out today. Our landlord said it will be fixed tomorrow. Therefore, we all ate standing up in the kitchen, using the washing machine as a table.

Solidad and Titoua and their makeshift dinner table.

The food was amazing! Leslie made double chocolate chip cookies that were quickly finished by Solidad and Titoua! They had Leslie running secret missions to the kitchen to keep them in cookies and coca cola without their mother knowing until nearly midnight.

We attempted to find a movie with French subtitles to no avail. We ended up watching Ratatoille. It was a great choice! Titoua has an infectious laugh and he kept pointing at the screen every time he laughed with complete glee. It was hysterical and adorable!

Watching Ratatoille by Christmas light.

As they left Nathan asked the Roffet/Gaillard family to pose like Mongolians. Everyone hit the mark except for Solidad. She just couldn't keep from smiling!

Keep your eyes peeled for a special Christmas post!
Merry Christmas Eve!

Wireless Router Fixed. Mongolian Winter is Cold

We got our wireless router up and going again after our AC/DC adapter got fried only having yielded 10 hours of service three months ago.

I finally was able to go a big electronics store in UB that was essentially a 5-story flea market with some new and some used products. It was on a main drag by foot and called "Computer Land" - just like that, no translation - so it was pretty easy to find. It was right behind a huge Canon store where they sell copiers, printers and cameras and the like.

I went into to one place and they didn't have what I was looking for but pointed me to the second floor to stall 204. All in Mongolian, I was able to describe the power pack I needed and from under a counter in front of me, the guy pulled out exactly that. It was much bigger and heavier than ours, but the specs were the same for the volts and amps, and it even had the precise same tip to our wireless router. For 6,000 tugrugs (<>$5) and three months of waiting, we're back up and running! If all goes well, we'll be able to Skype with our families on Christmas.

And I know it's cold across the States right now, but it was -10 here the other day with a stiff wind and my counterpart was walking all around town with me collecting surveys from banks. (It was -33 two weeks ago). He rhetorically asked me if Mongolia was colder than America. I told him it's not this cold where I'm from in the States, or at least this is as cold as it ever gets. He said somewhat proudly that it's still warm here and it won't really be cold until January when it hits -45 or so.

Regardless of how cold it is outside, I hope it's warm where you are or you have someone fun to snuggle up to.

Seasons Greetings.

Non-TEFL PCV/CP PDM IST Outside UB and MORE!

Since our last post a few weeks ago, a lot has happened. We spent 4 days attending in-service training with our Mongolian counterparts at a hotel outside the capital Ulaanbaatar (UB), I went to Sukhbaatar (our training site) by train to speak at a chamber of commerce conference, Leslie presented two days of music therapy to social workers , and we both had a blast hanging out with all our best PC buds. I'll give you the skinny on the interesting parts of the technical.

Prodigal Son Returns to Sukhbaatar
After Thanksgiving, I had a week to fill with work I thought was going to be with my host agency in their UB office, but at the last minute I was invited to Sukhbaatar to present an activity on business ethics with two other PCVs, one of whom helped plan and organize the event. I replaced my pal Darren who had a last minute conflict. Thankfully, he had already prepared most of the materials ahead of time. The materials were supposed to be translated in Sukhbaatar, but the translator canceled at the last minute. Instead, I called our Mongolian tutor in Bayankhongor, bribed her to translate them, and after some email confusion, got them back in time for the presentation.

To get there, I took the slowest train on the face of the planet overnight Wednesday, arriving at 6 am Thursday. It was a sleeper car mostly to myself, which I got my money's worth out of. When I finally got into town, I got phone directions from Garrett, who I was staying with, then walked in the -30F morning frigidly across the street toward his place. With no one else on the street, I was greeted by a young police officer patrolling the area by foot. He asked why I was there, I told him in Mongolian and he said back to me, "Oh, yes. American. He lives right here." Then in English, he counted to four with a smile, pointing to where Garrett's apartment was on the fourth floor and wished me well.

The conference was long, but information-packed for the Selenge Province business delegates who attended. One interesting point I'll always remember is that one day they had to scrap the afternoon's programming because of a last minute scheduling conflict of the key speaker, so everyone had the afternoon off. The next day, probably half of the twenty participants showed up hungover, some didn't show at all and some went back to the hotel for lunch and didn't return. Good to know.

Also, by the fourth day, they were done hearing presentations through a translator. If I do something similar, I'll try not to do much presenting unless it's an activity. A half hour spoken presentation is over an hour, which is grueling for everyone involved.

Incidentally, my presentation went off well. I had them break into four groups and discuss scenarios. Prompted by questions, they discussed child labor, environmental impact, office supply theft, and gender equality. The answers were pretty standard, but it's interesting to note that most offices are made up of women, though most managers are men. No one really saw a problem with that.

Here I am writing my name on the board. You can see it written in both Latin and Cyrillic letters. In Cyrillic, I spell it phonetically, but on my ID it's spelled like "nah-tahng", which isn't very helpful in getting my attention from across a room.

As per custom for any gathering of people, we all sat for an amusing photo to remember the event. I posed Mongolian style for this one. Only Garrett (bot right) feigned a smile.

The best part of the trip, of course, was getting to spend some time with my host family. My host mom was thrilled to stuff my face for two hours and talk about everything that's happened since I left in August. We missed each other a lot. She was extremely peeved to know I wasn't going to be staying overnight there. My little host sister took a minute to warm up, but we had a good time counting in Mongolian while attending to her kindergarten homework and with her Barbies, especially the dirty blue outfits my mom sent for her over the summer, which have apparently seen a lot of play. I was sad to leave again.

I didn't have a chance to get over to Leslie's host folks, but we'll hopefully be back up there for Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian lunar new year celebration that family oriented and lasts for weeks, much like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter all wrapped into one, with a little little Memorial Day in there too. Looking forward to that.

The train ride back to UB was shared with three other PCVs and wasn't much more exciting than the trip up, but we had a some good laughs. I enjoyed not being in a packed microbus with 20 other people meant for 11.

Music Therapy Workshop
Around the same time, Leslie presented to child protection social workers.

The first day, with the brilliant translation help of her program director, Enkhee, Leslie provided background on music therapy, defined it, described what therapists do, who can benefit from it and who is qualified to practice it.

The last half of the first day and all of the second day were mostly experiential. They walked through lyric analysis, music biographies, music assisted relaxation, and talked about improvisation.

They mostly had questions about music assisted relaxation and how to do it most effectively. The social workers mostly work with street children and children with special needs. There are few services for people with special needs, and most are usually left at home with no education. For example, the Downs Syndrome Society of Mongolia was just started about 3 years ago and only has about 30 members, even though there are many more people with the syndrome in the country.

She was really nervous before hand, but the seminar went so well. She was even asked to come back in March for update and refresher course. She was also asked to present 20 hrs to social work students to the one social work program in the country.

Non-TEFL PCV/CP PDM IST Outside UB
We spent four days with 19 other non-English teacher (Teaching English as a Foreign Language -TEFL) PCVs at a conference hotel just outside UB, whose name roughly translates as "Nook". It was almost the exact layout of the Darkhan Hotel four hours away, where all of our other trainings have been. Gotta love that Soviet flair for architecture.

With the aide of translators as needed, we were able to dissect the Peace Corps procedures and expectations with our counterparts so we all understood how project/program management is supposed to work. All presentations by PC staff were done in both languages and sometimes we were broken into separate language groups. Interestingly, Leslie's and my counterparts spoke the least amount of English out of all the other counterparts, but we got through everything really well. In fact, we were told constantly by the other counterparts that they were jealous of us. No pressure. Leslie and I spent a lot of time just with our counterparts, even rooming separately with them, which got us a lot of points with the PC staff and lots of flack from our fellow volunteers.

The focus of the training was program development and management (PDM). Though we all teach English in our communities and to our co-workers, those of us who aren't teaching children in schools are expected to work with our agencies to assess programs we can start, and then put together a plan of action. We're encouraged to think much more grass roots and to use our skills more than pockets to accomplish small to medium goals. The Peace Corps has a whole list of goals and objectives created by negotiations between our two governments mostly about training, so that's a good place for us to start talking. Sometimes these programs/projects involve grant writing and some dollars, and sometimes they just involve training and cooperation.

Just after the fall of communism here, many well-intentioned NGOs and governments through a lot of money at Mongolia without a lot of strings or training or oversight, but it didn't go well. Because of this, we're encouraged not to use the word "project" in either language because it usually means something big, involving lots of money and lots of corruption. In fact, the word in Mongolian is almost the same as "budget".

My counterpart, Undrah, and me outside the Nukht Hotel. Good times.

Leslie and her counterpart, Dogoo, on the bus ride home.

My trainer Cady and program director, Baagi, presenting about cross-cultural expectations of work

In this presentation, one person spoke in English while the other translated and vise versa.

Most sessions were very hands-on, as per the Peace Corps model. It's a form of teaching and learning that's very new here, but the results were compelling enough to get many people talking about taking this style back to their workplaces.

We were all assigned to get things from other people around the room. It was like herding cats as we literally pulled certain people with multiple skills in many directions at once.

We had a really great time bonding with our counterparts, hanging out with our American friends, and getting to know UB, but were glad to be home.

Here's our little Bayankhongor Airport. Just to the left of the building is where you pick up the luggage after your flight.

Now we're looking forward to putting all these new skills to use with our counterparts. In January, it's just down to Undrah and me as my other counterpart/manager is on maternity leave for 5 months. Fingers crossed.

SHOUT OUTS:
Shout out to Batjargal in Darkhan. He's an English student in Cady's class who's been following our blog for the past couple months. Hope to meet you soon!

Shot out to my dad, who just had another surgery, this time to repair his abdominal aorta with a stent. All's well after the surgery. I texted him from my phone to my brother's phone just before he underwent the endoscopic procedure last week. Technology is cool.