I’m alive, I promise. My apologies for not updating the ‘mingle’ for some time. I meant to give you all the scoop on the rest of Khuvsgul before I left for Khentii and then when I got back from Khentii I meant to give you two scoops on both Khuvsgul and Khentii, but I failed and I’ve returned from Sainshand without giving you anything. Please forgive. To make up for lost time I’ll start by giving you the breakdown of my Khuvsgul homestay day by day. Here goes:
September 12:
Today was the first full day of my homestay. My father had arrived late the night before so I woke up hazy eyed to his greeting. My host mother gave me a hot bowl of milk tea and some fresh bread with orom. Orom is the foam ladled off the top of boiling yak or cow’s milk. When the foam is cooled you’re left with a rich and creamy spread that is absolutely delicious. I helped my sister shovel the poop out of our goat and sheep pen. It was an octagonal fence with made from several Siberian larch logs. I glamorously pushed thousands of little goat terds with the flat, tarnished shovel into a big pile in the corner of the pen. Then my ten year old sister, Hulan and I shoveled the pile onto a torn synthetic burlap sack and in several trips moved the pile to a larger dung heap about ten meters away. My host mother was so proud of my poop-scooping abilities that she invited me back into the ger for another cup of milk tea and a hard candy. About an hour later I was sitting inside the ger watching my mother mend a shirt. Hulan was running back and forth from behind the ger to the door bringing my mother new cuts of meat. I asked my mother if I could help her at all and she took my hand and led me outside. My father, Tsogtbayar, my oldest sister, Ariuntogs, and Hulan were busy slaughtering a sheep and my mother sat me down with them. My father had already skinned it and removed its organs and was now separating the cuts of meat. Ariuntogs handed me a knife and one end of the large intestine. We squeezed out the rest of its dung onto the grass and then slit the small intestine along the top. Then we scraped the inside out. After we had finished, we went inside to prepare dinner. We rinsed out the stomach and then poured a mixture of blood and salt until it inflated ten times its size. We cut strips of fat, the small intestine, and some unidentified rubbery thing to stuff the large intestines for a ‘sausage.’ The stuffing was topped off with some more blood and salt and the end was sewed shut with a splinter of wood. All our concoctions and the liver and kidney were tossed into a pot of boiling water and left to simmer for an hour. I had already determined that I didn’t like the boiled blood the day before and I was hoping I could skirt that portion of the feast. But they generously gave me a piece of everything, extra blood and I had to choke it down. After several offered helpings I was finally able to convince them I was full.
September 13:
I helped my mother make aaruul today. Aaruul is the traditional Mongolian cheese curd that’s rock hard and rather sour. It’s made from yogurt that’s boiled for an hour over the fire. It’s thickened and cooled and poured into silk fabrics, placed into a tray and put outside to harden in a rectangular shape. Once it’s hard enough to remove from the fabric, it’s broken into smaller blocks and dried for several days. When it rains we have to run it inside before it gets wet. A storm rolled in today and I made several emergency runs with my mother. Our ger had a solar panel which powered our single energy-saving lightbulb and black and white satellite television. That evening we watched sumo wrestling. Boiled mutton and flour noodle soup for dinner.
September 14:
My little sisters departed for school today. Countryside kids spend the week in dormitories at the Soum center and come home on the weekends. After an hour of preparation, packing clothing, food, and books, the family loaded all their supplies to the back of the motorcycle and my father, mother and two younger sisters set off for school. I spent a large part of the day examining our ger and landscape today. My family has two gers side by side. One housed Ariuntogs and my sister-in-law, Bolormaa (I had two older brothers, only one of whom I met) the other housed my mother, father, two younger sisters and myself. Ours was a relatively large ger with five walls. The stove in the center was tarnished and black. There were two beds on the east and west sides. The north end traditionally holds an altar. The altar can house anything that the family cherishes or finds sacred: photos, buddhas, figurines, offering plates, etc. The Darkhaad Depression was an open, grassy valley nestled between a majestic mountain range and a river in front of rolling hills. My family’s camp sat a few hundred meters from the river in a field of boulders, something that I still don’t quite understand. Boiled mutton and flour noodles for dinner.
September 15:
This morning Ariuntogs and I rode our pair of horses to the Bag center (local ‘town’ center) to purchase some items at the store. We rode through several ger camps and as my blonde head stuck out, were approached by several locals to share their greetings. The store we visited was a short larch log shack too short to house me. The store’s owner was an adorable little eight year old boy with Down syndrome who shook my hand and then proceeded to sneak candy out of the baskets. I later found out that he was the son of every family in the bag center and known as the happy child. We bought a package of baaw (cookies), a block of black tea, a package of raspberry gum and a bottle of lotion. On our way back we were approached by a young, drunk man on his galloping horse. He tried to sweet talk my sister, but his attempts failed and when we gave up and galloped away my sister raised her pinky finger at him and said he was gross (an upturned pinky finger is akin to a downturned thumb). In the afternoon my father took me out for another ride to herd our sheep and goat herd. We rode to the highest point in the middle of the valley, dismounted our horses and looked over the landscape through his tarnished binoculars. He took me a few kilometers further and taught me the names of each mountain in sight. We met two of his friends and dismounted again to take a break. Laying on one shoulder, I chewed a piece of grass and watched the three of them roll cigarettes in old newspaper and smoke them in the afternoon sun. We stayed out several hours and when we cantered back I was (surprisingly) eagerly awaiting our dinner of boiled mutton and flour noodle soup.
September 16
Today was a very, very bad day. I had thought a month into my stay in Mongolia I had outsmarted my body and skipped the usual twenty-four hour sickness. Not true. I woke up at 4am violently ill. I spent the five hours running in and out of the ger. I spent the afternoon with an empty body, trying to sleep off the pain. This was the day our class was supposed to visit the local shaman and ranger and I was extremely disappointed that I slept the entire day. At 7pm my family drew me a bath (filled the little metal tub with boiling water and let me crouch in the tub with a ladle. Needless to say I was happy for that day to end and for my sickness to be over. The family had boiled mutton and flour noodle soup for dinner, but I opted out of dinner.
September 17:
I watched my host father kill fifty flies with a rubberband in our ger today. He held one side back like a slingshot and nailed them every time. I helped shovel poop out of the goat pen again this morning. The afternoon was devoted to scraping moldy aaruul. Aaruul is an extremely important food in the winter and helps sustain the family in the toughest of times. My family stocks up on aaruul in the spring, summer and fall months in preparation, storing bags and bags of the hardened curds on the periphery of the ger. We had a bag that had gotten wet at some point and was covered in mold. Rather than dispose of the supply we spent hours scraping the spores with a knife (the same knives used for preparing dinner after a quick wipe of a rag). To spice things up, we had buudz for dinner tonight, one of my favorite Mongolian dishes, steamed lamb dumplings.
September 18:
One of my last days with my host family we spent a large part of the day taking family portraits. We saddled up the horses with the traditional, decorative saddles, dressed up in deels and started snapping away. In the afternoon I visited my peer’s ger for our language class. She lived fifteen kilometers away and my father and I took our motorcycle across the valley to get there. She lived by a series of healing springs and after our lesson the students and I drank to our head, stomach, eyes, heart and ears. This evening I helped my sister weave rope from the hair of a yak’s tail. First we separated the hairs and laid them out in large squares. The squares were rolled up and twisted with two hands to make tighter strands. Two of the tighter strands are then twisted and rolled into a longer rope. For the saddle straps we were making, three of the twisted ropes were then braided and leather bound hooks were sewn to the ends. Boiled mutton and flour noodle soup.
September 19:
Today was the last full day of my homestay. I spent most of the day scraping mold again. By the afternoon I had developed arthritis. I tried to explain to my family the probability of my graduate school path. They told me I study too much, but said it was a good thing. They gave me their address to mail them my photos and told me I should visit them again. A heavy snowstorm had hit UB much of southern Mongolia. As a result our drivers were delayed getting to us in the isolated Darkhaad valley and we fortunately got to stay with our host families a little longer. Boiled mutton and flour noodle soup.
September 20:
We were supposed to depart at 8am, but the storm delayed our departure until 3pm. It was a slow and bittersweet morning. My family gave me a wooden necklace and a vest my sister had made me as departing gifts. In the afternoon a surprise entrepreneur stopped by our house. My host mother teared up as I left and kissed me on the cheek. It was sad to say good-bye. We drove into Ulaan Uul, the Soum center, for the night and had soup for dinner again.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
In the interim...
I've got more stories from my trip to the countryside that I will be posting in the next day or two, but in the interim I'll tell you about the picnic I had with my family yesterday.
I had originally wanted to visit the Museum of Mongolian Traditional Medicine this Sunday and my host family in UB said they would be happy to accompany me (my host father is a doctor of traditional medicine...I watched him do acupuncture in our living room.) but when I woke up that morning my mother said that her brother was going to a monastery and asked if I wanted to come. Of course I did, so I postponed the museum outing for the time being. After a fresh breakfast of eggs, 'sausage,' cucumbers and yellow rice tea (like milk tea, but with sauteed yellow rice kernels added into the mix) my uncle, aunt, and two cousins arrived at our house with a Chinngis Khaan hot water thermos and a bag full of apples.
We piled nine people into their low-rolling van and set out. I thought we were driving to the Gandon Monastery in town, but as it turned out we started driving to the next aimag over, Tuv. Forty five minutes and a flat tire later we arrived at the gates of Manzhir monastery park. At most parks or famous sites foreigners have to pay two to sometimes five times the entrance fee, but my host mother successfully told the fare collector that I was her daughter and I got in Mongol price.
We pulled into the parking lot filled with tourist buses and minivans, poured all nine people out of the van and started up the hill. Manzhir is one of many monasteries that were destroyed during the religious oppression under Soviet control. All that stood was the clay bricks of a foundation, a partially reconstructed wooden building turned museum and the modest wooden roofs scattered across the mountains face protecting large paintings of Guatama Buddha on the largest of outcropped boulders. My host father and mother are both practicing Buddhists, so the summit to each hut yielded whispered prayers and bowed heads.
I was es tactic to have an opportunity for climbing. Being in a crowded district and just coming out of a cold front the air quality in UB is horrendous and will only get worse, inhibiting my runs or any form of exercise out of doors. My mother called me a mountain goat as I hopped up the rocks to the peak where an ovoo had been erected overlooking the valley. After circling it three times in solitude, my family finally caught up to me and we decided to descend back down to our van.
At the base, my father and uncle went down to the car while the rest of us staked out our picnic spot for our late afternoon meal. When we found a few square meters of stone free grass my uncle and father returned with a rolled up carpet on one shoulder and bags and bags of food and drinks. We rolled out the floor rug, removed our shoes and began the feast and I mean feast.
My mother feeds me like there's no tomorrow. Even when my hands were full with an apple and half a sandwich she reached out to me with a cookie and yet another sandwich and said, 'Eat Lindsay, eat.' We had three loaves of bread, apples, grapes, oranges, chocolate cookies and wafers, pickles, salami and the holy grail of Mongolian picnics, an entire pig's head. My uncle whipped out the cutting board and started slicing pieces of fat from it's neck and ears. Shortly followed by my mother making me another sandwich. I tried to explain to them that I prefer the leaner meats, but my attempts were lost in translation and my ability to reiterate my preferences obstructed by the two other sandwiches I was being forced to eat.
When the sun set over Tuv aimag and our family had finished eating we packed up the leftovers, rolled up the carpet and piled back into the van to drive into the early evening lights of UB. What I had expected to be a three hour tour (a three hour tour) of Gandon Monastary turned out to be a whole day of climbing and chewing the fat. It didn't work out so well for the paper I had to write that evening, but I must admit it was one of the most interesting picnics I've had in a while. And that beats the watermelon and three spoons party I had on the Ithaca Commons late this August.
I had originally wanted to visit the Museum of Mongolian Traditional Medicine this Sunday and my host family in UB said they would be happy to accompany me (my host father is a doctor of traditional medicine...I watched him do acupuncture in our living room.) but when I woke up that morning my mother said that her brother was going to a monastery and asked if I wanted to come. Of course I did, so I postponed the museum outing for the time being. After a fresh breakfast of eggs, 'sausage,' cucumbers and yellow rice tea (like milk tea, but with sauteed yellow rice kernels added into the mix) my uncle, aunt, and two cousins arrived at our house with a Chinngis Khaan hot water thermos and a bag full of apples.
We piled nine people into their low-rolling van and set out. I thought we were driving to the Gandon Monastery in town, but as it turned out we started driving to the next aimag over, Tuv. Forty five minutes and a flat tire later we arrived at the gates of Manzhir monastery park. At most parks or famous sites foreigners have to pay two to sometimes five times the entrance fee, but my host mother successfully told the fare collector that I was her daughter and I got in Mongol price.
We pulled into the parking lot filled with tourist buses and minivans, poured all nine people out of the van and started up the hill. Manzhir is one of many monasteries that were destroyed during the religious oppression under Soviet control. All that stood was the clay bricks of a foundation, a partially reconstructed wooden building turned museum and the modest wooden roofs scattered across the mountains face protecting large paintings of Guatama Buddha on the largest of outcropped boulders. My host father and mother are both practicing Buddhists, so the summit to each hut yielded whispered prayers and bowed heads.
I was es tactic to have an opportunity for climbing. Being in a crowded district and just coming out of a cold front the air quality in UB is horrendous and will only get worse, inhibiting my runs or any form of exercise out of doors. My mother called me a mountain goat as I hopped up the rocks to the peak where an ovoo had been erected overlooking the valley. After circling it three times in solitude, my family finally caught up to me and we decided to descend back down to our van.
At the base, my father and uncle went down to the car while the rest of us staked out our picnic spot for our late afternoon meal. When we found a few square meters of stone free grass my uncle and father returned with a rolled up carpet on one shoulder and bags and bags of food and drinks. We rolled out the floor rug, removed our shoes and began the feast and I mean feast.
My mother feeds me like there's no tomorrow. Even when my hands were full with an apple and half a sandwich she reached out to me with a cookie and yet another sandwich and said, 'Eat Lindsay, eat.' We had three loaves of bread, apples, grapes, oranges, chocolate cookies and wafers, pickles, salami and the holy grail of Mongolian picnics, an entire pig's head. My uncle whipped out the cutting board and started slicing pieces of fat from it's neck and ears. Shortly followed by my mother making me another sandwich. I tried to explain to them that I prefer the leaner meats, but my attempts were lost in translation and my ability to reiterate my preferences obstructed by the two other sandwiches I was being forced to eat.
When the sun set over Tuv aimag and our family had finished eating we packed up the leftovers, rolled up the carpet and piled back into the van to drive into the early evening lights of UB. What I had expected to be a three hour tour (a three hour tour) of Gandon Monastary turned out to be a whole day of climbing and chewing the fat. It didn't work out so well for the paper I had to write that evening, but I must admit it was one of the most interesting picnics I've had in a while. And that beats the watermelon and three spoons party I had on the Ithaca Commons late this August.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Russian Hummers and Boiled Blood
Sain baina uu!
I’m back from the countryside! We spent the last two weeks traveling to Khuvsgul Aimag (the northernmost province in Mongolia) for our countryside homestay in the Darkhaad Depression. We flew from UB on EZNis Airlines into the small rustic town of Murun, the aimag center, surrounded by vast plains and low rocky mountains. From Murun it was some 300 kilometers to our homestay site, so we stopped at a ger camp for the night.
On our way to the ger camp we stopped at Uushgiin Hondii to see the largest known deerstone site in Mongolia. We were able to hike around the valley below our camp before our dinner: spaghetti and meat (sans sauce). I shared a cozy ger with two of my peers for the night and woke up to a light dusting of snow across the plains.
The second day’s drive took about nine hours. Our group rode in three grey Russian vans which are virtually indestructible. The dirt road from Murun to Ulaan Uul, the Soum center (regional town) closest to our homestay site, was beaten and undefined. Years of wear in the sloppiest of conditions have beaten the road into a lumpy mess. New paths are created whenever the mud gets too thick, so our drivers were constantly jerkily swerving to pick the “smoothest” route. If there’s one thing I’m thrilled I didn’t inherit from my mother, it’s her car sickness. In the bumpiest parts we drove 5 km an hour and to make up for such slow moments of travel the smooth parts became a race track for our three drivers, often slamming the brakes when we approached a dip too large to handle. I was surprised our car didn’t roll at some points or float away as we drove straight through a river. The Russian Hummers, as one of my teachers called them, are fearless.
Lunch was at a canteen ger along the road and the family that lived there invited us in for soup and tea. We stopped for directions at a snowy spot and broke the travel monotony with an impromptu snowball fight (we were all excited to see snow). We descended into the Darkhaad Depression, a valley of grassy pasture paralleled by a snowcapped mountain range and entirely Siberian Larch forests, after passing a line of ovoos or shrines. I was given a handful of seed and gradually tossed the grains onto the shrine while circling it three times. The ritual supposedly brings good luck so we all obliged. When we arrived in Ulaan Uul around 6 pm we were sick of driving (some more literally than others). We wandered the ghostly streets along broken wooden fences and worn down alley roads to find the last remaining open shop. We bought a jar of peaches and a bottle of Khuvsgul’s own vodka and spent the evening sharing stories and chasing the bottle of rubbing alcohol with peach syrup.
The next day was a short drive to our homestay sight. At the base camp we a lunch of bread with orom (the foam from boiled milk cooled into a delicious cream), khuushuur (meat filled fried dumplings), and the organs of a recent sheep slaughter; stomach, liver, kidney, sausage (intestines stuffed with strips of stomach and liver), and the notorious boiled blood. I ate all but the kidney. The stomach was like chewing gum, the liver wasn’t bad (I had been eating liver paste for breakfast with my UB family two weeks prior), the sausage had a good taste, but a…diverse texture, and the boiled blood was….not my favorite. It’s served in slices like discs. The texture is smooth, but it falls into pieces as soon as you take a bite. I found taking it in one bite was the best way to consume it. It tasted….like blood. I later found out they often season it with lots of salt and some diced onion, the only flavorings in the countryside. It was salty, rich and though I didn’t gag like Bear Grylls, I was not about to have seconds.
We had a brief horse riding lesson after lunch where we got to try the Mongolian saddles. They’re wooden and seem more decorative than practical. The saddle itself is so narrow one can’t sit inside of it. In a walk, you sit on the back and anything above canter you just stand. SIT provided us with combination Mongol-Western saddles which allowed us to sit, but were no more comfortable. Mongolian horses also come in a size small, so my time riding that week was quite humorous.
My host mother and sister were kneeling in the group of parents when we were all introduced. She raised her thin, short body to greet me; my sister stayed kneeling behind her. I used up my arsenal of Mongolian dialogue in a few minutes and so we sat silently, my sister still watching me intently, waiting for the van to drive us to our ger. The rest of the day was spent spitting out my limited vocabulary, flipping through my translation dictionary and dancing out my life story to my new family. I showed them pictures of my family and tried to explain the professions of my parents. I tried to explain that my mother is an orthodontic technician, but all I could get out was “dentist.” Hope you like the change in profession, Mom (or should I say doctor). A number of my explanations were similarly simplified and falsified. If ever find yourself in the Darkhaad Depression, my new major at Cornell is ‘grass’ and I no longer hail from the evergreen state rather our nation’s capital.
I got better at communicating as the week went on, but the first day was rough. As evening settled in my host mother poured me a cup of warm milk tea and at 9 pm when the stars were drifting across the Darkhaad valley I settled into my bed of folded blankets and deels.
I’m back from the countryside! We spent the last two weeks traveling to Khuvsgul Aimag (the northernmost province in Mongolia) for our countryside homestay in the Darkhaad Depression. We flew from UB on EZNis Airlines into the small rustic town of Murun, the aimag center, surrounded by vast plains and low rocky mountains. From Murun it was some 300 kilometers to our homestay site, so we stopped at a ger camp for the night.
On our way to the ger camp we stopped at Uushgiin Hondii to see the largest known deerstone site in Mongolia. We were able to hike around the valley below our camp before our dinner: spaghetti and meat (sans sauce). I shared a cozy ger with two of my peers for the night and woke up to a light dusting of snow across the plains.
The second day’s drive took about nine hours. Our group rode in three grey Russian vans which are virtually indestructible. The dirt road from Murun to Ulaan Uul, the Soum center (regional town) closest to our homestay site, was beaten and undefined. Years of wear in the sloppiest of conditions have beaten the road into a lumpy mess. New paths are created whenever the mud gets too thick, so our drivers were constantly jerkily swerving to pick the “smoothest” route. If there’s one thing I’m thrilled I didn’t inherit from my mother, it’s her car sickness. In the bumpiest parts we drove 5 km an hour and to make up for such slow moments of travel the smooth parts became a race track for our three drivers, often slamming the brakes when we approached a dip too large to handle. I was surprised our car didn’t roll at some points or float away as we drove straight through a river. The Russian Hummers, as one of my teachers called them, are fearless.
Lunch was at a canteen ger along the road and the family that lived there invited us in for soup and tea. We stopped for directions at a snowy spot and broke the travel monotony with an impromptu snowball fight (we were all excited to see snow). We descended into the Darkhaad Depression, a valley of grassy pasture paralleled by a snowcapped mountain range and entirely Siberian Larch forests, after passing a line of ovoos or shrines. I was given a handful of seed and gradually tossed the grains onto the shrine while circling it three times. The ritual supposedly brings good luck so we all obliged. When we arrived in Ulaan Uul around 6 pm we were sick of driving (some more literally than others). We wandered the ghostly streets along broken wooden fences and worn down alley roads to find the last remaining open shop. We bought a jar of peaches and a bottle of Khuvsgul’s own vodka and spent the evening sharing stories and chasing the bottle of rubbing alcohol with peach syrup.
The next day was a short drive to our homestay sight. At the base camp we a lunch of bread with orom (the foam from boiled milk cooled into a delicious cream), khuushuur (meat filled fried dumplings), and the organs of a recent sheep slaughter; stomach, liver, kidney, sausage (intestines stuffed with strips of stomach and liver), and the notorious boiled blood. I ate all but the kidney. The stomach was like chewing gum, the liver wasn’t bad (I had been eating liver paste for breakfast with my UB family two weeks prior), the sausage had a good taste, but a…diverse texture, and the boiled blood was….not my favorite. It’s served in slices like discs. The texture is smooth, but it falls into pieces as soon as you take a bite. I found taking it in one bite was the best way to consume it. It tasted….like blood. I later found out they often season it with lots of salt and some diced onion, the only flavorings in the countryside. It was salty, rich and though I didn’t gag like Bear Grylls, I was not about to have seconds.
We had a brief horse riding lesson after lunch where we got to try the Mongolian saddles. They’re wooden and seem more decorative than practical. The saddle itself is so narrow one can’t sit inside of it. In a walk, you sit on the back and anything above canter you just stand. SIT provided us with combination Mongol-Western saddles which allowed us to sit, but were no more comfortable. Mongolian horses also come in a size small, so my time riding that week was quite humorous.
My host mother and sister were kneeling in the group of parents when we were all introduced. She raised her thin, short body to greet me; my sister stayed kneeling behind her. I used up my arsenal of Mongolian dialogue in a few minutes and so we sat silently, my sister still watching me intently, waiting for the van to drive us to our ger. The rest of the day was spent spitting out my limited vocabulary, flipping through my translation dictionary and dancing out my life story to my new family. I showed them pictures of my family and tried to explain the professions of my parents. I tried to explain that my mother is an orthodontic technician, but all I could get out was “dentist.” Hope you like the change in profession, Mom (or should I say doctor). A number of my explanations were similarly simplified and falsified. If ever find yourself in the Darkhaad Depression, my new major at Cornell is ‘grass’ and I no longer hail from the evergreen state rather our nation’s capital.
I got better at communicating as the week went on, but the first day was rough. As evening settled in my host mother poured me a cup of warm milk tea and at 9 pm when the stars were drifting across the Darkhaad valley I settled into my bed of folded blankets and deels.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Sain uu!
I'm posting to say that I won't be posting for a while. We'll be departing tomorrow for the countryside, Hovsgol aimag, where we'll be with our rural homestay family for two weeks. I'll have much to say when I return and many photos to share. Don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. I'll be out of internet entire contact for the two weeks. I'll respond to emails when I return.
In the meantime, check out my first blog post on Glimpse!
I'm posting to say that I won't be posting for a while. We'll be departing tomorrow for the countryside, Hovsgol aimag, where we'll be with our rural homestay family for two weeks. I'll have much to say when I return and many photos to share. Don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. I'll be out of internet entire contact for the two weeks. I'll respond to emails when I return.
In the meantime, check out my first blog post on Glimpse!
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Khaans, picked pockets and the new fam.
Bonding over Chinggis, becoming a pick-pocket victim, getting lost on the UB bus system and meeting the former Prime Minister of Mongolia. Much has happened since I arrived in UB a week and a half ago and I apologize for my poor correspondence as of late. The first week was action packed with orientation, over the weekend we moved in with our UB host families and this week was our first section of classes. SIT has kept me busy, busy, busy.
There are five other students in my program: Sam, Brandon, Nathan, Kara and Britt. All of us are from the States and I think all of us are juniors. We started out in Anuujin Hotel in central UB about a half hour walk from our school. It was nice all being together and there was a nice pub across the street (they like to call bars pubs here) which meant for some lovely evenings testing out Mongolia's brews. I think the general consensus lays with Khar Khorin. We had a number of informative introductions to the city and the program which unfortunately has kept us too busy to explore on our own. A lot of us are antsy to get out and about.
We visited Narantuul, literally the black market, last week as part of our orientation. It's a few acres of endless stalls and tents selling everything from Cucci bags and Adidoos shoes to sofas, chainsaws, Changhong satellite dishes, fabrics, bike parts, kitchen supplies, meat, dairy in addition to some hairstyling and nail painting service shops. It's a pick-pocketer's dream with crowded aisles, lots of money coming in and out and quite a few foreigners. I had put a pack of cards in my back pocket to see if anyone would take it, but no luck. I'm going to keep trying though. Our visit was not without purpose. We were given 1000 Tugrik (about 75 cents), an hour and a half and asked to buy something that would be useful in our countryside visit. A lot harder than sounds. I spent and hour and fifteen minutes perusing all the sections and getting lost. I finally ended up with a MacGyver-esque needle and thread which was well-received. We're going back later in the week to get riding boots for our trip to the countryside next Wednesday for our first rural homestay.
Last week we all ventured through central UB to Mobicom to buy some cell phones for our stay. When we got to Mobicom I took off my pack to find my bag open and wallet gone. I may have escaped Narantuul, but I was a target on the streets and they outsmarted me. Needless to say, I didn't get my phone that day and rushed home to start calling my bank and canceling accounts. B of A said they could express ship me a new ATM card, but when I gave them my address here in Mongolia they rejected it. Street names here are obsolete. Mongolian directions are by proximity: next the Laos Embassy, near Sukhbaatar Square, etc. Thus, the postal system has to rely entirely on P.O. Boxes. Well B of A doesn't approve of P.O. Boxes, so I had them send it to my house in WA and my parents will send it here. I'm eagerly and frugally awaiting it's arrival.
Our UB hometay started Saturday. I'm living with a family in the fourth district about 10 kilometers from my school. My father, Tomorbaatar, is a doctor of traditional medicine. My mother, Ariuna, works has his assistant in his clinic. My sister, Odko, is 17 and will be studying international business in Australia come October. Very friendly, very helpful and they feed me well! I may be missing those leafy greens, but what Mongolia lacks in vegetative variety they make up in quantity!
I take a bus to and from school everyday. The UB bus system is rather ridiculous as far as I can tell. Market economy ideologies have carried over to the bus system and they really enforce efficiency. Forget the word bus, I ride to school in a clown car. I can take the five or the thirteen route, but the only confirmed stops are where I get on and where I get off. If the bus gets stuck in traffic or it can't turn left it will spontaneously take a detour. Yesterday the driver literally jumped the curb, did a number of three point turns and went back to the main road skipping three stops. My first day riding the bus I ended up taking the wrong one home. I was rushing out of the UB Hotel (the best wireless in UB) and jumped the first bus with the number five pasted to its window. But apparently there's more than one five route and I got on the wrong one. When we were approaching my neighborhood and it was supposed to turn left it kept on trucking. I got off about 3 kilometers from where I wanted to be and had to flag a taxi for the rest of my ride.
Today we visited the government building in UB and met with the former Prime Minister R. Amarjargal. We talked with him about Mongolia's economy, the effects of the global economic crisis on Mongolia and mining interests. Then we got a tour of the government building. We got to see the Parliament room and a number of works of art. I'll elaborate later.
A week from today we'll be heading up to Hosvgol Aimag (province) for our first country-side homestay. We'll be there for two weeks and will be back mid-September. I've been restraining my typically snap-happy habits to try and adjust this week. When I go to a knew place everything seems worthy of a picture and my snap-happy habit takes on plague-like symptoms. I've desensitized myself a little to my new environment and have learned a little about keeping my beloved Nikon out of some particularly eager hands. I'm hoping for my first real photo outing this weekend and will post some pictures soon. I'll also be taking my camera to Hovsgol for as long as my batteries last, so expect some new photos after that. I've taken a lot of video, but I've only uploaded a few so far. I'll get working on that as well.
Mongolia is incredible so far! Despite the bumpy landing, this semester is taking off. I'll keep posting.
Bayaritai!
There are five other students in my program: Sam, Brandon, Nathan, Kara and Britt. All of us are from the States and I think all of us are juniors. We started out in Anuujin Hotel in central UB about a half hour walk from our school. It was nice all being together and there was a nice pub across the street (they like to call bars pubs here) which meant for some lovely evenings testing out Mongolia's brews. I think the general consensus lays with Khar Khorin. We had a number of informative introductions to the city and the program which unfortunately has kept us too busy to explore on our own. A lot of us are antsy to get out and about.
We visited Narantuul, literally the black market, last week as part of our orientation. It's a few acres of endless stalls and tents selling everything from Cucci bags and Adidoos shoes to sofas, chainsaws, Changhong satellite dishes, fabrics, bike parts, kitchen supplies, meat, dairy in addition to some hairstyling and nail painting service shops. It's a pick-pocketer's dream with crowded aisles, lots of money coming in and out and quite a few foreigners. I had put a pack of cards in my back pocket to see if anyone would take it, but no luck. I'm going to keep trying though. Our visit was not without purpose. We were given 1000 Tugrik (about 75 cents), an hour and a half and asked to buy something that would be useful in our countryside visit. A lot harder than sounds. I spent and hour and fifteen minutes perusing all the sections and getting lost. I finally ended up with a MacGyver-esque needle and thread which was well-received. We're going back later in the week to get riding boots for our trip to the countryside next Wednesday for our first rural homestay.
Last week we all ventured through central UB to Mobicom to buy some cell phones for our stay. When we got to Mobicom I took off my pack to find my bag open and wallet gone. I may have escaped Narantuul, but I was a target on the streets and they outsmarted me. Needless to say, I didn't get my phone that day and rushed home to start calling my bank and canceling accounts. B of A said they could express ship me a new ATM card, but when I gave them my address here in Mongolia they rejected it. Street names here are obsolete. Mongolian directions are by proximity: next the Laos Embassy, near Sukhbaatar Square, etc. Thus, the postal system has to rely entirely on P.O. Boxes. Well B of A doesn't approve of P.O. Boxes, so I had them send it to my house in WA and my parents will send it here. I'm eagerly and frugally awaiting it's arrival.
Our UB hometay started Saturday. I'm living with a family in the fourth district about 10 kilometers from my school. My father, Tomorbaatar, is a doctor of traditional medicine. My mother, Ariuna, works has his assistant in his clinic. My sister, Odko, is 17 and will be studying international business in Australia come October. Very friendly, very helpful and they feed me well! I may be missing those leafy greens, but what Mongolia lacks in vegetative variety they make up in quantity!
I take a bus to and from school everyday. The UB bus system is rather ridiculous as far as I can tell. Market economy ideologies have carried over to the bus system and they really enforce efficiency. Forget the word bus, I ride to school in a clown car. I can take the five or the thirteen route, but the only confirmed stops are where I get on and where I get off. If the bus gets stuck in traffic or it can't turn left it will spontaneously take a detour. Yesterday the driver literally jumped the curb, did a number of three point turns and went back to the main road skipping three stops. My first day riding the bus I ended up taking the wrong one home. I was rushing out of the UB Hotel (the best wireless in UB) and jumped the first bus with the number five pasted to its window. But apparently there's more than one five route and I got on the wrong one. When we were approaching my neighborhood and it was supposed to turn left it kept on trucking. I got off about 3 kilometers from where I wanted to be and had to flag a taxi for the rest of my ride.
Today we visited the government building in UB and met with the former Prime Minister R. Amarjargal. We talked with him about Mongolia's economy, the effects of the global economic crisis on Mongolia and mining interests. Then we got a tour of the government building. We got to see the Parliament room and a number of works of art. I'll elaborate later.
A week from today we'll be heading up to Hosvgol Aimag (province) for our first country-side homestay. We'll be there for two weeks and will be back mid-September. I've been restraining my typically snap-happy habits to try and adjust this week. When I go to a knew place everything seems worthy of a picture and my snap-happy habit takes on plague-like symptoms. I've desensitized myself a little to my new environment and have learned a little about keeping my beloved Nikon out of some particularly eager hands. I'm hoping for my first real photo outing this weekend and will post some pictures soon. I'll also be taking my camera to Hovsgol for as long as my batteries last, so expect some new photos after that. I've taken a lot of video, but I've only uploaded a few so far. I'll get working on that as well.
Mongolia is incredible so far! Despite the bumpy landing, this semester is taking off. I'll keep posting.
Bayaritai!
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