Ger-riffic

Hello hello,
so we are nearly a week into our site and it has been wonderful. I will provide the following highlights our trip to the site, our ger, our community/family, our work.

Trip to Site:
We were scheduled to leave from UB on Tuesday at 10 am with an estimated time of travel between 5-10 hours. It was raining (a lot) but considered a good luck omen in Mongolia. I just thought how wet my things would get... : ) We waited until noon for our ride to show. Then we drove around UB for an hour, went and picked up more people for another hour and left UB between 2:30 and 3. Then we proceeded to stop every 10 Kilometers. Most of the time I wasn't sure why but there were a lot of potty breaks. 1/4 of the way into our trip we got a flat tire due to the enormi potholes in the road. However we were back in business in no time. At the half way point we stopped at a roadside town/diner. We were there for about an hour. We finially arrived at site at midnight! It was a super long day but we were excited to finially be at our new home.

Our Ger:
Our place is really great. Ger life this week has been pretty easy. When we arrived we had most of our furniture but no kitchen gadgets. So on Wednesday we went with our hashaa mate, Uganaa to the "black" market. (more on that in the later section). We ordered a futon to be made to fit jesse's "height" and so we can both sleep on it and picked up a chest for some of our clothes. We also bought some kitchen gadgets. Tricked out the ger for a mere $70 USD. Pretty cool I think. Our ger is painted very traditionally in orange with multi-colored patterns. The poles and center wheel are painted as well as a matching chest and kitchen cupboard and coffee table with tiny stools. We have been practicing cooking and last night made awesome pizza in the wok. Today for lunch we practiced with the fire cooking. I can boil noodles on it like a pro. We got windows put in our skylight yesterday and it keeps the heat in and rain out now. Very nice. It is kinda trippy living in a circle but it is really cozy. It has brought out the "man" in Jesse. Who likes to make fire, chop wood, and generally do manly mongolian things. Ger life suits him fine.

Our Community/Family
Our hashaa family (aka also my counterpart) are really nice. Uganaa is an english teacher and has been wonderful showing us around and helping us get settled. Her husband works crazy hours and we met him last night. He seems really nice. They are a cute couple. The kids are starting to warm to us and come by the ger a little more frequently now. The boy, esoo, likes to check us out and then leave. last night he and his sister came over and jesse showed them pictures on the computer of our family and time in mongolia. They liked it but esoo didn't like our music and covered his ears and made faces. I understand the feeling. Today Uganaa's brother (who also lives with them) came over with his pictures. He is 17 and seems to be a really nice helpful kid. I think we are really lucky to have a family like theirs living so close. Oh...and we are close. The Ger pretty much takes up their whole yard. It is kinda wierd but we will get used to it. The hashaa dog's name changes daily but after the first night he doesn't bark at us and seems to do a good job of protecting his family.

Our community is nice. There is a small apartment district in the center of town but it seems most people live in gers or houses. We have really only been to the town center area so far, not a lot of exploring in the residential parts but the commercial area is pretty cool. The black market is staged out of rail shipping containers. Whole stores in tiny containers. Then they are arranged into alleys. It seems like much can be found if one looks hard enough. Really hard. Found the meat house (almost made me throw up but actually pretty clean) and the veggie area. Also found cloth and household items. Still discovering the area but so far we like what we see.

Our Work
Jesse and I visited his office yesterday. It is housed in the big government building in the center of town. People seemed really friendly and helpful. I visited my work today and it seems pretty cool. Everyone is shy but hopefully we can overcome that soon. Will both start work next week and are looking forward to getting started. We have had some good talks already about our ideas of projects and activities.

I think that is all for now. Good luck to everyone as they start school and summer winds down. Keep on keepin' on.

Bonafide Volunteers

So the news has just kept coming. We love reading your blog postings as much as you love to read ours. Last week we were unable to read postings for some reason so we were sad but this week we are back in action.

On Saturday we were sworn in as volunteers. We took an oath and everything. The swearing in ceremony was an especially big deal this year because the president of Mongolia attended, gave a speach and shook hands with host families and volunteers. First time in Peace Corps Mongolia history. It was pretty great. He had no prepared speach he was just talking and his poor interpretor was writing furiously to keep up. We all looked very fancy with our new outfits from our families. We have a very talented crew of performers. I was able to save some friends and dignity by not singing at the ceremony and jesse was the cutest dancing monkey up there. Our families came and it was a very long good day. It felt just like graduation. Plus both of our supervisors were there. Lots of pictures to be had.

Speaking of pictures....At long last we have "Our Summer Vacation" pictures we are sending today so check your mail boxes in about ten years. Actually we are sending one CD with about 70 pictures to Mike who promised to make copies and send them domestically to interested parties. There are some really good ones in there, so now you will have pictures to accompany our stories. We will send another CD with our ger pictures in a few weeks. Once we move in and all.

We are pit stopping in UB for today and leave for site tomorrow! We are stocking up on foods we can't get in our town (beans, tofu, peanut butter, spices, cheese and the like). And some cloth to have some deels and shirts tailor made for winter. Jesse and I have both lost a bunch of weight and our clothes don't fit very well anymore. But tailor made stuff is pretty cheap and cool. They have these really old russian sewing machines here too that I might get and learn how to use for patches and what not...i need winter hobbies besides sitting next to the fire.

LMW's description of the araig (the fermented milk) and arrol (the milk product that is hard) are right on. I can't stand them. They often have the "candy" without sugar and in these hard little bricks. Very good for protien and on the go eating if you need to eat to survive but very hard to handle if there is ANY other option. Jesse however likes the stuff. Proving my theory that he has no taste buds.

To answer some burning ger questions... we have electricity (that can't handle more than two things plugged in) in the Ger but no electricity in the out house. The outhouse is shared with our hashaa family (5 people). We have a stove, a table, two chairs, a bed, wood floors, and a dry sink, oh and my boss said that we have a black and white tv but no english speaking programs.
It is a five "wall" ger. A wall is defined as a latice section. Four is the minimum we are supposed to live in so we have a little bit bigger ger. Our water is gathered at a communial well a 1/4 mile from the house. We have internet in our town so we will write more later once we see everything. Jesse starts work on Thursday and I start next wednesday.

Ok, I think that is all for now. Much love.

Happy Anniversary to Juli and Dustin....

Ta-Da! Site Announcements

So after three long months of waiting today was a big day of announcements. First, we found out our language scores...I got the dumb kid score and jesse got the smart kid score. No surprise there.Then after a session of putting condoms on cucumbers, no joke, we were told our site.

We will spend the next two years in Arvaikheer in the Aimag of Overkhangai. This probably doesn;t mean much to you and quite franlky us either. However this is what we know:
1) It is in the south western region about 450 km from UB. That translates into a 5-8 hour car ride.
2) It is primarially agriculture and some gold mining.
3) The tourist attraction is a very old monastary and some mountains...and mark your calendars...the 800 year celebration of Nadaam will be held in the ancient capital this July. It happens to be in our Aimag ( Aimag is like a state or provience). Promises to be one hell of a party
4) We will be living in a GER! Crazy. Lots of work, cold, and fun. We are both looking forward to the challenge. We wanted adventure and rustic and boy did we get it. No running water or hot water, an outhouse, and a wood stove. But we have electricity 24 hours a day. Part of the deal with the Ger is that you will live in the same hashaa (meaning fenced yard family area) as another family. The family we will share our hashaa with is one of my counterparts and is an english teacher and leads the local scout group.
5) As for our jobs....Jesse will be working for the ministery of health. Primarially working on communicable and non-communicable diseases. Sounds like some good stuff with kids too.. I will be working for two organizations. One is the Government run Childrens center. I will primarially be working on staff capacity building. The other part of my time will be focused on a Mercy Corps (USAID funded) civic engagement program for youth. Everything is pretty vauge but it sounds fun.
6) this is all we know for now. On thursday and friday we will be meeting with our counterparts and on Saturday we will be sworn in as actual volunteers. Quite the job interview.

More to come in the week.

One week to site announcment

For those of you keeping track of our progession through the summer we are almost done at host site. I really am unbelieving of just how quickly this summer has flown by. It seems like just yesterday we were stepping of the plane onto Mongolian soil for the first time and now we are about ready to leave the saftey of our host communities for the unknown adventure of site placement.

I can very easily say that Sierra and I have had a very successful summer. We should both have no problems achieving the necessary level with our language (something we were both a little wary of coming into our service). We have also both completed several community projects now and can consider all of them a massive success.

We both taught the same English lesson, a bit of a coincidence, to respective groups in our communities. She taught body parts (heads, shoulders knees and toes) to a group of school children, and I taught similar external body parts to a group of about 12 hospital workers in my community. We have both been told to expect to teach some English even though we are not TEFL volunteers so the experience was certainly a good one for us. Teaching English to non-English speakers also gave me a fresh and very interesting perspective on my own language learning ability. I am now hoping to start some English classes shortly after arriving at site in hopes that they will inspire my coworkers/students to give me a little more leeway in my attempts to communicate in broken Mongolian.

We both have also completed community develpment projects. I am not sure of all of the details surrounding Sierra's project, but I will do my best. Basically she and her site mates invited community members to submit either works of art or essays around the theme of "Mongolia's Future". They then invited some prominant local figures to serve as judges and themselves provided certificates and prizes to the winning submissions. After talking to her yesterday it sounded like they had some 20 enteries and had great attendence for the event. She declared it a huge success and was very excited about it.

My group identified two needs in our community that we worked to address in our project. First we spent about an hour and half on saturday morning teaching some of the local children to swim in our river. The river is one of the best places in town and heavily trafficed during hot days but a huge portion of the community can't swim. At the end of our hour and a half session the 10 kids that showed up for the event had learned a basic front crawl and the "dead man's" float. All in all I was very pleased by the results and wish we had started teaching earlier so we could follow up the session. The second project involved teaching about 10 local women the basic techniques for pickling so that they can save some of the harvest that is begining to occur. The diet here is so seasonal that often people eat almost no vegetables during the winter. We are hoping that pickling will provide them with at least some dietary variety and perhaps a bit of extra nutrition during the winter. This session was such a success that I am now in Darkhan to help buy supplies for an encore class on preserves tomorrow. On a personal note I am also enjoying learning these techniques so that Sierra and I can stock our pantry when we arrive at site.

I think that is all the new news for now. We are both realizing that we are about to say good bye to our families and so are spending lots of time with them now. We will be in town starting next monday for site announcments and then a week long conference with our counterparts. We will write more then.

Jesse

In for a Treat

So we have 3 more days of language class and then a week of review before our final exam! Pretty stressful time and people are getting swiftly to the end of their ropes. I however took a mental health day this morning (which does not translate and the teachers were very confused) and am feeling very fine.

The swearing in Ceremony that graduates us from lowley trainees to full fledged volunteers is quite the production. Every site has speaches in Mongolian and Mongolian performances of song, dance or instrament. We have a group of great people but all are lacking performance talent. So yesterday the teachers tapped ME! to sing a duet in MONGOLIAN. I told them i can't sing or dance but it didn't seem to phase them. So I am the act for our town. Very very very scary. All of our parents are there plus the staff plus the ambassador and perhaps the president. Ha! So I have 13 days to learn this thing and meanwhile study for my test. Jesse's group is doing Kazak dancing. J says he looks like a dancing monkey, to which I replyed a very cute monkey, and he agreed. I haven't seen them practice and he wouldn't show me so it will be a surprise.

This last weekend I went to Jesse's house for the last time. It was a great trip out. We did nothing the whole weekend. I love doing nothing when the weeks are so full. We pulled weeds and played with his brothers and watched season one of sex and the city on my computer. It was super. His mom gave me chesse.

Not much else to report just a frenzy of activities and end of the summer things. Oh, and I think I am getting a del waistcoat. So not the full robe but a more modern looking jacket thing. We will send pictures once we get to site. Oh...so we find out our site placements two weeks from yesterday. Very exciting. J and I both asked for a ger or house so we shall see how it all pans out. Be expecting some exciting postings in the weeks to come.

much love to you all and happy birthday to lorie and grandma!

s