I'd eat turkey in a big brown shoe

Turkey, turkey, turkey, turkey for me. Hi all just wanted to put up a quick post to wish you all a happy thanksgiving. We are thinking of you all. Have an extra helping for us today.

We are doing a modified thanksgiving here. Jesse and I took work off (actually just jesse my work is in guatamala) and we are doing nasty chores like bagging coal, cleaning house, and shopping. But had a lovely morning drinking special rationed food (hot chocolate for me and real coffee for jesse, thanks mom!) and watching I heart huckabees. On Saturday we are going to a friends house for thanksgiving dinner, in the sense that we are making a lot of food, not so much that we are eating thanksgiving food. We thought about themeing it, nothing says thanksgiving like a 70s pimp party. But decided to just bring whatever food we want to eat and not worry about it going together.

Other than that not a lot going on here. Yesterday jesse and I both had a good day at work. Which is worth mentioning because most work days are not as exciting as yesterday. Jesse had two programs. The first was in the morning at the local technical college here on HIV/AIDS. The government is doing a 100% condom usage pilot project (borrowed from Thailand) and this, I think, is part of that effort. Plus world aids day is Dec. 1. He said there were around 80 people in attendance, I think they took a couple classes hostage. They did three activities. One was a skit, one was true/false, and one was a categorize behaviors (safe sex stuff). He said there were a couple of interesting misconceptions. One, people thought you could tell if someone had AIDS by looking at them. Two, that you will always know if you have a STI, and three that you can get gonorrhea from peeing outside. The last one, you would think less people would think of the outdoors as a big toilet but alas they insist on peeing or pooping as they need. Mainly men/boys and small children and sometimes old ladies. Then in the afternoon we did another kindergarten parents training. This one was on healthy eating. I made cute games and baked a carrot cake, jesse gave out the good information and the food ger (aka food pyramid). We had 49 people there including 8 teachers. Last month we had 5 people. So that was pretty cool. Better advertising this time. Then afterwards we gave out almost the rest of our warm clothes from the clothing drive. It was great. I felt like I was doing good work here, and that feels nice.

Ok so there you have it folks, our thanksgiving post. Also for your viewing pleasure we have included some more photos. Enjoy.s

Just another day in paradise

so it may have been ten years since we last posted....internet has been limited. Since we last posted i celebrated my birthday. I am old. It was a relaxed weekend where all we did was eat. fun and filling.

Last week we went to UB (capital) and it was also fun and filling. We brought byamba to the vet and both jesse and i were nervous of the ten hour bus ride with her. We got a cute duffle bag and cut holes in it for her to travel in but she hated it and nearly had a heart attack. So once on the bus (the reallly cold bus) we took her out and put her in our coats. She was as good as could be hoped for. she only meowed for a while and then settled in to sleeping and cleaning herself for the duration of the ride. We didn't feed or water her past 7am since there wasn't really a place for her to go to the bathroom and she was very hungry when we got to our destination but otherwise a happy kitty.

The confrence I went to was interesting. It was a follow up as to how well Mongolia was meeting the UN convention on the rights of the child. They signed it 2 or three years ago and this was a sort of progress report. They are doing well in some areas but many areas are weak and need improvements. But it is difficult due to lack of funding and root level problems that can't be solved in a 5 year time frame. They are going to focus much attention in the coming 2 years to vulnerable youth (disabled, poor...). My boss was one of the presenters. I didn't know till she got up to speak.

Jesse's dentist appointment was fine. He gets to keep his teeth.

We bought a ton of food that we can't get in our town, so that was kinda fun. And we ate out a couple of times. Very good indian food birthday dinner.

Nothing else going on really. Back at work, weather is getting colder and days are getting shorter. Doesn't feel like holiday season with no one else excited about thanksgiving or christmas but it does feel like winter is coming.

I know I said no more boring posts but I can't help it. Mongolia can only hold so much fun at once. : )

that is all for now. buh-bye.

Riot

Hey all,

glad to see that the dedication brought in some much needed comments. Good to hear from all the fans, you know. : )

I can hardly believe it is November already! My birthday is just around the corner! This month is wierd at my work, both of my offices will be gone from this sunday to the 20th or so. Not really sure where that leaves me. But I do get to go to UB for a confrence in a couple of weeks so that should be fun. No idea what it is about but will tell more after I go, if I figure out what it is about that is. Jesse bit down on a rock disguised as a fruit the other day and hurt his tooth so he will be coming with me to UB as well to get it checked out. We just found out that we will not be able to make it home in time for christmas from our training in December so we will be spending christmas in UB. Not really that excited about it but hopefully it will be fun. We shall see. The Hewes family asked about holidays...here you go....there are two major holidays in Mongolia. One is Tsagan Tsar, in Feb., celebrating the new year. People get really dressed up and visit eachothers houses like crazy. People bring money for the host and the host gives presents to the guests. People are pretty poor here but it all kind of works out in the end with the money present exchange. The traditional food is buuz (steamed meat filled dumplings). At the new year they often decorate in christmas themed items like christmas trees and santa clause but it has none of the religious meaning. In july there is a celebration called Naadam, festival of manly sports. There are some postings a while back that explain that. There are some halloween parties but people don't trick or treat and unfortunately no thanksgiving.

My coats for the community drive is going smashing. As of Wednesday I had recieved just about 200 donations. So that is pretty cool since it started on Monday. Today we are doing a major give away of items. Local bagh governors selected poor families from their district to recieve clothes. Different from the states in that people don't self select but it seems to be pretty standard here.

I taught another capacity building workshop on wednesday and it went well. Twice as many people as last time so hopefully they liked it and will tell more people about it. Thursday was our first grant writing workshop. Communication problem and the space we had reserved was being used by another group. But someone brought a 23 page proposal so we had something to work on. Will have to find another way to advertise. Not sure what the best method is.... still thinking on it. But Jesse felt good about it (pretty much his baby) and we had a lot of fun being dumb.

This last week has been difficult because I was sick. So jesse had more chores to do and I only worked half days. But today I think I am almost better. Thank god. With no movies and me being on my last book it was looking pretty hairy for a while.

Jesse is making great progress on his teamwork workshop and may do his first one in December, a month ahead of schedule. Running it by his boss on Monday. He has been working on translating documents to get that ready. And I think I have created a program that I can use as part of my thesis. So that is exciting too. It is a youth civil society indicators workshop. I am going to write a grant for it to get off the ground and I think the youth center will take it on as its project so will keep you posted on that. If it does work I hope to have most of my thesis written before returning to the states. Then I can focus my last quarter on finding a freaking job.

It is crazy windy today but the sun is shining. We are suposed to get coal today so we can stay warm through the winter. We have been working on our black lung and it is coming along nicely. Most nights we have to open the door to let the smoke out.

Byamba is still cute is growing like crazy. He got out of the ger the other day and was nearly killed in the first 20 seconds. One of our hashaa dogs was not on his chain. But jesse showed him who was boss and I rescued the cat. We just read in one of our newsletters that only 50% of peace corps pets make it to close of service with their owners. So we are scared to let him out of the ger. In the summer though it will be hard to keep him in since the bottoms of the felt get folded up to let air in. We are working on his self defense moves and let me be the first to say he is really good at jumping on heads and attacking belts and moving feet.

I have had a couple of requests for more pictures on the blog so I will see what I can do for next time. That is all from this side of the world.

loves,
s

ps. i got the spam stopped. so there shouldn't be anymore dumb posts.