This one is for Matthew

I just want it to be know that if we were keeping score, matthew would win the number one fan award since his posts outnumber everyone elses. If we were keeping score. I have dedicated this post to matthew in honor of his number one fan-ness.

So we are fully in the Mongolia Mono. Get home and do....NOTHING. But we have been busy again at work so at least there is that. I am organizing a Coats for the Community drive and have been busy promoting that program. It starts the first of Nov. I hope it works out. Plenty of people need warm things but it is a little unprecidented to give clothes away here. No one told me that till after, so we shall see how it goes.

Jesse and I are teaming up on two projects. One is helping local NGOs write grants. Most international grants are supposed to be in english. so we are helping with the proof reading and organizing the proposals. We have been promoting that too. Our first meeting is next week. People seem pretty excited and it is good because we are improving the stability of services and also get to find out what people are doing, and get to meet all the movers and shakers in our community.

The second project is working with kindergarden parents. It is a monthly thing for me and jesse is collaborating with me for the next three months. Last month we did teeth brushing and hand washing. We were on TV and interviewed on the radio. Hopefully next month we can get more parents out for it. We are doing healthy foods for the body. I have some fun games and jesse has some good information. I am writing a tiny cookbook in mongolian for the parents with healthy alternatives to sugar and fat. Two staples of their diet. Me lecturing on sugar and fat! HA!

Jesse has been hard at work on his team building workshop and has just drafted the objectives, outcomes, activities. So that makes him feel good. It is going to be a great training.

Other than that we have been obsessed with byamba who is getting very big now, avoiding chores, and reading books, and building fires like its our job. Only now I am all out of books so I must find something else to do. I have started a new hobby of crocheting and have mastered the basic knot. i think I am going to make a scarf and donate it to my coats for the community program. At least that way I will have one donation.

Ok, I must give up the computer. Hope all is well. I will leave you with a quote John had on his last email and cracked me up...."sometimes a cowboy is just a man dressed up in a cowboy suit."
Its a think piece.

whatnot

hiya,
just thought i would put up our weekly post. unfortunately for you i don't have a lot of new stuff to report. Both jesse and mines work has slowed this past week. My entire office was out last week, both offices actually, so i didn't have a lot going on. Jesse is making busy work for himself. We dusted off SPSS and he is doing some data entry this week. I caught up on some sleep. I call it the mongolian mono. I am tired here all the time, especially since Byamba because he likes to wake up and reposition to sleep on my face or make war with my peaceful toes at 2am. I am really lazy but am forced to do many chores here. Perhaps adding to my sleepiness. For the last couple of nights we have had dinners that take about three hours to prepare. That puts food in the belly at 9pm at the earliest. Plus we have been making oppresively hot fires at night and the power has been going in and out. Combination of a hot, dark house and last night i was asleep on the couch before 10pm.

The western region directors will be here today or tomorrow from Peace Corps so our offices have been doing things to get ready. For example, my office is writing my Oct. work plan (half way through the month), and jesse's office is in charge of putting our ping and coal together for the winter. The ping saga continues...we have the floor and four sides of the ping but no roof so they got a carpenter to come out and measure last week to build the roof. He was supposed to have it done on Monday this week but he went to the countryside instead so they brought out another guy yesterday and he is supposed to get it done this afternoon. We shall see. It is a really good thing we started the process a month ago or we might freeze to death. Since the PC people are coming however I think they will have it done. Wish i had some power in the situation but alas none is mine.

I was having a conversation with my co-worker the other day and she said that i was really good because I am just like a Mongolian and don't need to plan. Ha! If she only knew. Although training was pretty crappy it did train me to relinquish all thoughts of control. I am able to just roll with whatever is going on and not get uptight about it. My new philosophy is that things will all work out in the end. I don't know how, but they do. Its wierd. Very not like me but when in mongolia...

Ok i think i am done with my ramble. Jesse was saying something yesterday about us taking pictures of our town and offices and such and putting them on the blog so if we are good this weekend next weeks blog may be actually interesting. Here's to hoping....

We call him Saturday

I figured out how to do pictures and jesse formated them for email so i thought i would put a few up for your viewing pleasure. The first one is the center of our ger. I told you orange is a hip color. This one as well as the first was taken while we were winterizing. I think it is funny and I hope you like it.


First a cultural lesson. Naming in Mongolia is a really cool process. Random like in the states but pretty cool. Typically people have several words rolled into one that is their name. Men often have strong or steel in their name (jesse's host bros for example, all three started with bat- meaning strong). Babies are named on the third day of life. Often the relatives will put their vote for a name in a bowl filled with rice. Then the bowl is shaken and a name comes to the top. Whatever the name is the father will whisper it into the baby's ear three times and that is its name. Other times people are named for their relatives or on the day they were born. This is where the good part comes in and an explanation of the picture.... so our kitty came to us on a friday. We wanted to call him the formal day of the week name friday (which is baasen) but the same word means pooped. Since we didn't want to name our cat shat we decided to name him Saturday instead (byamba). And that is the story of our kitty. He has been awesome and is the most spoiled cat in all of mongolia. We just watch him play for hours and we talk to him and he eats like a horse. We are in love. At night it is cold and he doesn't like the house I made him so he sleeps under the covers with us. I am always afraid we will crush him but so far he is ok.