Thursday, July 27, 2006

Just Checking

Hi all,

I am wondering if people who have English Literacy Resource Room materials in the mail or in the back of the closet waiting to be mailed could respond to this post. I would like to get an idea of the types of things coming, amount coming, and timing so I can make plans for the opening ceremony and literacy room events.

Thanks!

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

My Summer Vacation

So we are I guess officially done with our summer vacation...leave tomorrow to go back to site. To sum it up, it was awesome. Let me give you the low down:

Lady and Ken came in on Wednesday the 5th and I met them at the train station. Lady cried and I just had something in my eye. The next day, with the help of some friend of a friend action we were able to get into a car and go down to arvaikheer. The driver was super great. He was telling Ken all about things as we passed them (in Mongolian) and Ken smiled and nodded. Lady feared for her life in the back seat and we bumped our heads a couple times as the car became air born. At one point we turned around to pick up a dead marmot and place it in between the windshield and the windshield wiper. I think he forgot it was there because he turned the wipers on and the marmot went across the window like a little marmot flag. When we arrived at our ger jesse was there to greet us moments after putting the finishing touches on the ger. We relaxed, opened presents and made some good food.

While in Arvaikheer we had lunch with my boss, toured the children's center where I worked, Ken did music lessons for his new muurn huur, we climbed a mountain to look at petroglyphs (which rock), went to a concert (where the shaman guy caught the curtans and himself on fire accidentally, no one was hurt), and did nadaam for a day.

Then we went to Kharkhorum, the ancient capital and stayed at a ger camp. It was cold. Oddly cold. We hitched a ride with some tour company since we didn't have a driver coming until the next day and toured around the huge monestary. It was beautiful. Tragic history. At one point it had over 10,000 lams living in its walls, now it has like 30. It was mostly distroyed by the russian purges. The next day we took off for White Lake.

White lake was really pretty. Huge lake surrounded by volcanos. We stayed at a ger family camp thing with a couple of other tourists. We had some good cultural exchanges. My highlight was that the mongolians were tripped out jesse was speaking mongolian to them while Ken played the muurn huur and I fed them s'mores. White Lake however was colder and rainer than Kharkhorum so i stayed pretty close to the ger and fire. The boys did do a little fishing and everyone did a little hiking.

Then we headed back to UB but it was a two day trip so we made another stop at ulgii lake. This one has the thickest, largest swarm of mysquitos (sp?) that I have ever seen, so after soaking ourselves in deet we were back outside. Jesse got all wet trying to get some fish and mom and I drank wine and watched. Much better than fishing i think.

When we got to UB the next day we had a nice dinner and just hung out. On Saturday we went to this amazing performance called tumen ekh. They did all the traditional things: throat singing, dancing, shaman dances, all the cool instraments, and contortion. It was amazing. Really the best we have seen. Then right outside there was this kazak ger. So we went inside for another little show. The man told us all about the kazak traditions, ger, lifestyle, eagle hunting, and food things. It was really fun and informative. Then we went out to another nice dinner.

The following day we were scheduled to go to a nature reserve but we wussed out and stayed at the hotel. We were super tired.

Our last adventure took us to gan-galuut nature reserve ger camp. This was by far everyone's favorite I think. It had nice weather, right on the river (but no bugs) and beautiful hills and fun things to do. We did a horse back ride for a couple of hours. My horse was being a jerk. But everyone else seemed to have a good time. Jesse was galloping off (not on purpose) but looking like a master horseman. Ken knew how to ride so had a good time and lady's horse was used to following other horses so she was always riding someones butt. We fished, napped, hiked and ate harhog (the one where they put hot stones and meat in a pot to cook). It was really good.

On wednesday back in UB was lady's birthday. We just kinda dinked around the city and then took her out for a wonderful indian food dinner. Sat in a little tent and lounged on the floor pillows. It was fun, good birthday day.

That pretty much concludes the Loar summer vacation recap. We are now headed back to site and hopefully will be busy for a while.

That is all from us...over and out.