Mid Center Days + Naadam

Last week marked the 1/2 waypoint of the summer. The entire group of trainees returned to the dorm in our town for 3 days of training/fellowship. At the end of the summer, each trainee has to take a Language Proficiency Exam (LPI). Based upon standard criteria, we need to score "novice-high", which means that we can communicate with host country nationals in basic sentences using correct grammar and decent pronunciation (the test is oral in Mongolian). If we don't score that high, we have to have tutoring in the fall and take the test in November. This test is the source of most angst (along with food issues). On Tuesday, we took a practice LPI to see how we were doing and to determine levels of classes. They are regrouping the students and Ashley has been put in the advanced class. I have been told that I will be in the advanced or intermediate...not sure until tomorrow. Is it better to the the dumb kid in the smart class or the smart kid in the dumb class? Wednesday - Friday were full of training, meetings, health evaluations, etc. Some of the classes were helpful (cultural norms at holidays), while others were not. There was a class called "romantic relationships" (dealing with cross-cultural relationships), which even the married couples had to attend. Thursday night was a barbecue and dodgeball game between sites, which was fun. The barbecue was prepared by the PC trainers and I had my first salad since arriving in Mongolia (also beef shish-kabobs and kool-aid). Friday was morning training and the local Naadam events started. We didn't get out of training until 6pm, so we missed it here on Friday. However, almost everyone went over on Saturday. We saw wrestling and the end of 2 horse-races. Fried food was served everywhere and airag (fermented mare's milk) and vodka were passed around. On Sunday, my host family went to UB, so I went to a "horhog" (sheep bbq) with my friend Ryan and his family. It was a fun time (6 hours) and the food was good. Ashley went to a similar event and then her family went to the Chinngis Khan Statue Complex outside of UB. According to her, it looks like an American type monument and was very impressive. On the way back, they stopped in UB and went to another monument. Sunday-Tuesday this week is Naadam in UB. The local events all lead up to the big one this week, which is broadcast on multiple channels. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures this week, so I will try to get something together for the next post.

4th of July in Mongolia

Today is the 4th of July, which has no significance to anybody here except Americans. I tried explaining "large American holiday" to my host brother, but I think it was lost in translation...which is a common occurrence. About 15 of us went to a Korean restaurant for dinner because the large Mongolian restaurant in town was out of food (another common occurrence). No fireworks...just an normal evening here. Also, there is no World Cup soccer on, and the other channels are difficult to understand or in one of the following languages: Mongolian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. On to a recap of the past week: the business group went to UB for a tour of 6 small businesses....very cool and informative. Unfortunately, I also got food poisoning that day....which resulted in 24 hours of misery and 3 days of no food. I am easing back into it (dinner was rice with vegetables). Ashley was healthy this week, but a large contingent of PCers have been sick with food related ailments. On Thursday night, the business class taught English to locals. This was a new experience, but went pretty well. 8 people showed up and had various levels of knowledge. Next week we are going to break into beginner, intermediate, advanced classes. This weekend was pretty uneventful....studying languages, hanging out with friends, watching soccer. We took a run into the countryside and came across 2 large cemeteries, very interesting. The dirt is mounded above the bodies and everything faces south (sacred direction). The weather has been nice, though often hot in the sun. Very few clouds, but sometimes windy which creates dust storms. Hats and sunglasses are required.

Housing Update: I live in a 2 story brick/cement house. It has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Very large for this town. No hot water in the shower. I think the water coming out of the tap is about 33 degrees. I have determined that taking 1/2 gallon of hot water from the sink to finish off an ice shower makes all of the difference. Clothes washing is done by hand, so the standard for cleanliness has been substantially dropped. It only gets washed when it is visibly soiled or smells.


The building with the blue sign (hoosnee delgoor - phonetic) is Ashley's host mom's food market. It carries basics, like eggs, bread, drinks, candy, toiletries, etc. Basically, all of the PCers use her store now. She also takes requests from us for special orders (Haribo gummy bears, cheese). Ashley's apartment building is behind. Better pictures in the next post.





The other place to buy needed items is the white market (picture beside). This is a 2 story "stall" type facility with many vendors. Most of the vendors carry the same general types of products, but some are more specific (clothes, shoes, meat, grains, etc). We usually end up here once a day to look around or shop or practice our Mongolian.





This week is "Mid-Center Days", which means that all of the PC's regroup for 3 days of training, etc. We have our practice language exams on Tuesday...just prep for the end of summer real exam. The training this week is also more specific on a few topics. We also have interviews with our trainers on our cultural integration, host family stuff, and preferences for site placement. Ashley and I don't have any preferences....so we have no idea where we will be. Some people specifically want one location or another, but we are open to anything. Preferences are not always met, so this keeps us from getting our hopes up and then potentially being disappointed. We won't know our site placement until ~Aug. 20th.

Language Continues to Dominate Our Lives

Quick update: I am almost recovered from a sinus infection. I was actually sent to UB to the medical office for review...nothing major, just some medication for it. I did get a real meal out of the trip, a cheeseburger from a joint called "American Burger and Fries". It was a good burger...especially at that time. This past weekend was "GI Issue Weekend"...almost everyone had some sort of GI issue....Ashley and I included (only minor though). Also, school is out for the summer, so the internet cafe at the post office is PACKED....we waited for 30 minutes tonight to get online. There are 6 computers and 14,000 people in this town....not great odds. With our busy schedules, it is not likely that we will be able to wait each time....so the blog updates may be more irregular. The calzone went well...except that it was fried instead of baked (the oven didn't work). No one in this town has ever had mozzarella cheese, so I am going to buy some in UB ($6 for 2lbs). The weather was very hot the past week (upper 90's), but broke yesterday and it has been in the 60's/70's. Language is incredibly difficult for me, but Ashley seems to be doing well. I seriously think it is harder than any calculus that I took in college (including differential equations). We study for a few hours each night and I am totally spent by 10pm. We now know past, present, future tenses and probably 50 verbs...which we can conjugate. Our vocab is growing and a fine example is below: The first week here we went to a Korean restaurant and one of the trainers had to order for us (we couldn't read the menu). We went back on Saturday with a friend and were able to do everything ourselves...including reading the menu (we ate a meat-free meal). The food is ok....but I would pay a lot of money for a good pizza or chicken sandwich right now. I've also been having problems with my water filter (algae), so I have been buying water, which is eating into my tiny paycheck. I don't have my camera with me, so I will try to post more pictures and stories this weekend, hopefully of my host family. Also, next week begins the annual Nadaam festival, which should produce some cool stories/pictures. Take care and thanks for the support and messages.

Things to Watch and to Watch Out For

The past week has been intense...primarily language, technical, and cultural training. We usually start classes at 9am and end around 5:30, then do homework. We're also trying to integrate into our host families and spend time with friends. The language progression has been amazing...we can exchange pleasantries, ask/answer basic questions, and read Mongolian cyrillic, though we still probably don't know the vocabulary yet. We were told that to be "fluent" in a language, you need a working vocabulary of 2,000 words and my best estimate is that we know ~200 words and growing rapidly. Our teachers are very good, but demanding. Even the most experienced language learners are at their limit of comprehension. Host family integration is quite an experience because most of our basic choices are in the hands of people that we do not know well yet (food, sleeping arrangements, community events, etc). Each person is having a different experience and the arrangements are extremely varied (house, apartment, traditional ger). We will get into the specifics in a later post.

Per the title of this post, we have spent lots of time this week watching and watching out for. Per the pictures, the scenery is fantastic and the sights around town are not what we typically see in the United States. We found time again this weekend to go hiking in a nearby forest and below is a picture (notice the trees). We've also been doing a lot of watching of the community, to understand how to culturally integrate and how to technically integrate (our future jobs). Each place is different, so we need to observe a lot and synthesize that into action plans.


The image to the left is a Buddhist monastery in the hills of our town. During the 18th and 19th century, there were over 20 buildings, but the Stalinist religious purges in 1937 decimated the area and left only a few standing. This is one of the very cool sites that we walked to (about a 12 miles round-trip hike).





As you are probably well aware, the primary mode of transportation in Mongolia is walking (at least for Peace Corps volunteers). The sheer amount of walking that we do (many miles per day), requires that we become aware of our surroundings and learn to indentify any potential dangers, so that they don't become a problem. Below is my list of the 5 common things to watch out for while walking (seriously):
5. Animal skeletons (unfortunately this past winter was brutal)
4. Potholes (big enough to bottom a car out)
3. Construction holes that were not filled in after the job was finished
2. Animals (usually cows, but sometimes sheep, goats, horses or dogs) (example picture below)
1. Missing man-hole covers in the road

Food Update: I am starting to want American food, so I have offered to make a calzone for my host family this week. I got most of the ingredients, but one thing that can not be found is Mozzarella or Ricotta cheese. The only cheese is American and it is very expensive. I'll have to make do. Also, fruits (citrus in particular) are very expensive. 1 lemon is the equivalent of $3. I'll let you know next week how it turns out (i'm planning a veggie-calzone because I've reached my meat threshold for this week). By the way, we learned the phrase for "meat-free" food, so the next time we go out to eat, I expect Ashley to try it out.

First Big Update

Ok, so here is the first big update to the blog, with photos.

The first few days were spent in orientation, which is a compact introduction to the country, language, and culture. It also included sessions on health, safety, technical skills (job), and expectations/responsibilities. These sessions are used as a crash-course for host family living. After 5 days of orientation, we were split across 6 different cities (aimags or soums), based upon job type, and then each person was placed with a different host family. The host family accommodations ranged from traditional ger to stand-alone modern house. Justin was placed in a house and Ashley in an apartment, though only about a mile apart. The host family living is used to get us up-to-speed on the culture and language. It also teaches us useful life skills for Mongolia, like building fires and handing washing clothes in a tumpan (small plastic tub).
Food: many of you want to know the food situation, so here is a brief update. We have been eating traditional Mongolian food and have been pleasantly surprised. The food is based around meat, dough, and some vegetables (carrots, onion, potato) and some meals have included tomato, cucumber, cabbage. Most of the food so far has involved boiling or steaming and many are soup based. Funny story: Ashley ordered "vegetable soup" at a local restaurant and it was beef stew. The other soup on the menu was "meat soup", which meant it had no vegetables. Overall, we are being fed very well.
Outdoor Pursuits: As you can see from the picture, our town is surrounded by large hills and valleys. We have taken a few hiking trips up some of them, with the largest being around 900 feet elevation gain. The base altitude at my house is 5,044 feet (close to Denver altitude), and the thin air really affected me running/hiking the first few days. We seem to be getting more accustomed to it each day. Most of the landscape is barren (no trees), but we did find a small forest behind a neighboring range and all of the trees were pine with short, tight (close together) needles.
Language: This has been the hardest thing for me so far. Mongolian is a very complex language and has multiple sounds unlike anything in English. I am feeling good about reading cyrillic, but long words are still tough to sound out. Now that I can read the word, I have to look it up in a dictionary to see what it means. Fortunately, there are some very similar sounding words to English (pizza, engineer), but most are not (supposedly there are 12 words for dung, depending upon the animal, though I have not been able to verify that yet). Each days pushes our knowledge of the language and it is amazing how far we have already come in 1 week (we can exchange pleasantries and identify common items/food).
Well, I need to head home for buuz (traditional Mongolian steamed dumpling), so enjoy the pictures below.

In Mongolia and Training

We arrived on July 5th and have been in language, culture, and sector (job) training everyday. It has been very busy, but very cool. We are still trying to adjust to the jetlag and diet changes. Just wanted to say a quick hello. I'll spend more time posting pictures this weekend (there is a line waiting for this computer). Take care, Justin and Ashley

Packing....

It's been almost a month since the last post, so here is a quick update.

We have completed the restaurant bucket list, except for PF Changs (scheduled for tomorrow). All of the places lived up to our expectations except for Aiello's (disappointing pizza).

We are in the middle of packing up the house and recycling, free-cycling, and giving-away as much stuff as possible. It has been quite an exercise, but has gone well. It's amazing how much stuff we have..... I was reading a book about Mongolians and since many are still nomadic, they are able to construct or deconstruct their entire house (ger) in less than 2 hours! We are looking forward to living more simply.

Travel Plans: we received the official itinerary for our initial travel arrangements and here they are:

Philadelphia to San Francisco

San Francisco to Seoul

Seoul to Ulanbaatar

this amounts to approximately 22 hours of air travel and 6,700 miles

Blog Issue: I had incorrectly set-up the comments section of the blog, so any comments submitted before today were not saved. Therefore, please resubmit your comments (if you want to). Sorry for the inconvenience.