Ploofle

Well, according to my friend Sarah this blog is on a directory of PC peoples’ blogs, so the cat is out of the bag if it wasn’t before.  For those people I don’t know, welcome – and let that be a warning to you all!!

My host family was very happy to see me yesterday – I kind of snuck out the day we left because it was so early and I didn’t want to wake them up.  My teacher (and my host mom) confirmed that they were all sorts of sad that they didn’t get to send me off.  My mom said something about food – I couldn’t tell if it was they wanted to send me along with food, or if they wanted me to buy something in the big town – but I missed it, whatever it was.

They gave me slushy coke and yummy treats when I got back, and I brought back some photos I developed from the big city for them, so all was good.  Today I’m sure I’ll be back in the daily grind when I get back home.

It was really nice to have fast computers in-town.  I got to call Bonnie and even my dad for a bit on Skype with a reasonably decent sound quality.  Leandra didn’t get a real call per se, but she got a voicemail…eh, well it was nice to be able to talk to people and send out emails!!

I’m also in town today to go to the bank.  However, when we all went there, we weren’t allowed to go in, so I don’t know what will happen.  During Naadam pretty much everything but small stores close down for the week, so it’s today or not at all for my living allowance.  I have some saved, but I don’t know how much I’ll need during a special festival week.

I hope I get to see all the main events – the wrestling, horse racing, and archery.  Naadam time varies from community to community, so some of the other (Peace Corps Trainees) PCTs have already had Naadam and said it was a blast.  Some of the guys have also be already thoroughly schooled in wrestling. Heh…alrighty, likely little to no communication during Naadam, so expect a hiatus for now.  As they say here (phonetically), Cayhan Naadamaarai…

Tags: family, mongolia, peace corps

Pictures tomorrow, as I didn’t have time to upload em today.  Skype is 2.1 cents a minute to the US, so I may try to make more random-hour phone calls, especially to folks on the east coast, as the west coast hours are closer to like 3-6am when I’m on over here at 5pm-9pm or so.  I did well on my language test – I’m at the minimum for working in Mongolia now with a Novice-High – and I have 5 more weeks of language instruction, so I’ll make the most of it to be good when I get to my site and need to work with people there who may or may not be English proficient.

It’s super hot at the moment here - but maybe that’s the internet cafe as there are so many computers that are warm.  For the 4th we got a special dinner of Mongolian-made pizza (not as sketchy as Japanese pizza, but no coastline here, either), hot dogs (with an option of mustard-jalepeno kick), watermelon (common here), and juice (woo!).  I wolfed some of it down but I’m scaling back a bit so as to not get sick, too.

It’s probably been in the 100s even at my host site.  The flies are still pretty bad, which
we conjecture it being due to all the livestock.  Someone told me yesterday that there is
something like 32 million head of animals here compared to 2.5 million Mongolians or so,
and that the horse to human ratio is something like 13 to 1.  Woo buddy, as one of my sitemates likes to say (and he’s gotten our Mongolian language teacher to go with it too)

We had a really good session today on HIV/AIDS in Mongolia and the general situation in the region - plus who is working on it and
what they’re doing.  It may have been one of the best health sessions I’ve gone to yet -
at least, it reminded me the most of the briefings we’d get at UW about situations and
was very professional (not that the others weren’t! I just like my statistics and specifics).
I hope when I learn more that I’ll post the nitty-gritty observances on my more public health-oriented blog, as it’s been sadly neglected of late.

I got a package from Bonnie today with some great items - gummi bear vitamins, fruit
leather, sunglasses, and a watch - as well as a sweater, a bedbug, and more - plus a sweet
note.  I miss her so much.

I miss other folks too and expect to write (for real) personal emails tonight when I get
back to our hotel.  That and take my first running-water shower in the past month.  With hot water, maybe, even!

Tags: mongolia, peace corps

I woke up, studied, made tea in the outside house with a wood stove, ate a bit of food, weeded, ate meat off the bone, spilled a large quantity of hot soup on my leg, and left for here in a microbus with about 16 Mongolians.  woo. almost time to go home again…

Tags: mongolia