Ploofle

(I have pre-dated posts)

Today it’s been cloudy all day. Oddly enough, it seems to have warmed up the area - even with the gusty winds out here. It’s rather amusing to watch the plastic bag tumbleweeds roll by over gravelly dirt. Concerning my daily walk - at the corner of the town square, where I cut through on a combination sandy/concrete slab sidewalk, there’s been a pipe that’s not bursting, quite, but rather halfheartedly fountaining. It makes a huge puddle that I cross via a few red brick stepping stones that are magically there - maybe this pipe dribbles regularly.

At lunchtime Stacey pointed out a small stage being set up on the square - perhaps there will be a concert of some sort - I’ll need to keep my ears open.

Work today has been pretty interesting - even though the survey is only half-proofed for accuracy, I’ve started setting up SPSS for data entry. It’s been educational from both a software (I’ve never really used SPSS or any other statistical package in a “serious” manner) and survey design standpoint. Apparently at least the basics of biostats and epi are useful for someone like me who never thought they’d actually do research. The main barrier now is the fact that I can only read very neat print Mongolian and there are a lot of other: or open-ended questions in this survey; right now I’ve marked em with a sentinel value (or whatever that is in stats-land) as either “illegible/don’t understand” or “no response” as needed. Also some people from UB swung in who are doing research on adolescent and general reproductive health; they seem quite nice and are at the moment conducting a focus group selected from their survey of some sort.

Mongolia is full of startling sounds, btw. Maybe it’s because it’s so generally quiet - not much background noise - that I jump a lot. Or maybe it’s that I generally have little to no clue what’s going on except by sight, so those non-people-talking sounds scare the crap out of me. Kids here in Khovd have those cap pistol rounds, except there’s no pistol - they throw them on the ground and they pop super loud. And cars here seem to honk randomly - kind of like when I rode my bike in the US and cars would honk as they passed - as if you couldn’t hear em coming - and freak you out. And then the horns here are horribly non-standard - some sound like wheezy accordians, some sound like normal horns but at a weird pitch, and some literally are sirens.

At night the cars with the fanciest-sounding horns tend to have little lights, like those cell phone accessories back in the day to make glow-y antennae.

The internet has been grumpy this week, too, due to the people not being in the office where the gateway server is. In other words, it’s turned off. I need to sneak in sometime next week and set it up to turn on automatically at 8am, as it’s frustrating to know that you likely have communications waiting that you just can’t see.

I think I may post up my random spiffy spreadsheet this weekend, as well as some photos, as that’s what I plan to do this weekend. That and I hear the next couple weekends are a very nice time to walk to the river as the leaves on the trees there are turning.

Tags: mongolia

I found out the quick google maps search doesn’t put you in Khovd aimag center proper, but rather the literal center of Khovd aimag, and I am certainly not in the middle of a mountain range.  Well, not exactly.  Bah, here: googlemaps hybrid view of Khovd.

That is all.

Tags: khovd, maps, mongolia

Hey all,

I’ve updated yet again my address - which will continue to be updated as I move next month into a new office - but hopefully others won’t be subjected to having to copy down items in Cyrillic for customs or whatever as I translated the address.  There are also little tips for mailing stuff if you all like guidance - to those who don’t - you get the “Moh” pinky finger shake from Mongolia.

This weekend involved puppy-sitting, purple guitars, and pancakes.  All of it just about was pleasant, too.  You see, Jason got a cute puppy named Daisy, but she’s small and had stomach issues, so most of my puppy-sitting was watching her closely while she was awake and whisking her off to the tiled bathroom floor strewn with newspapers if she much as began a vague squatting-like motion.  That and I made bread which wasn’t too bad.

Between those two things I pretty much filled up Saturday.  On Sunday I got to talk to Bonnie about her 10k race and post-race events and drama, and that was really really nice.  She finished with an average 11 min mile or so I think, which to me at least is astounding…I would pass out bigtime.  It cooled down some from the light rain that passed through Khovd, and in some of the mountains you can see a good amount of white, too.

Stacey invited Peace Corps folks over to her place for pancakes, and I brought the yogurt I had bought from the ladies in my apartment’s courtyard the day before as well as the remainder of my bread.  The pancakes, made by Andy mostly, were of the chocolate blueberry cinnamon vanilla variety and pretty tasty.  Woo pancakes!  I finally got to see all the Khovdpeople too, except those who are out of town…but still spiffy.  After that people went off in various directions; I went off to see a photo exhibition about globalization that was most unusually on the square area in front of the bright red theater.  The pictures, I thought, were of eh-quality, but it was really neat that they brought this stuff so far out - The pictures were laser copies laminated onto foamboard it seemed, so it helped keep em intact.  Andy had seen em back in Bangladesh, I believe.

I then met up with a couple other PCVs to go on a more extensive market exploration, specifically where you can find meat and produce.  In the process of waiting, I managed to buy a dark purple (fading to black, if that’s any help) guitar for about $20.  Who knows how long it’ll last, but I found myself very happy to noodle around.  I miss making music things, I guess…or at least making musical-like sounds.

They showed me the meat market which is dominated by beef and mutton.  You can check it out too by looking under their card tables - the heads or forelegs are often laying about.  The vegetables were really nice, too - I saw in addition to the normal stuff bell peppers, shallots, and fresh dill.  Buying random things took up a lot of energy and time, and then I made more bread.  Tonight I’ll make lentils to eat with the bread, and maybe I’ll have some pseudo-nutella.  I only have a few more things on my list, and then maybe finally I can decorate the place with photos of you plus maybe some Kazakh wall hangings which are awful nice…

Tags: food, mongolia, Music, photos

I am determined to be, if not a domestic goddess, a rustic Montana militia survivalist-type. To that end, I have a variety of food-based projects I intend to accomplish:

Hard cider
Ok, so this isn’t an essential to life for everyone, but I miss it and there *are* apples out here. It’s hard to find recipes online that don’t refer you to buying some kit from America, though, and I *think* I might need to find some sort of special yeast to get it going - bread yeast, while available, won’t cut it.

Bread
Assuming my biscuits haven’t been re-cursed, I’d like to learn how to make proper bread - you know, the kind that rises and has holes inside from that. When I was staying with Suzie the breadmaking was getting there, but once I procure a small oven here I’ll be back in business with something to eat as well as occupy my mind when there’s nothing else to do.

Dried and canned things
It’s harvest time in Khovd and relatively many things are available. This won’t be the case several months from now so I better start storing up - even though I love getting my American dried fruits and all I don’t want to be always asking for stuff. I’m thinking at this point apples, nectarines, and tomatoes. According to a little manual I have eggplant is also viable. Canning things I’m not so excited about, mainly because I haven’t accumulated a store of glass jars through various purchases here. I need to check out the market some more to see what’s available, but there’s also the option of storing stuff on my balcony once it gets below freezing, especially meat and root veggies.

Brats
I have all the ingredients for a great bratfest - onions, beer, buns, mustard - except for the brats themselves. Conceptually sausages don’t seem difficult - meat, fat, spices, tada! - but I’m not sure how to negotiate the “can I buy those pig intestines off of you?” for casings and the fact that again, most instructions seem to think you own your own automated sausage stuffer and electric meat grinder. I think I need something called a…sausage stuffing horn? to do it by hand. This sounds like a more early winter activity anyway, as I have to refrigerate em somewhere (like my balcony).

Just about any of these could possibly make me sick, but I’m up for it for the greater good of, erm, culinary exploration. I continue to tread carefully on the internet here - I move slowly and carefully so as to not startle it and heaven forbid that I attempt to load more than one page at a time.

Tags: food, fun, internet, mongolia, projects

Here I am finally in Khovd. I flew in about 1pm on Tuesday and it’s been a whirlwind since.

The flight was surprisingly nice given some of the stories other PCVs were telling about domestic flights here. It was the size of a commuter jet or so with rows of 2 and 3. The flight was about 1 1/2 hours, and we even got an in-flight meal of a hyam (kind of like fatty goat bologna) sandwich and some cookies. I spent my time talking to my boss, looking out the window, and re-reading Robert Jordan books. I’m re-reading them mostly because they’re all in the PC reading library and because they take so much time - which I figure I’ll have a lot of. The scenery out the window was interesting - mostly uninhabited with a few white gers dotting the steppe. We flew over the edge of the desert too - you could see the sand dunes as they gradually transitioned into foothills and then mountains. Right around Khovd were some pretty tall mountains that have snow on their peaks year-round. The mountains in general here seem to be pretty old - they look more like eroded mountains you see in the Appalachians - but bare too. Maybe the erosion has been accelerated by the wicked wind they can have out here, though.

Landing in Khovd we pretty much walked off the tarmac and were out the door. Actually, the UB airport was maybe 1 1/2 times the size of the Lubbock, TX airport and the Khovd airport was definitely smaller than Love Field in Dallas. They hauled the luggage out and handed it out by number - so pretty important to not lose your claim tickets. In domestic flights they weigh literally everything so with my backpack of electronics and all I tipped the scales at over 150 pounds >_< I probably left the US with about 115 if they had weighed my carry-ons so I’ve been procuring stuff here left and right. I mostly blame the books and the heavy-duty sleeping bag PC issues, though I know I’ll be grateful for both. Essentially, about $160 in overage charges, of which PC paid for about $120.

The scenery here is kind of similar to what you might imagine on Mars - reddish brown gray sand and dirt and gravel that leads into brownish barren foothills that leads into craggy and barren reddish mountains. There are non-Mars parts too - there are rivers around here, and along those I presume there are green things and definitely small trees, not to mention actual human habitation. Fewer livestock roaming about than in Sukhbaatar.

My apartment is pretty nice. It’s essentially a bedroom and a kitchen, both about the same dimensions. I have the essentials - sink, stove, tables, bed, TV with cable. The extraneous stuff, like a fridge, I don’t have. Also interestingly, the heat here doesn’t kick citywide on until mid-October. It’s pleasant outside and I don’t mind, but since the hot water is linked to when the heat comes on I don’t have that either. When I get my hot pot thingy for boiling water I may take an improvised bucket bath - or maybe I’ll try bathing normally in the evening when presumably the water in the pipes has had all day to warm up a bit.

Anyway, that’s about it for life now. Working hard to settle in and looking forward to the weekend…

Tags: airplanes, khovd, mongolia