Off to the rising sun

We're spending Christmas in Japan where the trees are green, the flowers are blooming and Venita is within talking and touching distance. Japanese food in Japan is heaven.

Mongolia can wait.

Party, party, party!

Aaron's in bed at the moment and it's almost 2 pm Sunday... Our weekend really started Thursday night with some live jazz at a restaurant. One of Mongolia's more famous singers, Naraa, sang a few songs. It was nice to hear live jazz. We'll definitely go back. And they have fish'n'chips...

Glitter

Friday night was the New Year's party* for Aaron's work. We had been warned that the women would be wearing ball gowns and the men tuxes but we hadn't been warned about all the hair glitter. Unfortunately, I didn't pack my ball gown or any hair glitter so my outfit of cashmere sweater and black pants was a little boring. The place was packed with some 250 Mongolians dressed-to-the-nines and two Canadians dressed-to-the-fives. There was food, chocolates and several rounds of vodka going around. There was a lot of dancing. Enkhtuya, Aaron's coworker, dragged us to the dance floor when participants were requested for a game. There we were, in front of a huge crowd, acting out a chicken wooing scene. Aaron was pretty funny. We got second place. The best outfit of the night had to be the woman wearing a wedding dress. There was no mistaking it as anything other than a white, frilly wedding dress. Honourable mention goes to the Jennifer Lopez dress, remember the one requiring double-sided tape? We had a fun night. Mongolians know how to party.

*Most Mongolians don't celebrate Christmas so their parties are for New Year's. The decorations are still Christmasy with Santa and the ubiquitous decorated coniferous tree.

Bloody Party

The party was at our place on Saturday night. It was a Bloody Caesar, Bloody Mary party in honour of the clamato juice I brought back from Canada. The VSO crowd (and a few non-VSOers) filled our apartment. Many of our guests had never had a caesar (caesars being Canadian) before last night and the majority quite enjoyed them. Our "living room" even served as a dance floor. Our guests left and Aaron and I finally crashed at 3 am.

How to carry meat in Mongolia

1. Loose in a shopping bag

If your boss owns a horse farm and kills one of his horses on the weekend, you may find yourself carrying horse meat home on the Monday. The meat will come in an ordinary grocery shopping bag slightly smeared with blood and will contain various cuts of meat, including two ribs. You will be told of the healthiness of horse meat before being sent on your way. You will walk the fifteen minutes home with a bag that clearly contains meat and you won't be able to contain your smile while thinking: "Look everybody! A foreigner is carrying a bag of meat!"

2. On your shoulder

Toss a sheep thigh over your shoulder and be on your way. Pass by a herd of cows on a busy street.

3. In the back seat of your car

Kill and clean a few sheep then pile them in your backseat--plastic covering sheet optional. Drive to the city.

4. Loose in a shopping bag, take two

Buy some meat at the market. Go to the market's meat grinder and have your meat ground. As you leave the market, the plastic bag handle breaks and you find yourself carefully kneeling toward the pavement to prevent your ground meat from spilling onto the street. You are not entirely successful.

Return to Mongolia

During the two weeks I spent in Canada, Mongolia was a fast-fading memory. Aaron was still vivid but the rest of Mongolia seemed like a dream and it would have been very easy to just fall back into a Canadian routine and not return to Mongolia. But I did make it back.

On the way home from the UB airport, the sun shone bright and the air felt crisp; Mongolia became real again. I was happy to be in sunny Mongolia after Ottawa and Montreal's rain, ice rain and snow.

Beijing is a huge city. I didn't see much because I was exhausted and I got into the city as dusk was falling. The parts I saw were quite modern. We will go there on our way out and explore a bit more.

Aaron uploaded the latest photos; the captions are all his handiwork.

We've been gone for so long

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks; I still am waiting for funding, MC went to Canada and our Internet connection at home went tits up. The last event is why we haven't had a post in a couple of weeks. Actually, probably the last two are why we haven't had posts up in a while. MC is usually the writer while I tend to put up the videos and pics. I quite like the arrangement. So this is just a quick post to show you that MC is in Ottawa right now giving Henry the loving of his life.

When MC gets back I'll be sure to put up some more pics and get her nose to the grindstone to write some more articles.

In case you were worried...

Aaron and his white-flecked tonsils have recovered without requiring surgery or any other drastic treatment like drinking his own urine.

We went hiking again yesterday and now my legs are feeling it. Mongolia is great for pointing and hiking. There are few beaten paths and people just pick a direction and hike. Most of the time, you don't have to worry about a thick forest undergrowth, uncrossable rivers or trespassing.

There's no snow in the city at all despite the below zero temperatures. It's the moisture from the sky that's missing and not the cold. It's weird to have cold weather without snow. It just doesn't feel like it should be cold. There was a little bit of snow in the hills in the more shaded areas on our hike yesterday but barely enough to make snowballs. Barely enough still means enough and I did get hit by a snowball. No snow means sun and it's been great to have such sunny days.

A cute tonsillitis

Yesterday I was told that I have "acute tonsillitis". I guess that means I don't need my tonsils out, but I need to take some medication and rest. For those of you not familiar with tonsillitis, it is the inflammation of the tonsils in the back of your throat. Sore throat + fever + 2 nights of no sleep = grumpy Aaron. I decided to visit the UN doctor yesterday. She said I needed to start antibiotics right away - she thinks it's a bacterial infection. I'm not sure how she figured that out without a swab, but hey, they do medicine differently here. I've been popping some pills for a day and I feel better. Hopefully I'll have the bacteria/virus beat in the next couple of days. The pic is of my throat with some of the pussy infection highlighted for your viewing pleasure.


-AA

Making food

Saturday's homemade buuz tempted me to cook and bake some more. So on Sunday I made buttermilk biscuits, apple crisp and tofu egg rolls (I made the egg roll wraps from scratch too!).

All turned out quite delicious. Side note on the word delicious: in Mongolia, people often ask me: "How's [insert name of whatever I'm eating]? Is it delicious?"

We've had to adjust our recipes a little because the food here is a little different and we can't find everything we used in Canada. Some spices are not readily available, neither is seafood and we haven't seen baking powder yet. If we really wanted them I think we could find just about everything here by looking a little harder but we would also find a higher price tag. There are many meals that used to be staple at the Aaron and MC household in Canada that have not made an appearance in our plates here. We expected this. We haven't made our famous refried bean rollups, pizza, curries and tacos for a long time now. We now often eat oven fries and fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, pasta, rice and stir-fried vegetables with tofu, and cabbage salad.

The cheapest and most commonly available vegetables are cabbage, potatoes and carrots. I used to have a hard time going through a whole cabbage in Canada but here we go through one almost every week!

mc

Terelj - Saturday October 28th

On Saturday, we went to Terelj, one of Mongolia's more famous national parks, with newly-arrived VSO volunteers and two VSO employees. Terelj is not too far from Ulaanbaatar, about 50 kms or so. Ganbold drove us in the VSO jeep.

We spotted some camels on the side of the road just after entering the park and stopped to check them out. Two men were sitting near the camels waiting for people like us to stop and ask to ride the camels. Shelina, barely a week into her Mongolian adventure, decided to go for it.



After Shelina's camel ride we drove on and stopped at a tourist ger camp. All throughout Mongolia, there are tourist ger camps that rent out gers for Mongolians and foreigners alike. VSO had rented one for us for the day. Urnaa and Ganbold showed us how to make buuz, the Mongolian steamed dumplings. We made enough to feed an army.

Stomachs full, a little too full perhaps, Aaron and I set out to explore the surrounding hills. Terelj is rocky. The huge weather-worn rock formations are really beautiful. There was a bit more snow there than around Ulaanbaatar but only in the more shaded areas. Aaron and I climbed around trying to reach the top but never quite made it. We would have needed rock climbing equipment and well, rock climbing knowledge. We met up with the rest of the group near some yaks and climbed another face of the hill.


Then it was time to go home. We spent a quiet evening at home, a little too exhausted from our climb and the fresh air.

How many people can you squish into a microbus?

Including driver and the person who calls out the destination from the door and takes fares? 21.

Last weekend, a few of us visited a friend who lives 30 minutes away from the city centre and the best way to get there is by microbus. Microbuses are essentially minivans. They're privately owned but are usually licensed to operate as a public transportation vehicle. Take a minivan, add a few extra seats and sardine 21 people into it. A ride costs 300 tugriks or 30 cents.



Maija made us Earl Grey and we brought the usual victuals with us: chips, a swiss roll and various pastries. We went for a little walk in her neighbourhood and came face-to-face with huge cows also taking a stroll. They were so close I could have easily hugged a few of them. Instead I just stared into the one eye I could see and walked on.

mc

snow

It snowed Friday night and we woke up to a white city the next morning. Not much, barely a centimetre, if that even. The snow has since melted in the city but it is clinging to the surrounding hills. I feel like I'm in a alpine village. It's really pretty.

See Venita's reply to my post on Tokyo's weather.

Outdoor gym

There is an outdoor gym just outside our flat in Ulaanbaatar. It's often busy in the morning or after school. The gym equipment is quite interesting....Russian made I think.

-AA

Chinese for dinner

The VSO Volunteers had their last supper together and we grabbed the above vid. It's not that exciting besides the cool us of the Lazy Susan.

-AA

The sounds and smells of Mongolia

The car horn
In Ulaanbaatar the sound of the car horn is omnipresent. I've heard the honks of New Yorkers and Parisians but this is nothing like it. In Mongolia, the car horn is an expression of the driver's personality. The drivers will rig their car horns to sound like a lullaby, like an oncoming train or like personal outrage. Drivers love their horns and will use them at every opportunity. Night rush hour is a symphony.

The sh-sh-ch
My favourite sound in Mongolia is the sh-sh-ch sound that Mongolians make in conversation. Sometimes a Mongolian's voice will soften and my ears cannot hear beyond the sh-sh-ch-sh. I don't know yet what words they're saying but it's soothing.

The singing army
One night last week, Aaron and I went to bed early. I fell asleep promptly but Aaron was still awake when he heard distant singing outside. The singing got closer and louder until it woke me up and we rushed to the window to see what was going on (Aaron rushed, I stumbled around for a few seconds feeling the shelf for my glasses then finally joined him at the window). About 50 men were marching up our side street in perfect unison both in step and in tune. Their voices were strong, loud, beautiful and were reverberating on the building walls. They marched out of our sight but we could still hear them minutes later. Who were they? A singing army? Singing, marching roadworkers?

The meat and dairy products
Sometimes, Mongolia smells of dairy products. It's the salty milk tea boiling, the yogourt and cheese fermenting. A quick meal for Mongolians consists of a bowl of salty milk tea with meat dumplings.
Sometimes, Mongolia smells of meat. Mutton, beef, horse. If you bite into a dumpling, watch out for the hot, fatty juices that spray out. Get these juices on your jeans and you'll smell Mongolia for days on end.

The wild flowers
In the summer, the countryside smells of wild flowers and fragrant herbs. It's really pleasant to walk around and smell the tangy sage smells and the different flowers.

The coal and wood fires
In the cooler months of the year, homes not connected to the city's centralized heating grid use coal and wood to heat their homes (both felt and wood homes). The ger districts, Mongolia's equivalent of suburbia, go on for kilometres in most directions around the city. These districts have no large buildings, just felt homes, wooden homes, kilometres of wood fencing and hundreds of dogs perpetually barking. Ulaanbaatar lies in a valley and the smoke will often hover over the city. The coal and wood smoke smell is not a bad smell it's just different from the wood fires of Canada. I don't think the coal fumes are the healthiest ones to be inhaling.

mc

Yes, we are finally working.

Aaron and I have been working for three weeks now. It feels like forever already. I found a job as an English teacher in one of the local universities. I teach the future doctors and accountants of Mongolia. So far, it's kept me entertained. I think I keep the students entertained too. They don't quite know what to make of this Canadian woman who covers herself in chalk and mimicks actions and animals to make up for her poor Mongolian language abilities.

Aaron's been pretty busy. He'll post something soon.

Mongolian TV

We have a small TV in our apartment with some 40 channels. There's a bunch of Mongolian channels which are pretty undistinguishable from one another as of yet. The highlights in programming include news, talk shows (not the trashy kind), a big brotherish reality show and dubbed Desperate Housewives. There's also one or two all-music video channels. I love the videos. They usually follow a storyline with girls upset with boys or vice-versa.

We had BBC News for a while but then it just disappeared. Channels strangely move around on our TV. We also have a knowledge network in English and a Chinese movie channel that subtitles instead of dubs over English. Then there's a few random Korean, Chinese and Russian channels. Korean soaps are big here. Russian MTV is annoying.

When there's a power outage, the TV resets itself and we have to reprogram it. That's usually when channels go missing or move around. And that's when the TV reverts to black and white. For the first few weeks, we thought we had a black-and-white TV. Then we noticed the channel and volume graphics on the TV were green.

This was MC's inventory of her TV channels. Thanks and good night.

Uuchlarai!

Step on someone's foot here and you'll find yourself shaking hands with the person you just stepped on and saying sorry, uuchlarai!

What, we have to work?

Well today is the start of the second week at my job. Marie-Claude has been working at a school (forget the name off-hand) since last Wednesday. She is teaching English to 17 year olds and was also hired for 'International Relations'. I don't think she has any idea what that is, but I'll let her add her own posts about that.

Thus far I have had little time at my job. I don't actually have a desk/office so I when I am at work we generally go on field trips. The trips are a little strange actually. Well, the first one not so much. On Tuesday last week I went with my translator (Tuya - who happens to be a Gynecologist), a head doctor and my two counter parts, to a Hospital that is more advanced with IT infrastructure in UB. We all piled into an Isuzu Trooper (same model of truck as my parents have) and headed off to the hospital. The

My second field trip consisted of Tuya (my translator) and me getting a ride in the ambulance to the fifth main building of the Chingeltei Health Unit. It is over 2 KM from the other cluster of four buildings. I'm not sure how I'm going to get it hooked up to any type of WAN yet. But that's why they pay me the big bucks. Just a second, I'm volunteering!

-AA

Centralized heating to a whole new level

September 15th is a big day in Mongolia. It is the day the residential centralized heating is switched on. By centralized, I mean the whole city minus the ger districts. Huge pipes run through the city carrying heat (I'm guessing in the form of hot water?) and heat all the apartment blocks and other buildings. For commercial buildings, October 1st is the big day.

One of the volunteers here is a construction expert and he told me it's not a bad way to do things. They use the heat overflow from the city's power generators. So instead of having multiple cooling towers, the heat is sent through a system of pipes blanketing the city. Most of these are underground but sometimes you'll see the pipes peeking out in certain locations. A gift from Soviet engineering.

Our apartment has been pretty warm so far. We'll give you a status report when the temperature dips below zero.

mc

A hike, public transportation and other random notes.

We went hiking a few weekends ago with some veteran volunteers. They know a lot more Mongolian than Aaron and I ever hope to learn. We took a "taxi" from downtown to our chosen hiking spot, the hills just south of the city.

A note on taxis
There are official taxi companies here but people also stand on the side of the road and put their hand out and solicit any private car for a ride. If a driver feels like making a little money, he or she will stop for you. The fare is calculated by the number of kilometres on the odometer. It's pretty cheap too. Everybody does it from women with children on their way to school to the odd foreigner. (Note for my mom, Linda and all other mom-like figures in my life: I won't do this alone no worries.)

Back to the story:
So that's what we did last Sunday, stood on the street put a hand out and a car picked us up within 30 seconds. There's a spot on the south side of the city with a massive gold buddha, and a Soviet accomplishment monument on top of a hill. We checked those out and then hiked off to a nearby hill. It was more of a urban hike than anything since we could see the city at all times spreading out in the valley. Beautiful panoramic views. One of the hills we climbed has a massive drawing of Genghis Khan painted on it. It's like the Penticton sign for those who've seen it but instead of letters it's the face of an ancient ruler. The drawing is more impressive from the city than from atop the mountain we climbed. There are a lot wildflowers and fragrant herbs in Mongolia and we saw some on our hike.

We went home by bus as one was hanging out on the corner when we came down. Buses here are old, slow things. I hadn't noticed just how slow until that Sunday afternoon. They're cheap though. 200 tugriks or about 20 cents. I may be taking a lot more of them in the winter...

Note on money:
There are no coins here! No toonies or loonies to weigh down pockets. The smallest denomination is 10 tugriks (1 cent) and the largest 10,000 (10 dollars). The bill size changes with the denomination. I'm getting used to finding the right bill from my wad of bills in a timely manner.

mc