Christmas Time is Here...

12/26/2014

Well winter officially “started” here.  Winter has been here, with temperature hovering in the negatives. We have now entered the first of the 9 9’s as Mongolians like to call it. Here in Mongolia winter is classified into 9 sets of nine days. Mongolians in the countryside didn’t always have the luxury of knowing the date or time so a set of “standards” were set that herders used to determine where they were in winter. Here they are:

 1st 9s: Vodka made from milk freezes.

2nd 9s: Normal vodka freezes/congeals.

3rd 9s: The tail of a 3 year old ox freezes and falls off.

4th 9s: The horns of a 4 year old ox freezes and falls off.

5th 9s: Boiled rice no longer congeals and freezes.

6th 9s: Roads start to become visible through the snow.

7th 9s: Hill tops appear from beneath snow.

8th 9s: The ground gets damp.

9th 9s: Warmer days have set in.

The 3rd and 4th nine are supposed to be the coldest and then it is supposed to warm up after then. However, don’t let this list fool you. It will be well below freezing until April. 

To celebrate winter starting, Jen and I bundled up and went for a walk to the river. It was actually surprisingly sunny and warm when we did the 6 mile round trip walk. The river was completely frozen in some parts, where we boot skated, and then melted through at other points. It was really beautiful and nice to actually get outside of the buildings and enjoy the fresh air. It has been brutally cold here for the past couple weeks so I rarely leave my apartment. Because of this I have a lot of time to read and peruse the internet. Here are 7 interesting tidbits about Mongolia that I have learned from chats inside my health department and hours spent on the internet, laying on my radiator for warmth.

1. Mongolia has 13 horses for every citizen.
2. Mongolia has the world’s lowest population density. Just 2 people per square km. The U.S. has 35.
3. Mongolian’s tend to only have one name. They differentiate from other people by using their father’s first name as a “last” name. This means people’s “last” name changes with each generation. There is no family name that is passed down.
4. The top sumo wrestler in the world is Mongolian.
5. Mongolians on average consume 26 liters of alcohol per person per year. Of that, only 1 liter is beer. Vodka and fermented mares milk make up the rest.
6. Mongolia is home to the only truly wild horse. Here they are called takhi but are known as Przewalski’s horse around the world.
7. Mongolia still has outbreaks of the bubonic or “black” plague. Mongolian’s hunt marmots for their meat and sometimes the flea’s on the marmot pass the plague to humans. That is why when cooking the marmot, they literally blow torch all the fur and skin off.

Now onto Christmas…. I was able to skype with my Nana, my parents and my sister on Christmas morning. I opened present sent from my family and a stocking sent from my 1st grade teacher, Miss Francato! I am so blessed to have such caring people in my life. Christmas morning was spent dancing around my apartment with my kitten to Christmas music. Around 1pm, I got a call from my director, asking me to come to the Health Department. I had taken the day off, but I knew she must have a gift for me. I quickly got dressed and ran over there. I walked up to her office, where she had a beautiful cake and card waiting for me. My Christmas gift. It was wonderful. I celebrated Christmas with my site mates, listening to Christmas music and watching movies. Our real Christmas party will be on Sunday, when all our soum volunteers can come in for dinner. Although, I had a lot of fun, I am so happy that this is my last Christmas spent away from family!

On Christmas Eve, I went into my Health Department bearing gifts for my coworkers and my director. I brought in a big bowl of candy canes as well to give all the soum doctors who traveled into the city for their annual reports at the Health Department. I had given my main counterpart, Ariuk, gifts for his three daughters. He rushed home to give the gifts to them, and sent me these adorable photos on facebook, thanking me for the gifts! (I finally figured out how to add photos to this blog)

Every December, all the soum doctors have to report to the Health Department to give them their statistics and annual reports. This means, that my Health Department doctors have two weeks of receiving reports and finalizing the reports to be sent to the Health Ministry. So I have no actual work to do at the health department right now. It is a welcome break. I just go to work to plan and research health trainings I want to do the coming months and use the internet. Haha. Another volunteer in Mongolia and I are trying to start a DARE like program in the schools. We have contacted the DARE company in the US and they have agreed to help us set up a program here! In Mongolia, drinking, smoking and fighting are all huge problems plaguing every aimag. There is no program in schools to help diminish this and police officers are feared and hated. I would love to set up DARE in the schools, not only to combat all the bad behaviors, but to also develop a strong, trusting relationship between the schools, students and police officers. People do not trust the police hear and therefore never call them when they are in trouble. I want to change that. I want the Police Officers to become role models for the community and I am hoping setting up DARE in the schools could do this.

Buddhist Ceremonies and a Light Bulb moment

12/17/14

Great news in the life of Brittany…..The plastic and foam worked! My apartment is exponentially warmer than it was before! I now can properly seal windows and doors. Another skill gained in Mongolia.

Yesterday was a Mongolian holiday, the name and meaning does not really translate into English, the best answer I could get about the meaning of the holiday was that one of the gods set aside one day for his mother to be celebrated and yesterday was that day. Meat is not to be eaten on this day and everyone in the community visits Bulgan Mountain (the sacred Buddhist Mountain in my town) to light candles to pay respect to the god and his mother. Last night, Will and I joined my Mongolian friend and her family at the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain we purchased floating lanterns to let off at the top and her mother brought many candles for us to light. Once we reached the monastery on the mountain, we had to grab a rock and circle this large bell three times, hitting the bell with the rock as we walked. This rid us of evil spirits. We hiked up the snow covered side of the mountain in the dark with hundreds of other people, to light a candle and put it down on one of the many rocks. As you light the candle, you are supposed to make a wish. The mountain was covered in hundreds of flickering candles, it was gorgeous. Looking up at the mountain from the street you could just see lights flickering on the mountain and floating lanterns filling the sky. It is so hard to properly describe the beauty of the candles scattered across the mountain at night. Once we lit our candles, we made our way back down to the midpoint of the mountain and it was time to let off our floating lanterns. A group of young boys ran over to help us light the lanterns. It took an army of children and a box of matches to get them lit, but how amazing it was to watch them float away into the black night. After our lanterns disappeared in the sky, we hiked back down the mountain and I went with my friend to her grandmother’s ger to take part in her family’s celebration.  I was welcomed by her entire family and a table full of vegetarian food.  One of her cousins had just had a baby, and I got to hold her for most of the night. She was so precious, swaddled in a million blankets, rope tying the blankets around her tiny body.  The young children all had ashes drawn in a line down the bridges of their noses and on their fore heads. I explained to my friend that in the Catholic religion, we also wear ashes on our foreheads on a special day and that we do not eat meat on certain days as well. It is really interesting to see the similarities between the two religions.

At 10:30pm, we all filed out of the ger to light the 1008 candles that her grandmother had made out of sheeps’ fat. The candles were in a circular formation, and had to be lit from the inside out. Once all the candles were lit, we all walked in a circle, holding prayer books, chanting the Budhhist mantra “Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ“ over and over until all the candles burnt out. The mantra Om Mani Pädme Hum is easy to say yet quite powerful, because it contains the essence of the entire Buddhist teaching. When you say the first syllable Om it is blessed to help you achieve perfection in the practice of generosity, Ma helps perfect the practice of pure ethics, and Ni helps achieve perfection in the practice of tolerance and patience. Pä, the fourth syllable, helps to achieve perfection of perseverance, Me helps achieve perfection in the practice of concentration, and the final sixth syllable Hum helps achieve perfection in the practice of wisdom. I was given one of her grandmother’s prayer books to carry on my wrists, while my hands were in prayer position. The 1008 candles created a bonfire of sorts, which kept us warm as we circled and circled the candles until they burnt out. When the last candle burnt out, we went back inside the ger to eat more and sing out of the prayer book. Luckily, most of the song was just repeating the same lines over and over, but changing the number in the line. So for the song we sang 100,200,300…all the way up to 3 million. It was hypnotizing hearing them sing the lines over and over. I kept shaking my head to stay awake. After the song was over, the grandmother handed out gifts to everyone, including me. When I first arrived at the ger, I had given her lemon poppy seed bread I had made (thanks mom for the bread mixes!) which everyone loved and kept calling it “America’s Bread”. 

While we sat chatting in the ger, one of the little girls came over and sat on my lap and began playing with my hair, studying it and then finally asked “Why is your hair yellow? Are you from Korea?” All the adults began laughing and I told her no, I am from America. She looked shocked and said she really thought I was from Korea and did not believe I was American. The whole night she referred to me as the Korean. This brought me back to the time when I received my Mongolian ID card and it said I was a citizen of China....Do I really look Asian? Haha.

12/22/2014

This weekend we had a sleepover at Jen’s. We made dinner and watched movies. Then woke up and cooked breakfast together. It was nice to hang out with the original crew again, Jen, Will and I. After, we ate breakfast, Jen and I bundled up to go on a walk to the river. It’s a 6 mile round trip, which we never dared to do last winter, but it was such a beautiful day out we decided to just do it. Half way through the walk there we were ripping off our gloves and hats, enjoying the sunshine on our faces. When we arrived at the river, most of it was completely frozen, so we decided to do a little boot skating. It was so much fun. We were enjoying the Mongolian winter for once, instead of cursing it.

In 2012, the country suffered a dzud. A dzud describes a series of natural disasters, an extremely harsh winter that follows a very dry summer. Mongolians thought that this winter would bring another dzud, since the summer was so dry here; most of the summer we were in a water emergency, a lot of the wells had dried up, as well as the rivers and streams. Luckily, I do not think it is going to happen this winter, the temperatures have not been dipping that low. The 2012 winter was spent hovering in the -40s with heavy snow fall. It is a combination of a summer drought and a severe winter that has hardened the ground, making it into an impenetrable layer, making it impossible for livestock to feed. About 5 million livestock, about 20% of life stock in the country, were killed, in turn impoverishing their herders. The herding families in the countryside had no food and no way to make money. Livestock herding, accounts for 40% of all employment in Mongolia. More than half of the 21 provinces in Mongolia were declared disaster status. The harsh winter made it impossible to travel, find food or seek medical attention. Infant mortality in the 12 hardest-hit provinces jumped up to 60% in January of that year. One of the families affected by the dzud, was my best friend Gerlee’s family. Her family lost more than half of their livestock, animals they depended on for food and money. She told me that when the dzud happened, her family was forced to borrow money from people in order to survive. There were piles of frozen animals in their fields that could not be eaten or sold. Disease is common during a dzud, because of all the animal carcasses in the fields. Four years later her family is still suffering from the effects of the dzud. Her family no longer has herds of horses or cows, like they once did. The horses and cows need more food than other smaller live stocks, so for now they are just herding goats and sheep because if a dzud should occur, these animals need less food, so are more likely to survive on less food. There is so much more money in beef and horse meat, but at this point they have not recovered all their losses, they had to take out loans from the government in order to buy more sheep and goats. The problems with dzuds are that they are unpredictable; many summers here are spent in draughts, so it is not uncommon to have a dry summer. So they can’t use draughts as a predictor for a dzud that winter. 

I recently wrote this email to my country director, the training director and country deputy officer after reading an article with the following quote. My email is now being put in the weekly newsletter, the new volunteers next year will receive it and being sent to Washington DC. In my director’s words “Wow! Nice!  The message you share is always most powerful and meaningful when coming from a PCV for whom the light bulb has gone off!  Thank you very much for this.  Your insight and willingness to share it exemplifies the strength of any PCV’s service.”  Pretty cool!

Here’s part of the email where I addressed the article I read:

Hello All,

I recently read an article with this quote in it and thought I would share it. It really resonated with me. Especially after being a resource volunteer at the Health IST and listening to some of the volunteers talk about their experiences at site. A lot of them were feeling like “failures”, only 3 months into being at site. I think it is really important to keep this statement in mind and I wanted to share it with you, maybe it would be a good idea to be in an email sent out to the volunteers. Maybe it could inspire some of them or change their attitude towards their purpose in their aimags and soums.

“Service is ... different from fixing. ... Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you   to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment on life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. ... When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness themselves for the first time. ..." - Rachel Naomi Remen

I think that it is important for Peace Corps volunteers as well as people aspiring to have a career in international development to remember this. Serving others, is not fixing them; it is helping them grow and reach their real potential. A lot of the time, in Peace Corps, you see things that you want to fix in your country, whether it is a counterpart you wish to fix or a large health concern. Realistically, we are not going to be able solve those “problems”. We are not Mongolia’s saviors. We are here to help our counterparts and community members grow and to teach them skills that could possibly improve their work and in turn improve their country. We are not here to fix, we here to serve; whether it be a school full of children, a hospital full of doctors or just one disabled woman in the community. Sometimes that one person is the only success you may see in the two years of service, but to keep in mind that it only takes one community member to start a change.

It is the second thing I have had published in the newsletter!

Health Club and Special Olympics

12/11/2014

Yahoo messenger. Do you remember yahoo messenger or AOL instant messenger back in the day? Well it is ever so prevalent here in Mongolia. My coworkers use Yahoo Messenger to chat with one another from their offices. I finally broke down and decided to download it, so that I too could be involved in the chatter. We shall see how this goes. I may end up regretting this move. I much rather just go to their offices to chat, since my Mongolian typing skills are not great, and I usually mime out a lot of words I do not know in Mongolian to get my point across. But, it sure is fun creating away messages once again! Back to the middles school days, it fits well with the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC being played all day long in the shops. We are still back in the late 90’s early 2000’s here and I am not mad about it. Reliving the boy band craze that I have never given up (shout out to 1Direction..I love you!)

At work, I am collaborating with several doctors at the Health Department to start a “Healthy Futures” club. Essentially, it is a healthy lifestyle club, where the members create small mini groups inside the club: walking groups, exercise classes, sports groups, hiking groups, Zumba, Biggest Loser Competition; whatever interests they have that will keep them active throughout the winter and spring. I think it is a great idea. There will be a small membership fee for some of the groups, the money collected will go towards a specific cause. This winter’s cause is poverty stricken children. The money will be donated to buy winter jackets, boots and food for children whose families are having money struggles. On Monday, we set out to all the local organizations and schools to present the idea and sign people up. I am in charge of teaching a Zumba class once a week.  The classes will start in January.

Also, starting in January will be my Health Club at School 4 with my site mate who works there. The school doctor and social worker reached out to me, asking if I could help begin a health club for “chubby children”, I told them I would be happy to do a club, but it would have to include all types of children, but I would make exercise part of each club meeting, if they are truly worried about some of the children. My idea is to each month pick a different health topic, and have the club members design posters and activities for the school children on that topic. There is this awesome international movement going on now in developing countries called “Grassroots comics” that I want to bring to the school. Taken from the website: “The Grassroots Comics movement is a social venture aimed at empowering the rural populations by providing them a medium of social awareness, which is both simple to create and understand. We go to remote areas and educate the people on how they can express their ideas and thoughts through comic drawings. These people then create their own short comics portraying their issues, and we distribute their works.” So each month the kids would work to create a comic that would deal with one health issue plaguing their community. The comics would be hung up in schools, the health department, hospital and stores around the town, to create awareness in a creative, fun way. Two volunteers in another aimag have begun to do this at their school and they said the results have been fantastic. The kids really enjoy the project and community members are speaking about the new comics hanging on the walls. If you type in Grassroots Comics into google picture search, you can see all the awesome comics created by children around the world. A lot of them are pretty impressive!

12/16/2014

This past weekend Arkhangai, Mongolia held its first Special Olympics. My site mate Jen and I set it up with the help of my Health Department, FLOM and her school. This year, Ulaanbaatar (the capital) held the first ever Special Olympics in Mongolia. It was a momentous occasion, Mongolia recognizing the talent young disabled athletes have in the country. This is a huge strive for a country, where its disabled children and adults are hidden away in homes, not able to attend schools or community events. As Mongolia develops, so does its human rights and attitudes towards minority groups. To be a part of this change is amazing.

On Friday, my Health Department Nutritionist and Training Manager went to FLOM (Finnish NGO for disabled people) to conduct a nutrition training to the athletes and their parents. 13 athletes and their parents learned about the food pyramid, healthy snacks, correct portion sizes, the importance of vitamins and how to stretch properly before exercising. The athletes and their parents were split up, the adults received a more in depth nutrition training, while the athletes learned new stretches and played a few games with us volunteers. Once the nutrition training was done, the parents joined the athletes to learn about the food pyramid and proper portions. Each athlete and his/her parents were given an envelope full of food pictures they had to paste onto their own food pyramid poster that they would bring home with them. The second activity after they learned about portions was to draw meals on paper plates for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack according to what they learned. The parents and children seemed to enjoy the activities and left with a little more knowledge on how to eat healthier. I wanted to make sure that the nutrition training provided information about how to eat healthy with the foods available to the families in my aimag. I know we are supposed to eat 4-5 servings of fruits a day, but when fruits are not available or too expensive for most families to buy, this is an impossible standard to meet (I barely eat one piece of fruit a week), so I wanted to just focus on things that they could control, like salt and fats intake. I think my nutritionist did a great job doing just that.

Saturday morning, was the day of the Special Olympics competition. A couple days before the event, we were told that the original place we booked for the event was no longer available. They decided to give up our space to a paying group and therefor left us without a venue. Luckily, my site mate was able to talk to her school and they let us have the gym Saturday for the competition; so when we showed up Saturday morning to find a community volleyball competition going on in the gym, we were shocked. We went over to talk to the leader of the volleyball competition, and he said they paid for the gym and would be using it all day. We tried explaining that we had also booked the gym for Special Olympics, but he would not budge, his competition would go on, we would have to find another spot. We were shocked, why would he not give us the gym for an hour, it was for Special Olympics!..but knowing the general population’s opinion on disable people, it was really not that shocking. Why would they give up their gym time for a group of people they believed did something wrong in a past life to deserve their disability. We did not know what to do, the athletes and their parents would be so disappointed, we were so disappointed, but then two of our friends from Fairfield Café waked in the door. They were a part of the volleyball competition; we ran up to them and told them the problem. They said they would talk to the leader again; this was a competition for all the Christian churches and organizations in the aimag. We were stunned when we learned the churches were telling us no, they were churches after all! Finally, 30 minutes later, the church leader agreed to give us the gym for one hour. We began setting up the gym and lightning speed. An hour after it was supposed to start, the Olympics began. One of the private schools preformed dances for the opening ceremony and we had a mini torch ceremony, where all the athletes paraded around the gym. The athletes competed in Track and Field events. The smiles on their faces as they ran their laps around the gym were so special. What was even more special was the parents and community members who came to watch the events. They were all on their feet cheering for the athletes. For most of the athletes this was the first time they have ever received praise for their athletic abilities. The entire hour my face was plastered with a smile and at many points, tears in my eyes. The love the parents had for their children was obvious, in the cheering and hugs after every event. It was beautiful to see the athletes and their parents interact with one another. For that hour, I think everyone forgot that these children had disabilities, it was just a regular sports competition, which more and more community members piled in the gym to watch. Once all the events were over, we walked to Fairfield Café for lunch. After lunch, it was the awards ceremony. While all the medals were being labeled, a volunteer who came to help form another aimag and I played with the athletes. We taught them how to play ring around the Rosie, a hand clapping game and then did a bunch of races (each race you had to run like a certain animal). It was so much fun. Each child was awarded medals for the events won, 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place. Once again, a first was happening for many of the children, they were receiving medals. Every time their name was called, they would run up to receive their medals and then run back into the arms of their parents. So even though the morning started off a bit iffy, the day turned out to be successful. I feel so privileged to have been a part of it all.

Last night, I went to the market to buy foam and plastic to try to seal my windows. The apartment has been freezing, when I go to bed and wake up, I can see my breath inside it. So I looked up online how to seal windows and set out for the supplies. I had no idea how to ask for window sealers, so I went into the black market and went up to one of the stands and said in Mongolian to the worker “I have bad windows. I am so cold in my apartment. Help me”. The nice woman brought me to an auto supplies stand (I would have never looked there myself) and told me what to buy. I got back to my apartment armed with a bag of foam to be shoved into the cracks and plastic to be taped up to help with the draft as well. It seemed to have worked somewhat. I am going to try to put up another layer of plastic this afternoon. I no longer feel the draft and it is no longer snowing inside of my apartment. So those are two major pluses. I hope that when I go back for lunch this afternoon, my apartment will be noticeably warmer!

Thanksgiving, Nectar List, IST training and fur babies.

11/17/2014

This week I have been working with the Adolescent Center Doctor to come up with a plan for World AIDS Day, which is December 1. We decided on doing trainings for all the 9-11^th graders at the local schools the week before World AIDS Day and then having a big awareness celebration on the 1^st. There will be a volleyball competition at the Sports’ Center, in which school students will play against each other. The Health Department will be there wearing condom costumes and handing out pamphlets to students and their family members. The posters that the children made during the training will also be hung up on the walls in the hallways for the community to look at during the competition. At the end there will be a big parade, all the students were told to wear red and each decorated a red paper ribbon to wear during the parade. Unfortunately, I will not be there to help with the trainings, since I will be in UB training the new PCVs.

My sister made this wonderful list on her blog, called a Nectar List. The idea surrounding the Nectar List, is to make a list of important/exciting things you have already accomplished in your life. Everyone is constantly wishing they could do more things, travel more, etc, making bucket lists. But it is just important to look back and be happy with the small things you have already accomplished in your life.

Here is my current and growing Nectar List:

1.      I’ve watched the fireworks in the United States, Mongolia and Greece. Each and every time I am mesmerized by their beauty against the dark skies.

2.      I’ve cheesily danced around a field with my Mongolian friends wearing a traditional Mongolian Deel at 3am.

3.      I’ve cried from happiness when I finally ate a fruit salad in Greece, after spending nearly a year and half without fruits.

4.      I was on a Division 1 Rowing Team in College.

5.      I’ve been serenaded by a Mongolian Pop Group in the middle of their concert.

6.      I’ve taken many showers with baby wipes and bowl of water.

7.      I’ve shot-gunned beers in the showers of my college dorm with friends.

8.      I’ve watched the sunset over the ocean while riding a ferry boat in Greece.

9.      I’ve gone kayaking in the lakes and rivers of upstate New York.

10.  I have mastered countless raps breaking any “white girl” stereotype (not to brag but some include Kanye and Jay-Z’s Ns in Paris, all Nicki Minaj songs and Busta Rhymes verse in “Look At Me Now”).

11.  I have danced on bars and jumped into the arms of my amazing friends in numerous Buffalo clubs.

12.   I am 1 of the 7000 people chosen each year to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. (over 23,000 apply each year)

13.  I can speak Mongolian and read the Cyrillic alphabet.

14.  While in Mongolia, I lost my uncle, being thousands of miles away from family, I was able to grieve, cope and learn just how strong I am. This is something that I could never have imagined doing before.

15.  I hiked a volcano in Greece and jumped off a boat in the middle of the ocean to swim to the hot springs near it.

16.  I figured out how to navigate and use public transportation in foreign countries without speaking the language.

17.  I was able to hold my Dziadzi’s hand and talk to him the last minutes of his life. This day had a profound impact on my entire life. It was the strength and courage he showed in his last hours that I will never forget. I try to emulate him every day. I also got to see just how strong and amazing my Nana is.

18.  I’ve smashed plates and danced in the streets of Athens with my best friend and waiters we met that night.

19.  I held a real hunting eagle outside of a Buddhist Temple.

20.  I’ve watched a Shaman in the woods preform a ritual.

21.  I successfully navigated me way from one side of the world to the other by myself through 4 lay overs in different time zones.

22.  I was told I was trying too hard by a man in a plaid shirt, at an emo punk rock concert, when I dressed in a skull dress and converse sneakers. I had the time of my life at that concert.

23.  I know what it’s like to dance on top of a roof in the snow without shoes on with great friends.

24. My daddy taught me how to shoot a shot gun and I have gone to the shooting range a few times with him to practice.

25. I was lucky enough to be taught how to play the clarinet and piano by my Dziadzi (grandfather in Polish) and how to sing and act by my nana.

11/23/2014

I took the GRE yesterday in Ulaanbaatar. I did so well, a huge improvement from the time I took it back in the States, which I am super happy about. The day started off a little iffy. I arrived at the university it was being held at an hour early, to make sure I could find the room and get situated before it began. I walked into the main building where it was supposed to be and asked the guard at the front desk where the test was. He had no idea. I then began asking students if they knew where the “English College Test” was being held, since none of them new what the GRE was. As I was wandering the building, a woman from Turkey ran up to me and asked if I was there to take the GRE too. We began to search for the testing room. After exhausting all the options people in the halls, we found a janitor who told us where it was. We ran up four flights of stairs, at this point we had about 20 minutes till the test was about to begin. We went to the room, to find out that was the location for an English seminar, not the GRE, but they told us go to the library, the test was on the 6^th floor. So we left for the library, hiked up the 6 flights of stairs to be told once again it was not there. At this time we both began to get a bit paniky, she more so that I. I knew that I was in Mongolia, and more than likely the test would not even start on time. It was ten minutes past the time, when we finally were directed to the right room to take the test. We were both drenched in sweat, quickly filling out the forms. Luckily, we were able to start the test late, without a time penalty.

11/26/2014

                I met with a recent graduate of the UAlbany PhD program for Public Health last night. I have been in contact with several UAlbany staff, professors and admissions officers for the school of Public Health. One of them told me that there was a recent graduate and a professor working in Ulaanbaatar, doing Environmental Health Research and that I should contact them to meet. I had dinner with one of them last night at her apartment. It was so wonderful to hear about her positive experience at UAlbany and to hear about her interesting work she is doing in Mongolia. Her research is focused on lead poisoning in children here. What are the odds of UAlbany graduates being in Mongolia, conducting research while I am here?  It is so awesome. I officially submitted my applications to all the schools today. So hopefully I will hear back soon!

12/9/20144

                I celebrated Thanksgiving surrounded by 15 fellow PCVs. The American Embassy donated a bunch of food to us, Turkey, side dishes and desserts. It was all so delicious and it was so nice to just be with friends for the evening. Several Mongolian counterparts came as well, we each took turns describing how we celebrate Thanksgiving with our families in America and shared the tradition of saying what you are thankful for before eating dinner. This year, more so than last year, was really emotional. I think that we all miss our families so much , but at the same time we realized that this was going to be our last Thanksgiving in Mongolia as well. Each volunteer said some variation of being thankful for the Peace Corps and how it has transformed our lives, at that moment, reality hit that we are 8 months away from being done with our service and for some, never seeing Mongolia again. It is the weirdest feeling being so homesick for America, yet dreading the day we have leave Mongolia. The night was so much fun.

                                What I am thankful for:

1)      The Peace Corps: It has given me a once in a lifetime opportunity to grow as a person and really has helped me to be thankful for the life I had back at home.

2)      Friends and Family: American and Mongolian. I am so blessed to have such supportive, accepting and loving people in my life. I am so lucky to have found a second family in Mongolia.

3)      Clean Air, Water and Heat:  Living in Mongolia has opened my eyes to the troubles of the developing world. In the winter the air pollution is bad here, that people wear masks and trying to run outside is impossible. You can taste the coal as you breathe. I am never going to take clean water and air for granted again. Heat. You don’t know what real cold is until you can’t remember what warm feels like. This is 8 months out of a year in Mongolia. As I write this now, it is -30F outside and the radiators here cannot keep up with that. Apartments are freezing and painful. At this point, My body is in a constant state of shivering. I no longer remember what being warm feels like.

4)      My Health and Body: I will never again complain about my body. I am grateful to have a body that allows me to go for runs, hikes and play sports. A lot of the time we are told that our bodies need to be changed in some way, but after living in Mongolia, where everyone is so accepting of all types of bodies, and just happy with the body they have, it makes me never want to “hate/shame” my own body. It is capable of wonderful things and it is healthy, what more could I ask for.

5)      Mongolia: The country has changed me in ways I never have imagined. The people here have made me a better person and I will be forever grateful for this. I can only hope that I make a fraction of the impact they have made on me on them.

I love being in UB and enjoying everything the city has to offer. Everyone who was in town for Thanksgiving and IST went out for dinner at the Indian Restaurant and then we did a mini pub crawl the day after Thanksgiving. Another amazing night that ended in drinking Long Beach Ice Teas (like a long island ice tea, but with sprite and blue coloring instead of coke) on top of the Blue Sky building, overlooking the city.

                From November 25-28, I had prep for IST. Sarah (the other health trainer and I) met with Zorigoo (director of the Health Sector) to develop our plans for the next week. Each day we met at 9am and worked until 7pm. Because we have the best Post staff ever, each morning we were greeted with bagels, cream cheese!! and real coffee. For lunch, we had peanut butter sandwiches and yogurt, and for dinner they took turns making pies for us to eat. It was amazing. All the food we had been craving. Although the days were long and spent sitting in the office, we had so much fun coming up with the lessons and activities. I really got to know the PC staff even more and realized how amazing each one of them really is. I have a whole new respect for the staff. They are so hard working and determined to make the Mongolia Post one of the strongest posts in Peace Corps.

                December 1-6 was IST (In-Service Training) for the new volunteers. There are ten new health volunteers this year, each one of them came with a counterpart. So Sarah, Zorigoo and I trained them on topics such as Behavior Change Models, Needs Assessments, Action Plans and Monitoring and Evaluation of Health Projects. The purpose of IST was to have them practice going through all the steps of developing a project with their CP and at the end having a developed idea and plan they can bring back to site to start working on. The sessions went great and I had a fabulous time facilitating them, but the real fun was after sessions were over. The community youth development volunteers had their IST with the Health volunteers. So we were all in the same hotel for the week. My friend Hannah and I shared a room, which ended up being a penthouse suite; complete with two large tvs (which got American TV channels) and a huge bathtub. One of the nights we dedicated to Spa night, we took turns taking a bath, then did face masks and drank champagne in the coziest white robes ever. The next night all of us trainers curled up in our king size bed and watched E! news and Kourtney and Khloe take the Hamptons. Oh how I have missed trashy tv. Another night, we turned the other trainers’ room into a giant blanket fort and projected a movie onto one of the sheets. The last night, we celebrated by drinking champagne again and playing bananagrams.  It was so much fun being able to hang out with my fellow M24 volunteers, but it was also great staying up late chatting with the new M25 volunteers and hearing all about their experiences. The food at the hotel was delicious; the breakfast buffet was the highlight of the week. I ate breakfast sandwiches every morning. One morning they even had smoked salmon to put on them!

                What really made the week was the relationship I built with the Health Director Zorigoo. Sarah, Zorigoo and I spent every day together and it was just the best. Zorigoo is one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life. She is so sassy and hilarious, yet takes her job so seriously. She is amazing. A one of a kind person who the Peace Corps is so lucky to have working for them. It is people like her that are going to change Mongolia for the better.

                Right before I left for IST, I found five kittens outside of my apartment door. I took two in. One for me and one for my site mate. They are the most adorable fur babies ever. So tiny and furry. It is so much fun to watch them play together and they are amazing cuddle buddies. My kitten is named Fitzgerald, Fitz for short (named after my favorite author and the hunky president in the show Scandal) and my site mate’s kitten is name Huckleberry, aka: Huck. I put a box and a blanket for other three kittens in my hallway and my neighbor was feeding them, but unfortunately, the cold was too much for them. Sadly, they all passed away, but I am so glad that I was able to save two of them. There was a point when I thought I should just adopt them all but then I sat in my apartment and realized it would be absolutely ridiculous to have five cats in my tiny one room apartment. I wish I had room for them all!