Halloween and the beginning of winter

10/22/2014

Last night, I had dinner with the Vice Consul to the American Embassy. It was fun and it is always nice when the Embassy people come to visit and take us out to dinner. We all live such interesting, crazy lives, the stories are always lively and entertaining. Will and I then went back to my apartment to make Chicken Pot Pie for my counterpart, Ariuk, whose wife just had their third baby girl. He had told me how overwhelmed he was trying to cook for his whole family, so Will had the great idea to make them a meal, so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. It was the first time I have ever made chicken pot pie, and it was surprisingly easier than I thought, I might even make it for myself one of these days.

On Monday night, my friend Gerlee came over to give me birthday presents. She brought Airag (fermented mares’ milk, which I actually love) and the most thoughtful gift. I love coffee, so she bought me this giant coffee mug, which she had pictures of me printed on it, from when I visited her family’s home in the countryside. There is pictures of us hiking, herding animals, milking cows and a huge picture of me holding the hunting eagle. It was so extremely nice of her!

Since being back at work, I have been working on coming up with training programs for the soum doctors on the 21 topics the Health Ministry put out as their new campaign for the year. 21 healthy behavior changes, so my director put me in charge of overseeing the program in our Health Department. I have to come up with trainings and community activities for each, which will keep me busy for the next couple months. Also, she wants me to work with the hospital to help develop a better  training curriculum for their nurses. On top of those two very large projects, I am putting on a Halloween party at one of the local schools and directing a Christmas Pageant at that school. Not to mention, I am currently in the middle of applying for grad school and studying to take the GRE next month.  So these next couple months, I will be in lockdown. Work and study, 24/7. Although, I am still making sure I go for runs or hikes every morning before the temperatures get to low!

11/5/2014

                Last Thursday, October 30^th, was my site mate’s birthday. We went out to dinner with his counterparts. The female teachers he works with are hilarious and by the end of the night, they were telling us dirty jokes about Mongolian men. At first, we didn’t understand what the one was talking about but after repeating the joke a second and third time, it was clear what she was saying. We were all shocked but laughing hysterically, I have never heard a Mongolian woman talk like that. It was great. We, Peace Corps volunteers, then went back to my place to hang out more and eat the cake Rebecca and I made for Patrick, but since we all had to work in the morning, it was an early night.

                On Halloween, Rebecca and I went to School #2 to help judge their English Halloween Competition. The English teachers put together a Halloween themed English completion. Each tenth grade class had to prepare and preform in English a greeting, song, dance and Halloween skit. Rebecca and I were supposed to be in charge of picking a winner, but they ended up judging themselves and we just had to speak about how Halloween is celebrated in the United States during the opening ceremony and then give our comments about the performances during the closing ceremony. We just got to sit back and enjoy the creative dances and skits! The kids did a great job and their make-up and costumes were down right terrifying. I have no idea how they did it, but there a couple students who actually gave me a weird feeling looking at them. The faces they painted on were insane! Two of the sixth grade classes were invited to watch, they were too cute. They performed an English song and were wearing homemade masks. All the students really got into the Halloween spirit and it was so much fun to be a part of it!

                Halloween night everyone came back over to my house to watch Paranormal Activity and eat the left over cake. We got a call from our Korean and Japanese friends who volunteer in our town, saying that they were having a Halloween Party and wanted us to join them. So after the movie, we walked over to one of the apartments. When we opened the door we walked in to an apartment that had pumpkins and bats hanging from the ceiling and a giant Halloween poster on the wall. There was a table full of food and drinks in the middle of the room, and they were all busy face painting each other. My face was painted like a butterfly. We listened to music and talked in a mix of English and Mongolian, most of the time in Mongolian, since that was the common language among us all, till the early morning. It was a great night with awesome friends! I love when we all get together.

                Saturday morning was spent cleaning my apartment and doing my laundry. We all met for lunch and to watch Hocus Pocus during the afternoon. Then Rebecca and I left to go to the market to shop for the dinner we were cooking for Patrick’s birthday dinner. We had decided on beef with roasted potatoes and carrots, with a side dish that was made of cabbage and onions. We cooked dinner at Jen’s apartment, since I don’t have a stove. The theme of the dinner party was Murder Mystery. We had found a ready-made murder mystery story for the party that we were going to act out and try to solve after dinner. We had all dressed up, had props and booklets to get into character for the night. There were six rounds of clues and questioning. By the end of the sixth round we all still had no idea who killed the character and we were all wrong when it came time for us to guess who did it. It was awesome and I am so glad we put it together and the food turned out great as well. I want to throw a murder mystery themed dinner party when I get back to the States. The night eventually ended with full out dancing to Beyonce videos, like every night does that we are all together. It’s like our thing.

         Sunday morning, I went for a nice hike and then met up with my friend Gerlee. I went to her grandmother’s ger for lunch/dinner. Her grandmother is so full of life and spirit, I love spending time with her. She is always making me laugh and feeding me way too much food. This weekend we are going to go shopping for fabric together and then she is going to make me a winter deel to wear for Tsgaan Sar this year. Gerlee and I then went to Rebecca’s ger for a girls’ night. Last weekend was full of celebrations and went by so quickly!

                At work, I have just been studying for the GRE, working on my grad school apps and personal statements for each school. I have decided to apply to UAlbany, George Washington University, Boston University, Drexel, NYU, Hunter and Yale (the #1 Public Health Program in the country, may be a far reach but they have a close relationship with Peace Corps and have a fellowship program for former Peace Corps volunteers, so you never know) for my Masters in Public Health with a concentration in Community and International Health Education. I am so ready and excited to start this next part of my life! I have put most of my projects on hold until Nov. 22 when I take the GRE and submit my applications, and then I will get back to really concentrating on my trainings here in Mongolia. One thing at a time and lucky for me most of my counterparts are on vacation or busy auditing all their own work, so they are not interested in working on anything else as well. The only project I am actively working on is starting a Health Club at one of the local schools in my town with my site mate Rebecca. We have some great ideas that we will be pitching to the school doctor and a few English teachers at her school. Hopefully they will want to be involved! Our first topic we want to address is Anger management/ aggressive behaviors. There seems to be a lot of physical fighting in her school among the students, so we want to first start with that and show them ways to positively express their anger and how to discuss problems instead of punching one another. So we are now developing lessons and trying to incorporate self esteem and positive mental health practices into them.

11/6/2014

                Today, I found out that I was chosen to be an IST (In Service Trainings) Trainer for the new group of PC Health Volunteers. IST happens three months into service at your permanent site and is a time when Peace Corps brings all volunteers and one counterpart each, to a week-long training. During IST you have trainings all day that are aimed at helping you to succeed at your host country agency and help foster relationships between you and your counterpart. All the trainings are conducted in English and Mongolian allowing everyone to participate in the discussions. It is a great time to start developing projects with CPs especially because you will have someone there that can help translate your ideas to your counterpart. My IST experience was amazing and helped me to understand what my Health Department wanted out of me and how to work with the doctors at my Health Department, I hope that the new volunteers will find their IST just as valuable. Health IST this year happens during Thanksgiving, so unfortunately I will not be with my site mates to celebrate, but I will be with the new volunteers and some of my fellow M24s who are also trainers at a nice hotel (hello running water and showers), so I think it will be just fine!  I will go in 3 days early to plan the trainings with Peace Corps staff, which coincides perfectly with my GRE test date. I already planned on being in UB those days anyways, so once again everything works out perfectly!

11/9/2014

Yesterday, one of the new volunteers who lives in a soum about two hours from here came in to do some food and clothes shopping. I of course volunteered to keep her company while shopping. I ended up buying three new pairs of camel wool socks in fun colors, they are amazingly warm. I saw these winter boots I must have in the market, so Monday I will be going back to buy them. They are black leather (cow) and have this grey fur, which the lady told me was from wolf, but I think it must be goat, who knows, once my site mate bought boots and they told her it was dog fur on them. They are kind of combat-esque in style. I am obsessed with them. They also have these zip on leather parts that make them thigh highs. The minute I saw them I was forming outfits in my head, flannel and jeans, it would be very rocker grunge. I can only imagine how warm they will be to walk around in this winter! We all then came back to my ger to watch Clueless, eat ramen and share movies on our externals.

Today, Patrick, Rebecca and I went on a hunt for birch bark. Mongolians often use birch bark to start their fires so I went with them to gather birch for their ger stoves. It was so much fun running around the fields and up the mountains. I was a pro at finding trees that were dry and the bark was easy to rip off. Who knew finding bark would be so much fun! We decided to make Sundays the day we go to gather bark. We then hiked to the top of one of the mountains and sat and chatted on the big rocks. I can’t believe this is my last winter here! I am going to miss all these crazy adventures so much.

Part 2 of 2: Playing catchup on the last couple of months and Greece.

9/15/2014

Last month, I went to visit my friend Gerlee and her family at their ger in the countryside for 5 days. This time I boarded the bus alone, hoping I would remember to get off in the right town. I had never been to her family’s summer location, so I just hoped I would recognize the town when it came up, which luckily I did and I was greeted by Gerlee’s smiling face. We walked to her grandma’s house, where once again I was greeted with smiling faces and ushered into the house to drink ariag.I sat down with her grandma, brother and uncles to drink airag (fermented mares’ milk) as we waited for her other family members to join us. Her cousins arrived and we all piled into the back of her brother’s car and drove to a famous Monastery. It was gorgeous and huge! The monastery is surrounded by 100stupas. We first walked through the museum, which housed pictures and relics of Buddhist History. We then headed outside in the rain to walk around all the buildings. Each temple was extraordinary. The ceilings and walls were all hand painted and had images of the Buddhist gods and symbols all over them. There were huge Buddha statues and paintings inside each temple. The grounds are home to over 1000 images, statues and paintings of Buddha. Each temple was more amazing then the last.

                The rain finally stopped and we left the monastery grounds to walk back to her grandma’s house. On the way out, I saw huge eagles perched on stumps. They were hunting eagles and you could hold one for about 1 USD. I had to do it. I put on the big glove and held my arm up and the bird flew onto it. It was the coolest feeling! They are so giant and heavy! We then drove back to her grandma’s house and went off to the countryside to meet up with her parents and their friends at their summer ger site. The minute I arrived I was offered more airag and soup. After we ate, we went to herd the goats and sheep back to the ger.  Her younger cousin, who was about 7 years old, went with us and decided to ride one of the goats. This goat was so friendly and kept walking right next to us, wanting to be pet. So we picked up the little boy and he sat on the goat and rode back with us. It was adorable. We played soccer when we got back to her ger and I milked a horse, which was my least favorite part of the trip, the horse did not like it and kept trying to kick me. I let gerlee and her dad milk the rest. After we ate dinner, we went over to her grandma’s ger and helped her pack for her trip to the host springs. All the men packed the truck with a small ger that her grandmother would be staying in for a week at the hot springs. The next morning, we all piled in to the back of the truck and drove to the hot springs. It was cold outside so her grandmother gave me a deel to wear.

                As the family set up the ger, Gerlee and I went to the hot springs to bottle mineral water and to drink some as well. We walked across wood boards over the boiling hot water to a section of land that had many mineral springs coming out from the ground. Each little spring was dedicated to a different part of the body. So there was water to drink if you were having stomach problems, eye issues, etc. I drank a ton of the stomach water. After walking around the hot springs, we all jumped back into the truck to go berry and nut picking. It was so much fun. We hiked a couple mountains until we finally found berries to pick. After gathering berries in our plastic bottles, we hiked back down the mountain to eat lunch. Soup cooked on a fire. Once we were finished, we got back into the truck and drove to another mountain pass which is where we would search for pine nuts. I had no idea how one gathers nuts, I thought you just picked them off of bushed like berries, but no…The men climbed the tallest trees and shook the branches, making the nuts fall to the ground. We all ran around with cardboard boxes on top of our heads like helmets, trying to gather as many nuts as possible. I can only imagine what it would like to a foreigner, complete chaos with children 60 feet in the air, jumping and shaking branches. After that madness, we drove to a small town to buy more food and drinks. 

       We parked the truck in the middle of a field and had a picnic as the sun set. It was freezing and I thought that we would be going back to the gers to sleep, so I did not dress properly. Unfortunately, the men drank too much and we were unable to actually make it home. After a couple minutes of attempting to drive the country roads, the driver realized he should not be driving. We pulled over and set up camp in the back of the truck. They laid deels (Mongolian coats) and blankets on the bed of the truck and tied a tarp over it, which did not keep any heat in. After about an hour of trying to go to sleep, we all realized it was way too cold to lay down and sleep. We headed back to town to buy more drinks and food and decided we would party the night away in the field. We blared the music from the truck and pranced around the field, dancing and playing volleyball in front of the headlights of the truck. Here I was freezing, in a giant deel, dancing my heart out and running around a field. It so was weird, but so much fun.  Finally at 6am, the driver was good to drive and drove us back to the gers. Gerlee and I slept the day away in front of a fire, thawing ourselves out from the night before. It was a night I will never forget.

        

10/21/2014

                Greece was incredible! I wish Peace Corps Greece existed. I would pick up and move to Santorini in a heartbeat. Everything I had been craving for the last year and a half was satisfied. I could write a book about my weeks in Greece, but here I will just give you the highlights of each place Emily and I traveled to.

                First stop, Athens. The capital of Greece and a gorgeous little city, made up of brick streets, ancient ruins and hundreds of little restaurants, whose waiters would enthusiastically greet you and follow you down the street telling you to come sit down and eat food at their place. Many times we heard “we have the best looking waiters in all of Athens”, as if I chose my food based on attractiveness, which to be honest, after being in Mongolia for a year and a half, it did appeal to me as they said it. Many times I did do a couple double takes to actually see what the waiters looked like. But in actuality, all I wanted to do was eat my weight in seafood and frozen greek yogurt, it didn’t matter if Zac Efron himself was serving up my dishes or a homeless man, I just wanted the food. The first food I ate was fresh greek yogurt with honey, granola and grapefruit, a chocolate filled crepe and a feta and spinach omelet.  Luckily for me, the resort I was staying at had a top notch breakfast, lunch and dinner buffet, with unlimited wine at each. The wine came from a tap and you could just fill up pitchers or red, white or rose. The first day, I spent laying on the beach and the second, the day before Emily arrived, I spent in the Spa. I signed up for a day long spa package, which included 2 massages, a body wrap and a facial. It was 5 hours of absolute bliss. The funny thing was that those two days, I was so full from eating massive amounts of delicious filling food at breakfast that I was unable to eat lunch and dinner. It is amazing how real food satisfies hunger, unlike rice and potatoes.

                My third day in Athens, I woke up early in the morning and went to meet Emily at the airport. As the flight arrival screen updated and I saw her flight had arrived, I started crying. It was then 30 minutes later I was waiting outside the arrival gate and she walked through the door. I have never been so excited to see someone. After a year and a half of not seeing family or friends, my best friend in the entire world was here and it was overwhelming! We both hugged and cried and hugged and cried some more, thankfully, we were still able to navigate the public transportation system and found the bus that would take us to the Student and Travelers’ Inn. We wondered the streets trying to find the hostel, but we couldn’t find it, so we stopped at a little shop and the sweetest old man gave us directions, not before hugging and kissing us both and telling us to enjoy Athens. We got to the hostel and dropped our luggage off and set out for lunch. Right next to the inn, was a delicious greek restaurant, we ate and then headed off to see the Acropolis. Both of us had no idea what the difference between the Acropolis or the Parthenon was, I thought that the Acropolis was just a nickname for the Parthenon. But once we got there, we figured out all the different buildings, but still had no idea what they really were or what they were used for. Thank goodness for technology and we were able to google what the buildings were used for on Em’s Iphone. I was never a history person. The acropolis was spectacular and it was so cool to be walking around the ancient ruins. The Parthenon was bigger than I imagined, it was huge! After we finished at the Acropolis, we went to the tallest location in Athens to eat dinner and watch the sunrise. We rode up the mountain in a taxi, ate delicious gyros and drank just as delicious wine. The view was spectacular and right before the end of the night we met Erin, who was traveling around Europe and Asia. The three of us then traveled to Santorini and Mykonos together!

                The next morning, the three of us boarded the ferry to Santorini. It took us eight hours to reach the island; once we stepped onto land, a bus picked us up and brought us to our hotel in Imirovigli. The highlight of Santorini had to be the day we boarded a sail boat and sailed to the volcano. We hiked the active volcano as our tour guided told us about the history of Santorini and how the different islands were formed when the volcano erupted. After the volcano, we got back onto the sail boat and sailed to the hot springs. The boat could not dock at the hot springs, so any one who wanted to enjoy the springs had to jump from them deck of the boat into the ocean and swim to the hot springs. It was so much fun!! The captain took my camera and took pictures of us and then a series of selfies of himself. After our time at the hot springs was over, we went for lunch at little seafood restaurant on the water. I had delicious giant shrimp and more sangria. Once lunch was finished, we hopped back on the boat which took us back to the main island just in time for us to jump on donkeys and head up the island to watch the sunset. The donkey ride was hilarious and so much fun, after more than a couple glasses of sangria we were shrieking and laughing the entire ride up the hundreds of stairs. Thank god for the donkeys, I don’t know if we would have made it up all the stairs in time. The donkeys knew the route and trucked up the steep stairs on autopilot. What a trip! Once again, we watched the breath taking sunset, this time drinking champagne in someone’s backyard, while a model doing a photo shoot took place 10 feet next to us.

                Emily and I also rented ATVs to take us around the island for the day, which was awesome. We rode down to the different beaches, explored different parts of the island and woke up early one morning to ride down to a spot to watch the sunrise. Every point in Santorini is picturesque and photo worthy. While on one of trips, we ran into a group of guys who were doing the same thing as us, riding around the island on rented ATVS, we ended up having a wicked fun dinner with them, sharing our crazy travel stories and life as 20 somethings. I never wanted to leave Santorini. But after days and days of moving our departure date (thank god that our hotel room was available and we could tell reception every morning that we were going to stay another night) ahead, we finally got back on the ferry and headed to Mykonos, the party island.

                We were greeted by a women who owned the flat we were going to be renting for the next couple days. She told us how she came to Mykonos 30 years ago from Germany, fell in love and never left the island. While driving us to the flat, she gave us a tour and told us of the trendy places to visit. Mykonos did not disappoint, we had a crazy fabulous night out, dancing and running around the maze like island, getting lost over and over again. Luckily, we made videos of our night out and were able to relive the craziness over and over. After our night out, we needed a day on the beach. We hopped on bus heading to Paradise Island, which was a little bit of paradise. We perched ourselves under umbrellas on big over stuffed lounge chairs and spent the day soaking in the sun and reading. After Mykonos we went back to Athens. This is where we would part, Emily and I going back to Athens on our way to Istanbul and Erin off to Italy to meet up with her mom. After a great last dinner together, we boarded our separate buses and Emily and I were back to Plaka.

                We decided to do a walking tour of Athens, since we had only seen the Acropolis our first day in Athens. We joined in on the 4 hours walking tour of the city and it was awesome. We were able to see all the sites and our tour guide was awesome! After taking millions of pictures we went back to our Hostel to begin packing for the next part of our journey, Turkey! We went to bed excited to head off to the next country but then woke up to the TV in the lounge talking about the new protests erupting in Istanbul, in Taksim Square, the exact location of the apartment we were renting. We began searching the internet for news on the protests, learning that someone had been shot in the head and killed and that water cannons were being used on the protesters. Emily and I decided that we would be fine, we would just not join in on the protests, we were still going to Istanbul. I emailed the owner of the apartment and asked if the situation was actually as dangerous as the news was making it out to be. His reply “ Brittany, they are just protesting ISIS here, it is not unsafe”, I read it out loud to Emily and we both were not sold on his reply, but told him we would still be coming. We showered and headed to the metro with a backpacks on our back, the whole way trying to decide what we were going to do. We really wanted to go to Istanbul but was it worth it. We needed others opinions, we decided to call people and ask them what they thought. No one would give us a definitive answer, we wanted someone to tell us what to do, but they would not, I guess that is what happens when you become an adult, you have to make decisions for yourself. Ugh. Still confused and now really hungry, we decided we still had some time before we had to go to the metro, so we sit down at a café and order large frozen yogurts with a ton of toppings. Naturally, frozen yogurt would solve our problem. We decided we would give ourselves one more night in Athens and see how Istanbul was in the morning, but as we began to digest more and more yogurt, it became clear that we had to cancel Istanbul and stay in Greece. It was crazy to travel somewhere, putting ourselves in danger, we have years ahead of us to visit Turkey. Turkey would have to wait. But now we had another dilemma, where would we go now, we still had several days left to our trip, but we were now bored of Athens (tough life right?) and going back to the islands was out of the question, neither one of us wanted to board a ferry again for 8 hours. We sat there semi sulking about Istanbul, but knowing it was the right decision. Then it hit me, lets go back to the Resort and Spa I stayed at the first two nights. It was amazing and there is a beach. We booked a room at the resort online and within 3 hours we were hopping onto the metro to the airport where the Resort car would pick us up and take us to Attica. This was a superb decision. We bought the all inclusive pass so we could eat all meals and have unlimited drinks for the next three days. We never had to leave the resort complex. The only time we did was to go for runs. The first day we hung out on the beach all day, the second day was spa day, hair cuts, hydro massages, hot tubbing and saunas all day and the third day was lay by the pool and drink all day. The buffets for every meal were amazing. We decided to go back to Athens to celebrate my birthday.

                So trip 3 to Athens, my birthday. I am so happy we went back to Athens to celebrate. We had been talking about getting tattoos in Greece the whole trip and finally decided to walk to a tattoo parlor and get them. Twenty minutes later, Emily and I walked out with small tattoos on our wrists, that were both symbolic of our adventure and messages about how we live our lives. We went to this little restaurant that advertised traditional plate breaking throughout dinner. We were seated right next to the live music and enjoyed delicious Hummus and greek food. We were given plates to throw and yell “Oopa” when we were happy or excited. So much fun. The two men playing guitars sang happy birthday to me in greek and English and the waiter, bus boy and hostman (not sure what to call a hostess who is a man) grabbed Emily and my hands and we danced to greek music in the middle of the street. It was amazing. To end the night we were given dessert, shots of Ouzo and more plates to break. By far the best birthday ever. The next morning we woke and remembered that we would be leaving Greece the next day. We did some shopping and more eating. The next morning we woke up and headed back to the airport. In order to counteract jet lag, we decided we would stay up all night/earl morning in Starbucks and not sleep until different parts of our flights that coordinated with the times of night in America and Mongolia. I had a 17 hour wait till “my night”. I stayed up with Emily until 6am Greece time and saw her off to her gate, crying once again. I then wondered the airport and ended up sleeping on a couch at Starbucks for a few hours, wandering some more, napping again, until finally it was 7pm and I could board my plane.

                IT WAS THE BEST TRIP EVER.