12/30/2012
Last night was my
work's New Year's Party. Mongolians sure know how to put on a great
party filled with many performances and hours of dancing the waltz
and jumping to techno music. When I first arrived I was shown to the
room where we would all toss our coats into one big giant pile and
then we all had to line up on the top level of the club. Our names
were then announced and we were greeted with hot wine shots by some
of the staff in charge of setting up the party. The HD director was
announced first, then my name. We had to walk down the two flights of
stairs on to a red carpet to get our picture taken in front of a back
drop of a winter scene. Three cameramen were present taking pictures
at different angles as the announcer called the other staff members
down. After the pictures were taken, one of my coworkers made an
opening ceremony speech about New Years and the Health Department.
Shortly after the speech, the first course was served, which
consisted off two small salads and some type of cold meat. Fruit was
then served. Everyone chatted and snacked on the fruit until the
second course came, which was a traditional Mongolian soup, which was
then followed by the main course, a meat and rice dish. All the food
was really delicious. Once we were finished eating a variety show
planned by my coworkers started.
The first act of the
night was some of the women dancing and lip syncing to a Mongolian
Pop song. Then another group of woman performed a dance dressed as
the 7 Dwarfs. I am not sure why they were dresses like the dwarfs,
but it was a cute dance. Next came three guys (one being my
counterpart) who were dressed in tights and a white tank top. They
did this dance with ping pong battles where they jumped around and
then covered each others male parts (not sure what is appropriate to
call them online haha). It was strange but funny, apparently it is an
act from a SNL like show in Mongolia. After that a couple more people
sang and then the DJ started playing music and we all got up to
dance. Mongolians just dance in this large circle. So everyone is on
the outer part of the dance floor and then they push people into the
center of the circle to dance and show off. It is very middle
school-esque. At first this used to make me uneasy, being thrown into
the middle of a circle of people and forced to dance in front of
them, but now I just own it and dance my heart out in the middle of
the circle. Mongolians love corny dance moves, so I just break out
every cheesy move I know. It is so much fun to just dance like a
total goober. I love dancing like a total fool! We danced until
midnight, the only break we got was when the hired entertainment
began. The health department had booked a Mongolian Pop singer to
sing a couple songs at the party. She was great and her voice was
fabulous! We had just popped like 10 bottles of champagne before her
set began, so the floor was wet and slippery, during her first song
she strutted across the floor and slipped and fell. Hard. But she got
up like a champ and kept singing and went on to do 4 more songs
flawlessly. During the last song, which was a love ballad, everyone
got up and did the Waltz, the singer came over to me and asked me to
Walts with her while she sang. Sort of awkward to have her singing in
my face, but it was a nice gesture and at the end they all cheered
for me and clapped. There were many more Waltz song through out the
night and I became very good at the Mongolian Waltz, by the end I was
twirling all around the dance floor moving from one mans arms to
another and eventually all my female coworkers wanted a turn to, so
there I was waltzing around with them too. It was so much fun and I
think that it really helped me to gain stronger relationships with my
coworkers!
They had raffles
through out the night and during the first one, I won a tin of
Mongolian “Biscotti” and a bottle off Champagne. After that
raffle, it was my turn to sing and dance for them. I ended up talking
some of the women I work with to sing and be my back up dancers. I
picked an easy song so that they could learn it and sing with me. I
went with We Wish You A Merry Christmas and taught them little dance
moves to do during it. Everyone clapped along and began to sing with
us, it was great. They told me next time I must pick a longer song
and that for Doctor's Day (a holiday that celebrates the work Doctors
do in Mongolia) I must learn a Mongolian pop song and dance to
preform at the celebration. Now that I got my first performance in
front of them out of the way, I am excited to sing and dance some
more! It was so much fun.
1/15/2014
The internet has not
been working here and I have been involved in so many things that I
have not had time to blog or even write down my daily feelings and
adventures in anyway. The internet is still slow. Think back to when
dial up first came out, this is what I have been working with the
past two weeks. Loading a single webpage literally sucks the life out
of me. Haha. With that being said, I will try to some up the past two
weeks in this post.
In the past two weeks
I have started to do yoga every morning before work. I really feel a
difference on the mornings where I decided sleep takes preference
over yoga and then do it at night instead. My days are much better
waking up at 6am to do it then not. I am really loving it now. Some
days I do it twice, when I wake up and before I go to bed. I think
that since it is so cold and dark most hours, there is nothing to
really do but find ways to pass time in your apartment/ger. Since I
can't go running do to the temps and darkness, and I got yelled at by
my downstairs neighbor for jumping around my room while doing
insanity workouts. I had to come up with a way to stay sane and
exercise without disrupting people and remaining inside. So yoga and
pilates, sometimes zumba, if it doesn't involve a lot of
jumping/moving around has been my go to. As much as I am enjoying the
yoga, I can not wait for the temperatures to rise a little so I can
get outside and do some running and hiking. I am beginning to go
crazy with the lack of movement in my life. All I am asking for is
temperatures above 0 degrees. I tried going for a run last week and I
thought my lungs had literally froze. It was so painful and my face
was so frozen. It is just not possible with the cold and all the
smoke from the Ger stoves in the air.
New Years was spent at
Will's apartment. We all go together to celebrate. Our original plan
was to go out to dinner after we all got out of work, go back to
Will's to hang out for a little bit and then go out to the club to
ring in the New Year. What we did not expect was for everything to be
closed New Year's Eve. Apparently, New Year's Eve is the equivalent
to Christmas Eve in the US. Everyone spends this night with their
families, at home with a home cooked meal. As we walked around from
restaurant to restaurant, we increasingly became bitter about the
fact that we could no go out for New Year. The clubs were closed and
you could not even buy alcohol from the stores. Luckily, we have an
in with on of the local delgores (shops) and they allowed us to buy
champagne from them that night. So defeated, we walked back to Will's
to make dinner. At this time we were not even into making a nice
dinner, it was late and we were all starving, so tuna pasta salad was
made and then someone came up with the bright idea to play a game
which involved closing your eyes and scrolling through your contact
list in your phone, the others would say stop randomly and without
looking, you had to call that person and try to figure out who it was
without asking directly who you were speaking to. It was fun and
lasted about 4 rounds. We then began to try to throw Mongolian M&Ms
into each others mouths from various distances. This kept us occupied
for some time. More time than one would think. The things that become
amusing when you have limited resources. Since, our New Year was
before most of the world, we could not stream the ball dropping or
anything so at midnight, half asleep, we wished each other New Years
and fell asleep. My CP made a surprise visit to the apartment shortly
after midnight, which gave Lore and I a new found energy. We then
stayed up till 4am hanging out and talking with him, while the other
two were fast asleep in the other room. My CP's wife angrily came to
Will's door at 4am looking for her husband. She did not seem amused
that he was sitting at the kitchen table drinking with us. He
immediately jumped up and left with her.
The next morning, we
all woke up with M&Ms everywhere, in every orifice and corner of
the room and our sleeping bags. The day started with cleaning and
then we all went on and did our own thing. At 5pm my counterpart
invited us all over for dinner with him and his family. I was glad to
hear that his wife wasn't mad at us. We went over there and had the
most delicious meal. His parents and her parents, sister and her
children all joined us. It was so nice to be invited to his family
New Year meal. The meal consisted of milk tea and seabuckthorne juice
and oranges. Then it the salad course, which consisted of potato
salad and coleslaw. Then, this delicious rice and raisin dish,
followed by botes made with beef. Candy was dessert of course. It was
a great time.
Last week, I presented
and got my project idea approved by the HD director. My new project
is on Oral Hygiene, specifically the kindergarten students in the
soums. I came up with a tentative plan and lesson idea and presented
it to the Non-Communicable disease specialist at the HD. Now let me
tell you, I have been working on this Dental project for almost a
month now and kept putting off presenting it in fear that I would not
be able to say enough in Mongolian to get my point across. So each
week, I would say this is the week I will present the idea, and then
would inevitably chicken out. So finally last week I told myself this
is the week, you must do it. So I picked the day that I would do it
and told the NCD specialist that I would like to meet with her on
that day to discuss and idea I had. This way she was waiting for it
and I could not chicken out again. I first told myself that I would
do it in the morning and get it out of the way, but as the hours
passed by, I would keep talking myself out of it, making up an excuse
and setting another time. So finally I decided at 330pm I would walk
up to her and start talking about it. Finally around 430pm, I had
mustered up enough confidence to present the idea. I went over, hands
shaking and began to talk. She understood most of it and was able to
understand the English words I would use when I didn't know the
Mongolian. The meeting lasted about 15 minutes, but it was the best
feeling in the world, knowing that I did it without the help of my
counterpart translating for me. I knew that I needed to stop relying
on him to always help me, if I really want to build relationships and
work with the other staff members of the HD, so doing this
presentation successfully by myself felt great! She loved it and then
presented it to the Director. The director gave it her stamp of
approval and the training will be held in April. =) So now I just
have to begin coming up with the actual training materials and plans
and write a grant asking the government here in Arkhangai for money
for transportation and materials. If it is passed, we will be given
money to buy toothbrushes for all kindergarten students and come up
with a standardized dental lesson that all Kindergarten teachers/peer
educators will teach their students through out the province of
Arkhangai. Dentists will be in charge of monitoring the program and
reporting back to the HD with their observations and stats every 3
months.
The hospital just
announced that child mortality has been increasing and that 2014
will be the year dedicated to Child and Mother Mortality Campaigns.
So I am now coming up with various ideas that I will eventually
present to the HD on ways to combat it and prevent it.
Last week, I began
teaching my English classes. Tuesday mornings, I teach a beginner
English lesson to the Health Department staff while Will teaches the
intermediate/advanced group. On Thursday evenings, I teach the
beginner English class for the hospital staff and Will teaches the
advanced class for them. It is so much fun! I just love it. I made
them all English folders and flashcards to study the alphabet with. I
then taught them different greetings, how to introduce themselves and
what their jobs were. We played a game called “Fly Swatter”,
where there are two teams. Each team has a flyswatter (we used rolled
up paper) and I would yell out a letter and one person from each team
would have to hit that letter on the board. Whoever hits it first
gets a point for their team. We then practiced a short dialogue and
went over all the letter sounds that they have difficulties with.
Each class is an hour long. On Tuesday, my class consists of 6 ladies
(4 doctors and 2 secretaries) and 2 men, (both drivers for the HD).
On Thursdays, my class is 7 doctors from the hospital. I have not
taught this class yet, because last Thursday I was in UB for a
medical emergency with one of my site mates, so this week, will be
the first time I meet and teach them. I am excited and hope they are
just as enthusiastic as the HD staff was. After Will and I taught on
Tuesday, we went out for lunch and planned for our next class.
I was in UB for just
two days, but being there is always so exciting. Being in UB means
eating real food and seeing other Americans walking the streets. We
went out to eat at a Vegan restaurant, where I had a really good chef
salad, jasmine tea and chocolate cake. We then went shopping at the
State Department store, where I loaded up on teas (jasmine, cherry
and chamomile), coffee (regular coffee and Carmel latte mix) and
bought two large bottles of coconut water, which both I drank quickly
once we got back to the guesthouse. I then went to the bus station
the next morning to go back home and hopped on one of the city buses
which I thought brought me to the bus station. But I was wrong. It
dropped me off in some place that I had no idea where it was. I
wondered the streets for 25 minutes asking people who would pass me
where the bus station was and how to get there. Finally after 35-40
minutes of power walking (at least I was smart enough to leave an
hour early in case something like this happened), I arrived at the
bus station sweaty (although it was -30F out) and annoyed. I walked
up to the bus ticket window and asked for a ticket to Tsetserleg, the
lady told me that the bus was sold out. I gave her a huge “WHAT DO
YOU MEAN?” face and then became angry. But I quietly walked away
from the bus and realized that I would most likely have to take a
meeker home. Staying another night was not an option because my work
needed me back. I walked up the meeker labeled Arkhangai and asked to
buy a seat. A meeker is like a big van. The bad thing about them, is
that they will keep selling seats trying to get as much money as
possible even if there are no seat available. They will cram as many
people into them as possible and will not leave until they are full.
So I could be sitting there for hours waiting to leave. Also, they
are prone to breaking down. Luckily, it filled up quickly and the van
that was supposed to only hold 9 people plus the two driver, now held
18 adults. Crammed would be an understatement. Luckily for me I was
placed next to a young girl who spoke some English. She at first
wrote out on her phone “Do you speak Mongolian?” and passed it to
me. I told her that I could and asked her if she spoke English. She
said a little bit. So I began to ask her simple questions in
Mongolian and she asked if I would give her an English lesson. I said
of course, what else did I have to do during the 7.5 hour ride back.
At the halfway point we stopped for dinner and the girl who I learned
was a 17 year old accounting university student bought me dinner. She
was so sweet. We shared Tsuivan and mild tea. We were then back on
the road, I took a couple Dramamines, and fell asleep for the rest of
the ride.
This past weekend,
Saturday night, Will and Jen came over to my apartment and we played
drinking Battleship. You make a big grid board and then line up shot
glasses as the boats. We did a three-way Battleship game, which was
tricky at first, but we figured out how to make it successful. It was
a great time and we ate a lot of gummy bears. Sunday morning Jen came
over for a girls' day. We went out to eat at a nice restaurant and
had delicious cherry chicken salad and then went back to my place to
watch movies and do our nails and facials, which on the package said
it was from a shark. Who knows if the mask was actually made from
shark. We also went cosmetics shopping. I bought some great face
wash, face moisturizer and facial mist. The cold here is rough on
your skin, so I invested in what I was told was a great moisturizer
set. My skin does feel remarkably better after using it for three
days!
Friday, the US
Ambassador to Mongolia comes to visit us here in Tsetserleg. She is
going to visit or agencies and then we will be going out to dinner
with her Friday evening. It is such a small world. She was born and
raised in Buffalo and her assistant was born and raised in Albany and
his family had a summer home in Lake Luzerne!
