My Goodbye Party and the First Lady is going to know about my work!

4/11/2015

18 hours in Arkhangai. I took the 9 hour drive to Arkhangai with a Peace Corps driver to say goodbye to my counterparts and to pack up my apartment. At 1030 am I received a test from my counterpart, saying that Peace Corps just met with them and told them that my work at the Health Department was finished. I quickly texted him back, yes it was true and I am on my way back to Tsetserleg to say goodbye. As soon as the car pulled into Tsetserleg, I power walked over to my Health Department, making sure I would get there before everyone left. At 4:15pm I was in my office in the arms of my counterpart and best friend, crying. He was hugging me and telling me not to cry because it was making him cry. I couldn’t stop the tears, so there we both stood crying and staring at each other, willing ourselves to stop. I knew it was going to be hard, but I had no idea that the minute I tried to speak, I wouldn’t be able to. Every time I looked up to say something to him, my eyes filled up. He told me that he was going to arrange for all the doctors to go to the meeting room, so I could tell them all that I would be leaving the next morning and no longer working at the Health Department. 

While he gathered the other doctors, I went up to see the HD Director. I walked into her room and tried to make small chat and not address the fact that I was leaving, but once again in the middle of a sentence I started crying and then she did. Her assistant gave us tissues and we just sat there holding hands crying. She kept telling me that she loved me and things were going to be okay. I kept thanking her for allowing me to be a part of her work and for sharing her amazing village with me. Once we composed ourselves, the other doctors came into the room. I was sitting at the head of the meeting table, eyes swollen, with all the doctors staring at me. They had no idea that I was not coming back. The whole car ride from UB I had been preparing a speech in my head that I would say to them, to let them know how much they meant to me. But at that moment, sitting in front of them, all I could say was “ Today will be my last day working at the HD because of safety problems. Thank you so much. Thank you for being such amazing friends and for being so kind to me. You are all so amazing and I had so much fun working with you.” Then the tears came again and I couldn’t speak, so I just blew them a kiss and said I love you. They all then laughed and blew me a kiss back and thanked me for all my work and asked if they could all take me out to dinner that night. So I went back to my apartment to finish packing and then headed over to a local restaurant for dinner.

Every single doctor showed up to my dinner. I have never felt so much love in my life. They gave me beautiful gifts and my counterpart and another HD doctor sang to me. The name of the song roughly translates to “The most beautiful woman in Mongolia”. After they sang, my coworkers chanted my name and asked me to sing a Mongolian song to them. I only know one and was still crying from watching my counterpart sing to me, so I asked him to sing with me. I sang the opening line and then all the other doctors chimed in and began singing. Which of course made me lose it, here I am standing at the head of the table, looking at all these beautiful faces of people who became my family singing to me. We sat and chatted and ate for a few hours. At the end of the night, I took pictures with everyone and all my close doctor friends said how much they are going to miss me and how sad they were. I told them that if they are in UB in the next few months to call me, so we can meet up. I will be here until at least May 3. My counterpart already called me and told me that he and his wife will be coming to UB at the end of April to see me. I can not wait.

The next morning, it was time for me to hop back in the car and drive back to UB. My counterpart showed up at my door in the morning with a gift from his 6 year old daughter. She had drawn me a picture of her family, which included me. Above the drawing she wrote “I love you.” Ariuk had is beautifully framed for me. The best gift I could have received.  Peace Corps came and picked me up in the car and off we were, on the road again. The Peace Corps drivers are amazing and my country director also was in the car with us. We ended up stopping a lot to see different landmarks and monasteries. We stopped at the large lake in my province and at a special Monastery, that used to be the capital of Mongolia. Here we went inside and the monks said a blessing for us and gave us gifts. It was so wonderful. I love listening to the groups of monks chanting, the ringing of the bells and the smell of the incense. It is so peaceful.

The driver was such a funny man. He loves to talk about fishing, hunting and drinking. He was cracking us up so badly the entire way. At one point, he could not think of an English word he wanted to say, so he kept giving me examples, but for the life of me, I could not come up with the word. He just looked over at me and said “You are American, how do you not know the word?”. I busted out laughing. Finally after about 200km of driving, the word came to me. “Believe” I shouted it out and he laughed. Throughout the next couple hours he kept using it in sentences to help himself memorize it. We talked a lot about Shamanism and how it has changed over the years in Mongolia. In the capital many people are saying that they are Shamans in order to make money from desperate families with sick children or tourists who don’t know any better. It was really interesting to hear his point of view on the matter.

4/15/2015

This week I have been working at the Peace Corps office, helping staff with their work. Mostly, jazzing up power points they made for my groups Close of Service (COS) conference and writing post cards, welcoming the newly accepted volunteers who will arrive in Mongolia in the beginning of June. I have met with several of the staff and at this point it seems like they are leaning towards early COS-ing me, but we are waiting for the regional manager to get back to the office and to hear from head quarters. The most important thing is that I am here long enough for it to be considered a full service, so that I do not loose my fellowship for grad school. I should know what is happening within the next two weeks. 

A pretty cool thing happened to me today... I was interviewed by my country director about a domestic violence project I have been working on with my counterpart. Michelle Obama teamed up with Peace Corps on a project called "Let Girls Learn".  It is being implemented in 11 countries, Mongolia being one of them. Although female attendance in schools is not a problem in Mongolia, finding jobs and domestic violence is a huge problem for girls in the country. Every week the country director from each of the 11 countries with the program must directly send the First Lady one story of a volunteer and counterpart working towards the betterment of women in their host countries. My country director chose my story to be sent to the White House. This means that Michelle Obama herself will be reading about me and my counterpart and the work we have done in our community!! So cool.

Sunday I leave for the Gobi Desert with some friends. We will be traveling by bus down to the Gobi and then stay in gers with nomadic families and tour the Gobi on camels. I am so excited!

Last post from Arkhangai and a new one from my new home in UB. Goodbye Arkhangai!

4/1/2015

This past weekend, temperatures were in the high 40s, this meant it was finally warm enough for us to walk to the river and enjoy the sunshine. Rebecca, Patrick and I packed our bags for a day at the river: blankets, snacks, books and cards. We walked the hour walk to the river and found the perfect log to set up camp at. About 20 minutes into being at the river, strong gust of wind began to happen, which eventually led to just a constant wind blowing at us. Luckily, I brought matches so we began to collect branches and make a fire to keep warm. Cold wind gusts were not going to ruin our river day. We huddled under our blankets near the fire, eating snacks and chit chatting. It was so cold, but none of us wanted to give in and go home. We then decided that we would play music and dance around the fire. We went for many walks to collect more wood, in order to keep warm. The wind kept putting the fire out, so we found two large pieces of log to act as a wind barrier. Not the smartest idea, they both caught fire within 30 minutes of being placed in front of the fire, but they worked well for a while and caused the fire to exude even more heat. This worked, although we were slightly bitter for not being able to sit and enjoy the sun, but it ended up being a great time, a lot of dancing around the fire, dodging the fire smoke and watching herds of horses run past us. When evening came, we packed our things back up and began to walk back to town, wind burned and chilled. Halfway through our walk, an old man in a SUV offered us a ride back into town, free of charge. He was so sweet and it was nice to warm up in his car and not have to lug all of our stuff back.

On Tuesday, Rebecca, Patrick and I had our first English Class for 20 doctors at the local hospital. They are all beginners, so we taught greetings, went over numbers and letter sounds and taught them how to tell time in English. It was so much! They were all so energized and willing to participate. Every time we asked for volunteers, they all wanted to come up in front and practice the dialogues with us and do the role play skits. Every Tuesday and Friday we will teach them at the hospital and on the weekends once it is summer, we will go hiking and do English learning activities outside. The Hospital Director has made it mandatory for the doctors to learn more English, so she said to expect around 35 doctors each lesson. This first lesson, there was a training for some of the doctors, so they could not make it. Luckily, they all seem to be around the same level, so we don’t have to make multiple lesson plans. It is also really nice to have Patrick and Rebecca helping me, at first it was just going to be me teaching, but when I brought it up to them, they volunteered to help me with the lessons. It is a lot easier having three people to go around the room listening and correcting their English. Also, it will be helpful with some lessons to break up into smaller groups and having a teacher with each will be beneficial.

4/8/2015

Goodbye Arkhangai. As of April 5 I moved to the capital city, Ulaanbaatar (UB). Due to safety problems at my site, Peace Corps and I decided that it was best if I was removed from my aimag. As of today, I don’t know how long I will be staying in Ulaanbaatar, my director drove to Arkhangai yesterday morning to speak with the police, my Health Department and the Governor. While there, she and the other volunteers will pack up my apartment and bring my belongings to UB. It has been a crazy few days filled with all sorts of emotions.

Arkhangai had been my home for almost 2 years. The people I worked with became my family and that by far is the toughest part about moving. I was not given any time to say goodbye. As of today, they still do not know I am not coming back. Although, I know ultimately this was the best decision, I am so upset about never seeing them again. I will not be allowed to travel there. I was not prepared for the change in site and feel terrible that I will not be able to finish out my projects and give proper goodbyes to the people who impacted my life in so many ways. My counterpart Ariuk, is a one of a kind person and is going to have such a huge impact on his community. I wish I was there to watch him grow, even if it was for only a few more months. Ariuk was the one I could talk to about anything and would be there for me in a heartbeat. He was the one I called when my uncle unexpectedly passed away. He held me on the floor of my apartment as a I cried, at a time when I really needed family, he was there for me. Again he was the one I called when I got the new that my Nana was not doing well and was put on hospice care. He was there for me during so many important parts of my life, really helped me to integrate into the community and has helped me to be a stronger woman. There is no way I could ever repay him for all the encouragement, care and love he has shown me over the past two years. I was so blessed to have such an amazing counterpart and most importantly such an amazing friend in my life. I am most upset about not being able to say goodbye to him properly. I hope he realizes that I was not unhappy at site and I loved every minute of working with him.

I am going to miss the little girls I taught Zumba and Health too and the doctors who I worked with on numerous projects and taught English to. I hate that I have to leave so abruptly and in the middle of some really great activities. I actually feel guilty that I am not there to finish these projects, but I know that for my own safety and mental wellbeing I cannot stay in that aimag. I plan on writing letters to everyone who has had an impact on my service to tell them how much they mean to me and how thankful I am to have had them in my life. Although the past 6 months have been really tough, Arkhangai was my comfort zone. The community, the people felt like home.

Unfortunately there are no laws against sexual harassment and assault in Mongolia, especially when the assaulter works for the government. The culture is so different here and no one even speak of violence against women, even though it is so prevalent. 1 in 3 Mongolian women have been abused and yet the law system has not done anything about it. When researching human right laws in Mongolia, I found that there is not a single law about sexual harassment, no laws against a husband raping his wife and a very lenient law about sexual assault, where the assaulter has to pay a small fine depending on the severity of the assault. The problem with my case is it was a person who worked for the government, the government is very corrupt and the police work for the government. Therefore, I must move out of the Aimag in order to be safe and be for the situation  escalates even more. I can not be mad at the people in my town. Life is so hard for the people there. Think about how long it took for women to gain equal rights in the USA (it is still an ongoing process), now imagine trying to do the same in a 3rd world country, where everyone is living in poverty and democracy is just taking hold. I hope to one day visit Arkhangai, walk down the streets and see all that has changed, all the goodness and kindness it will possess. Developing a country takes years and years and let me tell you I can not wait for the day where Mongolia is considered a first world nation. It is possible, there are so many bright and hard working people here, I can only hope that they continue to grow and better themselves.

6:50pm- I received a call from one of the senior staff members saying that they will send me in a car tomorrow morning to go to Arkhangai to say goodbye to my counterparts!!!!  I started sobbing when she said this. This is the most wonderful thing in the world. I only get to stay for one night, but oh my god am I happy to be able to hug my Mongolian family goodbye and tell them how much they have meant to me and much they will continue to mean to me. Wow!!! I AM SO HAPPY!!!!!

Good bye Arkhangai! Thank you for making me a stronger, kinder, more caring person. I will forever be grateful to the people in Arkhangai for helping me become the person I am today. xoxo

March Madness

3/30/2015

These past two weeks flew by and were full of fun events. First I will go back all the way back to St. Patrick’s Day. My site mates and I got together for dinner at our favorite restaurant and then went on a mini bar crawl around our town (which only has three “bars”, more like small restaurants that will serve us beer). It was fun to chat over a couple beers. When you live in a country where none of the holidays you used to celebrate are celebrated, you actually forget when they are. Also, every American holiday just feels like a normal day and is the same: we cook chicken and have a salad, because that is considered a splurge on our Peace Corps salaries. It will be so exciting to get back to the States and celebrate holidays like I used to!

March 20-22 we had Language IST, which meant two Mongolian language teachers from the capital city came out to our province to teach us Mongolian for three days. Our soum volunteers came into the aimag center and we had Mongolian lessons from 9am-6pm those three days. The days were a mix of group lessons and individual tutoring. The teachers were really great and I learned a couple new useful phrases for work and new verb tenses. Although, at this stage in the game, I feel as though I have learned as much as I am going to learn; I am certainly not studying Mongolian anymore, but it was nice to work on my pronunciation a bit. I have another language test at the end of April, so it will be interesting to see if I improved at all since my last test.

Following language IST, Monday and Tuesday I facilitated a two day Nursing Seminar with another volunteer and my main counterpart. 20 recent graduates of nursing school came to the seminar to learn about nursing practices and how to improve care of patients in their hospitals. It was a lot of fun and I think they enjoyed the training a lot. The first day was lectures on various nursing topics and the second day was clinical practice. I loved the second day. It was so great to watch them put into practice what they had learned the day before. We started off by practicing CPR and the Heimlich. They took turns practicing on one another (just going through the motions, not actually preforming CPR on one another). Eventually, this led to me being the dummy for all of the trainees. They all wanted to practice on me and have the other volunteer give them advice while she watched. The male nurses were a little too happy to be practicing CPR on me. Haha, they were the first ones to volunteer! We then had them practice bed side manner and doing a full body assessment on a patient. We taught them about listening to bowel sounds, something they did not know about and how to properly take blood pressure. On the second day we had a guest lecturer, a JICA volunteer who is a physical therapist. JICA is basically the Japanese equivalent to Peace Corps. The JICA volunteer taught the nurses how to do range of motion exercises and how to properly transport a patient from a wheelchair to the bed. The nurses were so involved and asked so many great questions throughout both of the days. It was really interesting to hear about their experiences in Nursing School and what health laws and practices are like in Mongolia (sooo different as you can imagine!). 

Thursday was Doctors’ Day celebration. Many doctors from all over the province came in for a week long competition. I went to the question and answer competition and watched. My counterpart won the competition, but he was also in charge of writing the questions for the competition. Haha. So did he truly deserve first place, no, but no one seemed to realize that he wrote the questions and then competed. Well done Ariuk. Well done.

That Friday, was the English Pyramid Competition for students in grades 9-12. Each school in the province sent a team of 4 students to compete in the competition. The competition had three parts to it: a question and answer portion, Taboo and a Jeopardy game. The students were each given two essays that we Peace Corps volunteers wrote and they had to memorize/study for the question and answer and Jeopardy parts. Four other volunteers and I were in charge of running the competition: asking the questions, setting up each portion and tallying the scores at the end. I had worked with School #2 for a few days before the competition, preparing them for the three sections. They ended up placing 4^th in the competition, which they were super upset about, because last year we won 1^st place. This year a lot of the school who performed poorly last year, really stepped it up and the entire top 5 were within 10 points from one another. One of the schools did not understand the rules and sent four 9^th grade girls to the competition. So they had no one to compete in the 10^th and 11^th grade portions and only studied the 9^th grade essay. Jeopardy is based off of a third essay that all the grades were supposed to study. So when it came time for Jeopardy, they were hilarious to watch play. They knew nothing about the subject and their answers were hilarious. I think they guessed Russia and 6 for most questions. But they just sat their giggling the whole time, no care in the world they were going to come in last place. While students were stressed and one even hit another team mate in the face when he answered a question wrong, these 4 girls were just happy to have a field trip out of school. For the most part, all the students were great sports and tried so hard to win points for their teams. I had a great time watching them.

New Projects

3/16/2015

Every other day, I have been going to one of the local schools to help the students prepare for two English competitions. First, the English Pyramid, which is a competition Peace Corps volunteers hold in Arkhangai Province for students in grades 9-12. Each school has one team that competes. We volunteers, write three essays, one for 9-10^th grade, one for 11-12^th grade and another for all grades. The two students from each grade must read over/memorize the essays for the competition. The competition has three parts. The first, a question and answer part where we volunteers ask the students questions about the essays they were given, the second is Taboo with vocabulary from the essays and the third is a Jeopardy game based off of the third essay. I wrote the essay for the 11-12^th grade students. Each essay is supposed to be about American culture, celebrities or history. I chose to write my essay on one of the women I look up to, Hillary Clinton, of course. The other two essays are on Sharks and Native Americans.

The other competition I am preparing students for is English Olympics, which is a country wide competition in Mongolia. Every subject has an Olympics competition. One student from each grade 9-12 competes from each school. It is a written test, so I basically just go over grammar rules and work on their reading comprehension. Sometimes there is an essay portion and speaking portion. It depends on the year and what the education ministry decides. The day of Olympics, the test comes in a sealed envelope, which is then opened and the students and teachers find out what portions are on the test. So for now they prepare for all portions. I really enjoy prepping the students for these two competitions. Since I am not an English teacher/ TEFL volunteer, it is fun every now and then to work with students. Although, I can say that I am very happy I am a health volunteer, who works with adults all day and gets to decide when I want to work with children.

Last week in Health Club, I taught the students about oral hygiene (and did Zumba of course). We practiced brushing our teeth the proper way and did an activity where they had to sort good and bad food for our teeth. Each lesson, I pick two students who have to teach the mini lesson to the others. It is so adorable watching them read the posters and teach each other. We then made funny mouth masks, which they loved and took a billion pictures. This week my Health Department got two Social Work Interns, who will be interning at the HD for two months, so I am hoping to get them involved with my Health Club. Meet with them each week and then have the help me teach the lessons and work with the children. I think it will be great for them to practice working with children in schools, since that is where the social workers are and to see how a club is properly run. Social workers in Mongolia are in charge of setting up clubs in schools and planning extracurricular activities for the students. I will talk to my director about this sometime this week.

Last week, I also started tutoring this doctor from the Emergency Aid Department. She is in charge of making sure the Millennium Development Goal initiatives are being run in the province and the goals are being met. Her English is pretty good and she is a lot of fun to chat with. She comes in every Mon, Wed, and Fri to practice her English speaking. She has traveled to many countries and is hoping to move to Australia next year for a new job, so she wants to improve her English. She told me all about her trip to India, a place I am dying to visit! And somehow our conversation led to 50 Shades of Grey and how she is reading the first book now (although I think it is the Chinese edition, which is heavily censored). The censored version played in movie theaters here. She also wants to learn how to make cake, so I told her next month we can have a girls’ night at my apartment; we will watch the movie and make a cake. Who would have thought I would be talking about 50 Shades of Grey in Mongolia!?!?

Right now a few friends and I are planning a week long trip to the Gobi Desert at the end of April before our COS (close of service) conference. We recently received an email saying that our COS conference will be the last week of April. At the conference, we talk about our experiences, get debriefed about moving back and living in the US, have physical exams and dental exams, US government paper work/stuff and pick out COS date. There are three dates we can leave, I am hoping for the first one. We all have to talk and decided who gets to leave when, but since I have grad school to get back to, I am pretty sure I will be leaving on the first date, which is July 23. So it seems like I will be landing back on US soil July 24, 2015!!!! Fingers crossed, I get the first date.