Day 6 - Day 7

I have had a great time visiting my family for the holidays, but it is time for me to return to my life in Mongolia.  Peace out America, see you this summer!

Day 6: last night on holiday must include ice cream and coffee.

Day 7, aka my travel day:  a fun picture of my parents' dog enjoying the new snow.

Day 5

Day 5: After the snowfall.

Day 2 through Day 4

Day 2: making cookies with my family and friends.  Nothing gets better than this!

Day 3: A visit to the Capital Building in Madison.

Day 4: My dad at the hospital.

New Year, New Blogging Style

I haven't been as diligent with posting on my blog this past year, so I am trying something new for 2015.  Everyday, I will take at least one picture and post it to the blog.  Hopefully this will give me a great chance to continue to share the amazing and interesting parts of my life with you all!

So, a simple picture for day 1, my sister Sarah's dog Molly.

Packages + Heat = A Very Happy PCV!

So I got another care package last week!  It was from Mary and Susie Silberhorn, the wonderful ladies who own and operate Susie's Garden Patch in Garden Prairie, IL.  I have spent basically every summer of my childhood and young adulthood working at the farm, and the Silberhorn's are close family friends.  Thanks so much for the package!

There is a sort of funny story that happened when I received this package.  As you can see in this picture, the bottom of the package was all taped up in "монгол шуудан" tape, which says 'Mongolian Post Office."  I was concerned that my package had been opened to check for food (which is not supposed to be shipped into the country...sad, right?), and since I knew that there were spices inside, I was pretty concerned! 

I also noticed that every time I moved the package, some sort of sandy stuff would leak out.  Now I was really confused.  Did the package fall off a truck or something and get dirt/sand inside? Is that why the package was resealed by the post office?? There was nothing to do but open it up and discover the mystery of the sandy package!

So I cut through the post office tape and got to here: lots and lots more of this sandy stuff.  Still no clear explanation.

I blew away some of the sand, and saw I got a card!  How nice!  It has been great decorating my desk at work, and I can always use more cards!

I opened the box all the way and soon found the culprit--Mary knows that I love hot chocolate and coffee, and so she sent me a great mint-hot chocolate cappuccino mix!  Unfortunately some sort of squishing during the transport popped the box open, and the mix got over everything.  After a few minutes of laughing at myself for sort of believing my box was full of sand, I unpacked the contents.

So many seasonings!  Mongolian cooking has very few seasonings, so it is difficult to find a lot of spices here.  All of these will (hopefully) improve my cooking, and remind me a bit of home!  I also got several soup mixes and instant oatmeal.  Yum!

 

So there was a bit of a mess in the form of hot chocolate mix, but it is always the thought that counts.  I am so very lucky to have such a great family and group of friends who are watching out for me from across the globe, and that means a lot to me.

And I got to enjoy a great meal of hot chocolate and potato soup!  Thanks again, Mary and Susie!

On a related happiness-inducing event, my heat finally kicked on!  My apartment is nice and warm, and I don't have to wear layers and turn my space heater on to avoid shivering!  The heat (which is centrally controlled) was supposed to turn on city-wide on October 1st, but the pipes leading to my building were not working correctly.  This led to a giant hole right in front of my door into the building.  By the way, the hole is still there almost a week later.  I think its being kept open in case their fixes don't work correctly.

 

Why yes, they did dig underneath the stairs into the building, and under the building itself--I don't know much about construction, but this just feels wrong!

 

It was a large project.

When I was taking these pics, I noticed that there was a skull just chilling in the courtyard-type area.  This is pretty common, since stray dogs are everywhere and we have several that live by the apartment building and eat our garbage.  I hope my puppy didn't have too much to do with this skull!  It looks like it is probably a sheep skull.  I am getting better at recognizing bones and skulls from different animals, both because I see them on the ground all over, and when I buy my meat it is the easiest way of telling what type of meat it is!

There are several boys around the age of 7-9 that live in my building and they love to play outside with the puppies.  There always seems to be some puppies around.  The other day, they found a little puppy, and built this shelter for it to sleep in overnight.  It actually seems pretty warm, but the puppy doesn't really approve--he spends most of the night crying. 

Also, I got two cards the same day as my package!  They were from Al and Darlene Henninger and Sharyn Geske, all of whom I know because we are all members of the Illinois State Grange.  It was so thoughtful of you to send me a note, I really appreciate it!  It is great to hear from people and stay in touch with what is happening at home.  I hope that I will be able to send you a note back soon!

So in the course of the weekend I received a great package, two very nice letters, and the wonderful warmth of a heated apartment.  All in all, one of the better weekends I have had in Mongolia! 


This week in Khentii, there is a disaster preparedness conference going on.  It has meant that most of my English lessons are cancelled, but I have gotten to see some pretty cool things, such as about two hundred workers from different agencies learning how to march military style with survival backpacks and matching military uniforms.  I am not exactly clear on how this is disaster preparedness, but I am sure that will be addressed at some point this week.  But, more about work-related adventures in my next post.

As Mongolians like to say, sleep well!  Have a great week! 

Trip to the Russian Border Park

Hello!  Сайна байна уу!  It is the last day in July, and I have been in Mongolia for over two months already!  The time has really flown by.  I have about a week and a half left of pre-service training and a language proficiency exam at the end of training.  Then, on August 12^th, I will leave my host family for the last time and return to Darkhan, where all of the incoming volunteers’ sites will be announced an we will have a week of site-specific training and preparation before all moving across the country.  This summer has been a wild ride of ups and downs, and I have made many great friends along the way.  It will be sad to say goodbye for now to Sukhbaatar and my host family, as well as my fellow Peace Corps trainees.  I will try to update you all when I learn my language proficiency score (we are supposed to reach a novice-high level, which is basically general introductory conversation skills and about a 100 word vocabulary) and my site placement.  I am so excited to find out where I will live and what organization I will work with for the next two years! 

But back to my current adventures.  This past weekend my family took a trip to a park at the Russian border, a favorite picnic and sightseeing location in the area.  The park is mostly on the cliffs at the edge of a plateau, and offers astounding views of the lower river valley, where the Orkhon and Selenge rivers join together before flowing north to Lake Baikal in Russia.  I have seen the point of these rivers before from a different angle, but the view of the entire valley from the park was beautiful.  

Here is a distant view of a road that illustrates how it is easy for one path to split into several, where drivers decide which path will be the smoothest, least damaging option.

A few days before going to the Russian park, we drove to an Ovoo (Buddhist shrine) on the top of a small mountain by Sukhbaatar.

The main path to the Russian Border: fairly nice for an unpaved road!

For some reason, driving on this precarious frontage road was the driver's choice.  You can see the main road off to the left, so it definitely still existed for this stretch....Some things about Mongolian driving I may never understand.

We arrived at the park, and started our climb up to the plateau edge, where the main section of the park is located.

Up and up!

A cliff that sort of looks like a face! People were climbing to the top as well, you can see one person on the top in this photo.

Chinggis Khaan and his wife!

A re-creation of what Chinggis Khaan's cave home could have been like.

Me, with Sukhbaatar (a great war hero from the 1920s), a gun, and a buddy of his.  The 'gun' was extremely heavy, because it is made out of steel and concrete!

A naked baby statue, where many people were taking pictures of the statue with their naked babies.  Therefore, I did not touch this statue when I took a picture with it!

My Mongolian host mom putting an offering on a large Ovoo at the park.

My host sister posing with the amazing view behind her--this picture is an amazing thing in itself, because my sister never wants to take pictures!

My family (according to my mother, Lorre is my little sister) at the edge of the cliff--we had to jump over a little space in the rocks to get to this ledge.

The view of the rivers joining from the Russian Border Park!

A panoramic of the great view.

Lorre was wearing a dress, and my sister thought it was hilarious when the wind blew her dress up and Lorre attempted, Marilyn Monroe style, to keep it down.

The second Mongolian horse I have 'ridden' since arriving!

This girl is sitting on a reindeer statue. There is a community far north in Mongolia that raises reindeer, and it is apparently an amazing place to visit.  I hope I have the chance while I am here!

My host brother with an awesome eagle statue in the background.  Eagles are used for hunting in the far west region of Mongolia, where most of the ethnic Kazakh Mongolians live.

My brother and sister playing a game where you get hit in the head with a bottle if you are incorrect--I refuse to play with my sister because she gets too excited/violent after a few rounds.  They kept it all in good fun this time around!

Me and the view!

I have a lot of assignments and studying to do before my language exam next week, so I probably will not post again until next Thursday or Friday.  Until then, I hope everyone is doing well!

For the first year in as long as I can remember, I am going to miss my county fair.  To everyone working at the Boone County Fair in Illinois this year, good luck!  I know it will be a hard week for me, even thinking about the fair makes me really homesick.  The fair is always a time to see everyone that you don't normally see, and it finishes up the summer with a finality that even my big transition can barely equal.  But most of all, it is about the family and friends that I get to spend an entire week hanging out with and working with.  Of course, I could really go for a taco from the stand by the Livestock Show Arena, some mozzarella sticks, and several ice cream sundaes.  You all will just have to enjoy them for me!

Until then, see you later!  Дараа Улзье!