My sister's visit to Mongolia...a pictorial

It's been a while since my last post and part of the reason is I was enjoying my sister's company, right here in Mongolia! Though this place now feels like home to me, she had many of the same "culture shock" reactions that I initially did upon arrival here. There are so many amazing things to see and do here, that I wanted to share with my sister, though time was of the essence.....

We visited many of the museums in Ulaanbaatar, as well as several Buddhist temples, a quilt shop and the fair trade store, Martha & Mary. While in my home town, we went to both museums, one of the temples (where we watched and listened to the monks chanting), the horse monument for which the town is named, ate at the local vegan restaurant as well as a guanze in the market.

A weekend trip to a local soum for a small Nadaam celebration was also enjoyed! We had the pleasure of going with Leah and Haanda who were invited by the governor, so we were treated very well there! Seeing a horse race from a speeding Jeep was an awesome (though not so comfortable) experience! Sue got to enjoy airag, as well as plenty of vodka toasts during Nadaam as well. Sue told me that she was just happy to spend time with me and I have to agree, that was the best part of the visit.....hanging out, spending time together, talking or not... it was good:)

The one thing she really wanted to do that we didn't get to, was ride a camel. Hmmmmm.... perhaps after Mongolia I'll live somewhere else that has camels.....

Yak mania!

Yaks are some of the coolest looking animals in Mongolia. Webster's describes the yak as "a wild or domestic ox of the uplands of Asia that has very long hair". Their faces look like cows to me and their mournful deep "mooing" is low and reminiscent of a bull.

A weekend jaunt in a friends Russian Jeep through some very rough terrain, took 5 of us site mates a few hours away from our town to a national park valley teeming with yaks.

We had the opportunity to milk them and yes, as a farm gal, I have experience with milking cows and the yak was similar. Though cows have larger teats, it was surprising to me how natural it felt to be milking a yak! The herder gave me an old dress (which was inside out) to put over my clothes to protect them from yak hair. Though not a flattering picture of me, I have the proof that I milked a yak in Mongolia!

Our friend Andrew who had been to visit this family before, took us to meet them in their wooden house nearby. We stopped there to say hello and introduce ourselves first and were treated with the usual Mongolian hospitality, being served milk tea and some delicious yak yogurt and bread with sweet cream, called orum. (these treats of course were made with their yak milk)

After chatting awhile, we proceeded to a spot nearby next to a gorgeous river and set up our camp site. Unfortunately for me, later that evening during a rainstorm in the dark, I tripped over one of the tent lines and bruised some ribs. This kept me from our main event, horse back riding the next day!

I thought my ego was slightly more bruised than my ribs until the bumpy ride home Sunday evening.....ow... As I rest now trying to heal as much as possible in the next week and a half until the long awaited and excitedly anticipated visit from my sister, I am still happy to have gone on this adventure to see yaks up close and personal!

garden in the desert...

Now I ask you, who would be silly enough to take on a major and overly ambitious gardening project in an area which is essentially desert. That's right....me; silly excitable enthusiastic gardener that I am.

Now that it's past mid June, at home in Ohio I would have most everything planted and the garden would be a green living thing of beauty. Here, not quite the same. The garden bed (or at least part of it) has been mostly prepared, and planted with lots of hard work and many wonderful helpers, especially the girls of the English Garden Club.

These students, in grades 7-10 volunteered to help me work in the garden, 3 times a week for an hour each time for the opportunity to practice speaking English. I am delighted and grateful for their help! The watering alone for the approximately 50' X 10' bed involves countless trips into the dorm and filling up buckets in the sink then carrying them back out to the garden. It's a time consuming and good exercise, but a tedious task.

Our garden bed is a fenced in area in front of the school dorm, conveniently located and at least partially sheltered. However,much to my dismay an ornery dog has found his way in and likes to traipse over the beds; I have caught him running through!

The ground in these beds (one on either side of the entrance) is filled with sandy dirt and lots and lots of rocks and stones, not to mention the fire weeds that sting like chiggers. The initial preparation involved hours of digging, then adding in some decent soil (thankfully school got bags of it for us) and some manure (mostly bagged as well, that we added in, while attempting to remove most of the rocks. In addition to the club students, occasionally another student or school worker has pitched in and dug or pulled weeds and rocks with me!

Seeds planted in the garden have come mostly from my sister Sue and my friend Stephanie back home and include my favorites, which may or may not fare well here. Huge amounts of green beans, peas, radishes, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, herbs and about 40 tomato's have been planted thus far. (all from seed except the tomato's which I nurtured on my bedroom window sill.) This week I anticipate planting a few cucumbers which I've started and perhaps a few flowers to fill in some spots, as well as working on preparing the other side garden, which though smaller, is extremely rocky.

My plan for this smaller side includes "the three sisters" as the trio of sweet corn, pole beans and squash was called by Native Americans, though I don't know how well they may do. I think I'll try it along with a few small areas of potato's which are a big favorite here.

Hesitation and angst permeate my mind lately and my garden efforts here.... I have made such a big deal of my gardening abilities that now if it fails I will "lose face"....(oops...at least many of them have seen my lovely indoor garden). The location is not as ideal as I'd hoped (almost 7 hours sunlight a day) and the director warned me that people may take (i.e. just up and steal) plants and or veggies from the garden, plus the poor soil and the tremendous amount of physical labor involved.... This is the experimental garden year, I have now started telling folks; we will see what will grow, and the soil will be enriched just by growing plants in it this year. By next spring our compost will be ready and I will have a clearer picture of how to adapt my gardening practices to Arvikheer. Plus, I think I will attempt to write a grant for a greenhouse project here for next year!

Children's Day

Children's Day, a national holiday in Mongolia, is celebrated on June 1st. Technically, I believe it's Children's and Mother's Day, but kids are really celebrated on this day. Women's Day is celebrated in March, when all women, not just mother's, are honored. Here in Arvikheer, a new Children's Park has been built since my arrival and the park was crowded and appreciated by many on Children's Day. The ferris wheel has been up for months, (before winter) and the rest of the rides and area seem to have appeared since late April. It's amazing to me how quickly some things happen here, i.e., construction! With the limited number of good weather days (above freezing, long hours of sunlight, etc). when things need to be completed, it happens!

I had just been walking around the area of the park a few weeks earlier (yes, looking for dung for the garden) and it was pretty empty.... All the sudden there is (in addition to the ferris wheel), several other rides including a merry go round, a tall hanging swing ride, a pharoh's boat ride, and an above ground pond where paddle boat rides were offered! It is an amazing little place for this small town and is located right next to the new (as of last summer) soccer field (where teams pay to play there) and across the road from the new sports complex (also new last year).

A couple friends and I walked around, enjoying watching the kids have fun and admiring the festive atmosphere! It was quite crowded and most children were all dressed up; even in the dry dusty park!

Just outside the park area were vendors selling ice cream, drinks, snacks and toys of all sorts... Lots of happy children everywhere! Children are a society's most precious resource and though there are issues with child welfare and safety, (just like everywhere!), it is heartwarming to experience a day dedicated to the celebration of children!

Dorm Rooms

The dorm rooms here in Arvikheer, where students live for 9 months out of the year, are pretty nice by Mongolian standards. I only qualify that because if they were compared to the USA or some other country, they might not fare as well.

I recall my first look at a school dorm here. . . It was almost one year ago! When my group of PCV's arrived in Mongolia, it was night time and dark. We then took a very interesting bus ride to a neighboring town where we were to be housed in the school dormitory for our initial orientation period. (It was also my first experience with the pimped out buses here....)

The ride was scary because the roads were bumpy and rutty so the bus went very slowly and there were no lights anywhere. The occasional large dog was seen running along side the road, and there were odd sights, like little police booths where the bus had to stop, and arched entryways on the road with weird writing I couldn't read. It was like being in a foreign land... Oh yea, it was.... not so much anymore!

The dorm building appeared to be very plain and stark. There were no curtains on any windows. This I realized can be quite annoying and disorienting, especially when the sun rose at around 5 a.m. and I was severely jet lagged! The beds were tiny bunks, very hard and not a pillow to be found anywhere. There were many helpful local volunteers there to assist us with carrying all our luggage (100 lbs. of check in baggage, plus carry on....) to our assigned rooms.

The dormitory here in Arvikheer houses 100 students, ranging in age from 6 to 17. They come from neighboring soums and often spend the majority of the school year in this environment. The rooms are pretty nice, with curtains and decent beds, bedding and most even have lockers of sorts. The students take good care of them and many times have posters, bulletin boards and awards hanging on the walls.

My bright idea was to have my friend Andrew take photos of me with each group of students in their dorm room. Then I was going to surprise them with a copy of the photo at a party I am planning to celebrate the end of the school year...this is still the plan...but...

Tune in next week for a recap of the big party...these kids are amazing and deserve the best I can give them!

Much to my chagrin, by the time I got around to arranging this, I discovered that the students in grades 1-5 had already finished school and were going home for the summer, if they had not already left!

So most of the pictures are now with the older kids! And that means they will not be here for the big bash I have planned for Sunday! We are making pizza, watching a slide show, movie and popcorn and many, many games! The students still here are now grades 7-11 so that changes the original idea, but it will all work out in the end.

KharKhorin, ancient capital of Mongolia

This past weekend I visited KharKhorin with several of my site mates. The oldest monastery in the country, Erdene Zuu is located here, as well as the infamous phallic rock (both old and new ones) and our wonderful PCV friend Marisa. Many reasons to visit this lovely little town only a three and a half hour meeker ride from Arvikheer. The ride is always an adventure! Allison and I were the only non Mongolians on our way there. The paved road to UB is where we started, and followed it for at least an hour before turning off onto the rutted, dirt path that is the road for the next two hours. The half way point stop is an ovoo where many of us walked around clockwise three times, tossing a stone with each turn; and this is primarily a toilet stop. Our friend Babs (who speaks the best Mongolian among us) found and arranged the meeker for us. It cost us 8,000T each (around $6.) Babs and Joyce ended up on this same meeker the next day and it was the one we all rode back home together on Sunday.

We got to experience the lams chanting at the monastery and it was thrilling, peaceful, spiritual, and uplifting. It is a beautiful and serene place I would like to see again, even though dear Marisa will be back in the USA this summer, having finished her PC stint.

My photos cannot do justice to the serene view from the monastery grounds and the panorama of sky, mountains and intricate buildings. I found this place, just like my response to most monastery's, calming.

It blows my mind to think that the ancient capital of this magnificent country was once here, in the time of Chinngis Khan! The more I learn about the history of this beautiful land and it's warm and welcoming people the closer to my heart it becomes.

Sh*&!!

Where is my sh%$! What the what?! Manure, dung, doo doo, excrement, kaka, whatever else you want to call it, it's still sh#*! As part of my gardening adventure here in Arvikheer, my good intentions (and enjoyable, though somewhat time consuming and perhaps even a little hard work) were blown away by someone else's good intentions...

Let me start at the beginning. One of the exciting projects that both my school director and I were in agreement about was gardening. She envisions a greenhouse on the school grounds, growing vegetables. These vegetables would supplement the diet of the children living in the school dormitory, plus some would be sold to the public, with the profits benefiting the school as she sees fit.

My vision is to teach some children and adults about the wonders of gardening, the magic of vegetables and to introduce more variety as well as vitamins to the dorm students diet. I also have a serious gardening addiction that needs to be fed by just such activities!

Since I came to town in late August last year, one of my first outdoor gardening endeavors thus far has been to get the directors' ok to plant salad fixins' in the two large urns outside the school. It has been almost a week since I did that. After amending the dirt with potting soil, horse dung and some sawdust, I planted seeds with the help of a dorm student. I have been diligently checking and watering the urns daily, garnering some strange looks from the school workers and much curiosity from the children. I am anxiously awaiting the emergence of some green any day now! (provided all the seeds have not been pecked out and eaten by the birds I have witness feasting there...)

The compost bins, thrown together with the assistance of some of the Eco club members are another project that some folks seem to be interested in. While adding my own compost scraps to the pile yesterday, I noticed that one of the other bins is now being filled with veggie peelings, mostly from potato's. These I am pretty sure can only be from the school cooks..yea! What excitement to know that some Mongolians are willing to try this weird idea of mine out!

My enthusiasm really jacked up my mood yesterday. The pleasant weather also helped me feel fine and I spent several hours and many trips hauling bags of dung I had found from at the stream bed to the fenced in garden bed areas in front of the dormitory. There I dumped this dung, not bothering to scatter it, or to get my shovel from home and bury it.

As a farm girl, I understand the usefulness of manure as a fertilizer. Farmers worldwide know how beneficial animal dung can be! In some countries, such as China, the use of "night soil" is employed to boost crop growth . Here in Mongolia, animal dung is most frequently used as fuel for ger stoves; especially in areas where wood is not readily available, i.e. a majority of the country. Some of this dung I found even appeared to be from a stall with partially decomposed straw combined with it. The perfect combination for helping this rocky, sandy dirt produce better crops! I erroneously thought others would see this dung as exciting and beneficial as me!

What a rude awakening I had today on my way past the dorm to the monastery where I assist with the Saturday afternoon English class, when I saw all my dung was gone!! Who would ever think in a country where garbage, broken glass, discarded clothing and all sorts of trash are frequently found lying around that some animal dung thrown into a dirt bed would be offensive. Outraged, confused and pissed off, I went to class, vented to my monk friend and called Oyun.

After class I met with her and one of the dorm teachers. Apparently as part of the great weather spring clean up the school director told all the foreign language teachers to clean all the sh*% out of the beds in front of the dorm building. Ugh....there is not a heavy sigh heavy enough to convey my anger at myself for not burying that crap!

There appeared to be confusion as to why I might need the dung when we are attempting to make compost. I explained that the compost won't be ready for months and the only way we can get this dirt to grow stuff is through enriching it with dung! Ah, ha... that's all I needed to do was explain this basic fact. I did notice today that there is a little less trash around the school building; trash cans are still on my radar!

Next time I go hunting for dung, I intend to train students, (look out Eco club) exactly what to collect and perhaps we will have a dung collecting field trip! Live and learn.