Travels into No-Man's Land

JM - Our week-long spring break has come to an end. We had some interesting travels, most of which is really, really difficult to explain in words. So, this blog posting will mostly be photos from our experience. We travelled to Choir (like a state capital city), Shivee Gobi (which is a town in Gobi Sumber aimag (aimags are like states)), Munhhaan ( a town in Sukhbaatar aimag) and Baruun-Urt (the state capital city of Sukhbaatar aimag). All of these places were way off the beaten path. We left Wednesday morning, and drove for 4 hours to reach the first place. It was mostly paved road. The second day however, as we travelled to the next town, we took no road. It was a six hour drive following a path through the flat, open nothingness. We stopped 4 or 5 times at a random ger to ask directions. It was a very bumpy ride! In those 6 hours we saw only 3 other vehicles, all trucks of some sort. All our traffic troubles came only from random mud puddles, losing the track we were following, and slowing to a stop to let horses, cows, sheep and goats pass in front of us. Our trip back yesterday was a nine hour drive, the first half without any road, the second half with a paved highway that in a few places just ended, and then started up again a few km down the road. And now for the photos.

This is one of the men clayton interviewed for MercyCorps. We are sitting inside his ger. You can see on the sofa next to him a small bottle with some fabric. That is his snuff bottle, something that all mongolian men have. When people come to your house, it is a whole ritual of presenting your snuff bottle to them -- there is a certain way to present it, a certain way to receive it and inspect it and return it. Its pretty cool, but the snuff (tobacco powder) is pretty potent.

Above is a photo to show you the bowl of freshly cooked goat's meat that was shared with us. You can see some knives that we were given to cut ourselves off a chunk of super fatty meat. It was pretty good, if you got some without much fat, which wasn't easy.

here's a picture of a typical mongolian horse. they are small but stocky and hardy. We saw countless horses like this one grazing in the endless pastures.

This is the home of one of the people we interviewed. This is their "winter camp" which they will leave soon to move around for the spring and summer with their herds. You can see clayt in his red coat.

This cow was snacking on garbage in the middle of one of the "cities" we visited. In with the rubbish was a cow skull with horns, which this cow was using to scratch his face.

The sign at the top of this building says "delguur" which means "store." Not many people know that the swastika was used by lots of people long long before hitler, and is related to ancient buddhism practices.

This little girl was at one of the gers we visited. I just thought she was cute standing there in her purple sequined boots chilling with her puppy. She's at the entrance to the ger, which I wailed hy head against, as I always forget to duck to go in.

A view of one of the "cities" we visited. Can you imagine living here? Most of the cities had no roads, just a lot of open space and you drove where you needed to go.

Here is Clayt standing by our "road" to the countryside. Our translator said we were lucky, as this was one of the better roads available. Would you be concerned if your driver went off the paved path and followed this route instead? Better yet, later that day we got to drive an hour and a half of it in the DARK.

This guy was awesome. He was one of the people clayt interviewed. He is wearing the traditional del (the blue coat/robe) and the boots made of felt. Not really pretty, but super thick and super warm. You can see on the sofa in the corner there is an empty bottle of vodka. He was a generous host, and as we talked, he continuously poured shot after shot (in a rice bowl) for everyone, until the bottle was empty.

A big gold bust of lenin i saw in a tailoring shop we were visiting. Not sure what that's all about.

We got to see a horse race on our last day in Sukhbaatar. I was trying to take a photo of the finish line, but this guy thought I was taking his photo. I guess I was.

Here is one of the early finishers of the horse race. Mostly the racers are children, 5 years old and up. The race was for 25 kilometers. Can you imagine putting your 5 year old on horse for a 25km race?

Here are some camels we saw on the ride home! We had stopped for a bathroom break. Out in the endless open, with no tree or rock in sight to hide behind, I did not partake in the roadside bathroom breaks.

Here's another little cutie hanging around one of the farms we were visiting.

This couple were very nice herders that we visited on our first day. They had lots of cute little lambs and baby goats, and they let them out of the pen to visit with us. One that was only a few days old put itself right between my feet and proceeded to nibble on my jeans. Clayton said when they opened the pen I gave a squeal of delight and he thought I was going to die from being overwhelmed by so much cuteness. I don't remember the squeal.

A last shot of the goofy looking camels giving us the eye as they passed. It was really awesome to be out in the middle of nowhere, no cars, no roads, no people, no buildings -- just us, the earth, and some wary camels.

Thank you!

We have been in mongolia now for 3 and a half months. We just wanted to post a quick note to say thank you to all our friends and family members that have been so supportive of us. Your phone calls, emails, letters and packages are priceless to us! It makes us feel great to know that we have so many people that care about us, and support us and the work we are trying to do here. We know life is about choices, and it was ours to take this path. We feel lucky to have family members and friends that are cheering us on even though its a path not many would take. So, thanks for all the love!

Hillary President Don't.

JM - That is what our cab driver said today. He also said, "Osama Bin Laden... Boom!" in reference to a chinese hotel being built that he apparently hates. He was jovial and spoke a little english, and then tried to talk to us with a mix of crazy gestures, hungarian, russian and mongolian.

We got the package from my mom today, so a big thanks to her for that. She also sent hers express mail, and it got here in less than 12 days. No word yet on the whereabouts of Char's big shipment of goodies, or the x-mas card from jo and dan. We think they'll arrive eventually, as our friend just finally received a book from the states that was sent back in November.

School is going well and we have spring break next week. This term has been a real adventure for us, and we wish our break would be longer, but I think everyone thinks that way. We will do some travelling over the break, so we'll post a blog after then.

Saturday we had parent teacher conferences. They went well in general. The father of 2 of our students invited us to their house for dinner on Sunday. He said he would call between one and two, and then he come pick us up. They showed up at 12:30, without a phone call. This is how it goes in Mongolia. So, we went to their house, to see how real mongolians live. In our opinion, they were not living the typical mongolian lifestyle. Their apartment building was gated and had a guard. They lived on the 6th floor, but their aparment was the size of a house, and even had 2 floors. 3 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, an office, dining room, kitchen, huge living room, patio and play room (with a full sized piano). They also had a maid. It was a beautiful place, and we had homemade chicken soup with rice, salad, steak, scotch, merlot, coca-cola, buuz (traditional mongolian dumplings), dried fruits, candies cookies and cakes. They had the fine china out with the extra forks and everything. Maybe for some of our friends at home this doesn't seem like a big deal. But, compared to how most of the people here are living, its very very exorbident. While we ate and chatted, the maid washed the dishes. Some of them clanked in the sink, and both the mother and father spoke to her harshly in mongolian, then carried on with the conversation. They are really nice people and their kids are sweet. It was our first time riding in a Lexus SUV, with tv screens on the backs of the seats and cordless headphones. So it was an eye-opening experience for us, to see what life is like at home for some of our students. Bedrooms bigger than ours and several flatscreen computers and tvs, a maid to heat up soup and serve it to you whenever you like...

Here is a photo of clayt and amrah playing a game of some sort of poker.


And here are some things that are on our bathroom doors to indicate what you should do where. We have tried without success to remove them. I think they've been painted over. It looks real classy.

Bus Accident

CM -- Yesterday it snowed. This comes after a day that hit 45 F (incredibly warm for Mongolia at this time of year). The snow and warm weather created a lot of water, which, when the temperatures dropped again, turned into beautiful ice. The roads aren’t taken care of very well here. There are no plows or salt trucks. People are employed to sweep the roads off with giant straw brooms. Ice is removed by pounding it with large steel bars, then shoveling it on the curb. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen very quickly.

OK, now I’ve set the scene. After volunteering yesterday, I got on the bus to meet Jessica and some friends for dinner. As we passed the Wrestling Palace, the bus began to skid (just before a red light). It skidded right into the car in front of us. The bus driver got out. Everyone on the bus stood up to look, but the doors didn’t open, so everyone stayed on the bus. The driver came back, got something from the driver pod (the driver has his own miniature room built around him on the bus), then tried to run away. Someone grabbed him, but lost their grip. He ran off the bus, leaving us on a bus that had been in an accident without any driver. This was shocking to me, but no one else seemed too concerned. Another person (hopefully employed by the bus company) immediately sat down in the driver’s seat, and drove us away, making all the normal stops as if nothing had happened!

Maybe I missed something somewhere, but that’s how I saw it. Quite interesting, especially considering a Mongolian policeman was sitting in the seat next to me. He never moved. Our friend Amrah said that is normal. Since the policeman was not a TRAFFIC policeman, he really wouldn’t do anything. I have to say, it was convenient, though. I didn’t lose a lot of time, and it gave me something to ponder for the rest of the ride…

Coming Soon to ESPN!

JM -- How do you think this rates as a sport -- above or below those woodsman competitions when they balance on logs and the likes? This is what our TV options were the other night -- watching this, Transformer re-runs, Korean Soap Operas or MTv's "Pimp my Ride" dubbed over in Russian.

Please enlighten us if you know anything about this sport where it appears that you box with your knee while hopping on one foot.