A nice view

Ulaanbaatar is surrounded by mountains. Clayt and I took a saturday a few weeks ago and climbed one of the taller mountains to see what UB looks like from above. Here are some photos from the day.


We started off early in the morning at this giant Buddha statue. Its the largest one here I believe.

After visiting Buddha, it was a trek up a small mountain to visit a Russian monument. Looking down, you can see how small the giant Buddha looks from up here.

And we continued upward...This is a view of UB from one of the mountain tops.

Here's Clayt looking victorious after our long climb. Up here it was so silent and peaceful.

and here is the short "easy" path down the backside of the mountain... a very steep descent over loose rocks - I fell at least 3 times (ouch!) and Clayt few a couple times too. By the time we got almost to the bottom, Clayt had to hang onto me because I had jello legs from the exertion of keeping balance on the loose rocks at such a crazy angle. These are the things you do in Mongolia for fun!

Under the Knife in a Third World Country

Thanks to all of you who called and kept me company while I was in the hospital, it was greatly appreciated!

Here's what happened: I started getting sick in the middle of the night Thursday night, throwing up and having really bad stomach pains. Amrah came in a taxi and took us to the hospital. The nurse looked at me, then they called a doctor from home to come in and look at me. He decided I needed to have my appendix out ASAP. Clayt called our the school director, and he and the school principal showed up soon after. We wanted to be sure this really had to happen, and if it did, was this the best place available. Turns out it was a yes for both.

I asked if they would put me to sleep, and he said they could, but it would involve putting a tube down my throat and the recovery would be longer and more painful. The alternative, however, was not much better. They wanted to put a needle in my spine to numb me from the chest down, and then operate while I was awake. Both parts of this plan really freaked me out.

30 minutes later I was undressed and in the operating room, hooked up to a monitor and waiting for the scary shot in my spine. The good thing was that I didn’t have much time to think about everything, it happened so fast. The woman came in to give me the shot. She told me “You don’t move, ok? Never move. If you move, then my needle will break inside your spine.” I asked, “will it hurt?” She said, “yes.” She was really making me nervous. So, there I was, naked, curled up on my side in the fetal position with two nurses holding me down to minimize my movements. The shot hurt, but it wasn’t so bad. the needle did not break.

2 minutes later I was lying on my back again and the shot was kicking in. They were rubbing iodine or something all over me, and I could feel it. I mean, everything was going numb, but I was aware that they were touching me. This made me really nervous as I thought I would be able to see and feel when he cut into me. That feeling went away though, and as they saw I was getting freaked out, they put up a little curtain so I couldn’t see anything that was happening.

Some time later the doctor told me that my appendix was really long and red. He asked if I wanted to see it. I figured, why not, I wouldn’t get another chance! He dangled the thing over my face with a pair of tweezers, and I was scared it would fall on me. But, it didn’t of course, and that’s the first and last time I ever saw my appendix.

After surgery they wheeled me out. I passed Clayt, Amrah and our school bosses, and was only able to say “I survived” before we were down another corridor. I was still very numb, and it was tough to get my dead weight into the bed even with the nurses helping. And there I lay, at 4:30 in the morning, staring out the window and shivering from nerves and way too uncomfortable to sleep. I had to wait until 10 a.m. before I could see clayt. They gave me nothing for pain, nothing to help me sleep.

So that was early Friday morning, and I wasn’t able to come home until Monday late morning. The days in between were filled with 2 shots and 2 IVs each day. Unfortunately for me, I have hard to find veins and this really confounded them. Each time they came in to give me an IV, they had to poke me at least twice before getting the right spot. One night the nurse poked me 4 painful times before giving up and not giving me an IV at all. Our boss brought me soups and crackers twice a day, which was helpful since the hospital didn’t feed me hardly at all.

I had the pain from the operation, pain from the IVs and shots, pain from where they ripped off the surgical tape and took some of my skin with it, and then they said I had a bladder infection too, and the treatment for that was also painful. At no time did anyone give me antibiotics (but I hope that was what was in the shots) and no painkillers. I asked one of the nurses on the second day “please, can I take medicine for the pain?” She said “No, pain is good.” I beg to differ.

I had two roommates, both Mongolian with almost no English. None of the nurses spoke English (except one, but she wasn’t ever around), and the doctor spoke funny English. It was a long and boring three days. Unfortunately, visitors weren’t allowed to come into the ward, so when clayt came to visit, I had to go stand out in the hallway to see him. It was a no-frills hospital. You had to bring your own food, your own toilet paper, and only 2 toilets for the whole wing to use. There was also an ashtray in the unisex bathroom, and a sign in Mongolian that said please don’t smoke around other people. Several times I had to turn back and wait a while since the bathroom was occupied by a man with a head injury smoking a cigarette. I could have gone into a stall, but I am still not cool with sharing a bathroom with strange men (especially when there is a lock on the door!).

They also burned incense in the mornings, which I don’t think would fly in the US, but it smelled pretty good. Also, one day the nurse wasn’t around and my IV was finished, so the girl in the bed across from me got up and took the needle out for me. See what I mean about no frills?

The stitches come out this Thursday, and I’m out of work for this week it looks like. I saw the doctor again today, and said everything looks fine. He’s a good surgeon, and said he worked for the WHO at one point, and traveled to 23 countries in that time. He’s used to performing operations in a less than ideal setting.

So there it is, the story of my least favorite Mongolian experience so far. Lets hope it will stay that way!

For a Good Cause

jm- last friday i met with a man (Edward) from a volunteer organization here in ulaanbaatar called the Christina Noble Children's Foundation. They have projects going in several countries, and here they work hard to help abandoned and abused children who have nowhere else to go. Here is a link so you can read all about the different services they provide:
http://www.cncf.org/mongolia/projects.asp

So today i was able to go out the children's "ger village" and see how things are set up and meet some of the children. I had emailed saying I was interested in volunteering, and they are excited to have me start teaching English very soon.
The stories that Edward told me were so sad, and all so similar. He told me many of the children are abandoned. In mongolia there are alot of divorces and remarriages, in which the new husband does not want the old husband's kids around, so they are simply abandoned or forced to leave. Poverty is a serious and ugly situation here. girls are raped either by a family member and run away, or after they are left on their own (I was told of a girl in this situation that was only 9 years old) they are raped and left very injured. When they end up in the hospital as a result, the hospital calls CNCF, and they take them in.

We peeked in on the "kindergarten" class at snack time, and Edward pointed out a new little girl who was brought to the center recently. Her mother had been trying to kill her over time by forcing her to drink or eat chemical tablets of some sort. When the grandmother found out, she brought her to the center, and still visits. There was a little boy whose arm had been broken so many times (by his mother) and not fixed that it was very crooked, and Edward said they are going to pay the money to have it reset for him. The same boy also suffered from Rickets - the legs were not in good shape. But he was cute and smiled while we looked at his injuries, and then ran off, not appearing in the least bit self-conscious about his funny gait. One of the smallest boys had large scars going across his forehead at the scalp from repeat beatings from his parents.

What nice to know is that at the foundation they are safe, and looked after at all times. They can be kids! In their small fenced in community they have 2 playground areas, a school house, ger living quarters each with a "ger mother", a washroom, a cooking house and even a small new bakery. They also have a basketball court that turns into a skating rink in the winter and several gardens in which they hope potatoes and flowers will grow.

I can't wait to start teaching them english, and learn all about them and learn from them too. Sometimes the horror stories of bad things happening to innocent children can be discouraging and very depressing, but at least through organizations like this there can still be positive outcomes for these kids.

Things that make you say hmmmm......

Here are some random photos without explanation.
Use your imagination to think up witty captions!

Play Time in Apartment 29

Here are some photos of the kids from downstairs hanging out in our apartment. They came up last saturday evening, about half an hour before some folks were supposed to arrive for a "cinco de mayo" party. I had the music going, and they came in and it developed into a dance party, and then turned into a game of dress up, dancing and general bopping around and playing with random stuff they found in our apartment. Such as the camera. Between them I think they took about 30 photos in the hour they were visiting. Then they came back 2 days later and we did the same thing all over again, except this time Clayt and the boy went outside to play basketball while I let the girls raid my closet. They are sweet and goodnatured kids - often when they come up they help me tidy up -they fold the laundry on the drying rack, or wash dishes or sweep. I tried to make the stop before, but they seem to like it. They also like that now our patio door opens, and they can go out on the patio for a few seconds, before rushing back in after pretending to faint from looking down. Good clean fun.






That's StoveTop Stuffing she's eating in the photo above. They really liked it, but their favorite so far has been the wheat ritz crackers my mom sent - they mow them down in no time.

A Picnic with Little Monsters

Last weekend was our spring picnic with the elementary students, grade 1-5. The kids were super jazzed for the 2 weeks before the event, and counted down the days excitedly. I was excited to interact with my kids outside of the classroom for once, where I didn't have to lecture them to keep writing or sit in their seats correctly. By the end of the day, everyone was good and tired, and I think we should have gotten a personal thank you from all of their parents for exhausting them so thoroughly. Here are some photos of the g-rated action.

This bird was a real party spoiler. We had just gotten into a rousing game of duck-duck-goose when this rather large bird started circling our circle, flying low enough to catch our interest and raise shrieks from the kids. I never saw a circle of duck-duck-goose broken up so quickly - the kids started screaming and running around, huddled together or trying to shoo it away, but in general just flailing about without reason. There was no resurrecting the game after that.

Here are some of the girls finding ultimate skipping stones for Clayton. He was deemed the best stone skipper, so the kids pooled their efforts and just gathered stones for him to skip. Some were as tiny as a fingernail, others so big clayt had to use two hands to try to skip them.

Here are two of the first graders - the biggest and the smallest. Enguun (the boy, who Clayt and I have named Goon) looks so sweet, but he is the bane of my existence in the grade one class. Degi (Delgerchimeg) is a mousy little thing and for some reason she is always smelling my arm when she comes up to my desk for help. First graders are interesting.

Here's Clayt, showing his brute strength wieghtlifting a first grader.

This is Aya, a six year old space cadet. She marches to the beat of her own drum, and here she is proudly waving her garbage flag, freshly pulled from the river. I took it and put it under a rock, so it wouldn't end up in the river. She proceded to pull out about six more, waving each around, getting people wet with river garbage spray, until I buried them one by one under rocks with the first one.

Clayt, the see-saw bully, terrorizing the girls in his class, making them shriek, until the one on the back actually pitched off sideways.

Here's a last shot of the whole gang.

THE ABANDONED AMUSEMENT PARK OF TERROR!!!™

CM – In honor of the recent UN Global Road Safety Week, Ulaanbaatar banned automobiles on a stretch of its two most-traveled roads Sunday. These roads travel right through the center of town and one is pretty close to us, so Jessica and I decided to take the opportunity to walk down the middle of the road. We were joined by a gaggle of people who looked like they were up to nothing much, some kids playing soccer, and a surprising number of roller bladers. The lack of any well paved roads and sidewalks would lead one to believe that all potential roller bladers would already have met their demise. Not so.

So, after watching a less-than-interesting bicycle race begin (which chased us from the road), we left the beaten path for a while, lured by a Buddhist monastery we had often passed, but never approached. We looked at the monastery and took some pictures, but were too shy to go in. Oh well. This shyness led us to the real find…

THE ABANDONED AMUSEMENT PARK OF TERROR!!!™ Well, more like the abandoned amusement park of feces and dumb graffiti. After talking with our friend, we found that the amusement park is not so much abandoned as off-season. Could have fooled me. They apparently open the park up in the summer, which is surprising from the looks of it. Also, why can people just walk through it during the off-season if they intend to use it again? They are just begging people to poop in it! (There are as many public toilets as public trash cans – meaning none. This doesn’t mix well with the population of homeless folks).

Anyway, here are some of our pictures from The ABANDONED AMUSEMENT PARK OF TERROR!!!™ Enjoy:

As we walked into the park grounds, we saw this building proclaiming the park’s misleading name (more aptly, “Tetanus Land” or “World of Critical Injuries”).



Across the beautifully kept grounds you can see the three-headed slide of horror. This slide features some beautiful urban artwork, as well as a lot of rust, and watch those sharp edges! You can ask Jessica about the experience of sliding down it. She tangled with the beast, and lives to tell the tale…



And be sure to try the rides when you visit. While Jessica likes the caveman gravitron (sorry, picture not included), I personally prefer the disappoint-o-coaster (I almost made this thing fall off of its pedestal, with me in it).



Maybe catch a performance by your favorite band, possibly Foreigner or Molly Hatchet (a side note: don’t go backstage – there is a serious amount of human waste back there. Don’t ask me how I know).



Unfortunately, our trip to the amusement park was left incomplete. Due to the temperature, we missed our chance to catch the beaver fever in the water park/waste treatment plant for kids. Darn. Maybe next time.