I've decided i'd finally take the time on one of my work computers to update ya'll, so please forgive me of my errors, as little editing will have occured.
All is great with me and i've fallen in love with my little city. Work is constantly a rollercoaster as are certain days and even throughout a day. Living in a land with such a foreign culture and language keeps me forever on my toes, or sometimes makes me hide away for a breather. In these past two months i've been lucky to experience a few more mongolian events of which I will share.
I crashed a wedding, well, my CP's (counterparts/co-workers) made it mandatory for me to attend the reception of a former administration employee at my hospital, whom I had never met. I soon became the bell of the ball, as the father of the bride prided my mongolian singing abilities and showered me with vodka shots. I mongolian waltzed with both men and women, and then danced the night away.
I attended a female pop concert (we have a very nice, traditional russian opera hall in town), at which during the intermission, lucky seat numbers, one being me, had to go up on stage. I was the only non-mongolian at the venue and got a surprising round of applause. On my walk back to my seat I had to shake every persons hand. My CP thought this was hilarious, I was bright red.I did win a fancy pen and notebook.
The director of my hospital took me out to brand new foals from his two herds of racehorses. This first consisted of a 2 hour drive in the steppe looking for the herds, which roam free, lots of vodka shots, aiirag (horse milk), and then the acutal branding session where 14 new foals were wrestled to the ground and burned with the metal branding stamp. After the process, they dipped the branding stamp into aiirag and we all had to drink the milk for good luck, and finish the third bottle of vodka before heading home. Luckily, my director doesn't drink, but that certaintly didn't exclude me.
The search crew
The branding corral.
The director of my hospital, Battuvshin and me with the branding stamp.
Dipping the stamp in Aiirag
At the hospital within these past two months I have continued to teach english, I started a beginners yoga class, and did several classes at schools on Alcohol awareness and STI/HIV/AIDS awareness. I also organized a healthy foods fair with our health department, in which a restaurant made corn dogs, ehhh, not sure the healthy foods concept was fully understood. I have helped schedule community blood pressure and blood glucose screenings and organized a two day training at our soum hospital (little city outside our big city) and a three day training for the nurses at our hospital, in which another peace corps volunteer, an RN came and had sessions on post-stroke care, diabetic care, patient transfers, pre-natal care, nursing ethics, etc. I feel that within this short time my hospital has been very open to my ideas, and to working with me, but I need to focus more on the hospital and employee's needs. Luckily, our IST came right at the perfect time for me.
Last week all the non-TEFL volunteers (non- teaching english as a foreign language volunteers), which includes us health, business and community youth development volunteers had IST (In-service training) at a hotel outside of Ulan Batar. We all brought one of our counterparts (co-workers) and had a week-long training by Peace Corps on how to better work with our counterparts, and within our HCA (host country agency - the places where we work), and give our counterparts a better understanding of the peace corps and what our goals are as peace corps volunteers. Sessions included capacity building, cultural differences, project design and management, needs assessments and resources, behavior change, proposal writing, etc. It was a great experience and motivated my CP to work more with me. We tossed around several projects ideas that we plan to work on in the next year and I now have a more detailed work plan that follows better with needs of my hospital and needs of our employees. As these project move in to motion i'll update you about them.
Before I get too wordy, I want to touch on the title of this post: the art of layering and the mongolian shuffle and slide. As you may have guessed, a major hurdle about living in Mongolia is learning how to function in -10F+ degree weather. In that, a major aspect of adjusting is learning how to correctly layer. Now, I haven't experienced our extreemes yet, and have no way mastered this art but, have found that in -10F one pair of smartwool socks, one layer of tights, silk leggings and polarfleece leggings under a sweater dress with another sweater over it, a small jacket, my ski jacket, a hat, scarf, faux fur-lined boots, and polarfleece gloves seem to do the trick on keeping me warm on my 30 min trek to work. Many mongolian's break out their winter deel's wich are fur lined. Almost everyone has at least something with fur on it, hats are most common.
This trek involves a little adjustment to my normal walking pattern. I've observed mongolians thoroughly and have found there are two main forms of treking over the snow and mainly ice covered sidewalks. These include the shuffle and slide. The shuffle, which is by far the most popular, and safer form, consists of the typical shuffle movement where your foot doesn't come completely off the ground and is placed directly in front of the other foot. This limits space for error and chance that you feet will suddenly try to split on you. Trying to get anywhere this way takes twice as long.
The slide, most commonly attempted by children and young bachelors consists of a few forward motion steps followed by a sliding action on the ice. This doesn't work well for me.
The sliding track
I hope to soon follow this post with pictures!
Hope all is well and Happy Holidays!
xoxo,
Gracie
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