Singaporeans

On Friday I went with some people from my office to the dedication of the first house built for this build season. A Global Village team of recent college grads came from Singapore. Unfortunately we were too late for the house dedication (thank you UB traffic), but I still got to chat it up with the GV team for a while which was really fun. Most of them had studied political science and this was all of their first times in Mongolia and working for Habitat for Humanity. It was great for me to hear about their experiences and what they thought of the country and the organization. Also it was awesome to talk with fluent/native English speakers. Most of them thought I was a little nuts for a. going back to school for a Master’s (they just graduated and are sick of school) and b. for coming to Mongolia during the winter. There may be some truth to their arguments.

The GV team and a couple of Habitat staff.

The house they built.

Feeding People = Happiness

I am trying really hard this week (and hopefully from now on) to be in a better mood and be happier. The best way to feel happy and good about yourself is to serve others. So with that in mind when I ran into the Sister missionaries from my ward on Tuesday I promptly asked them when they could come for dinner, and they were available for Thursday. On Wednesday I spent all of 2 minutes on Pinterest before finding a recipe that looked interesting and doable here in Mongolia, I went to 2 different grocery stores to get almost all the ingredients I needed (don't know why I still can't find pepper), then spent about 4 hours on Wednesday night cooking in preparation. The preparation paid off because dinner was actually pretty good. I made this chicken rice casserole thing (so chosen because I could prepare it the night before and just stick it in the oven 30 minutes before eating). It had vegetables, normal rice, wild rice (totally worth the splurge and I feel super lucky I even found some), chicken, and cheese. We had bread and a green salad with it. For dessert I made brownies and we had them with ice cream. The evening was a great success and I had a really fun time chatting with the sisters. One of them is Mongolian and the other is American and we spoke in English the whole time which was fun.

The main dish after we'd finished dinner (I've really got to work on remembering to take pictures BEFORE we eat). Don't let the shiny melted cheese on top fool anyone, it was delicious.  I will probably be eating the leftovers of this meal for the next 5 days. Thankfully I unloaded half of the brownies by sending them home with the Sisters.

Just because of the good mood that it put me in I might try and feed the missionaries once a week from now until I go home.

Seabuckthorn, Good For Health

Yes, that is a real thing and I’m currently obsessed with seabuckthorn syrup. Seabuckthorn berries are small, round, orange berries that grow in central Asia. They have lots of nutrients are vitamins. For more information, here's the Wikipedia page: Seabuckthorn.

I tried the juice within a couple of weeks of arriving in Mongolia. At first I didn’t like it because I thought it smelled terrible even though the taste wasn’t that bad. But then someone brought some in to work and it started to grow on me. I drank a lot of it when I was sick because it is actually really good for your immune system (Wikipedia backs me up on this claim) and now I’m hooked. I prefer to drink it with cold water instead of hot and I usually always have a bottle of the concentrated syrup at my desk at work. I’ve tried a few different brands, but the Shar Doctor is my favorite. If anyone finds this stuff in the US (or elsewhere) I suggest you try it.

Darkhan (pronounce it without the ‘k’)

In April my boss took me with him to visit one of our affiliate offices. Darkhan is Mongolia’s second largest city and is bumpy 3 hours drive from UB. We left on a Thursday morning and came back Friday night. It was kind of fun to go on a ‘business trip’ but I didn’t have enough to do to really keep me occupied the whole time. Still, it was nice to get out of UB.

My favorite part of the trip was the drive going and coming back, even though at some points I felt like I was on a roller coaster the road was so bad (of course it is actually considered one of the better roads in Mongolia). I kept thinking about how there is no way my mom would survive this car ride, she would have had to take a Dramamine. I liked the drives because I got to see lots of the countryside and lots and lots of livestock. The weather was still chilly so it wasn’t green yet, but the snow and ice were mostly gone and there were some beautiful views.

The actual city was quite nice. It seemed so small compared to pretty much any other city and especially UB. I couldn’t believe that this was the second largest city. But it had a more hometown feeling and I thought it might be very pleasant to live there even though you’d be a little more isolated than in UB. The staff at the Habitat affiliate was very nice and they took me around the city to see the sights and past Habitat projects. I was also able to interview a past home partner which was great.

It was nice to have a change of my daily routine, but I was really happy to be come back home.

My New Digs

So as I have mentioned previously, I moved into an apartment the second weekend of March. I have now been living in my apartment for about 2 months and have still not put up pictures of it, so this will rectify that oversight. I moved out of my hostel because it was starting to get crowded, as I knew it would when the weather warmed up. I moved in with a girl from work, Eenee. She works in the other Habitat office in Ulaanbaatar, so we don’t actually work together very much or at the same office. We found a one bedroom 4 month sublet from a family that is in China right now. The building is one of the many Soviet built apartment buildings that is super sturdy but not super pretty. The kitchen is tiny but the refrigerator is really big. The bathroom is fully equipped and even has a washing machine (my favorite feature of the whole apartment). The bedroom is large and has a desk with a computer. I sleep in the bedroom on the bed and Eenee sleeps in the living room on a mattress and we both keep our stuff in the more than ample closet in the bedroom. Things have been up and down with the roommate situation, I’m handling it sometimes not so well, but I haven’t killed her yet, so that is a good thing. The location is pretty good and I have only a 15 min walk to work, a 20 minute walk to church, and a 10 minute walk to a pretty nice grocery store. I’m very happy that I moved and that we found this great apartment.

View of my building.

The door and stairwell of building.

Entry way of my apartment.

Bathroom

Living room, the fridge is in the far right corner.

Kitchen (really the corner of the living room that holds the kitchen)

Bedroom

Bedroom with view of the desk.

View from the window: the lovely trash pile.

Crazy Weather

It seems like half what I talk to people about (in Mongolia and back home) is the weather because it dominates so much of life here. About a week and a half ago a true miracle happened: it became warm and things started to turn green, pretty much overnight. I hit a true milestone when I stepped outside my apartment without wearing any tights (I had previously worn tights under all of my pants and obviously under skirts), it felt a little weird and I felt exposed. Then for a day, it hit 80 degrees and I was walking around with rolled up jeans and a short sleeved shirt, it was amazing. It stayed pleasant for about a week, and then over the weekend it turned nasty again. The temperature dropped and it snowed, but worst of all was the wild wind. I felt like I was going to be swept off my feet and the bag on my shoulder did actually get swept off my arm. Today it is still kind of cold, but the weather report says that it is going to warm up again this week and then snow again.

This picture shows how things have turned green so suddenly and also demonstrates the force of the wind with all of the trash that was blown into the little river. The only thing missing was the frost that was on the grass this morning.

I feel like the weather gods are trying to torture me.

So called Mexican Food

I have figured out that the amount of time I spend blogging is directly related to my general mood, so if you haven't noticed, the past few weeks my mood has been kind of apathetic. But a fair number of things have still been going on, so I'm going to try and catch up with a bunch of posts, so hold on to your hats.

Last night my organization had a little fundraiser. We got the 'Los Banditos' restaurant to sponsor us for a night and give us 15% of the proceeds from the night's sales to our Blue Sky Build project in July (the idea was actually mine because I was thinking about how my elementary schools used to do that with a local restaurant sometimes, I was just happy we could have a fundraiser that didn't involve me dressing up or hosting). 'Los Banditos' is the self-proclaimed "only Mexican Indian food restaurant in Mongolia," and with good reason. I have found through repeated attempts that Mexican food on any continent besides North America generally sucks (Switzerland is the ranking worst for me, they used raclette cheese!!!), and even in North America it can be hard to find decent and authentic Mexican food (ahem Boston). And yet I keep trying. Last night I ordered chicken enchiladas, which at first didn't seem too bad, they didn't taste disgusting, just off. Inside the enchiladas were the following ingredients: chicken, cheese, bell peppers, cabbage, kidney beans, corn, sliced mushrooms, and garbanzo beans. Sadly as I ate them they kept feeling heavier and heavier in my stomach, so I only ended up eating 2 out of the 4 on my plate.

The enchiladas.

When I took out my camera to take a picture of my food the guy sitting across from mistakenly assumed I wanted a picture of myself as well.

Part of the table I was sitting at.

Besides my inevitable disappointment with the food, I think the night was at least a success for the organization.