Goodbye Mongolia

I honestly can’t say how I feel about leaving Mongolia. The past month has been awesome because I’ve been super busy and I loved getting interact with all of the international volunteers and staff that were here for the BSB. But I also haven’t forgotten the rather depressing times in March, April, and May when it still seemed to be winter and I wasn’t busy. So my feelings are mixed.

I’m sad because I will miss the great people that I’ve met here and gotten to know. My co-workers and my friends from church are really amazing people and I am very sad to leave them.

I’m happy because I’m leaving pretty much when all of the international people I’ve gotten to know the past couple of weeks are leaving too, so I don’t feel like I’m being left behind. I’m also happy because I’m on my way to start a 3-week trip through China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I am SUPER excited to be going back to China to see people, most of all my friend Ana and her family who I’m staying with in Foshan. Honestly if I wasn’t on my way to see Ana and get to hang out with her for a few days I might not get on that airplane. I’m also happy because I’m meeting up with my best friend Lacey in Thailand and that’s going to be awesome.

I’m nervous because after that 3-week trip I still have no life plans other than to sleep on my mom’s couch and work at Del Taco until I find a real job. I’m getting a little panicky, but I’m trying to ignore my growing sense of dread.

I’m grateful for my experience in Mongolia, the good and the bad. It has been a real learning experience and I’m thankful for the professional and personal growth I’ve made here.

I’m in disbelief because my 6 months here is finally over. Weird.

My Last Mongolian Adventure

And now we come to the end. I spent my last 24 hours in Mongolia being lazy and packing. Thursday night my landlord was coming over to check out the apartment and give me back my deposit. I did a little cleaning up before and thank heavens I finished early because he, his wife, his son, their English-speaking friend, and (I assume) her son showed up 20 minutes earlier than I expected.  We figured out the money that I owed and they owed me. I told them I was leaving the apartment on Friday at 3:00pm (my flight left at 6:20pm, leaving at 3pm was giving myself a ton of extra time). They said they’d come back tomorrow at 2:30 to collect the key and to give me my money.

I spent Friday morning packing and lounging around my apartment. I didn’t really care about leaving the place spotless because we didn’t get the apartment in immaculate condition and we’d already agreed on what I would get back of my deposit. After putting off the final touches of packing by watching 2 movies and wasting time on the internet I was pretty much ready to go by 1:30 and was sitting on the couch watching stuff on my computer. Well thank heavens I was ready because they showed up early again, this time at 1:45pm.

After they handed me my wad of cash I figured I might as well go to the airport since they were there and I was ready to go. So I make ready to leave at the same time as the family and the landlord carries my suitcase down the stairs, very charitable I thought. When we get out of the building I kind of explain in gestures and the universal words of ‘taxi’ and ‘airport’ that I was going to a nearby hotel so they could call me a taxi to the airport (I was unable to call one myself because a. I don’t speak Mongolian, 2. I didn’t have the phone number of the English taxi service, and d. it’s impossible to explain how to drive to my apartment because we don’t have an address.) The landlord then puts my suitcase in his trunk and says ‘taxi’ and points. I figure I haven’t got much to lose: there’s not much danger as it’s him, his wife, and young son and they’ve never given me reason to be alarmed before. So off I go in their car with them.

The wife calls her English-speaking friend again and hands me the phone. She explains that the family is going somewhere near the airport and I can get a taxi from there and it will be cheaper for me; sounded good to me. We’re going in a direction that isn’t directly to the airport but kind of in the right direction. Then we turn off a main road and start going through a neighborhood of apartment complexes, eventually going into a parking garage where we park and get out of the car. Weirdly I still wasn’t nervous or alarmed, just slightly amused and confused. We then get into another car driven by another guy. We drive for another 10 minutes, pull over to a random side of the road and they take out my bag which is a signal for me to get out as well. The landlord flags down a car for me (the unmarked taxis are usually cheaper and I like them better anyway) and negotiates a price and puts my bag in the back. And then I’m off in my third car in an hour finally making my way to the airport.

I arrived 3.5 hours early for my flight, which was fine with me (although it would be nicer if there were any shops or food at this tiny airport, but I can’t have everything). 

My last shot of Mongolia taken from my taxi.

Last Mongolian Meal

On my second to last day in Mongolia I finally had what we in the US think of as Mongolian bbq, or at least something similar. This happened to be way better and was a BBQ place packed with tourists. Christine from the Habitat Asia Pacific office had stayed at my apartment the night before and so she was taking me out to lunch before her flight later that day. The food was delicious and it was an all-you-can-eat restaurant so I filled up. I kind of wish I would have discovered this earlier, but maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t. I don't think it was traditional Mongolian food at all, but it was still great.

My third plate of the day.

Naadam

Naadam is one of Mongolia’s 2 big holidays. It is 3 days of traditional sports like wrestling, horse-racing, archery, and this bone flicking game. For more accurate information, here’s the Wikipedia link: Naadam. I was told that an extra 1 million people were in the city for it and I personally saw a ton of extra tourists walking around. For a city that already has too many people it made things a little crazy.

I got to go to the Opening Ceremonies on Wednesday, which was quite fun and a great cultural experience. I got there super early because I was told to be in my seat an hour before the 11am start time (which means I got there at 9:20am, oops). The ceremony was mercifully only an hour and involved bands playing, horses marching around, the president speaking, and lots of people in Mongolian traditional clothing. I was sitting with some of the Habitat volunteers from Australia (our tickets were bought by my co-worker Billy), so it was nice to chat with them while we watched.

This is the Mongolian Olympic team that's going to London later this month.

Afterward the wrestling competition started. It was frankly kind of boring because there were a lot of them going on at once and I couldn’t really see what was going on. Then we checked out archery which was really cool. I ran into some of the senior missionary couples I know from church, which is always fun.

Wrestlers getting ready in their oddly skimpy outfits.

Male archer getting ready to shoot.

Female archers preparing.

Guys competing in the bone flicking sport that I never got the name of.

I’m really glad I got to experience Naadam and I’m really glad that I was able to leave when I wanted (I was still tired from the week before).

Farewell from Friends and Co-workers

It was a little harder to say goodbye than I thought it would be. I shouldn’t have been surprised, my favorite part about Mongolia has always been the people so it makes sense that the hardest part to leave would be the same thing.

On my last Sunday at church I gave a talk, half of which I blubbered through. I was asked to speak about my experience at church in Mongolia, and any recommendations for church members there, etc. I chose to focus my talk around Zion because I have never found a group of Saints who are building Zion more genuinely and enthusiastically than in Mongolia. Despite my exhaustion and having to get up early to write my talk, I was very grateful I got to speak because it gave me the opportunity to say thank you and goodbye to my ward. After church the YW president asked me to come down to the YW room because the YW wanted to say goodbye to me. When I walked in they had decorated the white board and started to sing ‘God Be With You Til We Meet Again,’ which made me start crying again. They had signed a card and when they said the closing prayer Gerelezaya translated it for me (don’t usually bother translating prayers) and I was pretty much bawling because the Young Woman said some really nice things etc. All of this crying I did on Sunday was partly because I was so tired and a little sleep deprived but let’s face it, anyone who knows me at church knows that I cry pretty easily anyway. So yeah, last Sunday at church was great, too much crying, but still good.

The Young Women, their leaders and I.

On Monday I went out to lunch with my office and that was really nice. Thankfully I didn’t do any crying but it was a pleasant little send off for me. They gave me a beautiful cashmere scarf and a ticket to the Nadaam Opening Ceremonies for that Wednesday. I really liked working with all of them and I hope I can stay in touch.

Colleagues and I at my farewell lunch.

Tuesday night I went out to dinner with probably my favorite people in Mongolia, Flower and Gerelezaya, sisters that I know from church. We had a lovely time chatting and enjoying Indian food. Brother Ganbold also came by (because he’s Flower’s boss so he had to give her stuff, but he stayed and ate too). They also gave me presents: a wallet (which I’m currently using) and calendar thing. And Brother Ganbold gave me a ticket to a cultural show for Wednesday night (which I went to with Gerelezaya and some people she knew from her mission and it was amazing!).

Me, Flower, Gerelezaya, and Brother Ganbold.

I will miss the people I met in Mongolia but I’m fairly confident that I will be back someday.

The Blue Sky Build (or why I came to Mongolia)

After five and a half months of planning (more actually, this is just what I was involved in) the Blue Sky Build had finally arrived.  The two weeks leading up to the BSB were super busy, but I really enjoyed it. The weekend before I spend all day Saturday going with one of the social workers to visit 6 families for the build, which is something I always enjoy, though we spent a lot of time in the car. Then on Sunday went into my office before church, only went to Sacrament meeting and then went back to my office to work with Melissa, our regional consultant who had come in that day.

The week before pretty much everyone was in the office early and stayed late. We had some more regional staff come in that week which ended up being a big help because they took care of some of the menial tasks that I would have been up all night doing without them (like printing and cutting 300 name tags, etc). The atmosphere was quite fun because we were all a little on edge and it was great to meet and work with some new people. All of the Mongolian Habitat staff also came into town so it was nice to meet and work with a few of them. There were a couple of issues of course. One snag we had was getting more translators for the build, thankfully it wasn’t my responsibility but I tried to help Chimgee (who was in charge of translators) as much as I could including calling my stake president and going to the RM institute class to make an announcement/desperate plea for any English speakers who could help out. My other major issue for the week was printing (there were actual problems of course but I learned to adopt the 'if it’s not my responsibility then I don’t have the time/energy to care' because otherwise I’d have given myself an ulcer). We have the crappiest printer/fax/scanner/copier at our office; it is like one you would have at your house, not in an office. It was slow and kept running out of ink. Well we needed to make thousands of copies and eventually I ended up going to a copy place after too many days and even the copy place was quite expensive. But other than that, things were fine for the build up.

Oh, except that on June 28, the Thursday before the build it was Mongolian elections so the entire country was off work. The rest visiting foreign staff and I all went into the office anyway, but none of the Mongolian staff worked (as far as I know). This REALLY stressed out some of our regional people because taking a day off 4 days before a major project is apparently not something that people normally do.

On Sunday, 1 July the real chaos started. Most of the volunteers were arriving that day and then we had the Opening Dinner that night. I was up really early that morning and in the office (and really excited). I got most of my day responsibilities done (like setting up some signs at hotels, etc) very easily and even had a little down time to grab lunch. It was SO much fun to see all of the international volunteers coming in. A couple of the staff seemed a little stressed, but otherwise I think all of the pick ups and registrations went pretty well.

I had to co-emcee the Opening Dinner (not sure why they keep making me emcee for these things, I don’t really mind I just don’t understand it). It went really well. The traditional (and some non-traditional) Mongolian entertainment was a huge hit with the foreigners so everyone was in a great mood. The most popular bit seemed to be the fashion show, which is really funny when I think about it, but it was very dramatic and cool (my favorite parts were the throat singing and the Shaman dance). People were standing up and getting pictures for the entire show. Overall, everything went great.

Throat Singing

Shaman Dance

Monday morning bright and early I caught the bus that was picking up at 2 hotels a 5-minute walk from my house. The buses left Ulaanbaatar every morning at 7am, which meant volunteers had breakfast at around 6am everyday. On my bus were 37 Koreans and 3 volunteers from Hong Kong along with a couple of random volunteers, translators, and Mongolian staff. I was initially disappointed that my bus was going to contain the only non-native English speaking volunteers we had, but it turned out to be blessing because the Koreans were super organized and quiet, so that was great.

My role during the week was to help with the media, update facebook and assist the Asia Pacific communications people with anything that they needed. That translated into a lot of walking around the build site holding my computer out trying to get a decent internet signal and then some boring down times. I felt a little bad that I wasn’t actually building, but I was still exhausted at the end of every day. I hung out mainly with Christine, one of our regional staff who works in Singapore and Ally, a 14 year old volunteer from the US who wasn’t allowed to actually build so she helped with catering and drinks.

Christine and I on the last day of the build.

Ally and I on the last day.

Our weather during the week was up and down. We had a couple of really hot days and then a couple of rainy days. On the first rainy day we just waited it out and the weather cleared enough to keep working. On Friday though most of the volunteers and staff left early in the afternoon because the rain was just too heavy (of course as soon as we’re all on the buses it stopped, but too late to change our minds). Getting home before 7pm was really nice though.

Korean team dealing with the rain. Photo credit Mikel Flam.

Every night I would get home and strip off my clothes and shower. I was too tired to go out most of the time so I would spend about an hour waging war with the flies that had infested my apartment and then crashed in bed. I don’t know why I was so tired because I wasn’t actually doing any building, but I was seriously exhausted.

There were of course some issues/problems/opportunities for improvement throughout the week, but nothing major and things got handled fairly well.

On Saturday, the last day volunteers were supposed to finish building by lunchtime because then we were having all of the house dedications and then closing ceremony and dinner. Because people left early on Friday afternoon though some houses were a little behind so everything got pushed back a little, but I think the houses all pretty much got finished. I missed all the house dedications because I was busy getting ready for the closing ceremony (I had to emcee again) but I heard some of them were very emotional and others involved shots of vodka.

The closing ceremony had its highs and lows. The highs included the families saying thank you and doing a couple of performances and each of the international teams did a little dance/song, which were sometimes funny and always entertaining. The lows included the fact that everyone was sitting in the sun in the late afternoon and the fact that it lasted WAY too long (my boss insisted on giving a speech which in and of itself was too long, and then giving out awards to way too many people that took an extra 45 minutes). After that we ate and then everyone left on the buses and the Blue Sky Build was over. (Randomly my bus left last because the Koreans were so attached to one of the families they built a house for that they were all crying and didn’t want to leave them, it was touching and hilarious all at the same time.)

Volunteers enjoying the Closing Ceremony.

I was SO tired at the end of the week. Sadly I still got up really early on Sunday morning because I needed to clean a little (someone was staying at my house that night) and because I had to give a talk in church that day which I needed to write/prepare and then find somewhere to print it before church (the crappy printer in our office had been temporarily re-located to one of the hotels that volunteers were at and I kind of have to have printed copies when someone is translating for me, I’m not mean enough to make someone read my hand-writing while simultaneously translating my too-big English words into Mongolian).

Some of the staff relaxing a little after everything was done on Saturday 

and the volunteers were getting on the buses.

My overall thoughts/feelings about the BSB are pretty positive. I had a really good time and loved all the people I got to meet and work with. It was also a great learning opportunity for me and I know a lot of things to avoid if I ever had to organize my own big build, or any major event.

Random Facts:

• I consumed more soda during the build week than I did the entire previous 6 months because there were thousands of bottles sitting in the test house with me all day and I had access to cold ones. I had at least 2 a day. I am now on a carbonated drink fast because I felt so crappy because of it.
• I wore the same t-shirt for 6 days in a row (I did wash it twice).
• I got weirdly sunburned during the week. I have a very visible watch tan now and on the last day I rolled up my pants to expose 3 inches of my ankles and lower leg: they turned bright pink as well. 
• I wore my Rodger Federer hat one day and was please to find 2 different international volunteers to talk to about Wimbleton because they recognized it.

Photo credit Mikel Flam

Photo credit Mikel Flam. You can kind of see me in the back right hand corner walking to the group photo because I was trying to get the Koreans to come to the photo.

(For more photos of the build check out Habitat for Humanity Mongolia's facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/hfhmongolia )

Sorry for the Absence

Wow, I haven’t posted on my blog in a really long time. My last post was back in June. My reasons for the long silence are varied. At first I was kind of upset and a little bitter about missing my Grandmother’s funeral and seeing all of my family. But I got all the details from my mom and 2 of my siblings, then my cousin posted a bunch of pictures of it and I got over that. Then I just got really busy with work. The end of June until now have been super hectic but super good too. It has meant that my normal internet wanderings have been suspended (I logged on to Pinterest yesterday for the first time in a like a month!), and therefore the blog has taken a backseat.

To make up for the lack of posts the past couple of months I’m going to attempt to write a bunch of posts in the next several hours.  I’m currently sitting at the Ulaanbaatar airport waiting for my flight to leave Mongolia. I’m a little sad about this, but mainly just numb. I’m flying to Beijing where I will have an 11+ hour layover where I intend to write more catch up posts. Of course I’m not sure these will actually get put up on the blog since the last time I checked BlogSpot was blocked in China, so we’ll see how many I can get written while sitting in UB.