Settling in

We are adjusting well to our new home(ger) in Murun. We are learning how to do everything on our own (such as laundry, fetching water, cooking, food preparation, and cleaning). We didn’t realize how spoiled we were at our host families. Everything takes us a lot of time, everything is a process. We do have electricity and we are thankful for that but we can only use one electrical appliance at a time which makes cooking interesting. It also doesn’t help that we need to run our water purifier for about 5 hours a day. We are also learning how to live without a refrigerator. We didn’t realize how much we would miss it. It makes food gathering on a daily basis a little more time consuming. Soon we won’t have to worry though outside will provide us with natural refrigeration. We have basically become vegetarians only because we can’t store it. Poor Mike!! He can’t wait for winter.
There is a family of Americans here that run a farm on the edge of town. Yesterday, they were so kind in letting us pick all the American veggies (such as corn, green beans, peas, dill, lettuce, and zucchini) that we wanted. It was like Christmas in Aug. we haven’t seen many of these veggies since we left the states. We mainly eat potatoes, carrots, garlic and onions so one can imagine our excitement. For the next couple of days quite a bit of our time will be spent drying and freezing these veggies for the winter and spring. We have heard that in the spring time there is not a lot of food, so every little bit helps.
The weather here has been really nice although we can tell winter is approaching. It has been getting up to 70 during the day and dropping down to 40’s-50’s during the night. Luckily our ger has been staying really warm. We have only had to make a fire once so far. We have also been getting a lot of rain over night which always makes for an interesting morning. When it rains water tends to creep in under the sides and sometimes comes through the top opening of the ger. As far as maintaining the ger it is almost like a ship. There are ropes everywhere and every rope does something different. Alli and I are becoming expert knot tiers and know what just about every rope in the ger does. After we winterize our ger next month we should have a much more intimate knowledge because we will have to take the whole thing down and then put it back up. That’s all for now, we love and miss everyone. Alli and Mike

new pictures

hey we uploaded some more pictures to Flickr.com hopefully this link will take you there.

Ger living

Where to begin? First of all we are now actual Peace Corps Volunteers, the ambassador swore us in and now we have to protect the constitution. We decided to split the responsibilities so Alli is going to take care of the foreign enemies and I will handle the domestic ones.
Oh yea, now we live in a ger. Our first home together as a married couple. Minus all the creature comforts we are used to, it is actually pretty awesome. Our hasha family is around our age and very nice, Dodoj is a Mongolian language teacher at Alli’s school and Byamba is a driver/petrol worker. They also have a 3 year old daughter named Iveelmaa. Our ger is about 20 feet in diameter and is really cozy. We just finished getting it set up and it is starting to feel like home. Mainly we are just happy to have a home now after living out of our suitcases for the past three months. It is really interesting to decorate in a circle when our whole lives we have been accustomed to 4 walls. We are pleasantly surprised that all of our stuff fits into our ger. On the inside; we have a pretty big bed, a nice couch, a desk, bookshelf, 2 dressers, a table, a sink, a wood burning stove, and a pantry. Our ger floor is wood on top of the ground with carpets. We do have electricity and have heard that it will work most of the time. We do not have running water or indoor plumbing. The outhouse is 50 feet away. We are not quite sure how the ger is put together but we will find out soon when we take it all apart to winterize it. Everything we do now is a process. I am sure that the amount of time it takes us to do anything right now will shorten the more we do it. Our hasha has a very good location. We are close to the internet, post office, bank, mini grocery stores and water. (When we say close we mean within a 15 minute walk)
It is hard to believe that the summer is over and training is done, we are reasonably confident in our language and survival skills which is good. The real test will come once it starts getting cold out, right now it has been getting down into the 40s at night and is in the mid 60s during the day, but we can tell that the cold is coming. Supposedly Khovsgul is one of the coldest provinces in Mongolia; it gets down to about -50c here, that’s pretty cold. I asked someone why they don’t ice fish here because the fishing here is great. They said that it was because the ice on the lake freezes to 7feet thick. It would be tough to auger through that.
As far as work goes it doesn’t really start until September 3rd for us, Alli is teaching English and I am a social worker. We are really looking forward to starting work but we are enjoying our free time; settling in and exploring our new surroundings.
Love- Allie and Mike
For more directions on how to call contact one of our parents.
This is our new address:
Allie and/or Mike Prelaske
P.O box 162
Huvsgul, Murun
Delger Murun School Allie and/or Mike Prelaske
P.O box 162
XOBCГАЛ MӨPӨH
ДЭЛГУР МӨРӨН СУРГУУЛБ

UB BABY!

Where to begin? Alli and I are know in UlaanBaatar or Red Hero in english. It is fantastic. Anything that you want here can be found for a price but after two and a half months in the hoodoo you will kill a man for a pizza and beer. The restaurant said that I didnt have to but i wasnt going to take any chances. Our first night here Alli, Salomon, Rachel, Phillip, Jim (tom bogway)thats big bear in mongol, jullie and I went to go get pizza. They actually had chilled beer mugs and brought out parmesian cheese and tabasco unsolicited. I had never been so happy in my life. It was just fantastic, just fantastic. Yesterday I had fried chicken and today a gyro. Tonight Alli and I are going to get a cheese burger, I am so excited. Tommorow our supervisors come into town and on saturday we swear in as actual volunteers. Then monday Alli and I fly out for Murun and our ger. I cant believe that we are going to be living in a ger. We will post our address as soon as we can. Much love from Mongolia. Bayertai

Mongolia's 'Switzerland'

Well a lot has happened between the last time we were able to write a message. First and foremost we passed our language exams, which is good because Mike dosen't want to get on a plane anytime soon. We didn't do the best but we definitely weren't the worst, and most importantly we scored the same. After our tests there was a lot of celebrating and relaxing. It was really hard to say goodbye to our families, they were such a big part of our lives this summer. Mike seems to think I am as nice as his host mom and will continue to do and press his laundry- you would think after almost a year of marriage he would know that his hands are capable of laundry too.

I made American pizza for my family as a little going away gift. Quite the experience because I had no oven and only a ger stove. With a little hard work and elbow grease - mission accomplished. It was actually excellent by my standards but then again I like things with flavor and most importantly cheese. My parents thought it was ok I think mainly because it was so different. My siblings however loved it. It was a good thing because I take after my mother and don't know how much to cook so I ended up with 7 medium pizzas.It again was an amazing experience to watch them eat something that reminds me so much of home.

All of the trainees are back together, attending meetings and celebrating site announcements. Mike and I are so very excited to be able to live together again and in our own place. Who would have ever guessed that our first place would be a ger. Yes, Mike and I will be living in a 5 wall ger for the next 2 years. We hear that 5 wall gers are pretty spacious- well as spacious as 1 round room can be. We are really looking forward to the amazing experience. I can't say we weren't a little bit shocked and even a little bit scared. What doesn't kill us can only make us stronger, right. Since we are living in a ger we will also have a haasha family. This means essentially that our ger will be on someones property. Great news for us- we will have someone to show us how to survive Mongolian winters. From what we know it is a younger married couple with either no children or a baby. Our ger will be located in an aimeg center called Murun. It is a fly site(I should mention that neither of the 2 runways are paved)!! Mike is so excited. This means that we are ruffly a 30 hour drive to U.B but only a 1 hour flight. From what we hear we really lucked out it is supposed to be the Switzerland of Mongolia. The province has a lot of trees and water. Check it out on the internet for us we are pretty much going in blind. We do know that we have reliable internet access and might even have at the places we work. I am working at a Mathematics school(1900 children) teaching 5-10 grade. Mike is working at the other school(2500 children) in the city as a school social worker/after school director. Many things to look forward to. Sorry we are so vague right now but we don't have a ton of information.
We love and miss you all and will write more as soon. We love reading all of the emails and blog posts. We love and miss you all- Allie and Mike

Peace out

Time is counting down until we learn where we will be living for the next two years. We are so excited only 7 days left until we find out. Except that we will have to say goodbye to our host families and my Mongolian mom's cooking. We will find out what type of housing we will be living in (small house, ger, or apartment), where, and job assignments. A lot to look forward to. As a side note if anyone is planning on sending us anything please wait until we get our living assignment.
My daily diet differs a little bit from Mike because my parents have so many animals. I eat and drink a lot of dairy. Every meal my Mongolian mom goes out and milks the cows and the goats for our meals. I have even tried fermented sheeps milk. I am learning to love it especially the homemade yogart. The best part of eating yougart is licking the bowl when finished and it is perfectly acceptable and even expected. I drink between 4-5 cups of milk tea a day. It took a lot of getting used to especially sitting down to a nice hot cup of it when it is 95 degrees outside and I am already sweating. I am now able to distinguish between horse meat, mutten and beef- quite a step up from how I ate in the states. Almost everything that I eat in my house has been homemade, even though we own a store. I don't know how Mike and I will survive when we have to cook although I am sure Mike will figure it out. I made my family Mac and cheese and mashed potatoes. They loved American cheese, the little kids were eating it out of the package. It was great to be able to share a little bit of home with them and watch them enjoy it. I am going to make them pizza next week. A little tricky because we don't have an oven, but I will make it work.
I thought learning Mongolian was hard until I starting trying to teach Mongolian students English. Myself and another trainee, Cass, have a beginner class of 40-65 children aged 8-13. They are great!! Mongolian children at least from what we have experienced are really really well behaved. They hang on every and I mean every word that comes out of our mouths. They repeat everything, noises included. They also want to write down everything we put on the board. The disipline is astonishing, everyday I am more amazed. We taught them peace out- it is so cute. Everywhere I go in our soum I hear hello, hi, and peace out.
Thank you to everyone who has sent us mail and packages. I can't tell you how much we apprecite it. We practically cry every time we open any mail from the states. Frisbee in Mongolian translates to flying plate. We love and miss you all- alli and mike

Life in General

OK first of all let me appologize about the picture thing. Last time I was here I started to post the pictures which takes about five to ten minutes per photo when something terrible started to happen. Twenty minutes before this I had just eaten a bowl of yogurt then my host mother gave me a giant bowl of hot soup to eat. By the time I got to the post office-where the internet is- I was not feeling so well. Which started the weeklong purge of everything that was in my body. Im OK now though.

What is our diet like? For breakfast I generally just eat some bread with butter and water. Everyonce in a while my host mother will fry me an egg in the morning. Lunch consists of soup for the most part. Very hot soup. Not hot spicy, boiling hot. Speaking of spices they are not used much here, at least in the food that I have been getting. Dinner can be anything but there is only a couple main dishes that are served consistantly. Buzz- which is like a steamed peirogi. Huushur which is like a deep fried peirogi, and tsuivan which is a noodle dish with meat. be tsuivand doortai.- I like tsuivan. My whole family knows this because it is the only thing that I can say.