Sorry that the blogs have become less frequent we are still trying to get accustomed to our site and our new jobs. This weekend our other site mates that live in soums came in. Mike and the boys enjoyed a guy’s night, playing video games and watching star wars. Elizabeth and I enjoyed the break! Luckily Elizabeth is a fantastic cook. She made me tortilla chips, queso dip, quesadillas, and biscuits and gravy. For a minute I almost thought I was back in the states.
Finally, Mike has started work. I guess now we will have to share the housewife responsibilities although he was really starting to get good at it. He now will be busy; teaching life skills to both teachers and students, teaching English and leading a yoga class for teachers (thankfully Lavonne gave him a deck of yoga poses). Mike, Elizabeth (our site mate) and 18 10th graders are also working on a world map project. They are painting a world map on a wall that is 6 feet by 18 feet. It is amazing to watch the process and Mike is taking a lot of pictures along the way. They are hoping that they will have it done within the next month or two. We are all very excited to see how it turns out. I am still really enjoying teaching English. This week I have started team teaching with 3 of our English teachers. My schedule is a little crazy right now but I am really enjoying my Tuesdays off.
Wow, it has really started to get colder here. On Sunday morning we were able to see snow on the mountain peeks. The snow made me think that maybe I should learn how to make a fire. This weekend I learned, although it absolutely didn’t seem to last as long as the ones Mike makes. I am sure I will become much better at it throughout this year and if not it can be Mikes job. It doesn’t take long to heat up our ger but it loses heat really quickly. If it is cold we generally have to keep a fire going. I guess soon it will be time to buy some winter clothes.
It is amazing how much you don’t eat when it takes a long time to make anything. Usually for breakfast we have an apple, oatmeal or the wonderful biscotti Mel sent us with a nice cup of coffee. For lunch, we usually have a bowl of rice sometimes if we are feeling a little spicy we will put some carrots or potatoes in it. For dinner we frequently use the leftovers from lunch and make some type of soup. Our diets have significantly changed from how we ate in the states. We obviously eat a lot of rice, noodles, potatoes and carrots. So far it hasn’t really been that bad. We are learning to branch out a little and made pizza the other night for our hasha family (they had never eaten pizza before). Tonight we will try to make burritos.
That is all for now. We love and miss you all- Allie and Mike
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Movin' on Up
We got a refrigerator!!!!! We are so excited, it is probably hard to imagine our overwhelming excitement but we didn’t realize how much of a luxury it was. We can’t even explain to you how much it means to us to receive mail, emails and phone calls. It is like having Christmas everyday! Allie started work this week. She is supposed to wear a suit and heels to work. She is teaching teachers, 2nd, 4th and 8th grade students English. My name is now Allie Bagsh (or Allie teacher). The students here are amazing and very well behaved. They seem to have a lot of respect for their teachers. All of my students wear uniforms colored according to their grade. The teacher’s schedules are a little hard to figure out but luckily I have really nice counterparts that have basically held my hand throughout the process. I think my schedule changed 5 times this week and is still not set in stone, luckily I am pretty easy going and don’t mind change to much. The first classroom I walked into I was scared to death, I almost felt like I was a little kid again going to school for the first time. When I walked in to my amazement all the children stood up and in unison asked how I was doing or Sain Bain uu? A little overwhelming to have 40+ students confront you at once, but very cute. Mike said that they did the same thing in Nepal. The school system here is different than what I was accustomed to in the states. Here they have a split schedule- that is even grades go to school in the morning and odd to school in the afternoon. They have to do this because of the amount of students and space. The students also stay in the same class all day and the teachers move. I have also found it interesting that almost all of the schools are within the same 1 mile radius.
I think the best thing about going back to work this week is that Mike had the week off and became the housewife. I would come home to find him hand washing the laundry, cleaning or cooking us food everyday. I asked him if he was sitting at home eating bon bons and watching soap operas but it turns out he was eating mutton and throwing knifes.
It is a really interesting feeling to be a foreigner. It is really hard to describe how weird you feel being totally different and only being able to understand a very small amount of what is going on around you. Now that school has started and the kids are out in full force we do have a lot of people staring at us. Hopefully the more we become integrated into the community the less staring we will have. This morning I had about 10 kids walk me to school it was a very interesting conversation- they were all talking really fast and intermittently throwing in Allie Bagsh and the only thing I could reply is that I like bananas.
We are still enjoying Murun and all it has to offer. We now can use the internet just about whenever we want since it is only a 5 minute walk. We found really good tutors (our hasha family) so hopefully our Mongolian should continue to improve. There is a restaurant that serves really good schnitzel every Tuesday. At night we are able to see every star in the sky and the entire milky way and every morning we are able to wake up to the beautiful scenery of being surrounded by mountains. Life is good. We love and miss you all—Allie and Mike
I think the best thing about going back to work this week is that Mike had the week off and became the housewife. I would come home to find him hand washing the laundry, cleaning or cooking us food everyday. I asked him if he was sitting at home eating bon bons and watching soap operas but it turns out he was eating mutton and throwing knifes.
It is a really interesting feeling to be a foreigner. It is really hard to describe how weird you feel being totally different and only being able to understand a very small amount of what is going on around you. Now that school has started and the kids are out in full force we do have a lot of people staring at us. Hopefully the more we become integrated into the community the less staring we will have. This morning I had about 10 kids walk me to school it was a very interesting conversation- they were all talking really fast and intermittently throwing in Allie Bagsh and the only thing I could reply is that I like bananas.
We are still enjoying Murun and all it has to offer. We now can use the internet just about whenever we want since it is only a 5 minute walk. We found really good tutors (our hasha family) so hopefully our Mongolian should continue to improve. There is a restaurant that serves really good schnitzel every Tuesday. At night we are able to see every star in the sky and the entire milky way and every morning we are able to wake up to the beautiful scenery of being surrounded by mountains. Life is good. We love and miss you all—Allie and Mike
Thursday, August 30, 2007
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
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
Friday, August 24, 2007
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
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
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
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
Friday, August 10, 2007
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
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
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