Last Day!

Well, today is our last day of Pre-Service Training. Tomorrow we swear-in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. It sounds like it will be quite the shindig -- very ceremonial with several volunteer performances. We'll also have the U.S. ambassador and Mongolian foreign minister in attendance. Very fancy, we know.

Ashlee and I are incredibly happy to be back together -- we'll definitely think twice about any future long-term separation, but I think it was definitely a chance for us to realize exactly how much we rely on one another.

We've been in Zuunmod, right outside UB, for the past few days. Yesterday the Peace Corps announced the sites of all the trainees and they brought in our supervisors for us to meet -- they will also be helping each of us to make it back to sites alive and in one piece.

My school director seems to be a very kind woman. My school has 1,500 students and 7 or so English teachers. I will be solo-teaching 15 hours per week and spending the rest of my time helping the faculty with their English and co-teaching their classes with them. It all sounds very exciting.

We fly out to Bayan Olgii on Saturday 8/22. Between now and then we'll be in UB, hopefully relaxing a bit and also taking advantage of some choice shopping.

We found out that in Olgii we will be living in a "wooden house." Don't let the word "house" mislead you. It is a one-room dwelling with an outside well and toilet. But I've actually heard that this is the way to go -- you can regulate the heat yourself during the winter, making sure it is nice and toasty as opposed to an apartment with central heating controlled by the city.

Gotta go for now.

More Pictures

This is a picture of Ashlee and I outside of a Buddhist temple in Ulaanbaatar.

This is me standing outside of a large stainless steel monument of Chingiss Xaan -- that's Genghis Khan in English.

This is me attempting to ride a horse at Gachuurt's Nadaam festival. The saddle was pretty uncomfortable.

Wrapping Things Up

This is a picture of me at Gachuurt's regional Nadaam back in July. I'm drinking a large bowl of airag, which is fermented mare's milk. It is sort of like Mongolia's champagne.

This is a picture of the ger I stayed in during my first 6 weeks of training. Standing outside are some of my "doos" -- or younger siblings in Mongolian.


This is a picture of my little host brother and I in our yard. Gachuurt is a really pretty town with mountains and a river just outside our hasha gate.




This is a picture of my LCF (Language Culture Facilitator -- don't you love Peace Corps acronyms), her husband, and myself. I encountered some trouble with my first host family, so Nara took me under her wing while things were sorted out. She and her husband are incredibly kind. They are also the first Mongolians I have met who actually keep pets, rather than guard animals. The large beast is their pitbull, Dingo -- he's a sweet dog with tons of energy.

Well, we have definitely taken advantage of being here in the city. This past Tuesday both Ashlee and I had the afternoon off after our morning language session so we decided to grab some lunch together. Ashlee picked the brains of a few current volunteers and she found out about a place called Granville's Irish Pub -- it was amazing. We split a large spinach salad with bleu cheese, a BBQ bacon cheeseburger w/ ranch dressing, french fries, and large beers. Divine. Although we were completely stuffed, we also -- of course -- ordered ice cream for dessert. They even had a cappuchino for me! We completely blew our budget for the month, but it was well worth every tugrik!

Afterwards we checked out the movie theater close to PC HQ and found, to my delight, that we were right on time for a showing of Transformers 2! I swear, the stars were aligned for us. The movie was in English with Mongolian subtitles. The theater was nice (stadium seating) and filled with kids. Ashlee was a little disturbed with all the movie talking -- the kids probably couldn't understand the movie anyway, so why not talk? It was like being in an episode of Mystery Science Theater. I really enjoyed the movie -- what a great escape back to America.

Yesterday I again ate lunch in the city -- this time I made my way to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant! It was just like good ol' Emperor's Mongolian BBQ back home in Walnut. They even had chicken (something I have not had in months) and fresh vegetables. It was all-you-can-eat, but I swear that my bowl was three times larger than anyone else's.

But yeah, today is the last day of PST in our host communities. It is also our last day of Kazakh language lessons. We get out of class at Noon and then Ashlee and I will share a last lunch in the city. Tonight we get to pack all of our stuff and then rendevous with all the other trainees tomorrow. Everyone else is very nervous for Saturday -- that is when they all find out where they are going for the next two years. Exciting stuff.

Our New Address!

So we got our new address in case anyone wants to send us a care package!

Scott & Ashlee Burt
U.S.A. Peace Corps Volunteers
Bayan Olgii City
Bayan Olgii Aimag
Mongolia (via China)

We have been meeting with one of our sitemates so she has given us the lowdown on packages. She said to send packages using USPS standard/flat rate boxes. She said the large box costs $53 and only takes 2 weeks to get here!

Let us know if you have any questions -- once we get settled a bit I'm sure we'll have some requests...

10 Days and Counting!

That's right, we have 10 days left of Pre-Service Training (PST) -- but who's counting? At least for me, it definitely feels that things are winding down. I taught my second to last English lesson yesterday. Friday is my last class here in Gachuurt -- my partner and I want to do something fun for our students, so we thought we'd teach them an American song. We asked our students what sort of song they'd like to learn and here are their responses in order: (1) Lady Gaga, (2) Beyonce, (3) Britney Spears, and (4) Chris Brown. Rrrright, like I have any of that on my iPod. We settled on Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River." I'm real excited to sing that on Friday...

In other news, I had a really nice evening last night. I finally got to meet my host parents -- they live full-time in the countryside with their livestock while I stay in Gachuurt with their grown children. They are wonderful people and incredibly kind. They seemed genuinely happy to have me in their home and very excited to hear me speak Kazakh. I tried my best to hold my own in twisted Mongolian-Kazakh.

For dinner they made the Kazakh national dish -- in English it translates to something like "5 Finger Food." It was a large tray of mutton, horse sausage, and steamed flour rolled with carrots and onions. It was quite tasty. I learned that the horse sausage was actually horse meat stuffed into the horse's intestines and left to cure for months. It was pretty salty.

After dinner the family presented me with my very own Kazakh hat -- it's awesome. Then we took rounds and rounds of pictures. It was great.

I've got to head to class now. Bye!