Work? (Ashlee)

Since you (mostly) know what Scott does at work all day (when school is actually in session, ha), I thought I would try to describe what I do here in beautiful, cold, sleepy Mongolia. My official title is "Health Extension Volunteer" and I work at the local Health Department in Olgii "city", Bayan Olgii province, Mongolia. The idea is that I will work with the department here on projects that they have already identified to increase their level of functionality and awareness of all things "health." Projects generally include things like public awareness campaigns about AIDS, Hepatitis, or general public health like washing hands and sanitation, or teaching lessons to students about safe sex (but that's a whole other blog for this town...). Suffice it say, programs are less than existent.

Due to general H1N1 craziness (among other factors), most of these types of projects (amid other ideas that I have floating around in my head) have not begun to take shape. So what do I do on a daily basis when I'm not making a delicious dinner from delicious materials shipped from the states? To sum up, sometimes a lot. Sometimes a lot of nothing. Lately, I have been computer fixing and helping to figure out the new edition of Microsoft Office, thinking/wishing/hoping/dreaming about future projects, thinking/wishing/hoping/dreaming about grad school, learning how to play computer games (everyone here is addicted to a pokemon matching game), teaching English (but BARELY anymore, thanks H1N1), handing out H1N1 info to people who visit our office and when I travel, hoping that people will come by to visit the office, working with Matt on a future project to translate a book in Kazakh, "participating" in meetings, "translating" medicinal handouts/drug reactions/webpages/cell phone instructions from English/French/Spanish/"German" to Mongolian/Kazakh, hoping that the bathroom is open so that I don't have to hunt down the lady with the key or go to the school's outhouse which is filling up rapidly, and generally waiting for H1N1 to pass.

H1N1 update: there is no H1N1 in Olgii. There are rumors (which may or may not have been started by some people I know who will remain nameless) that there IS flu infection here, and no one bothers to correct anyone, they just simply assume its true and pass the rumor along. Either way, there's no mail coming, no traffic coming, and no fresh food coming for the next week. Thank goodness for canned chicken and oreos from America!