by Scott
So Ashlee survived camp -- it was a positive experience that she has promised to blog about when she gets a chance -- and we have now been in UB for a week. We're staying at a guesthouse where we have our own room complete with a double bed, WiFi, television (with Russian and Mongolian programming), and access to a bathroom (with a hot shower and laundry machine) and a kitchen all for only $11 a night.
We've spent part of this past week traveling by public bus to a nearby town where our new sitemates are just finishing their training. Since Olgii is such an exceptional place in Mongolia, Peace Corps thought it would be a good idea for us to meet these new volunteers and try to introduce them to Kazakh culture and attempt to answer any questions they might have about spending the next 2 years in Kazakh-land. At this point, we are getting three new sitemates: Justin, Brian, and Adi. They all seem really nice and they are a mixed bag of good-naturedness, enthusiasm, and a desire to get to work. From what we can tell, Justin will be replacing Matt at the Children's Center, Brian will be sort of replacing Laura (he'll be living in the same house but working at a different school), and Adi will be a teacher in a small village 2 hours outside of Olgii -- a place that from I have heard makes Olgii sound like a booming metropolis. We've met with them twice so far and we're excited to get to know them better over the next year -- ha, that's right, we've only got a year left in Mongolia!
So yeah, other than a few afternoons with our new friends we have pretty much spent the rest of our time enjoying life in the big city tempered only by our modest budget. In all, we'll be spending three weeks in UB. To stay within our means we are buying groceries and taking the bulk of our meals here in our guesthouse kitchen -- which isn't so bad considering that we have access to fresh produce (salads!), frozen chicken breasts (unheard of in Olgii), and a plethora of stores brimming with Western goods that we usually have to rely upon care packages to get. We did splurge last night though and we had dinner at Hazara's, our favorite restaurant in the city where they serve wonderful Indian dishes.
In other news, I did have a spot of bad luck yesterday. While boarding a bus in the city center I made the mistake of taking my eyes off the road and I fell right through an open manhole -- the vast majority of manholes in Mongolia are uncovered. It was a smaller manhole, so I didn't fall all the way through but I did land rather hard on my side, elbow, and armpit. All in all, other than a sizeable rip in my new jeans, a muddy arm, a bruised side, and a bashed ego I came out fine. It definitely could have been much worse. Now, a day later, my pants have been washed and mended, I got some ibuprofen from PC for the soreness, and I'm able to laugh about it. Ah, the life of a PCV in Mongolia.
As for the next couple of weeks, we'll meet with the new group of volunteers a few times (including their swearing-in ceremony on the 20th), we plan to visit some friends in Mongolia's second largest city (Darkhan), and we have our own training seminar on the 25th thru 27th. We'll return to Olgii on the 28th to officially get our second year started.
