It's that time of year.

Imagine, if you can, Best Buy on Black Friday. Scary crowded room, full of people pushing to get the last $100 laptop? Right. Well, Mongolia has it's own mini-version, but instead of electronics, it's carts full of food stuffs.

What is the holiday?

It's TSAGAAN SAR time! :D

This was how I imagined most of the people I encountered today were thinking. People pushing past each other to get the last Super Kontiks off the shelf. It reminds me of a couple conversations I've had in the past year about the commercialization of Tsagaan Sar. I could see it getting to Christmas-sized proportions, easy. The ads on TV, the sales, all of it hints towards commercialism. Where it becomes less about celebrating the beginning of the end of winter and the new lunar year, and more about fancy things? Some Mongolians I've talked to agree.

I'm interested to see the differences between this year and last year. One of the traditions of Tsagaan Sar is giving a gift to every person who comes to your home. The more money the family has, the fancier the gift tends to be (candy, money, and phone units are common... things like clothing, decorations and American dollars are less common). Families can quite literally go broke preparing for this holiday. The trade-off is though, is that the families will probably be able to live off of whatever gifts they received during TS. Is it starting to get out of hand, though?

So, I had a fun time at the shops today. I went store to store, but everyone was out of (good) veggies. The last store I stopped in had a good pile of green peppers, so I went to town. I really love onions (for those who don't know me) but the pile was really quite sad. I asked the nice store lady if she had any more, and she went in the back to get some.

A couple of people came by to look at the onions, but were dismayed at the wilted-ness of them. Oh, but I waited there patiently. And waited. UNTIL. The lady came out with a crate with only like 30 onions in it. And they were all mine! I had my bag ready, and grabbed up a couple kilos right before the swarm of people in the back of me, who realized that there were new onions out, pushed me to the side.

But it was too late for them. I had the most glorious onions of the pile. 

And I realized at the moment, I'm more integrated into this culture than I thought.

Some of my beautiful, tasty, eye-watering onions.

(No worries, she brought out more after I went to pay. But after all the shopping, the pushing and shoving... it was my moment!) 

Until after Tsagaan Sar (which is Feb 22nd-24th)... peace!

Can you shake it up, just once for me?

If you've never heard Gregory Alan Isakov, you should check him out. Excellent chill out music.

Anyway, what happened? Thanksgiving happened- in a blur. Lots of good times with friends. I made my amazing mashed potatoes again, and despite making something like 5 pounds of it, it was eaten so quickly I barely got any. And best thing to come out of Thanksgiving week: OLD BLAIN (sorry real not-old Blain!).

IST happened as well, which was pretty darn exhausting, I must say. I'm glad I was able to be a trainer, but I'm not sure how the summer people do it. Six weeks of that? Oy. It was nice finally getting to meet the new healthies for a longer period of time, and I got some good ideas for projects as well. Oh, and I totally had my camera the whole time but didn't use it. Bad bad bad Kate.

Speaking of projects, I have about 8-ish months left. How nuts is that? It feels so far away, yet at the same time it feels like I just got here. Katie L (fellow PCV, full-frame camera owner, and all around awesome person) made a good point in her blog- there's such thing as a "third quarter phenomenon" in which:

...I took a screenshot because it wouldn't let me copy and I was too lazy. Read the rest here. This completely explains the weird frustrations that I had a couple months ago. It's been better lately. I've been talking to other PCVs and I even had a chat with our country director, Ellen, about it. I'm glad to hear astronauts feel the same way... makes me feel a little more human.

So. I never did give ya'all a tour of my new place. Something about what I saw today made me want to:

SOMEONE had a little too much to drink and lost his head. This was in my hallway today.

 So anyway, here's the rest of my place:

My kitchen! My new place is a studio. This is possibly the cleanest it's been. There's also a bookshelf to the left.

Turn around, and it's my bed and my desk! Nice and cozy. I can now watch TV and cook dinner at the same time. MULTI-TASKING WHOO. Also, I have Christmas stuff up now.

Turn a little more, and here's my clothes area! (?)

My awesome runway carpet from the hospital, complete with mysterious black stain.

My... uh... coat and random stuff area. I have no more large room to hide all of it.

BATHROOM.

Hallway outside my place. Scary.

Door on the end of the hallway, to keep it nice and warm! How smart! Alas,  two problems: 1) I'm too tall for the door and 2) now the neighbor kids play in the hallway instead of outside.

Neighbor kids' doing? Kinda cute.

Someone's been drinking!

I'm now in the 3-8, WHAT UP NOW, 4TH BAG?!  

So have you ever wondered how our heating gets to our apartments? Wonder no more! They shovel coal into a large fire at all times of day and night. That's right- Titanic old school style. Those are steaming piles of coal bits. 

And here's my work! My commute is about 30 seconds, or I imagine 15 if I run. Also, that sand pile in the right-middle is currently where I get Mika's litter under the cover of night so people don't look at me weird. 

And one bonus picture from the Erdenet seminar I forgot to add:

Pharmacy for the WIN.

The new day dawns, and I'm practicing my purpose once again.

So here's my in-between week. Last week, big seminar. This week, home. Next week, big seminar. I'm leaving again Saturday for UB to be the Health trainer for IST (remember last year I brought Altansuvd?), and THANKSGIVING! I'm excited that next year I'll be with my family, but Thanksgiving here isn't a poor substitute. This will be the last time before COS (close of service) conference that we're all together, so we gotta make it count!

Long photo post! Whoops.

So last week, I traveled the most west I've been in Mongolia so far- to Erdenet. I've been preparing nursing skill presentations for Laura (a fellow M21) and Gracie (a new M22 healthie). I first had a stop in Ulaan Tolgoi (literally: red head) at Laura's soum and did a two day training for the hospital there:

Laura has the CUTEST most well behaved cat I've ever met. And BIG EYES! 

Practicing positioning with Gracie as my patient!

Laura (on the left), Gracie and I with the hospital employees. (Gracie's CP, Doogie, is the one with the black dress in the back- she was my amazing translator the whole week)

I had to take a picture of this. It just says "School". The school is named "School".

We're cold! 

Sunset in Ulaan Tolgoi.

Next it was onto Erdenet! Three days of nursing skill seminars. Tiring, but it was well worth it. We covered everything from nursing ethics to constipation. The nurses were really receptive and we had some awesome discussions. It was also really nice to see the M21s I've missed (Katie, Ryan and Ali!):

And it begins! There were over 60 nurses there. Dang.

View if you were sitting in the back.

SKIN LAYERS WHAT UP

I sometimes drifted to the back to speak just to make sure people were paying attention.

Oh yeah, we had dinner! Here's Ryan and Katie shelling the shrimp.

LETTUCE.

Finished result- salad (with "feta") and shrimp pasta and garlic bread (not pictured). Mmm.

YUMM.

Gracie poured a whole bottle of something on her computer, now the backlight doesn't work. Hilarity ensues whenever she wants to do anything on her computer.

BUNNY HUGZ

Ok, ok, back to the seminar. This woman speaking is the head of nursing in Erdenet, and is best friends with Tuya and Saraa (from the health department). Small country, eh?

The ER doc showed us all how NOT to transfer a patient (Gracie). Owch. 

Two person lift from a wheelchair. Not too bad!

You can see how nervous I am. We're practicing patient falls. This is pretty much how it ended up in my hospital, too.

Alright, I'll stop killing your bandwidth with my pictures.

OH WAIT HERE'S A NICE ONE:

Children's English play... comp...compet.... competition (gaaaahhhh)
But this one was cute. (And it won)

Of Competition and Rivalry

Interesting theme this week. Not just because of the MSU/UM game (go State!!), Red Wing games, Tigers or Lions (and bears, oh my!), but of conversations had this weekend. Oh, also I'm sorry that Michigan fans got such a bruised ego... it's been nice to be on the winning side for once (or 4 times). :)

Mongolia has an addiction. An addiction that many people don't know about, unless you have lived here for a while. This addiction is one seen frequently, but rarely questioned, unlike the obvious addition to alcohol. That addiction is competition.

This weekend it seemed that competition and rivalry were a constant topic of conversation (it IS that time of year). I sat down with Jessica and her CP for lunch, and I finally asked the question a lot of the PCVs want to ask- "why, exactly, do schools have so many competitions?" Jessica's CP couldn't answer. She didn't like it as much as we did, but it was something they had always done. Jessica and I suggested she could be the voice of change, the starter of the revolution, the organizer of "Occupy Baruun-Urt" (hah). She said that she really couldn't- as much as she would maybe want it, she could lose her job trying to reduce the number of competitions.

I guess I should specify what kind of competitions they have. They have the usual stuff for the kids, which is what we generally agree with- basketball, volleyball, English, singing competitions, etc. Those are fun and good for getting kids involved in extra-curriculars. The ones that PCVs have trouble with are the teacher competitions- sports (which I think are generally fine if used sparingly) and teaching competitions. Teaching. Competitions.

I'm not a TEFL PCV, but I've heard so many of my TEFL friends talk about these competitions it's like I've witnessed them myself (and, my hospital HAS done something similar so I need to work on them too). They go like this: teacher make awesome insanely cool lesson plans with props and handouts and visuals (maybe including videos, etc). They spend hours upon hours making them. They present it to a class of their teaching peers, NOT actually in front of students (?!?!?! they usually cancel other classes too, so that the teachers can observe other teachers). The lesson plan goes in a binder, never to see the light of day again.

Now, why don't teachers do this for every lesson, I ask. It doesn't have to be flashy. It seems that if you prepared lessons that engage the children in learning, it would be better for them instead of reading straight out of a book.

It's too much work, Jessica's CP replies. We don't have time.

We then discussed possible solutions to this problem. Have Jessica and the training manager sit in on lessons and give feedback. Instead of wasting time making lessons they'll never teach, have a seminar on how to make better lessons. Have less competitions so teachers can focus on making engaging lessons. Share lesson plans. The possibilities are endless.

I remember Todd saying similar things last year, when he was frustrated that teachers would cancel classes to prepare for the teacher's volleyball competitions. During one of the most recent competitions, I heard of an incident that really ticked me off. One of the teachers ended up teaching the grammar point wrong and tried to blame it on the PCV for teaching them wrong (?! why would we do that). What's more frustrating than that, was that the PCV had to go and teach one of the teacher's classes on the fly because the teachers were arguing so much about points and who was supposed to win, that they didn't go to class to do their job.

I really don't need to point out how many things are wrong with that. And that's why we're here. We're here to suggest better ways to teach, more efficient ways of teaching. But if this society has this tradition so well engrained in their culture, can we really do anything about it? Maybe. Going back to what Jess's CP said- she's afraid to make that kind of change because she could lose her job. The working environment here is sometimes so interesting. It's the wonderful thing about being a PCV- you can literally go almost anywhere you want, when you want, and speak to whomever you want. Americans are weird, new, and people generally want to hear what we have to say. The change could be amazing.

Enough chat. Picture time. Jess invited me to the singing competition for her school- "Universe Best Song" is a Mongolian singing competition on TV that is much like American Idol, only you have to sing songs that aren't in the Mongolian language. So many of the kids did pop English songs and traditional Russian folk songs, with a little Korean pop mixed in.

This boy was getting chewed out by the Russian teacher (who was sitting next to me) for messing up the pronunciation of whatever folk song he was singing. The judging was either a "yes" or a "no", just like in American Idol. There's none of that "every child is a special rainbow" American bullshit here!

These girls went to camp :) they were so good!

Deliberations begin...

Yep.

And finally...

DANCE DANCE