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!

And life goes on!

Today was my first day back at "work" in a couple months (I say "work" as in sit at my desk in the hospital and work), because of camp and seminars (and my family visit!) and such. It was a little weird, but I wasn't as off in my morning routine as when I came back from America.

So it was pretty normal- we're having my dearest Ashley come this a'way to do a physical therapy seminar which is sure to be fun. As my CP and I were planning, I sensed something was a little off with Suvdaa, but I thought it was probably because I hadn't worked with her since camp, and I only saw her a couple of times after. That and we were probably both tired from the weekend.

Turns out that was NOT the case, ha. Conversation went something like this:

Me: Tuya is on vacation, yeah? Where is she?

S: I dunno. Maybe UB, maybe China.

Me: Ah. You said before you couldn't go to China, why was that?

S: Uh... (half laughs) I had problem.

Me (not wanting to press it further): Ah, I see.

S (grinning): .......

Me: ...??

S: ...I have baby.

Me: ....Umm... you do??

S (points to stomach): Yes.

Me: HOLYS&*%WHAAAAT?!?! That is AWESOME!!!

I proceeded to freak out for a few minutes, while Suvdaa laughed at me for being so excited. I had to try not to be TOO excited because in Mongolia it's bad luck to fawn over a baby that's not been born yet (baby showers = totally out of the question). Anyway, after those few minutes, though, my mind started to wonder... "That's so cool, I get to see a new Mongolian baby!" "But that means... she's gonna take leave and probably not be back before I leave." "Aw crap." It's fine though- Travis reminded me that it's not she's moving or anything, and that she'd probably want to help me in any way she can when she's away. I also have other CPs who are awesome too that I can work with while she's on leave.

I also had to remind myself of something that I think all PCVs remind themselves at least once during their service- life still goes on while you're here. Things don't stop happening just because you came to a different country. Good and bad things happen just as they do at home. I've already known some of the lows, such as illness and death, and I've seen how my Mongolian friends have reacted. Just in the past couple months it's been nice to see the highs- new buildings, new jobs, and now new babies. :) Although, Suvdaa's pregnancy isn't the first one that I've known. Khishgee, one of the English teachers, told me today she's thinking her baby is coming next week! And basically half of Sarah's teachers at her school are preggers right now (including her main CP as well), so I guess now's the season for love? Haha :)

So that's my news for the moment. :) Now I shall leave you with a couple 3x1 photos...

Singing oh, January, oh

The Decemberists new album = rockin', albeit a bit country sounding, was inspired by REM so I'm gonna give them a break.

Went to the Mercy Corps Client Day and Trade Fair during the weekend, some pictures ahead (HAHA get it?! Well, if you don't you'll see soon enough...). I got some cool stuffs, including PORK which we made pulled-pork sandwiches with and they were DELICIOUS.

Yesterday was the end of the 4^th Nine (see my post about the Nine Nines)… which is the coldest Nine. Only warm from here on up, yeah? I’d like to call BS since it’s only the end of January, but it seems that it might actually be true- the weekend calls for the lows to be ABOVE zero, and highs of +23F! I don’t even remember what that feels like! Break out the bathing suits!

This little sheep went to market... 

Also a month from today (*ahem* this was written yesterday) I’ll be headed to the good ol’ US of A (and Hong Kong) for a nice vacation. I’m thinking either I’m going to FREAK OUT (dreading reverse culture shock) or it’ll be perfectly fine. Hopefully the latter. Although my mom said she had it when she came back from Scotland for the first time, going into the huge supermarkets. One can only hope that I freak out whist eating a wonderful Jimmy Johns sandwich. #9 with no tomatoes and extra lettuce and onion… here I come.

…Need to stop thinking about American food. Just gets depressing. I’ve noticed I get on “food kicks” here. Like I’ll eat one kind of thing for a long time then suddenly get sick of it. I once was hugely obsessed with veggie melts but once sliced cheese disappeared from the delguur (store) shelves, I’ve been mostly eating sliced veggies with a Thai sweet-and-sour sauce, sometimes with chicken if I have it. For breakfast I used to be a hard-core egg eater but now I’ve gotten lazy and, with the help of Alex’s oven I’m still pirating, I’ve been eating toast nearly every morning. Partially also due to the fact that eggs are becoming a rarity again now that Tsaagan Sar is less than a week away.

i lose mai bodie... plz help mi :(

In other news we finished our grant for the Children’s Camp this week and I’m just waiting until Friday to get the final signatures so we can send it in. This week I’ll be starting another grant to address road safety in our community. When my coworker said that the hospital was interested in doing that project, I was right on board. We’re going to try for a MCA (Millennium Challenge) grant… but the deadline is April 4^th, just after I come back. So I’m going to try my darndest to punch this thing out next month with the help of my coworkers.

A little random, but I had a momentary freak-out at work today. I haven’t been feeling very good this week (tired/sore throat), I don’t know if that has anything to do with this. Anyway. I had “Doctors Without Borders” on the brain for some reason so I decided to check out their website. My thought process went a little like this:

Oh this would be a really awesome thing to do, what are the requirements? *clickity click* --> Huh, two years clinical experience with less than a 2 year gap in between --> Well, that’s ok, I can do my masters before hand, then I can work for a couple of years and then do this --> Let’s look at U of M’s nursing master’s programs! *clickity click* --> shit, do I need to take the GRE? WHEN? --> wait, what the heck to I even want to do my master IN? Clinical nurse specialist in GI diseases? CNS in adult acute care? Community health? Education? --> Should I start applying now?? --> Oh, but what if I wanted to take a year off? Then I could go down to Bolivia to do the photographs for Hugh’s university --> What about those photography classes I wanted to do? *clickity click* --> What about the continuing education classes in Japan? *CLICKITY CLICK* --> What about doing a year in South Korea teaching English? You get paid for that! --> What if I want to do a 3^rd year here?! I’m going to be SO OLD! I’m going to be the OLD SPINSTER with the nice career and no love/personal life, aren’t I? AREN’T I?? --> …I really should be working on that grant. *hastily closes browser tabs*

…Luckily my coworkers did not notice such a thought process.

Here's a nice picture so you can think happy thoughts after this blog post!