Okay, so a blog before I leave Mongolia. Final paper is done, but presentation tomorrow. I'm second to go, which I think is a pretty decent position.

When I left off it was about Bayanhongor, before we got to our families. So, after that lunch we went out to our families. The area was pretty rugged. My family lived on the plain, in a circle of pretty nice rock formations (some kind of igneous stuff, like in a lot of Mongolia I've seen). There was the family I stayed with and another ger, my host mother's older sister and her husband, and their kid, around 13 or so, was there part of the time. My family was excellent: Battuleg and Delgermaa, their kids were there for the first few days and then went back to school in the province center were we flew into. They had a larger ger their that they stayed in, so the one I was in with their parents was smaller, a "three-wall," so I guess sixteen feet in diameter or something like that. Battuleg was great, much more outgoing than Batbileg, my host father in Dadal. Both of my parents liked to practice language with me, and liked my Russian-Mongolian phrasebook. Sometimes Battuleg and I would go through my English-Mongolian dictionary and try to talk about things. That bag had a lake, and Battuleg liked to talk about the Great Lakes (Five Lakes) so I learned about words for birds and fish some, for example.
The second day or so I was there Battuleg took me with him to take the sheep to the river to drink. Every morning you separate the sheep with lambs from the other sheep and goats, and take them to water alternately. We took the sheep with lambs, which took a little while, there were still quite a few very young lambs. In the morning I found a little newborn one, they can be hard to spot though I later realized that of course the mom stays pretty nearby, and you can tell by her behavior pretty readily what's up.
The horse I used there (we had a lot more freedom with horses) had a tail that was all matted together, like a huge dredlock. He was good, pretty strong (it is a weak time of year for horses, it was still early spring there), but slow. When you went over a walk at all his tail would really hit the back of his legs, sometimes ending up in front of his back legs. Once the others came by really suddenly and I used another horse, the one my host dad had been using, and I also got to ride the Mongolian saddle then. I was wearing tennis shoes, so the wood of the saddle dug into my legs a little, but other than that I liked it a lot. The problem is that your legs are pretty high up and against the wood.
This time the other students were closer. I only did language with them every other day, which was cool, and they didn't leave me out of their rides and activities. Buyant, who was my langauge teacher before, the ornithologist who has spent a lot of time in the UK and thus has a hilarious accent and lexicon, was nearby and arranged lots of good stuff. We visited other gers together, including Tiago's where they had just slaughtered a sheep and fed us the intestines and liver, as well as the ribs and other usual parts. My family actually ate yak the whole time I was with them, including the excellent dairy products. The figures I've seen for yak milk is that it is over 15% fat or something. Anyway, clotted cream (urum), sour cream (tsutsgee) and aruul, hard milk curds are great. Also we ate a lot of bortzig, and I helped my mom make it once, a process that involved huge quantities of yak butter and sugar. I think that my favorite food in Mongolia was there, anyhow.
We also visited the canyon, which was pretty cool. The river there was still full of ice, but a lot of it was actually below the surface, which created a really cool effect. Good birds there too, we watched a steppe eagle for a while.
A big part of Bayanhongor was the goats. One day my family combed twenty, a few days before that I was at their neighbors/my mother's sisters' combing goats with them most of the morning (while others were in language class). The deal there is apparently just sell your product in the aimag center, some people had gone towards China in the past but that hasn't been profitable in the last couple years. The price is somewhere around four dollars a kilogram. The day of twenty goats yielded around nine kilos.
A few days before we left we went to the bag center, where they arranged a rodeo for us. My host dad was there and helped catch the horses. The deal with horses is that they run around practically wild, there is a stallion that is never caught, the male ones caught for riding are castrated so they can go with the herd. The stallions are very wild looking, very long hair. When a new riding horse is caught, one of the first things you do is cut its mane, actually. Very short.
The rodeo had three events: lassoing (Mongolians use the uurga, a pole with a loop of rope on the end, so that when you twist the pole it tightens), picking something off the ground while galloping, and bronc riding. The competitors choose horses for each other to make it the most fair. It was good, but the last event was kind of short and some of the horses not so wild. Maybe two good ones though, worthy of the July 4th Stampede.
After that we had a goat horhog, the real Mongolian barbeque, where you cook the meat with hot stones. Excellent. Goat meat has a really interesting flavor. Then we went up by the lake, where some of the other students were, and past the old monastery (didn't go in, the one lama there is also a politician and was busy) to see the rock paintings. There were some good Tibetan inscriptions by the ger I was in, but these were the full out thing.
The last day it snowed, and we had a ride planned, which we did anyway. It was pretty cold going, and our friend wasn't even there. But we stayed in his ger to warm up. The ride back was much better, most of the snow had melted and the wind was much more tolerable. Buyant was trying out a new word, "epic," so this series of events was dubbed "wicked epic."

We drove back to UB, stopping at Kharkhorin, site of Chinggis' capital. We spent the night in Arvaiheer, also an aimag center, which seemed to have a little more happening than Bayanhongor. In Kharkhorin we stayed in a ger camp that was pretty nice for a couple of nights. We saw Erdene-zuu, the monastery there of course. It is the oldest and one of the top three in Mongolia, built in the 16th Century on the site of the old palace complex, which was destroyed with the rest of the remaining buildings from imperial times by the Manchu. Enclosed in a fence of ... stupas (the number has special significance) there were around a hundred temples, but most were destroyed in the 30s. There are at least three still there. They are still trying to rebuild another one, for now there is a huge ger there acting as a temple. There is also the temple and monks' living area built in the Tibetan style (the old temples are in the Chinese-influenced style), where we also saw the praying area. Kharkhorin was a good place for hiking around, the ger camp was in a nice valley. We had a fire one night and some Chinese journalists there hung out with us for awhile and shared their beer. So perhaps we will appear in a Chinese documentary about Mongolia in coming months. Continuing towards UB, we stopped for lunch in a place with good dunes, and then there was a sandstorm. We spent the night in the ger camp at Hustai National Park. This is the Prezhwalski's horse reintroduction site, and the park has been heavily financed by the Dutch. We had a ride through the park which included takhi (P's horse), elk, and some good rock art: deer stones and man stones. The former are earlier and are slabs with incised elk or deer, the latter are from the "Turkic" period and are statues of mustachioed men.
When we got back to UB we were with our host families again, and continued our lectures. Talk about it later, have to end this one here.

This is a pretty delayed posting... last thing mentioned was a month or so ago...

Was still in UB when I left off, it was awhile ago, maybe a month. Anyways, lectures went good, the orthodox guy was very cool, said I could come hang out on Sundays with them if I wanted. The Catholic Church also interesting, they do a lot of social work-- they have a nice library for people in the area (it's off to the West of the main drag, where the outskirts begin), a few orphanages. Also have things set up in Darkhan and countryside. Like Orthodox, not teaching religion (actually there is a law against this) but of course if people come and ask it's fine. The priest is from Cameroon, speaks fluent Mongolian (has been here 6 years now). There is also a bishop, though of course Mongolia isn't a diocese itself. He's Belgian, I believe, one of the first people to come in the recent era. We also visited this place called the Mahayana Center (Mahayana- one of two types of Buddhism, later form in China, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet (some classify Tibetan Buddhism- practiced in Tibet and Mongolia as a third type, branch off of Mahayana)). Anyhow, this place was set up by Westerners who started an international organization in the 70s to set up these centers in many countries to teach in the local language, support local monasterys and other institutions, etc. They came here in 94, were first people teaching about Buddhism in Mongolian (traditional to do everything in Tibetan, of course). They have a nice building near the center with library, cafe, teach in Mongolian there, English courses. They help support the monks at the big monastery in Ulaanbaatar, Gandan, and set up the first nunnery in Mongolia since the transition. We talked to a French nun and a Swiss guy who has been working with this organization for a lot of years.
One night we met this guy Amare in an expat-y cafe with wireless internet that we like to go to. He's Mongolian, but got an MBA at Princeton (undergrad in Singapore). Good English, but heavy on the slang ("I was like, 'oh shit, guys'") He also went to high school in Moscow (8 years), so able to dicuss that when others got tired of the conversation. Anyhow, he owns a cashmere company, bemoaned the lack of business ethics in Mongolia... everyone working under him corrupt. Sounds like he's having a fair amount of success now, but his operation is mostly outside of Mongolia. Telling us he just signed a contract to provide cashmere for Rolls-Royce, some luxury jets. On corruption though, said he's afraid to go back to Moscow, at least people in Mongolia aren't killing eachother. Also interesting to talk to him about Russian education system, sounds like not too much has changed since the 80s.
After this week we moved out of the hostel where we were all living together into separate families in UB. I requested a family that spoke Russian, I got a family with two Russian-speaking parents and three girls (17, 19, 21) who all speak varying degrees of English and two speak some Russian. Many of the others got families with English-speaking parents. My family lives a little further from school than is convenient (the school is to the West, I'm on the East side). It can take an hour just to get to Sukhbaatar Square, about the midpoint. My father is a policeman (haven't spoken with him too much still, he speaks Russian and Mongolian quickly and with a heavy mumble/accent.), mother works at a different police station. Oldest sister studying law, second economics, third is a senior in high school and wants to be a plastic surgeon.
I went to Gandan Monastery with my mother and sister the Saturday after I moved in, it was interesting. First we went into the temple housing the gigantic statue of Avalokiteshvara (a buddha of compassion, the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of his). Before this we went through the whole area, during which I was haggled by more people than any other tourist place I've ever been (not too much, but was a little suprising to me). First guy spoke to me in Mongolian (how are you, whatever) but my host mom shook him off. Second guy while we were going into a temple, haggled me in Russian (Devyshka...), which was pretty suprising. Instead of saying I was German which would probably have been a good way out, said I didn't speak Russian or English, to which he said, you just don't want to. Finally went away. At the entrance to the Avalokiteshvara temple guy wanted me to pay five dollars, go back to front and buy a foreigner ticket. Let mom argue with him for a little bit, then just got out the student card. Worked fine, but he said no pictures.
Best part was going to one of the "prayer halls," I guess you could call them... A bunch of lamas in one large room, you choose a prayer in an annex and pay an attendent, then take the slip of paper given back to you to a free lama. We were there for quite awhile, incense was heavy. Noticed that some of the lamas had cell phones, would run out to answer them. This place wasn't in the walls of the main monastery/temple area, just outside in a pretty Soviet area looking building. The prayers are in Tibetan of course, ritual-heavy; people going back to attendent to fill cups with milk, oil, the monks do some hand gestures. My mother was at it for awhile, went to fill a cup maybe three times. I didn't feel too uncomfortable, lots of other people hanging around (Mongolians, of course), a little bored. When we left mom said that the lamas were looking at me and talking to their neighbors about me.
The next week was lectures on the environment; not many lectures, but interesting. First we went to the United Nations, where a guy inundated us with statistics. Most didn't like the presentation, but he just had pretty limited knowledge. He runs a program that gives small loans to local groups working on environmental projects (examples: strawbale housing projects, river protection/cleanup, programs to provide more people with solar panels for their gers). One with guy who helped set up a national park (Hustai) with the Dutch to reintroduce Prezhwalzki's horse (takhi in Mongolian). We visited this place driving back from homestay in Central Mongolia (Bayanhongor), pretty nice, small, but saw a lot of takhi, even some elk. Also marmots. Second lecturer was an alumni of this program, he did a study with funds from the World Bank to study the trade in wildlife products. Still quite a lot of illegal hunting going on; elk have been decimated by the demand in the Chinese market for velvet antlers (cut them into rings, people buy as an aphrodisiac. Other parts used as well). Marmots, foxes, wolves also heavily hunted. Mongolians think that marmot is really tasty, there has been several country-wide bans on hunting it. Basically, during socialist period, hunting very well regulated, after transistion, basically no regulation at all. He also had a friend with him, down from Krasnoyarsk, where she's teaching English (with Language Link, a company that many Beloit alumni work with in Moscow). She was trying to get a visa here, which I here is really difficult. Anyways, I was able to talk about Russia with her for a little, something that I really don't get to do nearly enough here. I've aquired such nicknames as Marussia among the other students...
We flew to Bayanhongor-- nice small jet. Newly refurbished, small Saab they bought used from American Eagle. Stayed in the aimag (province) center for one night. That evening a few of us went to the market, played pool. I had to drop out, started talking with two guys who said they were students who spoke a little English and Russian. At dinner we met some Peace Corps guys, after we had a dance party with students at the local management college we met them at a bar. Did some karoke, everyone liked "Pesnya pro zaitsev." After that went to the pretty nice apartment (nice big living room) of one of the guys, but everyone else wanted to stay out longer than me and the language teacher who had to follow us (apparently, they have been told to follow us around). I talked to him more than I had before, he used to work for a Russian gold mining company as a guard (discussed it more with him on the way back to UB). Finally got another student to go back with us. The next day we visited the history and natural history museums. Interesting, but the first came with a long-winded tour guide. They had nice archeological, Buddhist, and socialist era stuff (apparently Bayanhongor had a special tie with Yakutsk). The natural history museum was much smaller, covered all the bases. Rocks, stuffed animals, a standing dinosaur skeleton and a pretty cool mural. We moved out of the hotel, I and two others were late to lunch because we were exploring the half-frozen river next to town.
At lunch they had a few Americans working in the area to talk with us. I said near this guy Dustin, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with an elk embroidered on the breast pocket. Came from farming family in Eastern Oregon, here now with his wife and young son (I think 2 years or so?) working with small vegetable gardens. He's with some Christian organization in UB (I saw a doctor at the Korean hospital who is with them also). There's also a Brazilian (former soccer player) there now, who set up a soccer league for kids in UB and is now doing the same in Bayanhongor.

another stimulating week of lectures. Oyun, leader of the Civil Will Party, sister of Zorig the assassinated leader of the young democrats, and geologist rounded out the week along with one of the VPs of Ivanhoe Mines (who are trying to develop a site called Oyu Tolgoi, perhaps the largest gold/copper deposit in the world.) Oyun went on and on about it, which was great for me (she was even more enthusiastic than me, a suprise. She wanted to know my name and thought that I knew all of the current market prices for copper, gold and oil). I've read alot about her, but not about her mining views/history. Anyways, I could go on and on, and probably will later. It seems like no one on this program has done a project on (corporate) mining. (Someone made a film about the so-called "ninja" miners, who go solo and pay no taxes, pollute the hell out of everything, etc.) So, they both gave us materials, and I have somewhere to start my project from.

Other than that, Jargalsaikhan, another civic movement leader, the secretary of the People's Revolutionary Party (who are currently in power), and some others I'm forgetting or not sure I mentioned or not. Ganbaatar may have been mentioned last post, he's the head of National Soyombo, important civic movement, also good for discussing mining. And Undarya, an independent political consultant, who ended by quoting Frank Herbert. Made my day.

So, now we are off to Dadal tomorrow, generally agreed to be near the birthplace of Chingis Khan (at the junction of the Onon and Balj rivers). Good taimen fishing, I read. Maybe I'll get a chance. My family lives pretty close to Dadal, the "county" seat. A two, five, and fifteen year old, and a grandma. Baatar told me a little about them, mostly that they are good people, hard-working, but a little shy.

The ethnic group there is the Buryats, who also live on the Russian side of the border. The main ethnic group in Mongolia is the Khalkhs, according to them the B's are card-players, gamblers and drunks, but also leaders and very hard-working. They suffered the most under the 30s repressions, partly because of Stalin but also because there were many intelligentsia among them.

So, it'll be a two-day drive, over half unpaved. Wish me luck. I don't get carsick often, but it has happened... I know I won't be hung over at least, I've yet to find a decent vodka. Haven't tried Chingis himself yet though.

Everything went pretty smoothly until we got to China, where we found out after getting to the gate that they had rescheduled our flight because of "bad weather in Ulaanbaatar." We waited for awhile, Geoff showed up, after a bit there was another announcement in Chinese, and people started moving, but we really didn't notice. A Chinese guy came over and told us what was going on; they wanted to bus us to a hotel. So we went along after gathering everyone who was looking for food, and stood in line to go through an x-ray machine for some while. We got on the buses and drove in almost a circle, it was strange because there was a very heavy fog, and many buildings falling apart, and people riding bicycles, clear out there. I was near an American guy (there were several Americans and Canadians on the flight, actually), I think he might have been the first of the old hands to claim that China Air had just stolen our flight for another group; Lantern Festival is approaching, so many Chinese are going home. When we got to the hotel, some people were pretty excited... "Hot springs resort! I'm not going to Mongolia, just stay here!" It was pretty nice. Very new, large rooms, and we got free lunch as well from a large Chinese buffet. So we hung around for a few hours, I got in a few hours nap, and we were off again.
Things went smooth from there, we got through the security line pretty quick, then the plane. I sat next to a Mongolian girl, who spoke good Russian and English. She works for a Hural (Parliament) member, and was coming home from India. When we finally touched down, it was only a two or so hour long flight but felt like forever, there was a little snow on the ground, yellowy vegetation, quite like getting in at YIA. They just renamed the airport after Chinggis Khan, we noticed quickly. Our bags were there, Ulzii (our adminstrator) was there, we got on a bus and headed to a hotel, it was great. Ulzii greeted me with a "privet," and knew my name... Russian is coming in handy here and makes me cool.
The next morning we walked to our school, down a main avenue, and turned off into a side street, and then a typical-looking house. We have a ping-pong room, library, lecture room (with portraits of the khans), sitting room, and kitchen, and offices downstairs, storage below. Ulzii introduced me to Surmaa, who makes us lunch, because of my Russian. She made us some boiled beef and Olga-style borsht (no beets) for lunch, and they got us pizza. We went through some health stuff with a doctor, syllabi and schedules with Ulzii, and did language. It was good for me, I know my numbers solidly now, and feel more confident about my pronunciation.
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There's more to write about now; we had a good day of "touring" with the language teachers, Zaya, Tuya, and Baganaa, and yesterday visited the embassy (and met with the US ambassador, the political and economic advisor and the public affairs advisor), and had a lecture on history and civilization by a professor from the National University.
Our tour day consisted of first going up to the mountains to the south, the Bogd Khaan. They built a monument in the 70s there to Soviet/Mongol cooperation on the site of an old ovoo, or Buddhist rock cairn. The ovoo has returned, with prayer flags. There were several Mongolians there, it was a great view and a great monument, all around an awesome place. The monument has a lot of graffiti, except on the mosaic murals, which are pretty far above the ground, but not out of reach judging from some of the other graffiti. After that, we went on to the main square, Sukhbaatar Square. In the middle is the famous statue of Sukhbaatar, the main revolutionary hero. There is now a new front to Government House on the north side of the square, including a new statue of Chinggis Khaan, part of the 800 year celebrations of last year. We then stopped at a nice restaurant near the square, the Red Horse, and had some Mongolian fare, and continued on to the National History museum, which was impressive, reminiscent of the history museum in Moscow. They spent a good deal of time on pre-socialist Mongolia, of course. All of the signage was in Mongolian and English. the last activity was seeing a dance/song performance, of course of the "tourist" variety, but it was with real throat singing, musicians, even contortionists.
The embassy visit was pretty amazing. It's a little away from the center and of course took awhile for everyone to get through the metal detectors, etc. but the time we spent with the ambassador and advisors was pretty amazing. The new ambassador has only been on for five months or so, he met last semester's group at some function, then attended all of their final presentations and had them to his house for dinner. Ulzii said later that the previous ambassador was not really interested, the embassy attitude in general was "don't talk to us unless one of your students is dying." The embassy talk was given only by the public affairs advisor, the ambassador stopped in briefly to say hello then. Anyways, the current ambassador wanted to here all of our ideas for projects and told us several times how important he thought these kinds of programs are.
The impression I got from their presentation of policy was very good, things have changed since the early transition days, there was great emphasis on the especially unique situation of the Mongolians. They talked about Mongolia today as a "great success," which I can see, as they said there is no assasination or imprisonment of journalists and political opponents (I also discussed this with Zaya at the museum, she said the same), less corruption, and even the economic growth rate is growing. Anyway, the manner overall was also very genuine, relaxed, generally undiplomatic. The public affairs officer, Alexei, gave everyone a book about Danzan Rabjaa, an important monk of the 19th Century that he said some "itinerant Canadian Buddhist" had dropped off. We are going to his monastery, so now it's required reading.
After that we went back to school, and had a long discussion period with Ulzii. We talked about street children, the performance, Russian-Mongolian relations, Sino-Mongolian relations... It was really difficult for me to say anything, I feel very at home here, everything almost strikes me as similar to Moscow. I can even speak with many people using Russian, and my Mongolian is at a level where I can at least read most signs. But it was of course very stimulating to hear from everyone else. I'm very happy to find Geoff, who is very into cultural theory, and others who have great interest in linguistics, archeology, etc.
The lecture by the professor was very interesting, he touched on the "anthropology" of the Mongols; relating them to the Koreans, Japanese, and even a little to the Russians. He placed great emphasis on differentiating them from the Chinese. He also talked about China as a threat to the US. 40% Chinese investment in Canada... I had no idea. The Mongolians do still distrust the Chinese, but their attitude towards Russia is still more favorable then I had hoped (great, of course. I don't need to worry about speaking Russian at all). There is still even a sizable "Russian district."

here's some pictures of Ulaanbaatar for now: